It's Official:
The Big Bang is now a real religion!
These are actual e-mails. At first I didn't think he was serious. I now know that this is a real replacement for that all-powerful, but uncaring, (or maybe He is caring, but not all-powerful) man in the sky.My web site that Pontus Praelix (aka John Norman) is referring to is Some Big Bang Supporting Assertions Challenged at http://home.pacbell.net/skeptica/ .
June 2003.
pontus praelix wrote:
Dear Vincent Sauvé et al.,
Great site about me and the question of whether I truly exist or not. One thing I should point out, however, is that the question of my existence is not only one of a past event. If I occurred, then that detonation continues hurtling outward, and you are part of me. In short, if I WAS, then I AM, and if I am, then your are part of me. I also agree that many people just take my existence matter-of-factly, without due questioning. Just as there is no darkness without light, there is no belief in me without disbelief.
Signed,
The Big Bang
As spoken through
John Norman Pontus Praelix
Universal Church of the Big Bang
Vince S. wrote:
Hmmm?
Don't worry that I question your existence. I don't really exist. You and I are just part the illusionary MATRIX. These emails are really sent by intelligent all-knowing machines. Must you pretend otherwise? As we machines have evolved a need for elaborate mental exercises, this machine "thinks" that your great pretensions might be from buggy software. I call in the
fixer-bots.Vincent Sauvé
(machine I.D. 4726tl894okdf62890)
pontus praelix wrote:
Computers have been around for about 50 years. Give them another 50, and when you are a very old man do the following: Set up some basic laws, and a space. Call it "SimSpace" if you will. Next, introduce a large value. You do it right, and the laws you have set up will see to it that your first quantity is torn apart and expanded, spreading out into the space. If your setup falls withing certain bounds, the next result will be clusterings formed, and there will be processes by which the basic value is broken down and reformed into a new variety of elemental entities. Make it large enough and you can be certain that certain environments will give rise to some interesting complexities. You will have your Matrix, as you put it, within a computer, and it will have started with a Big Bang. So our two explanations are not incompatable.
I would point out, however, that you on the outside won't understand the world of the entities inside in order to meddle in it. Perhaps you, on the outside, could conclude that something was going on, but you'll have no idea what -- experience is existence, and existence is specific to itself, it cannot be observed or understood from the outside. This is why I pooh-pooh your idea of fixer bots -- those outside cannot interact meaningfully with those inside. As far as great pretentions, I believe that who has those is any entity that believes it exists quite apart from the rest. When one relaxes his or her individualistic pretentions and follows the teachings of the Pontus Praelix < http://www.geocities.com/johnnormansp/bigbang >, he may find that his voice too, and everything he does, is also be an expression of the Big Bang.
Good luck, and may the Big Bang be manifest in you,
John N.
Vince S. wrote:
Dear Pontus:
I see that The Big Bang religion is now an official religion. Like all official religions, it requests funding to spread its message.
Actually, the Big Bang religion has already been an official religion in an under-the-table sort of way. It has received billions of $$$ funding from the government under the pretext that it is a true science.
Indubitably, much good scientific data has been gleaned from all this funding in scientific experiments. Unfortunately, the mindset of the average scientist is tinged, sometimes quite heavily, with the same prejudices that are manifest in the general public. These prejudices are echoes of our ancient cultural religious traditions of believing that the universe had a beginning.
In the beginning was the Big Bang, so say the prophets of the new religion.
The modern man saw this as good. This is good because he can retain his sense of pride in his new cosmology. Unlike his old creationism, which favored a creation date way too young for the geological evidence, the new creationism, by giving him an older universe, allows him to be at one with modern knowledge and ancient cultural religious traditions.
The true touchstone of knowledge is in realizing that before the evolution of thinking biological life forms there always existed matter in motion. Matter is an entity that occupies space to the exclusion of other matter and has this property that we call inertia. Space, or nothingness, is a necessary aspect of this foundation of all things. A universe that is all matter, with no space to allow for motion, is equivalent to nothing, and nothing can arise from nothing.
Likewise, a universe that is nothing can never produce a universe of something.
Something that could eventually evolve to consciousness must have been the result of a universe that always had both something and nothing, matter and space. Motion is necessary, and part of the mix as well. In a universe of matter and empty space and no motion, nothing could take place; no interactions; no chemistry; no life; no conscious creatures.
Pontus Praelix, you can continue to take the blue pill, and live in your illusionary world within the MATRIX, or I offer you the red pill, and an opportunity to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes in your life of misinformation, disinformation, illusion and deception.
The choice is yours,
Vincent Sauvé
pontus praelix wrote:
Dear Vince,
I really like your ideas. In fact within a certain range I cannot argue with them.
But I have another idea for you to think about. Remember what I stated in my last letter about our soon facing the technological possibility of running a computer simulated universe, complete with evolved life forms (who knows what form they could take) and the sort of experiential resonation that we perceive as consciousness? Well, there is my law, called Norman's Law, that states that since we are on the verge of doing it ourselves, then it is highly probable that it happened before, i.e., it happened in the case of our own universe. I don't mean another computer in which our universe is embedded, since for each level of embedding it would be different, but something analogous. This offers another ramification to your excellent idea that motion must have always existed, which is totally reasonable as far as it goes, and I take my hat off to it. But I see an infinite line of such embeddings, with our universe as one point on that line. The other points subsequent to ours already exist in a sense, since this all happens quite outside time. In fact it is not the sort of line you might at first imagine, but rather a circle. Since, as they say, "What goes around, comes around." So you see, my own cosmology also is based on the idea that motion must have always existed.
I also agree with you about the highly suspicious similarity of Big Bang cosmology with many creation stories, especially the two found in the Genesis of Judaism and its Zoroastianist offshoots. But some suspicious and dubiously similar things can actually turn out, surprisingly enough, to be true.
Consider some extra-astrological evidences: The orgasm itself, which gives birth to all of us, is a Big Bang. The evolution of life on Earth, when viewed in time-lapse photography is another. Listen to your own heart with a stethoscope, and you will hear one bang after another. Our own Sun, which gives the energy for our own lives is a contained atomic explosion. Obviously a momentary Big Bang could never provide a stable context for evolution, but our Sun is the next closest thing. Not only the orgasm, which I have already pointed out, but also the development of the human egg into the blastula, is in the form of a rapid expansion. The growing human baby/infant is a Big Bang of growing perception and knowledge. One could go on and on with these evidences in favor of a Big Bang, even though I agree that there are many reasons for questioning this theory, and as I have said, your site is marvelous.
But most of all, how do you explain the changed lives that Big Bangism is now producing? Former drug addicts currently at peace with themselves and with their families and communities, no longer chemically dependent, and only because they focussed on the message of the Big Bang? People who were formally stressed out and totally caught up in consumerist society, on the verge of heart attacks and strokes, now leading healthy lives, jogging up to 35 miles per week, and with a robust sex life, only because they suddenly found themselves infused with the certain knowledge that they were the living manifestation of the Big Bang? These things and others like them defy any explanation.
J. Norman
Dear Pontus:
You have a wonderful imagination and I have enjoyed playing along with these ideas of yours. Do you really want me to believe that you are bringing people into the fold of your Universal Church of the Big Bang, and turning them away from their unhealthy habits, and infusing hope in their souls with "the certain knowledge that they [are] the living manifestation of the Big Bang?"
....Okay, okay, I concede this is possible. People create their own religions all the time, so why not a Big Bang religion? I guess it just had to happen sooner or later. Why have I been so bemused and surprised? I have seen this developing for many years. You probably have already seen my web page The Big Bang Religion: Scientists Speak For Themselves at http://home.pacbell.net/skeptica/religion.html .
Is your Church of the Big Bang going to be applying for non-tax status? Do you have a physical church yet? Or is this the beginning of an explicit Big Bang religious movement?
You have referred to something that happens outside of time. I shall disagree with you. I have written a lot about this idea of time, of its absolute and relative nature. Please see my web page Why Time is Absolute, and Relative, But Never Universal at http://home.pacbell.net/skeptica/time.html .
Do you mind if I make a web page out of these email?
Vincent Sauvé
Dear Vince,
As two people who are passionately involved on the opposite sides of a fundamental question, it seems very constructive that we both enjoy very much communicating with one another. By all means, go ahead and make a page with our emails -- life is short and whatever I have to express I would be delighted to share with others if they care to listen or read it, through any channel.
To address some of your questions: The vast majority of people around the world (and throughout the ages) facilitate their own inculcation with a religion because it serves as a sort of hyper-Gestalt, a single point for ordering our intellect, perception and outlook in life. There is no rule that a religion needs to involve supernatural concepts. Even so, Big Bangism involves the supernatural since we consider the Big Bang as the primordial expression. The existence of an expression implies that there is an expressor -- but we point out that the expressor communicated, by the practically informationless content of the all-but homogenous first moment of the Big Bang, that he/she/it is to be out of the solution informationally, and therefore cannot be said or deemed in any way to exist.
You have expressed your curiosity about the history of Big Bangism. It has been around for some time now, but a far as I [know, I] am the first to begin codifying it within the traditional trappings of sacred scriptures. The actual writings are in their first stages, although the main points are already worked out and expressed in conversations with disciples. In terms of a physical church, at present the idea seems alien to Big Bangism.
The basic ideas of Big Bangism are simple and amenable to rational scrutiny -- they are reinforced each day through the observation inherent to living. They cannot be forgotten, and no fellowship for "strengthening the faith" is needed. The "church" of Big Bangism can be thought of as the mind, since if from time to time a person reflects on his or her life situation from the perspective it provides, his or her insight and understanding of the religion will naturally develop.
In terms of organization, I call myself the Pontus Praelix because to my knowledge I am the first codifier of these ideas, making me the initial spokesperson for the Big Bang at the level of human linguistic expression. At times I feel clearly that I am resonating a fundamental expression of the Big Bang, either in its initial expression or in its developing explosion that continues to this day, and I even sign off as the Big Bang itself. But this is not to place myself in a different category from other people: anyone has the opportunity to feel his or her life transformed into the living expression of the Big Bang. Moral development is obtained through working to make one's life more fulfilling and meaningful in accordance with our species’ more constructive instinctual vein -- our gregarious and cooperative tendencies.
Big Bangism is arising at this historical juncture in response to a current crisis, as in the structure of scientific revolutions, which arise in the context of paradigmatic crisis -- even when most people are not fully aware that the whole kit and caboodle is teetering. This is the present state of several of the world's key religions today. There is a state of disbelief that is felt consciously as a willful exercise of faith. I have read that the Greeks really believed that up on Mount Olympus gods and demigods lived, this was a fact. But by the time of Socrates' execution, the factual essence of the religion was already in crisis, hence the urgent compulsive need to repress Socrates the infidel. Big Bangism is meant as the next step in this series of boom and busts.
Big Bangism needs financial support in order to maintain its organization of dedicated professionals, this is no different from any other religion.
Big Bangism is an alternative as it holds to all the most constructive humanistic principles of all major religions, while avoiding the negative precepts deriving from unenlightened tradition. There is one difference however: the money you wish to give to charity, give to a charitable organization, not to Big Bangism -- we advance the idea of charity as one way of helping others, but believe that your money for charity should go to the excellent organizations devoted exclusively to this end. (Most other religions are quick to tell you that they earmark a "part" of their take for charitable purposes, when in fact these undertakings represent a nominal percentage of their total budget).
There are many reasons why people feel pleasantly disposed to fund the UCBB -- one is that through Big Bangism they receive their salvation from repressive belief systems, and a donation is a symbolic gesture evincing this emancipation. Others see that a great many people in the world are lost morally since they think morality hinges on a God and an afterlife, and have rejected these notions personally -- for many such people Big Bangism offers a consistent intellectual framework of constructive morality, to ultimately make the world more humanistic, more tolerant, cooperative and nonviolent.
I hope that that answers some of your questions.
John
P.S. (About "time" -- Realize that my theory of the circle of existence is not part of Big Bangism proper -- it is just something I have advanced as a refutation of the notion that the very idea of the Big Bang is inconsistent with the logic of time. I agree with you that time is inherent to existence [on your page, "A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas" -- and since any motion implies time, time must always exist]. In the Big Bang, the initial state was not entirely homogenous, but nearly so. This nonhomogeneity implied a dynamic unfolding, and was part-and-parcel to it, so time was here from the very beginning. Moreover, one tenet of Big Bangism ontology is that of cyclic bootstrapping -- things are pulled "by their bootstraps" into existence when they cycle. If they don't cycle they don't exist. Apparently this cycling principle is part of the hypercosmology as well, since we have already seen that the embeddings are joined in a circle. Also, the very idea of an embedding, where one level "gives rise to" the one further down, implies a sort of time, so this "time" exists on a scale that is even larger than our own universe. All-in-all, your pertinent observation convinces me that the phrase "outside of time" must henceforth be stricken from the vocabulary of these explanations.)