"It Came From "Something", Or Not

When I first started the six pack blog just over two years ago, I wuz all like all educational and informative-n-stuffs. This last year I moved to shorter funnier, sarcastic, angry atheist-y and more entertaining post. Today, I will attempt some brainiac-ness in that I discovered sumthin' new and eyez iz gonna try and share it because it is the ultimate question (yes, THAT ultimate question. no not if I'm single).

One of the problems with religion is that...they already have the answers-it's God. It never changes, doesn't want to, it claims to have all the answers and it is totally wrong (that's the sound of the God in the Gaps getting smaller and smaller). Beautiful and wonderful science on the other hand is endless in the seeking of answers. If a question is answered, then a million gazillion will replace that (and that is the way it should be). But what about that endeavor philosophy, the endeavor I honestly and admittedly do not know much about.

Maybe we are one bubble, that came from another bubble...in  a bubble bath with a dog into that has   cucumbers over it's eyes(?).

Robot Voice (Stephen Hawking) in his latest super awesome book said that philosophy is dead concerning the great questions and physics whomps all over it. While it is true that physics has hella answers, and I'll just say it, truths, I do not believe that it can explain everything and not only that, it is not the only vehicle to get us there. Theoretical physics IS looking into that super great question...what came before the big bang (1) and perhaps, just perhaps, philosophy can answer that.

So how do you answer the question...How does something come from nothing? At one moment there was no universe, then the next moment...universe, baby.  To say that God is the answer to that question does not explain any of the philosophy of the "hows" and "whys (the answer of God is more like a statement, not an explanation-which is what an answer is) or the mechanisms of the whole deal-eo.

The really super great The Atlantic monthly delves into this, and very well I might add. How can something come from nothing. Well, one idea is that it  didn't go down like that (there was nothing and then God made something-voila the universe and besides that...2nd law of thermodynamics, yo). Perhaps we came from a different universe, a bubble universe. Perhaps we are like those sands on a beach (this is from my teenage punk rock stoner years) and one grain of sand, produced the next. Maybe we are one bubble in a bubble bath, and we do not even see the other bubbles, or an "atom" within an "atom". Perhaps we a "something" that is within and infinite amounts of "something." Whatevah "it" is..."it" came from something, not nothing (or not).

Sort of looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, but he was tired or sumthin'...or outta paint.

Philosophy, and science for that matter, may never conclusively answer the question...but at least they are trying (as opposed to the audaciousness of religion that claims to already have the answer. Arrogant I tell ya). We live in a physical universe that has physical laws that we all adhere to (that 2nd law of thermodynamics that we keep talking about). So the answer must be within that, right, yes, no, maybe (?). Because the question was never answered, it just keeps coming back, or rather, it never went away (because God in not a good answer).

The thingy about it is, and this is the hard part for believers 1) we do not yet know how the universe came to be, 2) we do not even know what we do not know, 3) only science and philosophy acknowledges #2 and is actively seeking an answer for #1 and #2 and 4) we might never know the answer and that is OK (unless you are a believer) because it is also the journey (that is the admitting and stating the question, then looking for the answer) as well as a destination.

It's a journey to the truth and the truth is we may not eveah find the answer to the question "What happened before the big bang (first cause)", but dagnabit...if you are a carbon based life form and do not subscribe to superstition, literal mythology and are relatively normal in that you use critical thinking and reasoning skills (rather than blind, unquestioning faith), then....it is so human for us to try.

* Check out the interview with cosmology philosopher, Tim Maudlin, in that rag my dead hero used to write for, The Atlantic Monthly. We never met, bro, but I miss ya Hitch (if there is a heaven, then I hope yer up there annoying the shit outta the fraud known as Mother Teresa...and having a couple too many drinks.

* Mama-T (that's Mother Teresa) in SF Weekly.



(1) This is the biggest of biggest questions concerning the God in the Gaps. First they told us that god created everything and we believed it. Then awesome science came along and said, first there was the big bang, abiogenesis happened, then evolution thru natural selection. If this last mystery can be solved, then there will be no more gaps and here will be no more God. The question: How can something (the universe) come from *nothing*.

The young Stevo and hottie wife. OK, I guess I'll be the only weirdo that asks this, even tho everyone also thinks this one...What kinda sex are the Hawkins into. Or just like the question, what was before the big bang, what are the hows, the whys, the 'mechanisms'. I'm not talkin' shit...I was just wondering how they "do it."