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Goodbye Jesus

Jim And Penny Caldwell's Archaeological Findings:


BlackCat

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Dear BlackCat,

 

Please believe me when I say that I empathize and sympathize with you. 

 

Putting aside my rationality for a moment and writing on a purely emotionally level, of course I hope that I'll see my parents and older brother, my aunts, uncles and deceased friends again.  But whole and healthy again, too!  Not ravaged by Parkinson's disease (my Dad), nor Dementia (my Mom), nor heart problems (my brother Paul), nor stomach cancer (my uncle Jim) ...and so on.

 

However, all that makes me what I am, is not just emotion.  I also have the capacity to reason - so I must try to balance my emotions with what my mind understands to be true and real.  This leads me to conclude that I won't ever see my loved ones again.  I tend their graves - but the mature and realistic realization that I must live with is they are gone forever.

 

 

Does that sound ok to you?

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

Well my personal opinion on this is that you will and won't see them again.   Their bodies are done, if they are dead.  The personality that went with the bodies is gone as well.  The soul behind it you will "see" again. 

 

 

That's cool, Stryper and thanks for the hopeful words.  :)

 

I can't say that I really embrace the Michael teachings, but, in the interests of keeping an open mind, neither do I fully discount them.

 

THanks,

 

BAA.

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BAA:

But I do know that there is more to life and existence than what we can currently see and comprehend. Here I agree with Josh. Not fully, but mostly. There does seem to be some underlying tendency for the universe to organize complex things out of simpler components. Something happens to make life out inert materials. As you put it...there's an,'unseen inferred guidance or influence'. I've come to understand that it isn't something religious or solely humanocentric. But just what IT is, I don't know. I wish I DID know, BC!

I'm sure that you understand this influence as natural, as I do. And since BC keeps saying that she wants to isolate this away from the ID movement, which is errant, then I see no real harm in where she's trying to go with this line of inquiry. The main thing is that this line of inquiry is a work in progress, we truly don't know with any certainty. I couldn't agree more.

 

That's the most important thing BC. Where people usually go wrong is when they take their speculation as hard fact. I have suspicions about existence itself (as in the entire realm thereof)and consciousness as being interconnected, inseparable and I drift off into Idealist Pantheism in certain ways. But I also fully understand that I could be completely wrong too. These things are less than certain, but worthy of exploration for sure.

 

Agreed 100% Josh!  smile.png

 

Let's (you, me, BC and anyone else who's interested) walk together on the road of exploration and see what's round the next corner, ok?

 

Btw, I can't think of many more life-enriching things than to look, to seek, to marvel and to wonder - especially in the company of like-minded companions.

 

3.gif

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

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Let's (you, me, BC and anyone else who's interested) walk together on the road of exploration and see what's round the next corner, ok?

 

Btw, I can't think of many more life-enriching things than to look, to seek, to marvel and to wonder - especially in the company of like-minded companions.

 

3.gif

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

Absolutely BAA.  I'm happy and thankful to have met you guys. biggrin.png  

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This whole thing has been very interesting so far.

 

I watched AronRa's series (page 6) on creationism fallacies again today just to refresh myself on the content again. We had that series going around @ booktalk.org a few years ago and I remember enjoying it then. The token creationist there at the time was all worked up about that series. If you haven't seen it already, BC, that's another good one.

 

I can imagine how strange it must seem right now if up until this thread you didn't know about the many names of God referring to older polytheistic times which have been worked over by copiest's in order to try and read as though these are names for the same God. That's pretty much how we're all raised I'd assume and it's a real eye opener when you crack into modern archaeology and the advancements in religious studies that have exposed the underlying truth about the gradual evolution of God. And what a coincidence that you've had Karen Armstrong sitting on your shelf all along.

 

Perhaps after that you can get through Israel Finkelstein. What they are doing is looking at the evidence and drawing conclusions from it, as opposed to starting out with a claim and then trying to force fit the evidence to match a pre-conceived claim, like what the Caldwell's and others are doing.

 

BTW, the JW founder Charles Taze Russel had contact with and worked together with some SDA's. So that's why some of it sounds similiar.

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BAA:

But I do know that there is more to life and existence than what we can currently see and comprehend. Here I agree with Josh. Not fully, but mostly. There does seem to be some underlying tendency for the universe to organize complex things out of simpler components. Something happens to make life out inert materials. As you put it...there's an,'unseen inferred guidance or influence'. I've come to understand that it isn't something religious or solely humanocentric. But just what IT is, I don't know. I wish I DID know, BC!

I'm sure that you understand this influence as natural, as I do. And since BC keeps saying that she wants to isolate this away from the ID movement, which is errant, then I see no real harm in where she's trying to go with this line of inquiry. The main thing is that this line of inquiry is a work in progress, we truly don't know with any certainty. I couldn't agree more.

 

That's the most important thing BC. Where people usually go wrong is when they take their speculation as hard fact. I have suspicions about existence itself (as in the entire realm thereof)and consciousness as being interconnected, inseparable and I drift off into Idealist Pantheism in certain ways. But I also fully understand that I could be completely wrong too. These things are less than certain, but worthy of exploration for sure.

 

Agreed 100% Josh!  smile.png

 

Let's (you, me, BC and anyone else who's interested) walk together on the road of exploration and see what's round the next corner, ok?

 

Btw, I can't think of many more life-enriching things than to look, to seek, to marvel and to wonder - especially in the company of like-minded companions.

 

3.gif

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

Sounds good. Do you have something in mind around the next corner or do you mean let's take it improvisationally based on what just happens to pop up next?

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Hello BC!  smile.png

 

I've been thinking hard as to how to proceed and I reckon a good place to start is to build upon this foundation.

Could you please re-familiarize yourself with the the content below, which we covered a while back?  Thanks.

 

Once astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding, they inferred that in the past, it's contents must have been closer together.  They could see that the very early universe must have been incredibly hot and dense, with all of it's matter and energy occupying a very small volume indeed. Taking this thought-experiment to it's logical conclusion yielded a universe of zero size, but with infinitely-high density and temperature..

 

Today, we use the term, 'The Big Bang' to describe the universe expanding (with explosive force and fantastic speed) from this quantum-sized 'seed'.  It wasn't long before other scientists realized that they could build machines that could partially simulate the super-high pressures and temperatures of the Big Bang fireball.  Doing this would be an excellent way of independently checking and testing what the astronomers were discovering with their telescopes.  So, these particle physicists built bigger and bigger Particle Accelerators to test their theories.  The largest one currently in operation is the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, located near Geneva.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

 

As the particle physicists were designing, building and using the LHC's predecessors (from the 1950's onwards) they performed many experiments and made many discoveries.  They were building on the earlier, pioneering work of scientists who'd identified such phenomena as electricity, magnetism and nuclear energy.  As they ramped up the power of their particle accelerators they began to discover something very interesting indeed.

 

Unification

 

In 1873, James Clark Maxwell had shown that the seemingly-different forces of Electricity and Magnetism, were, in fact, two aspects of the same Electro-Magnetic force.  He had unified these two forces.   This was the first rung on the ladder of unification that scientists have been slowly-but-steadily climbing, since then.  Please look at the stepped diagram under the heading, 'Conventional Sequence of Theories' on this Wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything  It should be read from right-to-left, going upwards.  Please remember that each new level of unification requires greater energy than the last. This explains why particle accelerators are used.  Only they can generate the ultra-high temperatures and densities needed to see unification at work.

 

Electricity is unified with Magnetism to yield the Electromagnetic force.

(This happens all around us, at everday temperatures and densities.  E.g., radio waves are electromagnetic radiation.)

 

Electromagnmetism is unified with the Weak (Nuclear) Force to yield the ElectroWeak Force.

(This was experimentally proven in the 1970's and 80's.)

 

Strong (Nuclear) Force is unified with the ElectroWeak Force to yield the ElectroNuclear Force.

(We aren't there yet, but the LHC is providing plenty of data that should help scientists reach this level of unification.)

 

ElectroNuclear Force is unified with the Force of Gravitation.

 

Everything is unified in a Theory of Everything.

 

So what's all of this got to do with the Big Bang, BC?

Putting it simply, our universe began when one pure, simple and unified, incredibly hot and dense SuperForce began to fracture, splinter and break down.  Cosmologists refer to this process as Symmetry-Breaking.  As the universe devolved from it's pure state, the various forces split off from each other.  First Gravity splintered away from the ElectroNuclear Force.  Then the Strong and ElectroWeak Nuclear forces peeled away from each other, followed by the Weak Nuclear and Electromagnetic Forces going their separate ways.  Last of all, Electricity and Magnetism divided from each other.

 

Can you see how this sequence is the stepped ladder of Unification, but run in reverse?  All of these 'breakages' occured in the very first fractions of a second after the Big Bang event, when the fireball was cooling down from it's zillion's of degrees and it's density was rapidly dissapating.  So, the reality we inhabit is 'broken-and-winding-down', but it's been doing so for the last 13.72 billion years.

 

I'm going to keep things as simple and as generalized as I can make them.  Otherwise our brains will crash-and-burn very quickly!  I'm also going to deal with just one possible explanation, even though there are many.  Why?  Well, because we have to start somewhere and since we've already dipped our toes into the water on this particular stretch of beach, going a little deeper shouldn't hurt.

 

To business...

 

The scientist who first made serious inroads into explaining some aspects of the Big Bang was Alan Guth.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Guth  He did so in 1979.  His work seemed to neatly explain certain things and astronomers have since confirmed some of his theoretical predictions.  Inflationary theory seems to be well supported by certain lines of evidence, but it doesn't address HOW the universe came to be. Instead, it describes  conditions just after the 'birth' of the cosmos, when the Big Bang was explosively inflating the universe in a super-hot fireball.

 

Further work by Guth and other cosmologists yielded a possible explanation to the HOW question and this extension of Inflation theory is known as Eternal Inflation.  Perhaps the best way to grasp Eternal Inflation BC, is to think of the SuperForce (from the quote above) as an infinite ocean of ceaselessly boiling, bubbling and churning energy.  This restless sea of pure power spontaneously generates quantum-sized 'bubbles' that have very interesting properties indeed.

 

Think of the way a stormy sea on Earth bubbles up froth and foam.  Now, each and every bubble of this SuperForce foam is endowed with infinite energy.  An ordinary water bubble will eventually decay and burst, ceasing to exist.  But the bubbles from this eternal sea don't all do that.  Some do, but some don't.  In fact, you and I have already discussed what happens when one of these bubbles split off from the SuperForce ocean and went it's own way.

Please look at the two paragraphs above that I've highlighted in green.

 

Yes.  Exactly.  We've been here before.

 

Our universe may have originated as one of the bubbles from the eternal ocean of pure SuperForce energy.  When it split away from the ocean, there was a terrific burst of energy (the Big Bang) which inflated our bubble-universe to it's present size.  During the cool-down period, the various forces (Gravity, Electromagnetism, etc.) separated from the original, pure and simple SuperForce, giving us the complex, but fractured universe we live in today.

 

So you see, BlackCat, Eternal Inflation seems to explain HOW our universe began and WHERE it came from. 

Now, please skim thru this Wiki page about it.  Don't go deep - you'll only get a headache.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation

 

I think that's as far as I'll go for now, except to invite you, Josh, Falemon or anyone else to quiz me on anything that I haven't made clear enough. 

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Oops!

 

I was so involved in that last message, I didn't see what you guys had posted.

 

Thanks and please enjoy!

 

BAA.

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A good starting off point, Josh.  Thanks!

 

BAA

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Hi guys.  I'd have got back to you sooner, but have not had a chance the last few days.

 

BAA- yes, these 'bubbles' make sense.  When I first read your earlier posts, the idea of 'bubbles' did occur to me, so I was on the right track. 

 

Josh, thanks for the link to the multiverse video. It's really fascinating.  I wish I could understand it properly.  dry.png

 

I'm now wondering why these 'bubbles' give rise to life, and not just different forms of energy?  The fracturing of these forces seems to be a good thing: the forces can influence reality by being separated and weakened (if weaken is the right word?).  Their 'fall' enables the emergence of intelligent creatures who are conscious of the forces that have given them life.   And here is where I'm wondering like Aaron in the other thread about 'minds creating minds': how amazing and fantastical that unconscious forces can create conscious intelligent beings who are aware of their 'creator'?  It's hard to grasp how 'mind' can come from non mind.  ohmy.png

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We're humans and part of our evolution has involved seeing patterns everywhere. We evolved a sense of "agency"--we instinctively look for not only patterns but something that controls those patterns. When we didn't understand lightning or forest fires, we still needed desperately to control them. When we didn't understand what made babies, we still needed control over fertility. Remember that "invisible princess" experiment Geezer mentioned elsethread? Like "irreducible complexity," the idea can get really tempting that we were programmed eons ago to think someone's watching us, watching out FOR us. But that's like Douglas Adams' analogy of the puddle in the hole, thinking that some god must have made that hole just for it and being grateful for the hole being shaped jusssst so. Little things evolved over time into a full-blown concept of deity.

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Hello BC!  smile.png

 

Thanks for sticking with this.  Kudos to you for persisting.

Btw, you'll see that I've numbered your questions in red, ok?

 

Hi guys.  I'd have got back to you sooner, but have not had a chance the last few days.

 

BAA- yes, these 'bubbles' make sense.  When I first read your earlier posts, the idea of 'bubbles' did occur to me, so I was on the right track. 

 

Josh, thanks for the link to the multiverse video. It's really fascinating.  I wish I could understand it properly.  dry.png

Well, so do I, BC! 

To prevent my poor brain from going into total meltdown, I satisfy myself with understanding this stuff superficially, not properly.  I'll leave 'properly' to those folks who do this for a living. 

I'm now wondering why these 'bubbles' give rise to life, and not just different forms of energy?  1.

 

The fracturing of these forces seems to be a good thing: the forces can influence reality by being separated and weakened (if weaken is the right word?).  2.

 

Their 'fall' enables the emergence of intelligent creatures who are conscious of the forces that have given them life.   And here is where I'm wondering like Aaron in the other thread about 'minds creating minds': how amazing and fantastical that unconscious forces can create conscious intelligent beings who are aware of their 'creator'?  It's hard to grasp how 'mind' can come from non mind.  3.

1.

Ah yes BC! 

But remember, that matter and energy are equivalent.  Matter is 'frozen' energy and energy is 'unfrozen' matter.  Each has the potential to become the other.  Please refer to message #65 again, specifically, the first paragraph.  Once they discovered the expansion of the universe, astronomers realized that if they wound the clock back to zero, this cold and 'frozen' matter would become hot and 'unfrozen' energy.  Currently, matter in this universe (stars, planets, etc.) is very thinly spread indeed.  But what happens when all this material comes together?  It gets denser and hotter. 

 

As the density and heat rise, molecules can no longer hold themselves together.  They break down into their constituent atoms.  Hotter and denser still and the atoms break up into their protons, neutrons and electrons.  More heat and pressure forces these particles to split up into the quarks that go to make them up.  After that...?  Well, we're not exactly sure, but finding out is one of the tasks the LHC is designed to help us do.

 

It's that ladder of Unification again!   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything

 

BC, since Einstein demonstrated that matter and energy are equivalent, we now know that it's possible to climb up or down the ladder.  The astronomers running the universe's clock backwards were going up the ladder, Unifying the various forces via greater and greater heat and pressure. But, moving forwards thru Time, from the instant of the Big Bang, we go down the ladder as the universe expands and cools.  Cooling and expansion allows energy to 'freeze' into matter in a series of downward steps.  As the pure SuperForce cools, it's cannot retain it's Unity and it breaks down in stages. First Quarks 'freeze' out, then protons and neutrons and then atoms themselves.  Latter on, as the fireball dissipates and cools some more, atoms can come together (freeze out) to form molecules.  It's from these molecules (frozen energy) that galaxies, girls and guys are made.

 

If it's any help, please consider the humble water molecule... H20. (I'd planned to go here, if you recall?)

In it's hottest state water is a gas/vapor, which we call steam.  Cool the steam and what happens?  It condenses into droplets of water.  Cool it further and the once gaseous element ceases to be liquid and becomes a solid, which we call ice.  Ice, water and steam are three possible states of the same thing, the molecule, H20.  Whichever form it takes, depends on the ambient temperature and pressure.  The net amount of matter/energy cannot increase or decrease - it can only change it's form.

 

Which helps answer your second question. 2.

'Weaken' isn't the right word, BC.  I can understand why it comes to mind, tho'.  By talking about reality becoming 'broken' or 'fractured', we're inclined to suppose that broken/fractured things are somehow weaker than unbroken/whole things.  But that's just our everyday store of experience letting us down.  Mea culpa! sad.png  I used the words, broken and fractured, without remembering that they come with emotive baggage.  In science we need to be dispassionate and professional, leaving our emotional baggage out of our thinking.  Sorry to mislead you like this.

 

Anyway... the separate forces that govern our reality (Gravity, Electromagnetism, etc.) aren't weaker than the unified SuperForce they devolved from.  They've simply changed their form, just as H20 changes it's form.  No energy has been lost or gained, it's only changed from one state to another.  Equivalence, being the operative word, here.

 

Does that help?

 

3.

Finally, when it comes to mind coming from non-mind, let me counter your question with a question.

"What do you mean by the word, mind?"

 

Douglas Adams (waves to Akheia!) is oddly helpful here, BC. 

Before you can understand the answer, maybe you first have to understand the question?  I know that I don't.  Do you?  Do the Christian apologists who use that argument know what a mind is?  I'd say no.  Remember Aaron's thread?  He claimed that, 'only mind can create mind', but when I showed him that there's no natural, scientific evidence for that claim, he rapidly backtracked and re-defined his claim, didn't he?

 

So, perhaps the problem lies in our faulty understanding of what a mind actually is?  Until we can define it properly, claiming that only mind can create mind, is premature and unfeasible, imho. 

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I suspect that what is meant by 'mind' is consciousness. Not just the brains ability to record, reframe and reorganize information in a way that makes navigating in the world possible. BUT we have no real evidence that consciousness isn't just an advanced form of that process.

 

Still, consciousness - sentience - is still a bit of a mystery. It's okay to say, we don't really know yet.

 

However, since other animals exhibit consciousness (of varying degrees), especially higher forms like dolphins, elephants, dogs and apes.. it seems to point to it being a natural progression/evolution of the awareness begun in simpler life forms - ie: moving towards what is 'good' (nutrients, safety, warmth) and moving away from what is harmful.

 

Another interesting thing is the studies done on the brain-damaged. Brain damage can have many effects, you can lose the ability to move or speak, some people have an entire personality change, etc... it's obvious that the brain does have a very central role to play in our consciousness. The "God Helmet" where electromagnetic induction of hallucinations and the sense of the 'supernatural' is easily reproduced is another bit of evidence for a natural explanation of consciousness AND supernatural/religious experiences.

 

I've had a couple of interesting experiences, and because those experiences/inner sense still remain 'unexplained', for me... I have to say, I don't know.

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Akheia-  you make a good point and remind me of  an experience I had about 3 years ago where I sensed a presence in the bedroom.  I'm embarrassed to say it was the heeby jeebies.  I'd been reading this 'true' story about a woman whose family had experienced alien abductions (yes, this shows my gullibility.eek.gif).  That night I had to sleep in the back room as my husband's snoring was particulary loud, and the book was playing on my mind.  The back room was full of stored funiture and so lots of shadows etc.  I woke in the night and had sleep paralysis, which is scary.  Once I had woken properly I thought I could sense a presence in the room and so returned to the snoring husband.  This shows how our imaginations don't need a God helmet (thanks Ravenstar for your reply. wink.png ). 

 

BAA- thank you for addressing the points I made.  I think I'm following you so far. The penny's just dropped about 'equivalence' and 'weaken' not being the right concept.  Thank you. biggrin.png

 

My understanding of mind is not as clear as I thought, having been pondering this the last hour.  wink.png   I agree with the points Ravenstar makes, that 'awareness' or 'mind' is down to the hardware of the brain and so surely it has a perfectly material explanation.  What I find amazing is that the Forces (the ones we're discussing cool.png) that create our reality can give rise to arrangements of molecules (brains) that can 'recognise' their 'creators'.  So 'mind' to me, is the ability to not only recognise yourself and others, but to understand your 'place' in the grand scheme of things, to understand how the universe works and the ability to lament the fact that we are not eternal beings.  (We seem to have infinity in our 'hearts').   I suppose I've gone along this way of thinking: because I can ask the question 'how did I get here, me this intelligent, self aware being?', I imagine that what brought me here must be at least as intelligent as me, if not more.  And that's when I think of those molecular machines that seem to defy 'blind evolution' and I can't put together how humans could have evolved without a prior intelligence of some kind.  So I may be falling into the 'seeing patterns' mind set, but I'm still not done with IC yet.  I can see how 'mind' is the result of a molecular machine or brain and in our case we have such a 'machine' that is so 'arranged' as to enable us to ponder our own existence.  I'm still struggling to believe that such a 'machine' can come about purely by chance.  Anyway, I'm straying away again, so please continue BAA.  biggrin.png    

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Ya, I'm not totally convinced that consciousness is just biochemical-electromagnetic signals. I still harbor a fondness for Jung's collective consciousness, and even maybe that we have some sort of metaphysical existence. When you study the different parts of our psyche - it's really complicated and all parts are needed.. the Id, the ego, the subconscious, the unconscious, archetypes, we act not just as individuals but also as a collective social organism, etc... - we are almost too complicated for mental health.

 

However... I can't subscribe to the god hypothesis, unless that 'god' is pantheistic. (we are parts of the whole and the sum is greater than the parts, etc... ) I also can't subscribe to the 'intent' part of it. There may be an urge for the universe to evolve consciousness but I don't think it was a sentient intention as we understand that. Then again, maybe we are anomalies, a bad experiment of life and our kind of consciousness will fail and we will go the way of the dinosaurs, never to be seen again.

 

But... the more I learn about science the more I can see that it is not pure chance at all - but an elegant unfolding of how energy and matter are shaped and evolve through the forces acting on/through them. Then we get back to the puddle thing though.. of course it is the way it is because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here to observe it... and around and around we go.

 

I think quantum physics and consciousness studies have a lot more to tell us about the nature of the universe and our place in it. We are infants yet in our understanding and it's a really big universe.

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Ok then BC.  smile.png

 

Why a Multiverse? 

 

Well, it's what the observations and the maths seem to point to.  

 

Doctor Laura Mersini-Houghton wrote this article...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/78818152/Laura-Mersini-Houghton-Birth-of-the-Universe-from-the-Multiverse ...and in it she says something that I find highly significant. In the context of the three most successful theories used in current-day physics, she writes, "That the three different and important theories, quantum mechanics, string theory and inflation, all predict the existence of a multiverse is, I believe, hardly coincidental."  Add to this the fact that three of the four predictions she made in 2006 have been confirmed and you can see why her work is something I take a keen interest in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mersini-Houghton There are Wikipedia pages about the CMB Cold Spot and Dark Flow, should you want to check them out, BC. 

 

The way I envisage the current situation, is like this.

If a sailor in mid-ocean notices certain things, they can conclude, with a fair degree of certainty, that an island is just over the horizon.  They can't see it yet, but the signs are that it is there.  A gathering of clouds indicates that something is deflecting the air upwards and causing the water vapor to condense and form clouds.  Birds flying in that direction indicate that there's land ahead.  The deep, long swell of the ocean feels different - as if the seabed is becoming shallower and disturbing the waves.  Perhaps the boat has passed by some drifting branches or similar flotsam?  That would suggest the presence of nearby land too. 

 

This is, more-or-less, where science is now BC.

We don't have any definitive evidence for a Multiverse just yet, but more and more indications are being confirmed.  Who knows?  Maybe we'll know for sure before this decade is out? 

 

I gotta run now, but I'll post a bit more later on.

 

Bye!

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

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Does a multiverse hypothesis point towards there always being a 'something'? I saw a documentary on Brane theory a while back, and they tried to illustrate how 2 branes touching/colliding could have caused our big bang. I didn't understand it all but it did seem rather fascinating.

 

(I'm a visual learner, and I suck at math. It would be nice if these theories could be dumbed down for people like me... I think part of the problem is the gap between real science and communicating that to us non-scientists. I did enjoy Dr. Brian Greene's Docs on string theory.)

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I can see how the multiverse theory is plausible and makes most sense of the data so far. 

 

My 'starting point' has always been to assume that matter or energy is eternal.  (This boosted my faith in an eternal God: if energy/matter can be eternal then why not a God?)  I never understood why ' creation ex nihilo' was such a big deal with Christians.  The bible doesn't teach this and logic and science surely show that you can't get something from nothing.  So if it is the case that there is this ocean of bubbles/ Big Bangs that has always existed, then that makes sense to me.  cool.png

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Does a multiverse hypothesis point towards there always being a 'something'?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me respond to your question with this, Ravenstar.

 

We exist. The universe we inhabit exists. So, how do we go about explaining these facts?

There are a number of options. Here are three that come to mind. Of course, there are others.

 

1. Anthropomorphic Religion.

Existence is best explained by a personal, supernatural Creator.

2. Mysticism.

Existence is an illusion and the only true reality is the Eternal Tao / Nirvana / whatever...

3. Science.

A Multiverse is currently one of the best scientific explanations for the reality we observe. It explains the complexity we observe, as being a statistical function of the Multiverse's infinite potential to continuously generate 'new' universes. Since science cannot invoke supernatural and/or mystical causes for anything, it's default position is that reality is caused by 'something' rather than 'nothing'.

Does that help?

 

That said, physicists like Lawrence Krauss hold the opinion that universes like ours CAN just 'pop' into existence - out of nothing. This act of self-creation being due to the counter-intuitive workings of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. (No! Please don't ask me to explain this. While I readily accept that this principle is a real quantum phenomenon, I don't understand it much at all.) Here's a link if you want to follow it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss

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I saw a documentary on Brane theory a while back, and they tried to illustrate how 2 branes touching/colliding could have caused our big bang. I didn't understand it all but it did seem rather fascinating.

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Ah yes! The Ekpyrotic Theory. http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/npr/

An alternative explanation that also seems to fit the observations. Instead of invoking an eternal multiverse to explain 'everything', Steinhardt proposes an eternal cycle of universal destruction and creation, over and over again... forever. I view this one with an open mind and await further data.

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(I'm a visual learner, and I suck at math. It would be nice if these theories could be dumbed down for people like me... I think part of the problem is the gap between real science and communicating that to us non-scientists. I did enjoy Dr. Brian Greene's Docs on string theory.)

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Me too. :)

 

This page carries a neat illustration (Fig.2) that should help you visualize the string 'landscape' Greene talks about, Ravenstar.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-livio/how-can-we-tell-if-a-multiverse-exists_b_2285406.html

 

(Caution! Please don't picture each universe as actually being a bubble. They are simply 2-D representations of the 3-D universe we inhabit. The 2-D inner surfaces of each bubble represent the 3-D spacetime continuum we inhabit, with each 3-D universe inhabiting the higher-dimensional domain of the string landscape. If it's hard to grasp, think of a tv, computer or cinema screen. We easily interpret the flat, 2-D people we see on them as three dimensional, like ourselves, don't we? So that's all Fig.2 is, a flat representation of something that isn't.)

 

Anyway...

 

Bubble universes like ours nestle in the valleys, where the energy potential has settled to a lower value. This corresponds to the exchange/tranformation of matter and energy that I was explaining to BC. As the Big Bang fireball expanded and cooled, so the energy giving birth to our universe became 'frozen out' into various types of matter, sinking our bubble deeper and deeper into one of the string landscape valleys.

 

The deeper the valley, the colder and more matter-dominated the universe in it. The higher the mountains, the higher the energy states of those regions. The energy values of the peaks and ridges are way too high for anything as cold and 'frozen' as ordinary matter to exist.

 

Lastly, this image also helps me understand what the physicists mean when they say that direct communication between any two bubble universes is impossible. Each bubble is separated from it's neighbors by walls (ridges in the string landscape) of energy. Communication would mean peeling ourselves off the 3-D 'surface' of our own bubble, climbing up and over a ridge and then 'sticking' ourselves back onto the 'surface' of the neighboring bubble.

 

No way! :(

 

Your thoughts? Questions?

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

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wow thanks!

 

I'll have to take some time to digest that

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I can see how the multiverse theory is plausible and makes most sense of the data so far. 

 

My 'starting point' has always been to assume that matter or energy is eternal.  (This boosted my faith in an eternal God: if energy/matter can be eternal then why not a God?)  I never understood why ' creation ex nihilo' was such a big deal with Christians.  The bible doesn't teach this and logic and science surely show that you can't get something from nothing.  So if it is the case that there is this ocean of bubbles/ Big Bangs that has always existed, then that makes sense to me.  cool.png

 

Dear BlackCat,

 

If what I've written so far makes some sense to you, then I'm glad.  smile.png

But where, if anywhere, would you like to go now? 

Possible avenues for us to go down might be these.

 

How we can test for the existence of a Multiverse?

 * What physicists think the tell-tale clues might be.

 * Which experiments are looking for these clues.

 * The current results.

 

What are the Theological consequences of a Multiverse?

 * What this will mean for Christianity.

 * What this will mean for all supernatural belief systems.

 * What will this mean for world society.

 

How does an Infinite & Eternal Reality affect Me?

 * Infinity is NOT just a big number.

 * The Infinite Replication Paradox.

 * A Crisis of Identity.

 

Or maybe there's some questions you'd like to put to me?  I can't guarantee to answer them, but I can take a shot.  Please let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA. 

 

 

 

 

p.s.

Synchronicity or a statistical fluke?  I dunno!  Wendyshrug.gif   But would you read anything significant into these two facts?

1. You choose the handle, 'BlackCat' to use in this forum.

2. My partner and I own a jet-black cat called, Beauty.

I knew nothing about you until you started this thread and you couldn't have known about our cat.

 

"The Multiverse works in mysterious ways, it's wonders to perform!"  wink.png

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BAA- I'm not sure where to go from here.   wink.png

 

Maybe it's a good idea to let all this sink in.  My whole way of looking at things is undergoing radical changes, and I'm aware that those puddles or events that seemed like gifts from Someone, are just natural events, that are part of the Superforce or rather a result of the Big Bang- but then there's the molecular machines.... they ever beckon me with their beauty and 'design'.  IC is the lynch pin now, for any remaining belief I still have in a Designer, but alas, I lack the knowledge to prove this or disprove it, and I know you've said before that biology is not your area either, so I shall continue to study the pros and cons of IC/ID.  tongue.png   Yes, it bothers me that the majority of scientists don't 'see' design when studying these biological systems, but there are a few biologists and scientists who do see design, and they understand the biology.  I need to be more patient.  I'm sure biolgists will figure these machines out.   Out of interest, did you get a chance to watch that film I linked to in post 93 on page 5.  It's only 6 minutes long, and it covers the main points that convince me of the possibility of IC/ID.  I'd appreciate you watching it, just to see if you pick up on something I'm not.  The biology is explained in layman's terms.  cool.png  Yes, there's ID progaganda you can pick out, but focus on the biology parts. 

 

As for your black cat and me 'BlackCat', all I know is there are lots of black cats in this universe, so they'll keep cropping up. laugh.png  

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BAA- I'm not sure where to go from here.   wink.png

 

Maybe it's a good idea to let all this sink in.  My whole way of looking at things is undergoing radical changes, and I'm aware that those puddles or events that seemed like gifts from Someone, are just natural events, that are part of the Superforce or rather a result of the Big Bang- but then there's the molecular machines.... they ever beckon me with their beauty and 'design'.  IC is the lynch pin now, for any remaining belief I still have in a Designer, but alas, I lack the knowledge to prove this or disprove it, and I know you've said before that biology is not your area either, so I shall continue to study the pros and cons of IC/ID.  tongue.png   Yes, it bothers me that the majority of scientists don't 'see' design when studying these biological systems, but there are a few biologists and scientists who do see design, and they understand the biology.  I need to be more patient.  I'm sure biolgists will figure these machines out.   Out of interest, did you get a chance to watch that film I linked to in post 93 on page 5.  It's only 6 minutes long, and it covers the main points that convince me of the possibility of IC/ID.  I'd appreciate you watching it, just to see if you pick up on something I'm not.  The biology is explained in layman's terms.  cool.png  Yes, there's ID progaganda you can pick out, but focus on the biology parts. 

 

As for your black cat and me 'BlackCat', all I know is there are lots of black cats in this universe, so they'll keep cropping up. laugh.png  

 

Ok then BC, it sounds like you need some space and time to mull things over.  That's cool and I'm just glad I could be of some help.  smile.png

 

Yes, I did look at that 6 minute vid, but that was a while back... so I'll do so again over the weekend, ok?

 

So, could I now ask you a (reciprocal) favor?

If, in your searchings, you come across some info on ID from mainstream science sources, would you be so kind as to post a link to it, here, in the Science sub-forum?  I ask because, as you know, the life sciences aren't something I've much knowledge or understanding of.  Thanks in advance.

 

Wishing you well,

 

BAA.

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Ok then BC, it sounds like you need some space and time to mull things over.  That's cool and I'm just glad I could be of some help.  smile.png

 

Yes, I did look at that 6 minute vid, but that was a while back... so I'll do so again over the weekend, ok?

 

So, could I now ask you a (reciprocal) favor?

If, in your searchings, you come across some info on ID from mainstream science sources, would you be so kind as to post a link to it, here, in the Science sub-forum?  I ask because, as you know, the life sciences aren't something I've much knowledge or understanding of.  Thanks in advance.

 

Wishing you well,

 

BAA.

 

 

Will do BAA.   It's a pleasure exploring these matters with you. biggrin.png

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