↪180 Proof
A cursory search for what the Big Bang is shows that it actually is the beginning of the universe — Brendan Golledge

"Cursory searches" are more often too simplicistic (lazy) and misleading, especially in modern physical sciences, than deliberate study. — 180 Proof

180proof's disparaging assessment ("simplistic/lazy") of your self-effacing (non-expert) post is ironic. He typically dismisses transcendent (non-immanent ; pre-space-time) conjectures by labeling them as "non-parsimonious" ; which is a code word for Empiricism. His philosophical notion of Parsimony*1 is essentially Keep It Simple Stupid. But when used to limit our philosophical search for truth beyond the limits of empirical Science, Parsimony may convert a theoretical virtue into a personal vice : synonyms "niggardly, penurious, stingy"*2.

I'm currently reading a non-fiction book : How Fascism Works. And one statement reminded me of 180's censorious kind of Parsimony. "The pull of fascist politics is powerful. It simplifies human existence " into either/or categories : male/female (no rainbow variations on gender) ; makers/takers (wealth creators / welfare mothers) ; natural leaders / innate followers (fuhrer / masses). His criticisms of hypothetical suppositions (to place beyond evidence) on a philosophy forum are mostly political put-downs, thinly disguised as logical arguments. For example, if you are "simple-minded" enough to believe in transcendent entities or principles, he may label your naivete as a "Dunning-Kruger effect".

If this was a Physics forum, and you were an Astrophysicist or Cosmology student, then "deliberate study" of the Big Bang theory might be appropriate. But as an amateur poster on a philosophical forum, a "cursory search" may be enough to get the gist of the theory's implications. Besides, there are plenty of scientists, who make cosmic beginnings a "deliberate study", from whom we can obtain a non-empirical philosophical overview*3. :nerd:


*1. The parsimony principle, also known as Occam's razor, is a philosophical principle that states that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct: ___ Google AI overview

*2. parsimony : the quality of being overly sparing with money : miserliness. parsimonious. ___Merriam-Webster dictionary

*3. Is the big bang the beginning of the universe or time?
Simply put the Big Bang is an extrapolation from current evidence to a universe that was hotter and denser in the past ( and had a period of early very fast expansion) . If you continue that extrapolation then theoretically you would arrive at a singularity but by that point our models have broken down and we simply don’t know whether that is ‘real’. Hypothetically the universe can apparently both not have a beginning and yet not be eternal either perhaps. It’s thought that the use of the word ‘before’ itself becomes problematic and the Big Bang was everything there was no other ‘void’ or some such - it didn’t expand into a ‘place’ it is place. Even time is a problematic concept that we don’t really understand fully some posit that all time exists as a block and we move through it or a sort of spot light effect does. I think one could consider the following no doubt loose analogy - the Big Bang is the beginning of the universe as we know it - perhaps in the same way your birth is the beginning of you as we know you but as if we knew nothing about conception or whether conception were even a real thing. Again there are hypothesis that our Big Bang is just one of many - either lots of ‘bubbles’ in a foaming multiverse , or in some way real branching quantum universes , or one realised version of potential but not realised quantum possibilities but this is as far as I am aware pretty much speculation for now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophysics/comments/10doo2d/is_the_big_bang_the_beginning_of_the_universe_or/
Note --- Your Deist Myth is one attempt (speculation) to explain the "conception" of the universe "as we know it".

Shameless and insipid non sequiturs. Good job, lil troll. :clap:

I am not aware of an a priori argument that the universe must have a beginning, but it doesn't appear to be how our universe was made. I could imagine a universe similar to our own, but without friction, and with all light/matter being gravitationally bound. — Brendan Golledge

Shameless and insipid non sequiturs. Good job, lil troll. :clap: — 180 Proof

Good point! A world "without friction" (entropy) might be eternal and infinite. But that's not how our actual "universe was made". Instead, it seems to have been conceived as a temporary experiment in limited spatial & temporal existence. So, when faced with astrophysical evidence for ex nihilo existence, it would be reasonable to inquire into possible Before-and-After*1 states. Theoretical Scientists may legitimately imagine (sans evidence) a more-of-the-same-eternal-Multiverse or infinite-array-of-quantum-measured-many-Worlds scenario. But Theoretical Philosophers can just as justifiably postulate how a temporal universe could be conceived ex infinito.

I'm surprised that 180 hasn't complained that reference to AI or Wiki sources is "simplistic, lazy, and misleading". He sometimes insists that "cursory" research be cured by "deliberately" studying some arcane tome by an incomprehensible expert in some abstruse area of science or philosophy. If you find that assertion hard to believe, a deliberate study of the archives of this forum might reveal multiple instances of "I'm smarter than you, because I have read some esoteric books".

Instead of rationally responding to our postulations and criticisms, 180 simply offers us another example of his censorious argumentation technique : limit our freedom to speculate by imposing an imaginary Law of Parsimony, and punishing us with Political Put-downs ("insipid non sequiturs"). The Trumpish art-of-the-twist*2 is to accuse his critics of doing what he does (irrelevant non-sequiturs). Plus impertinent Sarcasm. :wink:


*1. "Before and after reasoning" refers to a type of logical thinking where you analyze a situation by considering the state of things before a particular event or action, and then comparing it to the state of things after that event or action, allowing you to understand the cause and effect relationship between them; essentially, it's about understanding how something changed over time by looking at the "before" and "after" states.
___ Google AI overview

*2. The tu-quo-que twist :
The term tu quoque is Latin for "you too" or "look who's talking".
It's a particular type of Red Herring fallacy where the speaker avoids responding to a criticism.
___ Google AI overview

My idea of the creator God comes from cosmological arguments. — Brendan Golledge

My original god-concept came from my austere religious training : back-to-the-bible-protestant-Christianity. It typically dismissed many of the specifically Catholic doctrines & miracles --- except of course the resurrection --- as either metaphors or outright fabrications by officials of the Imperial Roman religion. Hence, we were taught to be skeptical & rational about our beliefs. So, simple "It is written" Scriptural truths were more important than pretentious Cosmological arguments. In theory, we let the Bible authors do the philosophical thinking for us. But interpretation of their meaning & intention was not so simple. Moreover, I came to learn that many of those authors were either mythical or arbitrarily assigned --- by the Catholic compilers & editors of the original letters --- into the book we now know as the New Testament.

So, I lost faith, not in a logically-necessary world-creator-God, but in the man-made religions & scriptures purporting to represent & interpret the will of God. In college, I was introduced to a variety of different god-concepts, but all failed my skeptical testing. Therefore, I gradually constructed a god-concept of my own, not from Catholic cosmological argumentation, but from the First Cause / Prime Mover conclusions of Plato & Aristotle, supplemented by modern scientific evidence : Big Bang & Quantum Theory. I'm content to let P & A answer s challenge*1 as to why an absolute eternal un-caused Cause is necessary to explain our world of contingent causes. Those ab-original Philosophers reached that logical conclusion without any empirical evidence of an ex nihilo beginning of space-time (matter-energy)*2.

My own personal contribution to the various philosophical god-models is based on the scientific evidence that semantic Information is also the energetic chain-of-causation (material evolution) that can be traced back to the mysterious beginning of Time. My thesis and blog go into the details of how I arrived at that obscure notion. In my next post I'll link to a blog essay that discusses the connection between meaningful Information and causal Energy. Since Information & Energy are physical-but-immaterial, could a hypothetical Enformer/Programmer be the transcendent First Cause/Creator God? :smile:


*1. Challenge to Brendan Golledge :

Please explain why do you assume that a so-called (un-knowable, ubiquitously nonevident) "Deity" can be "the uncaused cause of all other causes-effects" and yet also assume that the (know-able, inescapably evident) universe itself cannot be "the uncaused cause of all other causes-effects". — 180 Proof

Note --- An eternal universe would have to be self-caused, not un-caused, hence a deity. But Spinoza's "single-substance" could not be perishable Matter, which is dependent on Energy to actualize. The Big Bang theory presumes that Energy (cause) and Law (control) are eternal. That's why I coined the term EnFormAction, to combine causation (energy) with organization (form) into creative Action.

*2. "Plato's first cause reasoning is based on the idea that everything that comes into being must have a cause.
It also assumes that an infinite regress of causes is impossible.
Therefore, there must be a first cause, or something that is not an effect.
Plato believed that this first cause was a god of some kind."
___ Google AI overview
Note --- Apparently 180 believes in the hypothetical infinite regress-of-causes now known as the Multiverse Theory*3. Hence his Spinozan God is both material and eternal. Ironically, our experience with a material world implies that it is governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics : "the final entropy must be greater than the initial entropy". The only way to continue the material world after inevitable heat-death would be to import Big-Bang-scale energy from some other (transcendent) source of energy/causation (Prime Cause).

*3."Some say that the multiverse theory is an example of the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy.
The inverse gambler's fallacy is a formal fallacy that occurs when someone concludes that a random process has likely occurred many times before based on an unlikely outcome. It's the opposite of the gambler's fallacy, which is the belief that an event that has occurred often recently is less likely to occur again.
___ Google AI overview
Note --- Multiverse Theory is based on Inflation Theory, which has been criticized as paradoxical & unproveable. Besides, the Mverse is not only hypothetical, but necessarily transcendent to the time-bound world we know. Space-Time-Matter-Energy, as we know it, vanish into nothingness when we turn back the clock to Planck Time.
"The latest astrophysical measurements, combined with theoretical problems, cast doubt on the long-cherished inflationary theory of the early cosmos and suggest ..."
___ Google AI overview

Before the beginning, there was God. Nothing was before God, and neither does God depend on anything else. — Brendan Golledge

In my last post I promised to link to a blog essay that discusses the connection between meaningful Information and causal Energy, which in my thesis are necessary attributes of a First Cause / Prime Mover. The notion of "Active Information" was postulated by a quantum physicist, but it seems to be essentially what my thesis proposes as EnFormAction (energy + form + execution). The blog post is four pages long, and somewhat technical in both scientific and philosophical terms. If you can find the time and patience, I'd appreciate your comments on Post 137 as it relates to your Deist Creation Myth.

My hypothetical Deity is imagined as Platonic Potential, not a humanoid entity. And in-dependent, not merely one instance of an infinite chain of temporary universes, each dependent on the one before. :nerd:


Active Information, Meaning & Form
As I said, what Peat calls “active information” sounds similar to my own philosophical notion of EnFormAction¹⁷ . And EFA is imagined as something like a Quantum Field, which is not a material thing, but an empty space (vacuum) with only the potential for energy or force. Mathematically, the field is defined in terms of dimensionless points for spatial measurement. There is no Actual Energy until triggered by some perturbation. Philosophically, an Information Field might be a source of something like Mental Energy with the potential for Meaning or Consciousness. This is an ancient concept, most commonly known as Panpsychism. But, for me it’s just a hypothesis, intended to explain the origin of Ideas in a material world.
http://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page29.html