Human evolution; our complex speech mechanism (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 04, 2018, 14:14 (2179 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The start of our solar system and Planet Earth was pretty major for you and me, but an eternal and infinite universe could have had an infinite number of major starts.

DAVID: Up to this point we were talking about possibilities with significant evidence. The eternal and infinite universe is pure hypothesis and without a smidgen of evidence.

dhw: Fair comment. I should have stuck to our solar system and planet. Apologies for taking us off onto a different track. An interesting one, though. One has to ask: what was there before the Big Bang, if it ever happened? Nothing at all is also pure hypothesis, as is an eternal mind without a beginning. There is no way we shall ever know, unless your pure hypothesis is correct and your God reveals himself!

DAVID: According to Guth and his cohorts there is no 'before' before the Big Bang, proven mathematically in a paper presented in 2002 at Hawkings 60th birthday party/ symposium, my book, page 63. Put simply, time starts with the BB. Just as life starts with the first functional living cell. Both starts are followed by an evolutionary process which are too complex to be the result of chance. If there is a cause for each event, it is simpler to attribute them to one source than to conjure up two causes for two such pivotal creations.

A strange volte face. According to you, your God caused the BB, and so he existed before the BB. Before, now and after are one concept of time. Nobody can possibly prove anything about what happened before the BB (if it happened). I agree that one cause is simpler than two causes. The one cause may be an eternal and infinite universe of energy and matter constantly changing itself. No, I don’t believe it, and I don’t disbelieve it, just as I don’t believe or disbelieve in a single, conscious, sourceless, eternal mind. Maybe the complex evolutionary process was created (top down), or maybe it evolved (bottom up).