[Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE

Wed Dec 8 14:58:40 CST 2010

Sorry Jack but I respectfully disagree about whether this is a topic for 
exploration in this forum.  The notion about whether this is a steady 
state universe or one that is expanding or receding or has cycled 
through numerous creations and collapses is at the heart of the church's 
almost universal belief that "as it was in the beginning, is now and 
ever shall be--world without end."  What is at stake is the notion of 
the 3 tiered Universe which we have discarded as an out-dated notion of 
the world we used to live in and the revelations through the theories of 
Copernicus which ultimately convinced the church that the sun does not 
revolve around the Earth and that the Earth is not the center of the 
universe is now returning to tell us that there is more to our stayed 
belief in reality as ever.

Certainly there are some on this listserve that will be put off by the 
academic discussion but others such as myself find that this is 
meaningful to my understanding of RS1.  At the heart of it is whether we 
believe that the only absolute is change.  For sure we can live our 
total existence convinced the Earth is flat.  For sure we can live out 
our lives believing in the poetry of sunrise--sunset without our ever 
understanding that it is the Earth's rotation that causes our perception 
of the movement of the sun across the sky.  We can even live full lives 
believing the Earth was created in 6 days and that dinosaurs lived side 
by side with humans and that Noah got all of those animal pairs on the 
ark.  What all this means is that not only do we have the ability to 
live complete lives in numerous dimensions of reality but we can also 
suspend reality in our minds in order to enjoy pure fantasy.  In fact, 
it is this ability to suspend reality that allows us to "demythologize" 
much of the current church dogma.

Whether or not many scientists do not "buy" into the big bang theory of 
the universe is only evidence that there are alternate theories proposed 
by curious human beings as to the beginning and perhaps the ultimate 
meaning of the universe.  The more we learn about that which lies beyond 
our protective shell of oxygen the more we find ourselves confronted 
with the reality of being.

Hopefully, the listserv continues to spawn creative thought.

Jim Baumbach

On 12/8/2010 11:25 AM, Jack Gilles wrote:
> Dear Laurel,
>
> Just to share with you and others that there are other alternative 
> understandings.  There are many scientists who do not "buy" into the 
> Big Bang theory at all.  There is a highly respected group who have 
> talked that we live in a "steady state" universe with continuous 
> creation and destruction of galaxies.  The "red shift" that is one of 
> the "proofs" cited for the Big Bang theory can be explained in other 
> ways that do not have the distant galaxies receding at ever increasing 
> speeds.  I know that this is counter to the CW, but I, for one, am a 
> follower of the steady state universe.  This is a very complex and 
> highly scientific argument, but just to let you know that there are 
> other explanations that do not require exotic solutions.   For those 
> who might be interested in this other view they can contact me, but I 
> don't think this is the forum for exploring theories, but I do 
> appreciate your reflection on the awesome mystery we are a part of.
>
> Jack
>
>
> On Dec 8, 2010, at 11:46 AM, LAURELCG at aol.com 
> <mailto:LAURELCG at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Editorial
>>
>>
>>   Before the Boom
>>
>>
>>             Published: November 30, 2010
>>
>> New York Times
>>
>> Astronomers and astrophysicists have given us insight into what 
>> happened in the first trillionths-of-a-second after the Big Bang, 
>> nearly 14 billion years ago. But the current cosmological hypothesis 
>> is that before the Big Bang there was nothing.
>>
>> Now Roger Penrose, the eminent British mathematician, is arguing that 
>> there is physical evidence that may predate the Big Bang. In a recent 
>> paper, he and his co-author, the physicist V. G. Gurzadyan, describe 
>> a pattern of concentric circles detected against the universal 
>> backdrop of cosmic microwave radiation generated by the Big Bang. 
>> These circles, they say, may be gravitational waves generated by 
>> collisions of superbig black holes before the Big Bang.
>>
>> The two scientists go even further, claiming that the evidence also 
>> suggests that our universe may "be but one aeon in a (perhaps 
>> unending) succession of such aeons." What we think of as our 
>> "universe" may simply be one link in a chain of universes, each 
>> beginning with a big bang and ending in a way that sends detectable 
>> gravitational waves into the next universe.
>>
>> The argument is highly controversial. But if the circles the two 
>> scientists have detected stand up to further examination --- if 
>> they're not the result of noise or instrumental error --- it could 
>> radically change the way we think about our universe. And the notion 
>> is no more radical than that of some cosmologists who argue that our 
>> universe is only one in a multiverse --- a possibly infinite number 
>> of co-existing, but undetectable, universes.
>>
>> The question is: What do we do with these possibilities? Our answer 
>> is to marvel at them and be reminded, once again, that we live in a 
>> universe --- however we define it --- that contains more wonders than 
>> we can begin to imagine.
>>
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