---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
John, my point in replying originally was -- and is -- that I don't believe any of this guff you're spouting about "science." I think your interest in this subject is completely driven by your belief in the childhood notions of "God the Creator" you were taught in your youth, and that you're still desperately trying to prove these myths "true." The bottom line of most of the new cosmological theories you've presented is that one universe gives rise to the next, a sequence that goes back infinitely because there was never a "beginning" to infinity. I think you're just uncomfortable with a universe that was never created. I think -- as I said earlier -- that you are intensely uncomfortable with the notion of an eternal universe that has always been and thus never "required" being created. I think the *reason* you're uncomfortable with this concept is that it would obviate the need for any "first creation" and thus for a "creator." In short, I think you're a lot like the people who search around on mountaintops looking for wreckage of a boat so they can "prove" the myths about Noah's ark "true." I get it -- you have a need to believe in the myths you've been told about God, and you try to project that need onto every new scientific discovery, hoping to find something -- ANYTHING -- that you can glom onto to allow for the possibility of a "Creator factor." Your very comment that started this thread was, in fact, "My question primarily is: what caused the Big Bang?" I don't think you're looking for the "what" -- I think you're looking for the "Who." I'm just pointing out that none of this new research really seems to point to a "beginning" of the universe. It points instead to an endless successions of "Big Bangs" that are in reality just the result of the previous one. And so on, forever. But if it amuses you to try to "prove" the existence of this God thing you believe in, carry on. Just don't think you're fooling anyone about what your intent really is. In my book you're as much of a "scientist" as the crazy people who believe that dinosaurs lived during the time of Jesus. Or the "TM scientists" who start with an assumption -- that things are "really" the way that Maharishi described them -- and then try to "work the data" to make it seem true. That isn't science, in their case, or in yours. It's allowing the theory to drive the data, not allowing the data to drive the theory. bawee has either been coerced by the "lurking reporters" to respond like a jerk here in his post or he is a jerk. I'm pretty sure the lurking reporters are getting a good kick out of seeing how far they can use bawee as their puppet, how far they can make him prostitute his character just so he can feel like he is of some use to sadistic "reporters" still, apparently, needing test subjects here at FFL. I've pretty much figured out everyone here, how long is it going to take for the "reporters" to figure out everyone's psychiatric profile? They've certainly got bawee figured out (man who can be bought with a few pieces of silver). From: "jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2014 8:04 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: End of Space and Time Xeno, There are many young scientists today who believe that they can prove what happened before the Big Bang. From what I understand, they think that they can find telltale evidence from the cosmic noise background as to what happened before the Big Bang. This would be analogous to seeing a slow motion picture of a bullet piercing a wall which would show the effects to the wall where the bullet exited. From these effects, they can retrace backwards the nature of the bullet and the energy that made it pierce the wall. Even Roger Penrose has been giving lectures in college venues showing his ideas about what happened before the Big Bang. You should check out his videos on YouTube. The rationale for these theories are very different from the reasoning behind the Kalaam Cosmological Argument. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : Eternity as a spiritual experience and eternity as time are different perspectives. Modern scientific theories do postulate a beginning of the universe, not a creation. As space-time comes into being at this beginning, it is meaningless to talk of something before the beginning for there was no time, there was no before, even though there is a beginning as seen only after the beginning. In other words, it is only when the universe is experienced as existing is it possible to formulate the idea it had a beginning. When we look at distant objects through telescopes, we are looking back in time and the universe looks very different the farther away we look. Steady state theories of the universe have so far fallen as a result of these astronomical observations, so currently a physical interpretation of the universe as a function of time implies there was a beginning, but no way to have knowledge of what came before if in fact there could be a before. If I make a cup of coffee in the morning, there is a beginning, a middle, and and end to the process but I am not creating anything, I am just rearranging. I think the idea of god comes from the thought that if there is a beginning something must have initiated it, or rearranged something, though I am not sure why that should be necessary. If I attempt to remember when this body came into being, I do not remember, but at some point this body was there and was and is imbued with awareness. So 'my' beginning' really seems much like waking up in the morning. The blank of deep sleep, or the activity of a dream is suddenly replaced with the waking often without memory of antecedents - those come in a bit later. Yet that blank of deep sleep is in some sense the same value as everything around the body in waking. So the temporal value of passage of time, and the intemporal value of simply being, are curiously simultaneous, no beginning and beginning. That is not logical, but it is an expression of the mystery of experience. But before you wake up and the mind is in deep sleep, the mind cannot formulate the concept of 'becoming awake from sleep'. Ultimate beginnings and endings seem impenetrable, because the means to evaluate only exist in the middle between these extremes. This would seem to imply that ultimate beginnings and endings are forever hypothetical — we can never know. So at those hypothetical junctions the physical eternity of 'endless time' and the spiritual eternity of an undefinable unbounded present would seem to merge. So only in the middle between these 'transitions' can we pretend we know anything at all. When we manufacture a concept of eternity, it is always expressed as a function of time, even though it is not really possible to express it in words. There is the physical eternity concept of all moments of time strung together, and there is the spiritual eternity concept of just the one moment being experienced, the others out of sight, out of mind, or those moments in meditation where the awareness is awake but essentially still and the concept of time is impossible to experience, but which we conceptualise when the mind once again becomes active. (This is not meant to be a discussion of 'truth', just ideas to juggle and see if they fit experience in some way) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Barry, Before shooting the messenger, you should read what the message is first. If you saw the clip, the presentation was a scientific discussion of how the universe started and how it could possibly end. The lecturer definitely does not agree with your belief that the universe has no beginning. In fact, the lecturer stated that the universe started as a burst of information as can be seen from the WMAP picture of the cosmic noise background. The distribution of the information can be interpreted as a series of zeroes and ones, which is consistent with how information is stored in a hologram. The lecturer did not discuss the role of God in this scenario.
