TOBS: Origin of the Universe

....so reverse tide,
to fill poverty's void ~
rich, you *******s, give all your money
to the needy!

that's a natural void
that needs filling.
_______
Blog, or dog? Who knows.
But if you see my lost pup, please ping me!
http://journals.aol.com/virginiaz/DreamingofLeonardo

"If experts cannot really
Explain either the origin or the early
Development of your purported 'higher intelligence,'
Should we not look elsewhere
For an explanation?"
~ Ravenquothnevermore

Like,
Where? Mother knows,
My soul glows ~ My shroud's
Cloudy, yes, rather foggy, but so
What? Yes, a black cloud
Hangs over my house, haunts
My soul, my sanity, my mangey life.
But know ~ I am,
Therefore I think. Or,
At least I used to think
So. Before.
_______
Blog, or dog? Who knows.
But if you see my lost pup, please ping me!
http://journals.aol.com/virginiaz/DreamingofLeonardo

Those things may not be solely for physicists, but many of those
things require such complex and technical knowledge that it might as
well be. It takes people who understand the processes used by these
experts and are able to "translate" what they mean to the rest of the
public to make them understandable outside of the scientific
disciplines. Isaac Asimov was one of the best in doing things like
that. I recommend you read his nonfiction material about the various
sciences. Because of them, he's been called "The Great Explainer."
While not entirely up to date with the latest knowledge, his book,
"The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar" is one of the finest
introductions to astronomy and cosmology (the study of the universe,
its origins and where it's going) that I've ever encountered. I read
it back in the '60's, and it turned me into an avid armchair
astronomer. Give it a try. Old as it is, the principles for
understanding astronomy are still valid.

Some of the people in this group chose to sling harsh criticisms at
you. While your line of logic leaves much to be desired, it is very
possible that you are not aware yet of why and how that is so. For
people to be impatient with you for this is unfair. Most people would
react to their frustration by considering whether these answers are
findable elsewhere, when science doesn't have them yet, but if they
look for objective knoweledge, as opposed to unsupported religious or
pseudoscientific notions, they'll come back to science as the only
true medium for finding the truths you seek. There really is no
"elsewhere" to turn to which can provide answers based on fact. And
any other kind of "answer" is, in reality, no answer at all.

You were inquiring about what is known about the universe's origin,
and expressing an understandable frustration with the fact that so
little is as yet known about it. You're committing - or considering
committing - a classic error, the one which would rather fall back on
an entirely unproven concept (i.e., the ones proffered by religions)
as opposed to accepting that at least some knowledge has been obtained
by science already, even if it is not enough to satisfy your thirst
for knowledge about the subject. I, too, languish with the sad
knowledge that I'll probably never learn the answers to such
questions, but I don't fall into the foolish trap of thinking that
"someone else" does know them. They can't, because they don't adhere
to scientific discipline, and can proffer any wild notion or
supserstition as fact. As long as some people will believe it, that's
all that matters to them. I have a higher standard for what I will
accept as truth. So do scientists - it's required of them in their
field. But the average nonscientist feels no compulsion to adhere to
such things. They'll accept as fact anything which sounds good
enough, especially if it feels satisfying to them somehow. If you
truly want to know more about the origin of the universe, you'll have
to do some genuine study on the basics of astronomy. Then you'll have
the tools needed to help you better understand what researchers are
talking about. But even if you do that, you'll still find that
science does not have all the answers yet.

There was a time when earthquakes were deemed to be caused by giants
living in the earth. That doesn't make it so. Belief that evil
spirits caused illness is another old notion which some people still
accept, though it has been disproven in a manner that can only be
called massive. The facts that scientists come up with are not
matters for belief. Belief is where you decide something is so with
no evidence to back it up. What scientists learn are matters for
acceptance as the best knowledge available to date, not as subjects
for people to "believe in." Scientists don't ask us to believe in
what they learn. They do ask us to accept what they learn, after it
has passed the tests of proof. And they have every right to ask for
that; they've earned it. If experimentation shows that a hypothesis
is probably true, and later other scientists can duplicate the same
results by performing the same experiments independently and with a
critical and objective eye, the results have earned our acceptance.
When does pseudoscience or religion make any attempt to earn
acceptance from us with such mundane and earthly things as evidence?
It simply states ideas and notions as though they were fact and lets
us decide to believe in them or not. Religion goes a step further and
suggests dire consequences to us for failing to believe without
questioning. Science isn't nearly as arrogant, or as malevolent.

When it comes to dealing with what the public will accept as
realities, it is sad but true that they will usually prefer to accept
an explanation which satisfies, even if it is wildly illogical, and
even when there is already evidence that it is simply not true, as
opposed to one in which only partial knowledge is obtained and the
people seeking that knowledge are honest enough to admit they don't
have all the answers, and maybe never will. As for me, I'll take the
honesty every time. But in doing so, I am temporarily accepting some
explanations that are as yet unproven, some of which are purely
hypothetical and others with only a moderate level of proof. I have
to accept that I'll never obtain totally complete, comprehensive
answers, or that if I ever did get them, that they would satisfy. At
least the scientists don't plug in their brains to mythology and magic
and organized superstition for their answers. If they did, we'd still
be living in the Dark Ages, when belief smothered all scientific
inquiry and technological advancement. Living piously was deemed the
only value worth having, and wanting to live well was deemed sinful.
Even with the inquisitions no longer a bothersome reality in our
lives, though, religion continues to promote this kind of concept.
Future inquisitions are certainly not out of the question. If given
the opportunity, religion would gladly take the reins of society
again.

Those who can't accept either the scientists or religion tend to opt
instead for the pseudosciences. These dudes will always eagerly
provide explanations that satisfy without having to resort to theology
to do it. They don't even have to revert to facts, unless they can be
re-engineered to fit. Trouble is, they're as unfounded as theology
itself, and the uncritical public does not demand that they prove any
of what they say. It's enough if it "sounds like how things ought to
be." But oughta-be's don't add up to truth or reality. Any time an
oughta-be turns out to have validity, it's usually purely coincidence.
Those who promulgate pseudoscience are looking for
self-aggrandizement and just possibly financial gain. They need none
of the disciplines that are required of science, because their reading
public does not truly acknowledge the need for, or the value of, such
disciplines. That's why they're not scientists. That reading public
is far more interested in explanations that satisfy than in
explanations that are real, but partial, or unsettling.

Even scientists are human and capable of having preferences which
they'd like to see supported by their research. The idea of a
permanently expanding universe was one concept which they were eager
to disprove; they found the oscillating universe, one which collapses,
then re-expands through another Big Bang, far more aesthetically
pleasing than one in which everything flies away from everything else,
forever more. But the evidence they were coming up with continued to
point to the expanding universe model. They had no choice but to
accept it, at least until further research proved otherwise. The
known quantity of matter contained in the universe just isn't enough
to allow the present expansion to slow down and ultimately collapse
upon itself again. It's only about 1/10 of what would be needed.
They haven't concluded their studies, though, and are still looking
for Dark Matter and Dark Energy which would give the added heft to the
mass of the known universe and allow it to be accepted as an
oscillating one. No one can say for sure that they won't find what
they're looking for, but so far the evidence still seems to point to
an expansion that won't reverse itself, ever. Though the scientists
have their preferences, that doesn't mean they can impose them on
their research. Whatever research comes up with that is demonstrably
so must be accepted, whether it is aesthetically pleasing or
revolting. Nobody wants to think that the Big Bang was a one-shot
event. There'll come a time, though, when the accumulated evidence of
researchers will arrive at a conclusion which they feel confident
represents the reality. They hope it will turn out to be an
oscillating universe, but will accept the permanently expanding one if
enough evidence for it accumulates, especially if it comes together
with a marked lack of evidence to support the oscillating one.
There's one law of the realities of the cosmos which is known: not
all answers will be the ones we might hope for.

Velikovsky's book about planets in collision and other cosmological
catastrophes gives some very interesting ideas about how the universe
got to be the way it is. Unfortunately, none of it holds up to
scientific scrutiny, and much of it contradicts what already is known.
That doesn't keep him from having avid supporters of his theories,
even today, many years after he published them, and long after they've
been shown to be pure bunk. Like religion, people will believe
whatever it is that they WANT to believe in scientific areas. A
scientist does not have that kind of luxury. He can't engage in
intellectual laziness like that, or he'd lose all credibility in the
future. A reader of pseudoscience, for instance, who reads about a
footprint discovered that might be from a Bigfoot will support his
belief in this idea with the question, "Well, what else could it be?"
That is the quip given as a final response to skeptics of UFOlogy,
too. As if that, somehow, made it so. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Reaching scientific conclusions can't be done using such easy and
expedient lines of thought. A scientist won't end a line of inquiry
by asking "what else could it be?"; instead, he'll be searching
actively and systematically to learn what it really IS, by finding the
evidence. A scientist can't search for explanations that satisfy and
only concern himself with the ones which do so. He is on a search for
what is real. That search tends to be a never-ending process, because
to learn one new fact opens up a whole new series of questions in need
of answers. No one ever "arrives" at any totality of knowledge in any
field of science. Anyone claiming to have done so can safely be
regarded as a pseudoscientist. Or worse.

Like the person who posted this thread originally, I, too, am
frustrated that I'll never learn in my lifetime the answers to many
cosmological questions of importance. I can, however, gain some
knowledge about them, and I'd rather have a puny quantity of
information which is reasonably valid than a vast quantity of
information about a reality that doesn't exist, never has and never
could. Religion is often the refuge of people whose quest for
knowledge includes a requirement for simple and easy answers. The
workings of the universe are anything but simple, and anything but
easy to understand, even in the areas where there really is a measure
of understanding already acquired by science. Science is complex, not
because it wants to be, but because the very nature of all realities,
biological, chemical, physical, etc. quickly make their vast
complexities known, even to a casual observer. If you look into a
microscope, you would expect to find a simpler environment. Instead,
the submicroscopic world is every bit as complex as the one we are
familiar with, and just perhaps more so. The same is true of the
macroscopic world, i.e., the universe. The more we examine it, the
more complex it proves itself to be. Without delving into those
complexities, we can't learn more about it. But in delving into them,
the science becomes more and more incomprehensible to the lay public.
The scientists aren't making science esoteric to keep the public in
ignorance; it is nature itself, and the complexities it contains,
which accomplishes that.

If scientists aren't able to find these answers, nobody can. There
are no alternatives to scientific inquiry. None which can come up
with "answers" that conform with reality, at any rate. Certainly
ancient scriptures, and the blatherings of pseudoscientists cannot
fill that gap, even remotely. We must take what knowledge science
does acquire and appreciate it for what it tells us. If that isn't
enough, that doesn't mean that religion or pseudoscience is going to
fill in the blanks for us. They'll only muddy the waters further.
Religion claims, of course, to have ALL the answers. The trouble is,
they've had to change their tunes on many of those answers, like when
they finally had to accept that the world revolved around the sun and
that the "vault" of the sky wasn't a fixed object, like a painting on
the Sistine Chapel, but was actually an almost infinite depth of pure
void, containing everything from loose molecules to clusters of
galaxies. Most of today's astronomers would have been subjected to
the auto da fe back in the Middle Ages, when religion held sway over
all that was "true," and they would never have had a chance to learn
what they have. Religion does not add to our understanding of our
real universe; it squelches it. That's why religion is so hostile to
science in a world where scientists can work with relative freedom
again, now that the crusades and inquisitions have ended. The
evolution question is still one which gives the religious people deep
consternation, because they must somehow now attempt to make the
"Biblical fact that the world was created in the year 4004 BC" into
scientific fact, and they can't do it. They rely heavily on the fact
that "science doesn't know everything yet" to help their believers
accept that somehow they, the religious leaders, do. Notwithstanding
the vast accumulation of knowledge which makes the evolutionary theory
a certainty, even if total understanding of how it works is still in
the future, the fundamental religions continue to hold to their belief
about the year 4004 BC. Religion is the very antithesis of science.
It plugs in ideas conceived of in ancient times and demands they be
accepted as immutable laws of the cosmos. And it offers no proof
whatsoever; on the contrary, it scoffs at the very idea that any
believer would have the temerity to require any. Even when they've
been proven wrong, over and over, they persist in teaching people that
science is all wet, and the religion is the true reality. When it
obvously isn't, and is demonstrably not true.

Pious believers love the quote that says (paraphrasing, because I
don't have it committed to memory) that "to the nonbeliever, no
explanations are acceptable; to a believer, no explanations are
necessary." That's the gist of it anyway. It sounds nice and poetic,
and that alone is enough to get some people to accept it without
question. Isaac Asimov once put this same quote into different words,
but they lack the romance, obviously: "One cannot reason with a
person whose fundamental premise is that reason doesn't count." Just
because something sounds poetic and oh, so deep, doesn't make it so.
Just like the way people really latched on to the quote from "Love
Story": "Love is never having to say you're sorry." When in reality
love is making yourself admit you were wrong and saying you're sorry,
for the sake of the relationship with someone you love, when you've
flubbed something up. People went nuts over that quote, though,
thinking it was just terribly poetic and beautiful, and oh, wow,
that's deep - and therefore had to be true. In pracatice, though,
that concept will fall flat on its face, every time. Because it's
anything but true.

So, to the original writer of this thread, I'll say this. Science
doesn't know everything about the origin of the cosmos, but they have
learned more about the things which are demonstrably true than any
other approach has provided. The fact that they don't know everything
does not imply that someone else does, such as pseudoscience or
religion. That only gets you into murkier waters than the scientists
are in, despite the fact that they claim to the skies to know it all.
The reality is they're not even close to knowing. Science, for better
or worse, is the best, and only, vehicle for seeking those answers,
and even if they're not full answers or as satisfying as the "answers"
which religion and pseudoscientists will so eagerly provide you,
science has one virtue that the other two don't have: honesty. On
top of that, scientists also are held to a thing called
accountability. If a pseudoscientist's theories are disproven he
doesn't lose his job or even his future credibility; he can go on
espousing nontruth and still be believed. Religion can do likewise.

Believing something to be so doesn't make it so. Proof does. Since
reality is the thing which governs events, it is far better to be in
touch with an ugly or revolting reality than to choose to believe in a
prettier one which doesn't truly exist, but which is comforting to
believe in. That belief won't change the fact that the genuine
reality will still govern events, but it will guarantee that the
believer is unprepared for its consequences. Even someone seeking to
be in touch with reality can sometimes miss the mark, or underestimate
the potential of a given reality, but he has less chance of being
taken totally by surprise when events occur. And he's in a better
intellectual and emotional posture to deal with them adequately, too.
Ugly or otherwise, I'll take the reality and nothing but, as much as
possible. I don't think most people would make that choice; they want
reality to be prettier than it usually is. Belief, whether in
religion or pseudossience, makes that possible. That's why they are
satisfying, where science often fails to satisfy. But being satisfied
doesn't make the concept one has chosen to believe in real.

Even the ancient Chinese knew the fallacy of accepting an appealing
belief over a harsh truth. Confucius said, "To study and not think is
a waste; to think and not study is dangerous." People who have normal
intelligence, and are able to see the fallacies of religion and
pseudoscience if they look hard enough, will gladly plug-in to these
concepts anyway. They're thinking a lot, but not doing any genuine
study. If they did, they'd encounter the evidence which makes those
beliefs ring hollow. People who think but don't study are vulnerable
to propaganda and other nasty things, too. It's not worth it.

There are people, who have organized and call themselves the Flat
Earth Society, and who believe that the earth truly is flat. Despite
the mountains of evidence proving their belief to be utterly wrong.
To them, those mountains of evidence are pure propaganda, designed to
intentionally mislead us all. Belief has a way of allowing people to
fall into that kind of thing, and it doesn't bode well for the
viability of our species as a truly sentient one. How sentient are
we, after all, when the vast majority can look at a subject and choose
to believe something other than shown by the evidence, and say, "Don't
confuse me with facts"?

It don't work, chum. Never can, never will.

"faster" wrote:

..they finally had to accept that the world revolved around the sun
and that the
"vault" of the sky... was actually an
almost infinite depth of pure void.

Dude. In your voluminius post you have rightly denounced religious dogma
and the blind faith that religion requires. But has it ever occured to
you that possibly the doctrine that space is "pure void" might itself be
a religious dogmatism on a par with Ptolemaic geocentrism? oc

"Bill Sheppard" wrote in message
...

Dude. In your voluminius post you have rightly denounced religious dogma
and the blind faith that religion requires. But has it ever occured to
you that possibly the doctrine that space is "pure void" might itself be
a religious dogmatism on a par with Ptolemaic geocentrism? oc

BS says ...

"The SCO exerts is pressure ever downward, driving the
flows that create all that is, throughout infinity. Again, this
is taken as a 'given'."

"the 'Engine' or Primal Particle (PP) is driven *by* the
supra-cosmic overpressure (SCO) from *outside* the
universe. That's why it's called 'supra-cosmic'. It's source
is unknown and is taken as a 'given'."

"So non-plurality/ nonlocality of singularities joins the list
of 'givens' in the expanded model, along with hyperfluidity,
Ultimate Origins, and the SCO,"

Religious dogmatism anyone???

Bill Sheppard wrote:
"faster" wrote:


..they finally had to accept that the world revolved around the sun

and that the

"vault" of the sky... was actually an
almost infinite depth of pure void.


Dude. In your voluminius post you have rightly denounced religious dogma
and the blind faith that religion requires. But has it ever occured to
you that possibly the doctrine that space is "pure void" might itself be
a religious dogmatism on a par with Ptolemaic geocentrism? oc




Bill:

There is one alternative viewpoint that has never been refuted. It is not
the politically, religiously or Platonically correct viewpoint, and yet it
is factual by every measure that may be applied.


The universe exists.

The universe is a continually existing plurality of entities that function
and change according to their integral properties and potentials for change.

The universe keeps on existing, and according to that fact it may be
surmised that the universe always has existed and will continue to existing.

The plural universe is what it is, and it is eternal.

Ralph Hertle

"Bill Sheppard" wrote in message
...
"faster" wrote:

..they finally had to accept that the world revolved around the sun
and that the
"vault" of the sky... was actually an
almost infinite depth of pure void.

Dude. In your voluminius post you have rightly denounced religious
dogma
and the blind faith that religion requires. But has it ever occured to
you that possibly the doctrine that space is "pure void" might itself
be
a religious dogmatism on a par with Ptolemaic geocentrism? oc


Bill, are you really suggesting that no scientists are looking at the
nature of the vacuum?
Or are you setting this up as a strawman argument ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman#Rhetorical_use

"vacuum energy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

"Quantum Foam"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam
NB reference to Reginal Cahill's 'process physics' theory - I'm not
sure how you view his theory.

"Ralph Hertle" wrote in message
...

There is one alternative viewpoint that has never been refuted. It is
not
the politically, religiously or Platonically correct viewpoint, and
yet it
is factual by every measure that may be applied.

The universe exists.

The universe is a continually existing plurality of entities that
function
and change according to their integral properties and potentials for
change.

The universe keeps on existing, and according to that fact it may be
surmised that the universe always has existed and will continue to
existing.


Sorry Ralph, but this is a complete non-sequitur. Just because something
continues to exist does not mean that there was _never_ a state of it
not having existed. It is merely a surmise.

OG wrote:
"Ralph Hertle" wrote in message
...

[clip]
The universe keeps on existing, and according to that fact it may be
surmised that the universe always has existed and will continue to
exist.


Sorry Ralph, but this is a complete non-sequitur.



No it isn't. That calls for the reader to use induction. Deduction doesn't
make any sense, and if that is the measure your are applying you would be
right that it is a non-sequitur.


Just because something
continues to exist does not mean that there was _never_ a state of it
not having existed. It is merely a surmise.



That's a double negative. I would correct the grammatical error to read:

"That something, or everything, continues to exist means that there was a
state of it having existed."

There is no evidence of nothing ever having existed.

There is every evidence that everything has existed, that the universe
exists and did exist prior.

Without induction what do you use to form concepts or to identify the facts
of existence?

Without induction there is no means of knowledge and no evidence that
nothing exists or that something never existed.

Without induction nothing can be known, and that means that there can be no
knowledge of something.

You claim nothing. I claim something.

Ralph Hertle

Anybody here really care that this is a banned subject in the newsgroup
talk.origins? (TOBS)

"OG" wrote in message
...

"Ralph Hertle" wrote in message
...

There is one alternative viewpoint that has never been refuted. It is
not
the politically, religiously or Platonically correct viewpoint, and
yet it
is factual by every measure that may be applied.

The universe exists.

The universe is a continually existing plurality of entities that
function
and change according to their integral properties and potentials for
change.

The universe keeps on existing, and according to that fact it may be
surmised that the universe always has existed and will continue to
existing.


Sorry Ralph, but this is a complete non-sequitur. Just because something
continues to exist does not mean that there was _never_ a state of it
not having existed. It is merely a surmise.




A contradiction in logic?
An anomaly?
Such a paradox.

There is evidence that you had a beginning.
And there is evidence that you will someday end.

So all things must have a beginning, and an ending.
Alpha and Omega -- this implies cause and effect -- indeed, a First Cause --
and a Final Effect.

You had parents, a mom and a dad -- you are spawned from an egg and a sperm.
The paradox is that the First Cause, the very First Cause, is thereby an
impossibility.
A scientific impossibility!
Here mystique must enter with answers.
For isn't it a given that when the laws of physics fail us, we must then
fall back on the Outlaw?

You keep on investigating, but the rest must go on living, and they cannot
do this without answers.
Questions without answers -- is this not insanity?!
So if science hasn't the answers, then people will settle for the mystique,
for the paranormal, for the gods.

Science has a long and glorious history of unveiling the mystique.
Conjecture is for naught if it leads you nowhere.
Follow your science.
You will fail science far more than it will fail you.

Dr. Why