The gods of cosmology

[Laura]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1735602,00.html

Questions about why we and the universe exist are worth asking even if there are no answers

Tim Radford
Tuesday March 21, 2006
The Guardian

For the third year running, a physicist has won the Templeton prize. This is the one that is not just bigger than the Nobel - it is worth £795,000 - but also more imprecise: it is awarded for "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities".

It went on Wednesday to the cosmological polymath John Barrow at Cambridge; last year it went to the American Charles Townes, who discovered the maser; the year before it went to the South African George Ellis, whose big research theme was the large-scale structure of space and time. In the past 11 years it has also gone to John Polkinghorne, who gave up his chair in physics at Cambridge to become a clergyman; Freeman Dyson, the British-born physicist who worked on the Los Alamos project; and Paul Davies, the Australian-based thinker, writer and cosmologist. Not bad for an overtly religious prize first awarded in 1972 to Mother Teresa.

Barrow made a name beyond astrophysics 20 years ago by co-authoring an argument known as the anthropic principle: that the universe looks as though it has been tailored for the emergence of intelligent life. This frames two huge riddles: is there something special about the universe that means intelligent beings will inevitably emerge to understand it? Or does it just appear like that because we look back down the long tunnel of time so of course it would seem to point exactly towards us?

Einstein put one version of the same question when he observed that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe was that it was comprehensible. The Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg put another version when he said, in a 1977 book called The First Three Minutes, that the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. Most science involves taking a large subject and reducing it to ever smaller, more precise questions. Physics seems to start with precise questions about atomic particles or strong nuclear forces and end up with very big, imprecise ones such as: why are we here? No wonder even physicists who don't believe in God tend to invoke Him. Einstein famously claimed that God did not play dice. Stephen Hawking ended his most famous book by claiming that humans might one day read the mind of God. Leon Lederman called his book on the Higgs boson The God Particle. Others leave the divine question open; yet others overtly believe in God. This is not quite what anyone expects from science, which got where it has by firmly excluding the supernatural and following the evidence of the natural.

But then cosmic physics is the odd science. It can explain, with huge confidence, the entire history of the universe from about the first tenth of a second of time onwards. A few years ago cosmologists were inclined to claim that at any moment they might have the whole answer: they would be able to explain how the universe borrowed energy from nowhere, puffed itself up from nothing, burst into starlight, exploded with supernovae and produced a sludge of elements that finally delivered a creature intelligent enough to read The Da Vinci Code.

You hear less of that now. Physicists cannot be sure whether this universe right here is the only one; or one of zillions of universes, one just lucky enough to produce Aristotle and Oprah Winfrey. Perhaps the answers lie within that tiny fraction of time right at the beginning of everything, and perhaps they do not. As both atheists and believers are fond of saying, God knows. The questions are worth asking, even if there are no answers. As Steven Weinberg said in The First Three Minutes: "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

 

[Russ]

I think the word "universe" could be taken to mean at least two different things - "absolutely everthing" or just a collection of galaxies... the "life" of the (or our) big bang(s).

My thoughts on the answer to the question, is there any point in everything, is that there is no point. There is "something" as opposed to nothing, so there is nothing "in" nothing to say "thats the point in everything". The very question itself is part of everything.

When we ask "Why are we here?", what is "here"? Is it, why are we on a planet in a galaxy as a human, or is it, why does ALL life exist no matter what configuration of "stuff" it is in? The first question probably has more than one answer, because there are more than one meaning for the word "we" or "I". We can say that "I" is a physical human body, or we can say it is how people act, what they do, some kind of karmic/spiritual thing, as opposed to a physical thing. So we can draw back through time, how the physical human body came to be, but I think maybe we would just hit a dead end with it, ie. it doesn't answer the full question because we're not just physical beings. We are missing out on another "universe" which is the "spiritual" one, and it seems to be connected with the physical world. The physical world seems to allude to it just by existing.

The main thing I think, is not the question "why are we here?", but first to ask what ARE we, and what is HERE? Then we can maybe ask why we are here. I mean, if we don't understand the question, how do we expect to find the answer?

We focus on the physical too much, I think a lot of people see God as some large human with a beard, well, it might as well be santa claus ;D Bill Hicks said "What could oppose God's will?" "Nothing!". The C's say that the nature of the universe is not hierarchical, so there is no "God" at the top of a pyramid, that is an STS way of looking at things. I think all life is god, and at the root its all the same thing anyway, its all "the light of the light".

I mean, for instance, where does the light comes from for thoughts? Did anyone ever question that? How do you picture a red ball in your mind if its all dark, bloody and stuffy in your head? How does our vision "light up"? This kind of thinking is beyond a lot of things I have read... maybe there is some stuff in very complex science, but you know what, I doubt it. We just haven't got there yet. Maybe scientists are too arrogant, or maybe I am for saying this, but I think they need people like us to inspire them, because they get so entrenched in a physical way of thinking, so far ahead on "one side of the coin" that they miss out on a lot. They should analyse the awareness of a child which they have forgotten IMO.

They need to think, things like what is surrounding our vision? I mean its the most immediate problem in the whole of existence, for humans, isn't it? Isn't our vision a "miniture" version of a universe? What is surrounding it? Where do things go when we turn our heads? And what does "turn our heads" mean? Its just words, but what happens is not proven. What we sense on first person is so important, its where the universe starts for all living beings, and most of the population ignore it. I suppose its such an "obvious" thing, or so simple, that people just don't bother thinking about it.

We overcomplicate things IMO. Only certain things, they don't need to be as complex as we think they are. All life receives and sends "data", and whatever that data is, the method of recieving and sending it is always the same at the most fundamental level. Our imagination tends to merge with what is really happening, so instead of seeing imagination in its own "box", we put it in different boxes, such as "visual". But its only real when its seen as what it is - imagination. We should define what is imagination, and what is really happenening, and part of what is happening is how we think, and what we know and understand. It just needs to be tidied up IMO. Once we are seeing in a certain way, it stays like that, if we are thinking that we are physical human beings, and that is all, then it affects our thoughts, and what we do, and how we feel. But if we aren't so sure, and we organise how we are seeing things, then we see it differently, and then we are not restricted in our thinking, our ideas. Why restrict critical thinking for the outside world, why not bring it inside, and stop telling our children what they are, and how things are, when we don't know?? We treat our children like they are stupid, but theyre not, they ask the best questions in the world, and then we work hard to destroy that part of them, like it was destroyed in us. And we do it without even realising it.

I think a lot of people think that raw intellect is all thats important for being a scientist, but I disagree. The "being" needs to be right, they need to be able to see things how they really are within themselves first, or they might as well just not bother. With intellect, you could work on crosswords for your whole life and never discover anything, if that makes sense - the intellect is like some kind of machine that is only useful when its working on something that is useful. I mean, problems can be attractive to an intellect, and you could go down a very long road, working lots of things out that in the end are just "mental excersises". If its all based on an assumption, you just aren't going to get anywhere, and it doesn't matter how much you try, its not going to happen IMO.

I know there are some scientists who are working on this problem, Ark being one. But most scientists are just "deaf" when it comes to this, and the only way to get through to them would be for someone like Ark to do something which would gain worldwide respect, and use that respect to give credibility to working on ones self to see things how they are within themselves.

 

[Guest]

No wonder even physicists who don't believe in God tend to invoke Him. Einstein famously claimed that God did not play dice. Stephen Hawking ended his most famous book by claiming that humans might one day read the mind of God. Leon Lederman called his book on the Higgs boson The God Particle. Others leave the divine question open; yet others overtly believe in God. This is not quite what anyone expects from science, which got where it has by firmly excluding the supernatural and following the evidence of the natural.

Actually, the above tendency of some lime-light physicists indicates a fall from objectivity if not down right psychological immaturity as in the case of Hawking, and marks the tendency of these same physicists to demand All That Is be placed in a little mathematical box scaled to their convenience.

There are so many questions and so few answers and yet there are also those claiming be close to the BIG ANSWER, and they use the G-word often enough as if it lends them a kind of credence. IMO objectivity should be independant of the psychological axis whose extremes are humility/arrogance.

Given that religion is a doctrine or set of doctrines that nobody claims are objective, just given, there is no reason for a scientist to either be in alliance with or antagonistic toward religion. At the same time, official science, the same science whose more glamorous representatives spout the G-word as if with priestly authority, ridicules the very possibility of paranormal events (while governments funding that science continue to do research in those areas that are obviously not acceptable for the "common man").

Scientists, IMO, should do what they do best: question assumptions. Instead they tend to build on sanctified theories, using technological advancements to patch what they have instead of daring to look back at foundations set in place during times when there was far less data available.

 

[Sangodare]

I would say that the nebulea thus seen are are binary star/planetary systems and we are apart of one. It is possible that we may exist within a binary star/planetary system. the twin sun theory...This concepts has proofs...