wildcat2030:

See on Scoop.it - Philosophy everywhere everywhen

Even some of the more faithful might have wondered over the last few days whether there truly is a God.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking would like to help. Let’s imagine there isn’t, seems to be his preference.

Indeed, in a speech at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday night, he made jokes about God’s supposed power and omnipresence.

“What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?” asked Hawking, clearly not afraid of meeting a reddish man with a fork and a tail.

Being a scientist, Hawking has faith only in scientific explanations.

As NBC News reports, he discounted a repeating Big Bang Theory (even though he’s appeared on the show).

Instead, he thinks: “We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.”

I certainly feel like the product of quantum fluctuations on many days of the week, don’t you?

Charlie Brooker   
The Guardian, Sunday 6 September 2009
{ “Contemplating the scale of the universe makes a mockery of household chores” }

Every. Damned. Day.

But unlike Charlie Brooker — who seems bothered by being so awed by it all that he can’t take out the garbage — this is my favorite thing. This is why I have garbage jenga and don’t give a fuck. This is what makes it all bearable and worthwhile.

And yet, for some things, totally unbearable. The things that deserve to be jenga’d like garbage in the face of all this… and yet are not, because they’ve been made important by organizations whose CEOs don’t read enough science news. Pretentious things. The worst things.

Steven Weinberg / Jeremy Bernstein

{ Book Review: Why Does the World Exist? - WSJ.com }

(via olena)

don’t we need to make up a point to carry on?

(via lunazigzag)

••••••

OS:
Not necessarily. After all, isn’t one of premises of Buddhism just that — pointlessness? (It seems so, from the Koans and interpretations of those Koans I’ve read.) They seem to carry on quite well, despite.

However… you could argue that pointlessness is in fact a kind of point.

It’s interesting that, either way, a human philosophy can mimic the System’s (Universe’s) “philosophy” — a system needs no reason for being, especially from a scientific perspective. It might be a far cry to suggest that Buddhist-like thinking — being sans need for a reason — means those people who practice, actively/consciously think of themselves as “systemic” (of the system). Yet it’s possible that the two modes of perception are intertwined.

P.S.
If anyone is reading this thinking I’m saying some garbage about Buddhism that’s absolutely untrue, please speak up. Message me, correct me. (Though, what I’m saying here is apart from the fact that there are other “points” to that practice; for example that a reason to live life kindly might come from the idea of reincarnation — the latter being a point.)

(via lunazigzag)

os…

Who is continually deciding that “Natural Philosopher” should no longer be a title — that a grasp on the way nature works has no place in the way that humans conduct their lives (and for what valid reason)? That science can say nothing about what only seems ephemeral to us, the way that air once seemed ephemeral?

Who is so convinced that, instead, technology will change us, our behaviors? So far, there are plenty of seemingly magical technologies out there, really amazing things that prior generations never thought possible — but they are tools. If we don’t introspect a bit, if we don’t ask questions like “Based on what we know, factually, about A, what does this mean about B?”, tools won’t do it for us. Our tools are more complex and shinier lately, but we’re using them to do the same damned things we’ve always done, if on a larger, more complex scale.

“…his interpretation is often described in terms of ‘many worlds,’ whereas we believe that ‘many alternative histories of the universe’ is what is really meant. … the many worlds are described as being ‘all equally real,’ whereas we believe it is less confusing to speak of ‘many histories, all treated alike by the theory except for their different probabilities.’ To use [this recommended] language is to address the familiar notion that a given system can have different possible histories, each with its own probability; it is not necessary to become queasy trying to conceive of many ‘parallel universes,’ all equally real.”

Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, 138

(via wildcat2030)