Before the Big Bang? Afterthought (Origins)

by dhw, Friday, August 01, 2014, 17:52 (3765 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Thank you for your honesty. ...It's clear from the Strassler article that there is no clear definition of matter, and many of the terms he deals with actually refer to things nobody knows much if anything about. But he does emphasize that energy and matter are totally different...-DAVID: At least some clarification. I follow Strassler the best that I can, since the ideas in the standard model are changing so much. First cause has to energy, pure or with some degree of formation into matter. we can go no further.-The only clarification I can find is that anyone who thinks they have found clarification should think again.-dhw: Unfortunately, the very fact of naming something endows it with some kind of reality, as though it were known, even if it is not. Perhaps the word “God” is a prime example. It's muddled enough to turn any truth-seeker into an agnostic, wouldn't you say?-DAVID: Just the opposite. If God is a mystery, the quantum layer, his hiding-place, makes Him quite logical.-An atheist would argue that if the origin and nature of the universe are a mystery, you don't solve the mystery by adding another mystery. -DAVID: We only know what energy and matter look like on this side of the bb. We have no idea what the other side looks like. It could be a strange form of pure energy we know nothing about. [...] We know what we got, but we can hardly claim to know what came before the bb. To claim it was just like the space-time we have now cannot be justified.-NO claim can be justified. A “strange form of pure energy” and a “universal consciousness” are just as speculative as “the space-time we have now”. -DAVID: Has there been more than one bb is also an unknown, but if there was one it is certainly conceivable there were others before it. At this point one should stop.-Agreed.-DAVID: The bb looks like a creation, so the individual may assume faith in a creator if he wishes, or not, as he wishes. As we have discussed, the outcome of the bb with a complex universe, with sentient life, with other life in all its complexity, all raise other issues of design and a possible creator.-A masterly summing-up. I would only add that the idea of a possible creator raises other issues that lead far beyond the scope of both science and philosophy.