Big Bang

The only way I can answer religious doctrine is to ignore it. All I can do in reply to religious writings is to ignore them. Human beings wrote it down and human beings are the doctrinaires: there I rest my case: human beings are not god. Period.

I simply do not believe in any god / any religion. I do not hate them nor despise them. I do not believe there is no god. I simply do not believe in any god. I have no religion. I do not believe in a future life, a system of future rewards and/or punishments, nor in any master plan, nor in any singular nor in any origin of / for the universe. I believe in no prophets nor angels nor powers nor powers of the dead / “Other” nor any entity waiting to do me a favor if I only pray. None of it “took” and none of it “takes” now.

Belief is easy: just accept “it” as if “it” was true and no more thinking is required about “it”. Just as I shall say I believe so and so will make a good or the better or a less the worst for president: I cannot say “I Know”. Pick one belief and there are thousands of other beliefs. Pick one belief and there are thousands of variations. Knowledge takes work. Trying to know takes work. Honesty takes work. Being able to say “I don’t know” is part of being honest. I am not a good liar. Being a good liar takes work. It is a different kind of work. Making a decision based on belief alone is sometimes all that can be done: It is a belief about what the “real world” is. A belief in the “other” world, the other world of god / religion is another thing altogether. Making decisions based on beliefs in the “non-natural world” applying some way or other to the “natural world” is also done. Human beings are doing it. I rest my case.

I believe all kinds of things and I do not apologize. Or I am shown I only believe in something and do not know and have to apologize. If I do not know anything I am honest enough to say so. Or I lie.

I accept no apology, explanation, defense, nor argument for god / religion: You/he/she/they believe it or not: The fundamental basis for belief is belief. Belief is not knowledge. Period.

God is not taken out of scientific argument nor out of the realm of scientific inquiry. NO! NO! I in fact argue that gods and religions must be studied. They are included in the history of ideas, defended or derided as a part of philosophy, studied as a part of human history such as justification and/or excuse for war and pursuing peace, for examples. That is: studied anthropologically or as a class of idea. There are those who study religions very carefully and have there own or none. History is necessarily concerned with religion. There is in fact an extensive enumeration of “religious” practices called The Golden Bough in thirty five volumes and he was being selective.

The study of nature excludes a study of god and religion as there is nothing there to study. “They” do not personally exclude so and do not have to personally exclude anything and thereby need not justify anything: there is no thing there to take samples of to measure: there is nothing there to exclude and nothing there to include if they wanted to. Period. You and I can guarantee they would if they could. People would have “samples” of god on their table tops at every meal! I would too! Or, they would refuse or fail to so do such. As it is, they might put symbols of god / religion on the table. That can only be studied anthropologically. If the study of nature is the study of god then there is no shortage of study. If the study of nature must include the belief in god, that is political, not science.

“Religion” has never screwed up anybody. People do the screwing. Religion is a cultural expression and a popular expression amongst a group of people: a social thing: and as varied as are groups of people. Pick one belief and there are thousands of other beliefs. Pick one belief and there are thousands of variations.

I do not believe there is no god. I am not a believer in a god to not believe in. “They” insist I am an atheist anyway. “They” are angry at me for not accepting their “beliefs”. I could lie down and mash my face into the floor before any image and shout “I believe!” and there would some “them” who insist I shall go to hell anyway for some reason or other.

As for the big bang: there is no evidence of any such a thing: it is a “working generalization”. It is a sort of “working” “assumption”. A way of talking.

As I hinted before: the universe cannot have a “beginning” based on our notions of time and space: “It”, the universe, the ALL, includes all times and all spaces by definition. There is no time, space, cause, effect, or “thing” left over. To assert a “cause” or “beginning” to the universe entails some extra-universal thing. Call that god. But god did not “cause” the universe to exist. God had not created causes before god created the universe. Therefore god created the universe and did not “cause” it to be. God cannot exist in our world of causes and effects. God created causes and effects. God created time. It is “said” “when god created the world” only because we use our limited language. God did not “start” as there was no where for god to start and no time for god to start as god had not created times nor starts nor where’s nor there’s. God did not cause the universe by creating it because creation is not a cause. No thing can be a “reaction” to the “cause” of god because god had not created anything until god created it and that includes causes and effects and reactions. Therefore there is no “starting time” for the universe nor a "starting time" for god. Even the middle ages monks in monasteries knew that!

The Cause Of Existence

I remember the phrase “existence is not a predicate” and that logically since something exists there is no question of causation for that requires an action to effect another action and mere existence is not an action. But cars do exist as the result of manufacture we students replied. We were speaking of the existence of the universe, however, the existence of all.

God’s creation is not your human scale creation.

Even the most medieval monastic monks had some ready answers. The sum total of all or The ALL exists but cannot be the result of something else except as a result of itself for the ALL must include all causes and results of causation by definition of it being the ALL. There are no causes left over, so to speak. God did not “cause” the universe to “be”: there was no action before god created it and therefore no causes either.

I Am Not What Made Me

At least some anti-evolutionists insist that the world began 3500 or some “written” number of years ago and maybe even tyrannosaurus and brontosaurus dinosaurs walked up the plank into Noah’s ark. Since their minds are made up they have stopped thinking. They are left with the repetition of old notions which end in quarrels, fist fights, and murder. The anti-evolutionists would kill others they do not like and end their creation. The anti-abortionists would kill anyone who disagreed with them and abort them. Typical humans.

As a bunch of biological warm blooded not so furry bodies we human beings are predatory, nasty, vicious, violent, raging, biting, scratching, and rip-it-apart creatures. We are killers.

Are we “mutants of” or “evolved from”? Honestly, I do not care. I do not care if we as a biological reality “came from” some goo out of the ice.

I do not care who my parents were. I am and that is the hard basic fact of life. And after a certain “point” in my life I took charge and moved on, creating and re-creating my self using what was available. I decided to stop the worry about people who were not “there” or “not there for me”. I do not bother about any of that anymore. BOO! Here I am. Get on with it!

I have little choice: to accusations of being a “freak” I shoo off them who so accuse and move on, fight them off if they bother me, go on making my life, and continue to live.

If WE, as bio-entities, “came from” mindless apes, muddy gravel, green sea weed, dinosaur poo, or whatever, what and why should I even care?

I fail to understand the concerns of creationists and pro-lifers. They were created and they are alive and no one is threatening them.

Simply put: I am here and grow and this demonstrates my necessary being. This happens by any means necessary. If I am a mutation of a life form or an evolution into this, a new or a different life form, what do I care? If I am an accident of nature or a freak of nature I am still as a matter of fact alive and here. I give no thanks to the “them” and none to the “that” which, however necessary they were to my being, are not me.

I am not that which made me.

“God Created A Universe Of Mystery.”

“God did not create a universe of limitations.” The very problem asserted by Cantor of infinite numbers was the false infinity of mere extension. Cantor insisted that the real world requires particular principles of infinity creation not endless mindless infinity creation. Cantor insisted that the creation of principles of infinity is the infinity encompassing all infinities, not the endless “infinity if infinities”. God is not infinite nor an infinity. God is the creator of infinities. Infinities in motion or the principle of infinities in action: Action, Motion, Creation, Creativity, Infinity.

“God created a creative universe.” We are a part of the universe. We are a thinking part of the universe. We are a part of the universe that thinks. The universe has a mind of its own including yours at the very least. We are the mind of the universe and we are the universe looking at itself and changing itself. The universe is a creating universe not a collection of “things”. We are things that create things and not a mere collection of biologic parts.

“We will always create the new and re-create the old as we find ourselves able and willing. Forever. That is the reality for humanity.”

We will never know even collectively everything because the universe is forever not “finished”. We shall never be finished with creating and re-creating our world. We shall always and forever be confronted with the new and the unknown. There will always and forever be the permuted new and the unknown. This is our World without End. Amen. Amen.

“God created a universe of mystery.” The universe is neither finite nor infinite. It is a false issue.

“False Infinity”

Someone asked a judicious time later why I figured that the universe was finite. Where had I heard or read that? I replied that they told me it was. I simply did not know. They were ready to impale me with ridicule and humble me with humiliations if I stayed silent. So I thought about it a little for myself.

“I know nothing!” I repeated --- once too often. The HA-HA-HA had died out of that coming from me.

The explanation I was given that I remember best was that in an infinite universe there would presumably be an infinite number of shining stars in our sky such that we would be inundated with light. Since this was not so there could not be an infinite number of shining stars and there could not be an infinite universe. There would be an infinite number of stars the light of which would always be infinitely far away forever by their logic. Further, there is only so much light that could “fit” in a local or finite space. If the speed of light is finite then there may be other finites within the infinite.

This was an example of “linear infinity” and “false infinity”. If only a finite amount of light reaches us we have to find out why.

Can it be argued that the universe is infinite or not if it is not known that it cannot be infinite or not? Simply put, can it be known that the universe is infinite if we cannot ever complete a measure of it? Might there be a limit to knowability? Maybe we cannot come to know the answer. My “friends” were incredulous: how could I stop there and leave them ignorant. “Knowledge does not come on a silver platter” I answered. “Personality is a potential. Intelligence is a potential. Beauty is a potential. YOU must WORK at it to make it work.” So I replied. The fisticuffs of humiliation still awaited my answer. There was a beautiful face in the bunch that made me begin to cry.

There is the greater infinite amount of dust in the way of the infinite amount of light. Maybe there is an infinite number of “things” that can happen to “free” light freely gallivanting about the infinite universe such as an infinite amount of new things such an amount of light could do before it could get “too far”. Rather than travel about indefinitely all night the light might eventually “do” something. That would make “sense” in a universe of constant activity.

The “Big Bang Theory”

This was part of a horrible quarrel amongst some “friends”. I hesitate to suggest that I do not believe they were friends of mine.

As a result of the quarreling, I asked them two questions.

Can we assign “time” to the universe and its “creation”?

Can we assign a “creation” to the “all” at all?

I suggested that there was a religious reply to this sort of question that even the most middle minded medieval monks were aware of.

+Since god created time and space and the universe that this obviates the question of time relating to the “when” of creation.

+Of necessity, the universe itself is neither subject to time nor space for both time and space are OF the universe and the universe may subsume time and space but is neither in time nor in space itself.

+To say the universe must have a “time” to “start” assumes that the universe is in time.

+Since god created the universe, the universe includes time but is not itself governed by any time.

+To assume that there was a creation of the creator or a creator of god assumes that the creator exists in time such that there would be a time for the creation of god.

+If god exists “outside” or “beyond” time and space then of necessity there can be no time for the creation of god.

+This obviates the question about the creation of god by anything at any time.

+There was no time before god created it and therefore no “before” god and therefore no creation of god (such as by another “thing” before god).

+The universe which subsumes time and space is not itself timed nor spaced.
I suggested that the universe is maybe spaced out and is always out of time.

Three Questions I Reduced To One

Three questions arose recently: about Love, Money, Ideas, and How do we know if the universe is expanding.

I do not know if the universe is expanding as how could I. But I wondered how any one could assert that, as it was asserted, which was how the question came up.

On the outside of the universe it could be seen to expand, so to speak, but, then, it wouldn’t be the universe seen to expand but a part of it, the part seen to expand, as the outside would be a part of the universe but not under observation. How could it be seen to expand from the inside? What measure could / would be there to measure it against?

It was a problem of extrinsic and intrinsic geometry. It all started with the question: is the universe finite or infinite. I could only wonder how it could be known, one way or the other. I said that I wondered how a finite universe could be finite but without an end.

My answer, as I was pressed to give one, was theological.

I said it was the similar to the question as to how anyone could know if god was infinite: a theological conundrum: regarding god and the universe as a unity. There actually historically was an answer figured out theologically but it was to the satisfaction of only a few. If the universe was infinite then it would be commensurable as an infinite thing would be known to have a number however infinite it might be. Since god was not considered commensurable then god could not be infinite. Anything finite was by definition commensurable so then an incommensurable god could not be finite.

Anything to be measured or assigned a number would have to be so described by human standards and could be known. Anything in the universe was actionable upon if it was known. Anything knowable must be subject to measure and must be subject to number and must be subject to action upon it. Anything acted upon was therefore subject to change. No action upon god was considered possible. “Obviously”, no one was considered able to change god.

If the universe was a one then it was indivisible infinitely and numbered and thus god could not be a one. If the universe was a many then it was enumerable and thusly numbered and thus god could not be a many.

Therefore god was beyond mortal measure. Harrumph!

What could be known of god? The honest theologians replied that nothing was knowable about god, it was believed or not, that god was an organizing principal for humanity, and humanity was forever organizing and reorganizing and thereby changing the belief in god but not losing the absolute necessity for organizing principals. They continued that the questions about life and existence started with beliefs and developed into knowledge which was the endless task for humanity and would take forever, and that we need to keep faith in goodness and justice and togetherness (… and so on …) within such eternally continually developed reason. Amen.

The universe was only knowable over time and thus only finite within the limits of our knowledge. The universe was assumed infinite as there was no known end to time nor space nor anything else needed to get to know it. If we ever found an end to the unknown then our questions would be answered. Until then, the universe would be knowable finitely at any time.

However, the issue of an infinite versus finite universe was a false issue as it assumed one or the other without evidence for either, except as argued above and before. There was no measure possible for a universe we have not completed measuring to conclusively figure outside of belief that there was an infinite universe.

And thusly I completed my answer.