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

Wed Dec 8 17:17:07 CST 2010

Jim,

I will respond to your email, but I don't think we're dealing with theological issues here, certainly not a three story universe issue or the nuts who want to see man walking with the dinosaurs.   In the discussion is the question of what do you mean by "beginning" or for that matter, the whole meaning of time.  It also has to do with other philosophical issues that do have theological dimensions.  But the people I refer to are not the nut cases I mentioned before but are very clear as to all the current theories, including background radiation, the red shift and others.  Here is a small part of what a dear friend of mine, who has described in extreme detail and mathematics the alternative to the Big Bang.  

"Galaxies are stellar communities with populations that are born and die like any community but there is no 
compelling reason to believe that any specific galaxy ever had a birth or will face an ultimate death. Galaxies 
may evolve, exchange material via axial ejections, grow from scattered or fragmentary populations, migrate and 
merge but there is no compelling reason to believe that this whole incredible universe ever had a birth in an 
assumed spacetime continuum that expanded from virtually nothing, or that it will ever face an ultimate demise.

The Big Bang hypothesis is based on the presumption that such a thing as an a priori spacetime continuum 
exists. Where then are the universal measuring rods of space and time? It is a contradiction in terms to derive 
them from measurements in this physical creation to explain an origin to creation. Einstein himself questioned 
the continuum basis of his own theories late in life. (7) The continuum is an unsubstantiated belief. There is no 
evidence whatever that such a thing exists as an independent entity with curvatures conditioned by 
concentrations of gravitational mass embedded in it.

There is only one fully consistent alternative to the a priori spacetime continuum hypothesis. The universe is 
discontinuous and synchronous at the atomic level. Atoms themselves define space and time. Space and time 
are a posteriori to creation. They are derived from measurements after the fact. The creative process is eternal 
and in intimate communication with itself through conjugate quantum influences. These quantum effects are 
operative on hierarchical levels that permeate the cosmos.

Now, as I said, this is a very technical issue and is not something that all will find meaningful or helpful.   But I really congratulate Herman Greene for his excellent article, which pulls together the relationship of the Universe Story of T. Berry and the scientific theory of the Big Bang.  I found his reflections to be profound and on target.

With Respect,

Jack
On Dec 8, 2010, at 3:58 PM, Jim Baumbach wrote:

> 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 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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