Origins - how veddy original.

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The dialog:

What was before the Big Bang ? You don't know, do you?

Well, what was before the dimensions folded up? You don't now, do you?

You really think time has just gone on with no beginning? Lame.

Might as well admit it. God did it.

How do I know? Look here - in the beginning God. Can't get past that.

What do you mean, what was before God? That's a meaningless question.

STOP NATTERING ABOUT THE STUPID TURTLES, FOR GOD"S SAKE!

Well, you can't answer it either.

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Thank you, Brother Martial.

Leave us notice, We are sitting here in these few million years [has it really been that long? Seems like yesterday]. EVERY day the sun comes up somewhere, every night it goes back into its cave, plants bloom, set seed, die, and new plants grow up, the birds chirp and kick the fledgelings out of the nest, and EVERYTHING WE SEE comes OUT of something else and gives place to something else.

Of course we think the egg chicken egg alternation is all there is.

If you stand by the side of the highway in the midst of the desert you cannot begin to imagine New York and Los Angeles even though the highway connects them.

What came before the Big Bang - if there was a Big Bang? I do not know. I cannot imagine. Is it even a meaningful question? Could I understand the answer?

What came before God - if there is a God? I do not know. I cannot imagine. Is it even a meaningful question? Could I understand the answer?.

More turtle soup, anyone?

Word.

As in, "Word to your mother."
I'm old school.

Ah!. I see. The fuller phrase enabled out friendly webmeister to help me into that.

I am older school. And a different school. Never before ran up against it.

Do not claim ultimate mysteries because of a lack of imagination.

1. I could go for a bottomless bowl of turtle soup, sure.

2. How dare you mock turtle soup?

3. Yeah - no matter which of the two you subscribe to, on the rational level it only gets you so far. (But much further than the tideline, either way.)

I'm not sure where it was, but there was the line [SOMEWHERE] about the person who could look at a cast horseshoe and deduce the existence and many of the qualities of the horse. Something like that.

Of course that gets you into the guys reconstructing a prehistoric critter from one bone, or the fact the PrptoRomance is far from Latin [try it as an exercise, it is fun, but even if you use Old French and Rumanian and RhaetoRomance the outcome is just not Latin]

I am not up for the horseshoe thing, though I will reconstruct you ProtoRomance or ProtoAlgonquian or ProtoTurkic like a shot - give me data and something to write on and I will reconstruct the protolanguages of the world.

But deo gratias I have - not imagination, it is the more than two dimensional mind that is requisite, I think - the mind I need to look at the highway and realize there is / was / must be at either end something out of my current ken.

One thing I have noted about scientists involved in origins, be they linguists like me or paleontologists like my brother: They will scratch the surface, assemble ProtoRomance or Protoceratops [I think they are cute] - and stop. ProtoIndoEuropean or the original chordate are inaccessible or irrelevant or somebody else's pidgin. Even the ones who reconstruct the Big Bang tend to say "That's it, show's over." and sweep the question of what might lie beyond under the carpet.

We talk about this a lot - I am NOT sure whether it is that some are so constructed as not to see mystery even enough to ignore it, or whether at least subconsciously it is thee for them but they feel no interest in taking the clock apart.

Those scientists actively researching the Big Bang do not say "show's over." We understand more now about the physics of the early universe than we used to, but science never claims to have absolute or final knowledge on any subject. For some reason the fact science changes, which is its greatest strength, is seen as a weakness by some people.

Well, actually we can't. each layer of explanation brings you to another layer of explanation. The honest man does not say he has exhausted it, only that he or his ingredients [data for some of us] are hexhausted.

What's wrong with ruveyn's explanation, Philologos? It almost seems as if you are saying if we don't know everything, then we don't know anything.

The physical processes responsible for tides have been well known for some time: tried and tested explanations that make sense and account for observations of the natural world. If you want to go further and ask where did the natural world came from, why does it have the properties we observe, and even further to WHY it exists in the first place, that is something different.

I am, frankly, perfectly content to trust that I will not fall through this chair and that the tide will go in and out. I am perfectly content to cycle on the road which is easier than over hillocky grass without knowing what New York is like.

Being Elephant's Child I am pleasured to find that there is a patterned relationship between the tide and the shenanigans of the moon, and then that there is a patterned relationship between that and Newtonian physics - and to discover that the road was bult in 1918 and became part of the Interstate System in 1956 and is maintained by me personally - I choose to assume ALL my tax dollars go into highways and none into the Obama family's pocket.

Being a research-mad pattern seeker I constantly strive to expand these notes and applaud anybody who does. Of course there are those looking at what before the Big Bang, just as there are those striving toward more valid deductions about eternity; you can flood the academy with PC idiots but you cannot stop researchers researching even if you deny them funds and access to journals.

Being Doubting Thomas I scrupulously and repeatedly scrutinize all incoming data and theories starting with my own, and have grave doubts about reports of New York and Los Angeles where the highway and those travelling on it do not seem to give adequate support.

Being a realist pessimist I figure even if we know SOME things about New York and get them right we cannot from here in Peoria KNOW the reality of New York.