random thoughts on nothingness

[Damocles]

Meditation though is neat, I need to get back into it. clearing ones mind is both difficult and very good.

Yeah, I suggest reading Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior.

 

[uscitizen]

Thanks for the recommendation, I will try that.
funny though how so many equate meditation to a religion.

 

[Damocles]

Thanks for the recommendation, I will try that.
funny though how so many equate meditation to a religion.

The book is actually very secular. It was written by a Buddhist, but it is made for western audience and is not specifically religious.

You are right, often meditation is thought to be an Eastern Religion thing.

 

[uscitizen]

I was into TM many yuears ago and was accosted for devil worshipping ???
I just laughed at them and they decided, yep satan has his claws into him.

 

[Damocles]

They believe that emptying your mind allows entry of Demons... You poor demon possessed creature!

 

[OrnotBitwise]

Nice post Ornot. Like you and as I attempted to express in my original post .. using the old freshman verbiage.. ie "mind blowing" ..lol.., no matter how much I try to comprehend or as you put it..stretch.. I just can't accept the notion of something arising spontaneously out of nothing. Therfore it takes me back to the idea of an Architect ...with a purpose. Perhaps it is a securty blanket, perhaps it is a measurement faith. I dont know.. but it appears when one reaches this point.. Science and God (Supreme Entity) meet. I believe Hawking has stated as much.

If you think I'm going to make fun of your "security blanket" you're much mistaken. I know too many physicists who feel the same way.



A minority of physicists probably feel as you do but a not inconsiderable one. That's physicists as individuals. The goal of cosmology as a branch of physics, however, is to extend physical theory beyond the singularity: to give us a way of describing the properties of what was "before" the Big Bang.

There's nothing that says what came "before" -- as uscitizen keeps pointing out, "before" is a troublesome concept in this case -- is necessarily a living being. In fact, if they *are* able to extend the chain of causality beyond the singularity, that in itself argues against a creator, to some extent. Creator as Prime Motivator or Alpha Cause, at least. That is to say, if they can explain the Big Bang event by purely natural causes, then room for any hypothetical Alpha would be pushed back by that much.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of purpose or design where the universe is concerned, I freely admit. This is no less an emotional reaction than yours is.

My gods didn't create the universe but are of it. They're neither omnipotent nor omniscient. That's just the sort of god I'm more comfortable with, I suppose.