According to the current theories, time and space did not exist before the universe. Space-time simply emerged. Therefore asking what happened before makes no sense, because there was no time. And because space did not exist, there was nowhere for what could not have happened before, to be. But beyond that we have no idea.
________________________________ From: "jr_...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2014 4:41 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Hawking: 'There is no God' Xeno, As mentioned earlier, how did space and time begin in this universe? Is it an emergent property too of the random fluctuation of the quantum? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : Mathematicians, Physicists, Computer Scientists, and Evolutionists have shown experimentally that high levels of complexity can arise out of very simple systems so that the appearance of intelligence can be an emergent property of simple starting parameters. So it does not appear to be necessary to hypothesise any intelligence to get the ball rolling. ________________________________ From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2014 7:13 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Hawking: 'There is no God' ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Salyavin, I think that you will agree Hawking made another blunder by making another unsupported and unscientific assertion. Just recently, he lost a bet about the discovery of the Higgs Boson. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he'll pay on his wager. What have you got against Hawking? A lot of people didn't think the Higgs would be found, even Werner Heisenberg, but there you are. That's how science works, you have an idea and you test it. Some are right, most are wrong. It's hardly a "blunder", besides we don't know when or why Hawking made his bet, maybe he forgot to cancel it due to having other things on his mind! He paid up though. $100. You say that consciousness is a phenomenon of emergence. IMO, that's not correct. My proof is space and time itself which is an essential factor for the existence of this universe. How can a random quantum fluctuation conceive of length, width, and height to create space and cognize the flow of events to create time? OK, I suspect need to familiarise yourself with the concepts a bit more. I don't know what you mean by "cognize". The word means "become aware of" a quantum event isn't "aware" of anything. Do you mean that it had to somehow know what it was doing in order to do it? Laws unfold on their own, there is no plan for them to work to. They are simply our descriptions of what always happens under the same circumstances. Given the starting point of the universe we ended up with the laws we've got. It could have been different, if there was slightly less matter compared to anti-matter after the big bang we would have less atoms in the universe which would affect the energy and total mass before inflation when the subatomic particles that make up everything else came into being. This would make everything work slightly differently, maybe such big stars wouldn't have formed which would mean we wouldn't be here because there would be no heavy elements to make us or our planet with. Victor Stenger wrote a book about how the universe would have been different with different initial settings like this, I haven't read it myself but mention it because a lot of work has been done on this. It isn't absolute of course, some think the universe is very finely tuned and use that as supposed proof of the necessity of a creator, Stenger thinks that it doesn't need to be as finely tuned as all that. Besides, the universe may have evolved, if one came into being that couldn't produce the material necessary for complex life then it would end one day and another would come along once the vacuum state had settled down. There may have been millions of cyclical universes, we will never know. But it seems obvious that it got here under its own steam. Complexity first - whether it's consciousness or gods or whatever - makes no sense because the complexity must have come from somewhere and you are just pushing the start back to something else, presumably ineffable. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Xeno, The problem with Hawking's approach is that he is hung up with matter, a thing that is measurable by scientists. But, apparently, he does not consider superstrings to be a scientific fact. These superstrings exist at the Planck level or at 10 to the power of minus 33 centimeters. It's still an unproven theory and one of many involving different kinds of strings, loop quantum gravity and others. It will only become a fact as and when it gets tested, which is currently impossible but when they switch on the LHC at CERN this year and get it up to full power they might get a glimpse of what direction to go in. These are very interesting times for physics, and all of us I hope, they are finally doing what they forgot to do with string theory 30 years ago, which is test the predictions as they go. Mind you, there are so many different versions of ST that they will never know which one is correct but it will be nice if they can at least narrow it down. These superstrings are the bases of all particles that make up matter or energy in the universe. At the Planck level, there is an ocean of these superstrings that form other universes aside from our own. You should watch John Hagelin's lecture about superstrings on YouTube. In addition, regarding your point about the Kalam Cosmological Argument, there is a principle in logic that refers to the Prime Mover. This is invoked when one comes up with an infinite regression of causes, which you've pointed out. If you accept the concept of a Prime Mover, then it appears that you accept the rest of the argument in the KCA. Lastly, there is the hard problem of consciousness. Is it a phenomenon of emergence or is it the basis of everything in the universe? Emergence. Consciousness is a function of the brain and not a thing. Saying that the mind is someTHING is a category error, consciousness is a verb not a noun. Get over that and you stop looking for some mysterious dualistic substance that survives us or is independent of us or is some universal constant that interacts with us. It's what our brains do. Of course, it still leaves us a problem but not as hard as we thought. Before anyone complains about dogma, there is a lot of thought and research behind these statements but I'm not going to elaborate now as the pub opens in a minute. TTFN droogs.
