Hi everyone,
I don’t often post here, being a metaphysicist, rather than studying matter, but this article I found quite interesting:
Questioning the Big Bang
A handful of researchers posit an alternative theory of origin — the universe has no beginning
[link= http://www.stnews.org/News-2934.htm ]http://www.stnews.org/News-2934.htm[/link]
Many, if not most, people assume that certain aspects of nature’s workings are absolutely known. Outside of intelligent design circles, no modern biologist doubts the theory of evolution by natural selection; it is too well established by harmonious data across a multiplicity of fields. No credible doctor questions the germ theory of disease. And, one might think, no serious cosmologist disagrees with the standard cosmological model.
As many of you old-timers will know, I’m a great fan of Laurence Doyle, an astrophysicist from the Seti Institute. Much of what he says goes deeper than the theories in this article.
Here are some of his observations:
"Science is when you compare your thoughts with those of the universe to see if they match."
"You're doing science when you take intelligence above the evidence of the senses.
....Nothing changed when you realised the earth was round. Nothing changed - you just went higher."
I met Dr Doyle once when he was a speaker at a youth holiday camp I was helping organise while he still worked for NASA. He really stretched your concepts of life and the universe – one of the most spiritual persons I’ve ever known. I remember him saying for instance something like "When we are reading a book what are we doing?" and explaining that if you look at it from a science point of view then you are examining wood pulp and ink and therefore you are missing the whole point because what we are actually doing is reading ideas. He translates everything back into the spiritual realm - the realm of ideas.
If there is a new view that the universe had no beginning - then surely, that is entering the realm of eternity which to my underrstanidng is spiritual? Here are some excerpts from an article titled "The metaphysics of space and time" which was an interview with Dr Doyle. Here, he is asked whether there is a link between the eternal realm and what appears as a human state of material things and he replies:
"I don’t – for the same reason I don’t think there’s a link between chalk and math, per se. If 2+2=4 is written on a chalkboard, the math isn’t in the chalk; the chalk is a finite way of looking at the truth…
……
You don’t find time turning into eternity, because the sum of all finite things doesn’t make the infinite, any more than the sum of mistakes makes a correct answer. So you can try to add up time to get eternity, but you’ll never get there. There isn’t a melding or an eventual evolution of material time-sense into an eternity time-sense. I think the eternity-sense exists, and time is a limited way of looking at things – a way that doesn’t coexist with eternity. It’s this limited way of looking at it that needs to be dispensed with."
"When people talk about the Big Bang, the origin of the universe, I always think of "2+2=4" And how old is that? We can talk about the origin of Roman numeral two’s, and we can talk about the origin of Arabic numeral two’s, because they’re symbols, but we can’t talk about the origin of the real two. So I would say time is dependent on matter - whereas an idea is not material and therefore doesn't involve time."
In that interview he also talked about quantum physics and Bell’s Theorem (where one event instantly affects another far away) and talks of how it is coming to be recognised that consciousness is the primary measurement as you can’t have a measurement without conscious tho
RE: Questioning the Big Bang
Hi Judy,
I take the Hindu and Theosophical view that the Universe 'retreats' into itself, still existing but not as matter that's gross, then emerges once more. That kinda blends both viewpoints quite nicely.
E.g. a synopsis of the Stanzas of Dzyan:
--------------
SYNOPSIS OF THE FIRST SEVEN STANZAS
Reprinted from the Proem to Vol.-1- of the "Secret Doctrine"
The history of Cosmic Evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say, the abstract algebraical formula of that evolution. Hence the student must not expect to find there an account of all the stages and transformations which intervene between the first beginnings of Universal Evolution and our present state. To give such an account would be as impossible as it would be incomprehensible to men who cannot grasp the nature of even the plane of existence next to that to which, for the moment, their consciousness is limited.
The Stanzas, therefore, give an abstract formula which can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to all evolution: to that of our tiny Earth, to that of the Chain of Planets of which the Earth forms one, to the Solar Universe to which that Chain belongs, and so on, in an ascending scale, till the mind reels and is exhausted in the effort.
The Seven Stanzas given in this (the first) volume represent the seven terms of this abstract formula. They refer to, and describe, the seven great stages of the evolutionary process, which are spoken of in the Puranas as the "Seven Creations", and in the Bible as the "Days" of Creation.
Stanza -1- describes the state of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the first flutter of reawakening Manifestation.
A moment's thought shows that such a state can only be symbolized; to describe it, is impossible. Nor can it be symbolized except in negatives; for, since it is the state of Absoluteness per se, it can possess none of those specific attributes which serve us to describe objects in positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the negatives of all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as the remotest limits attainable by their power of conception.
Stanza -2- describes a stage which, to a Western mind, is so nearly identical with that mentioned in Stanza I., that to express the idea of its difference would require a treatise in itself Hence it must be left to the intuition and the higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as he can,the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed, it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain.
Stanza -3- describes the Reawakening of the Universe to life after Pralaya. It depicts the emergence of the Monads from their state of absorption within the One,the earliest and highest stage in the formation of Worlds - the term Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the tiniest atom.
Stanza -4- shows the differentiation of the "Germ" of the Universe into the Sept
RE: Questioning the Big Bang
Dear Venetian,
Thank you! 🙂
I have printed it out and I shall go away and have a read. It looks extremely interesting but more than I can take in off a screen! 😮
Judy
RE: Questioning the Big Bang
That's just a synopsis written by a Westerner. Try the actual Stanzas! 😉
Here's the first of 19:
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STANZA -1-
1. The Eternal Parent wrapped in her Ever- Invisible Robes, had slumbered once again for Seven Eternities.
2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the Infinite Bosom of Duration
3. Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi to contain it.
4. The Seven Ways to Bliss were not The Great Causes of Misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them..
5. Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother, and Son were once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new Wheel and his Pilgrimage thereon.
6. The Seven Sublime Lords and the Seven Truths had ceased to be, and the Universe, the Son of Necessity, was immersed in Paranishpanna, to be outbreathed by that which is, and yet is not. Naught was.
7. The Causes of Existence had been done away with; the Visible that was, and the Invisible that is, rested in Eternal Non-Being - the One Being.
8. Alone, the One Form of Existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in Dreamless Sleep; and Life pulsated unconscious in Universal Space, throughout that All-Presence, which is sensed by the Opened Eye of Dangma
9. But where was Dangma when the Alaya of the Universe was in Paramârtha , and the Great Wheel was Anupadaka?
RE: Questioning the Big Bang
Flippin' 'eck Venetian - I can't make head nor tail of that! 🙁 But then, I'm sure it's similar ideas to those I'm used to, but just a different vocabulary and one has to get tuned in to it.
Judy [&:]