Which existed first "something" or "nothing"?

[Aupmanyav]

Perhaps not, but being conscious of what is happening in the body can mitigate many problems. Many people do not listen to the body at all. For example, getting fat, the body is saying something to the person.

 

[Thief]

Perhaps not, but being conscious of what is happening in the body can mitigate many problems. Many people do not listen to the body at all. For example, getting fat, the body is saying something to the person.

and the same is true in spirit

 

[Aupmanyav]

That which comes in a bottle?

Methyl, Ethyl or some other?

 

[Thief]

hehehehe

 

[Thief]

That which comes in a bottle?

Methyl, Ethyl or some other?

you left out isopropyl.

but of the four chemistries of alcohol only one can be consumed....
and even then, in small amounts

'....for your stomach......'
said the Carpenter

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Yes, by the time complex molecules changed into bacteria, they were fully living organisms (though I do not know whether they had souls or not ), reacting to impulses from their environment. It is the second image in my previous post indicating what may have happened earlier than that - molecules which responded to their environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocell

Were there any chemical and electrical interactions/impulses between complex molecules before they changed into bacteria?

 

[Ouroboros]

That which comes in a bottle?

Methyl, Ethyl or some other?

There's plenty of spirit in space: http://phys.org/news/2006-04-astronomers-alcohol-cloud-spanning-billion.html

 

[Aupmanyav]

Were there any chemical and electrical interactions/impulses between complex molecules before they changed into bacteria?

Law of evolution. Interactions/impulses were always there. The smarter molecules survived to propagate their species and take evolution further. The whole process is so simple, so natural.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Law of evolution. Interactions/impulses were always there. The smarter molecules survived to propagate their species and take evolution further. The whole process is so simple, so natural.

So free complex molecules are conscious?

 

[Aupmanyav]

Depends on your definition of 'consciousness'. Are electrons conscious? They interact with their environment.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Depends on your definition of 'consciousness'. Are electrons conscious? They interact with their environment.

According to your definition....yes...they play an essential role in all chemical and electrical interactions.. And the quantum vacuum also is an essential aspect as the medium through which these interactions are taking place ....yes?

 

[Frank Merton]

By using a monotonically increasing (and divergent) velocity curve that allows one to leave the infinite well in finite time, and then by changing sign to that speed when that finite time has elapsed. That is your return trip that goes through the entire well.

It is actually pretty easy to do that. The obstacle is nomological (you cannot go faster than light) not logical.

Ciao

- viole

You can do that in mathematics but not if you are a frog.

 

[Aupmanyav]

@ben d, I am not knowledgeable enough to comment of Quantum vacuum. Yes, I think it is involved in all interactions.

 

[Frank Merton]

This is an issue that is probably never to be resolved. Logically time had to have a beginning, and since since we now know that space and time are the same thing, and energy may be too, they all began at the same time.

But there was never a time when nothing existed. If there is nothing there is no time so no time for it to exist. Things just began, end of story.

We need to leave it to physics to work out the details, if it can, and if it can't, then we need to just let it be. Inserting deities is not rationally honest and inserting deities from ancient speculation is stupid.

There seems to be a tendency to say maybe something always existed. This is to treat infinity as though it were a number, a common error in thinking. One does not get to here from infinitely far away, even if one travels faster than light. One must travel infinitely fast to achieve such a thing. What would that mean? Again, giving it a meaning is to treat infinity as a number, and it is not a number.

 

[Frank Merton]

Yes, more or less. Probably the best analogy is to imagine the Universe as a film and our perception of time the running of that film under a projector. We think we see actors moving and doing things, but in reality we just see a sequence of static events, one after the other, (each photogram) that our brain interpolates to create the illusion of time flowing. The past is just the photograms left behind by the projector (but still there) and the future are the photograms not yet played (but already there). But the whole film, seen as the sequence of all its photograms, is not flowing anywhere. It is not changing at all.

Therefore, to say that the Universe popped out into existence at the Big Bang, is like saying that the movie popped out into existence at its first photogram. Which is obviously ridiculous.

And, in a sense, we are immortal. For instance, the event of my birth did not disappear out of existence. It is just a photogram that is not currently played by the projector in my skull.

Ciao

- viole

The big bang may have been the beginning, or may not have. We have little evidence -- certainly not enough to resolve the question. I tend to think the probable reality is an inflating universe where bubbles of more like normal space-time appear here and there (but because the speed of the expansion is superluminal, they are necessarily so far apart as to be completely out of range). The really interesting speculation to me is that some of these bubbles could themselves be unlimited in size and hence truly flat and like what we seem to see about our universe.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

This is an issue that is probably never to be resolved. Logically time had to have a beginning, and since since we now know that space and time are the same thing, and energy may be too, they all began at the same time.

Let's try Frank.....could you explain why you think that 'time' as a concept to represent the measurement of duration...or the concept of existence itself ....had to have a beginning?

 

[Frank Merton]

Let's try Frank.....could you explain why you think that 'time' as a concept to represent the measurement of duration...or the concept of existence itself ....had to have a beginning?

I have long noticed a reluctance among prominent astrophysicists to talk about the beginning of time or whether it ha a beginning and have wondered about why. I think you bring out one of the difficulties -- just what the hell is time? My perception is that we live in the present and the past and future are only abstractions. There are problems with this within the context of relativity theory, but they are not unresolvable. Still, the more common view seems to be that time is a dimension in which the universe moves, the present sweeping through.

Now, with this preamble, to your approach, let me say you build a clock that is indestructible and will tick forever. Will it ever tick an infinite number of times? No -- as I said, infinity is not a number (at least a countable number -- things depend on the definition of number). No matter how long it goes on ticking, it will perhaps tick gazillions of times, but never infinitely. No matter how long it ticks, it will never reach an infinite number of ticks.

This is how I see the universe -- a clock that has been ticking a long time, but it had to have a starting point to get to the number of ticks it has reached (what we call now), and so I assume there was a beginning and there was no before that beginning.

 

[allfoak]

you can do this?....self heal by will?

All i can do is to create an environment conducive to healing.
The healing takes place apart from me.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

I have long noticed a reluctance among prominent astrophysicists to talk about the beginning of time or whether it ha a beginning and have wondered about why. I think you bring out one of the difficulties -- just what the hell is time? My perception is that we live in the present and the past and future are only abstractions. There are problems with this within the context of relativity theory, but they are not unresolvable. Still, the more common view seems to be that time is a dimension in which the universe moves, the present sweeping through.

Now, with this preamble, to your approach, let me say you build a clock that is indestructible and will tick forever. Will it ever tick an infinite number of times? No -- as I said, infinity is not a number (at least a countable number -- things depend on the definition of number). No matter how long it goes on ticking, it will perhaps tick gazillions of times, but never infinitely. No matter how long it ticks, it will never reach an infinite number of ticks.

This is how I see the universe -- a clock that has been ticking a long time, but it had to have a starting point to get to the number of ticks it has reached (what we call now), and so I assume there was a beginning and there was no before that beginning.

But Frank.....existence can never be made to cease existing.....so to have a beginning, there needs to be some way of making what we know is real disappear (become unreal) to have had that beginning. If that is impossible, which it is, logic dictates that there was never a beginning....existence is eternal. Now let's be clear...all cosmic forms are finite and have beginnings and endings...but the essence that these forms are made never had a beginning for the reason given...there is no nothing that doesn't exist.

As to time...it is merely a concept of the mind..an abstraction from eternal duration to represent an observed or measured finite period of duration of existence...and is relative to moving aspects of universal existence within universal space... Time is not real as a rock is real...it's a mind thing...

 

[Aupmanyav]

.. but the essence that these forms are made never had a beginning for the reason given...there is no nothing that doesn't exist.

One of the unsolved problems. However hard we may try, we cannot get the answer. The answer will be available only in future.

For a true beginning even the essence has to go, otherwise we are confronted with the question - when and how did the essence arise, and why should it be eternal?

So, at some point - time, space and energy made their first appearance, at least for our universe (if there are many)..