(preliminary)
Memoirs - My Philosophy of Life
(preliminary)
My Philosophy
Practical Philosophy on Life
My life philosophy
is “live and let live.”
I try not to hurt of kill
anything that is not a threat or danger to me.
But I believe there are people who are evil (e.g. Hitler) and should be removed from power and maybe from the living before they kill more people unjustly. Thus I believe in the need for a trained military but not the use of it for any purpose but to defend ourselves and in such wars as the World Wars, our allies and friends.
As far as my understanding of the way this country works I quote David Rovics Quote - "IWe live in a class society which operates under the golden rule – those who have the gold make the rules, and everybody else has to stand up for their rights by other means. Those who have the gold declare the wars, consistently lie about the real purpose of the war, and profit from the war. Those without the gold fight and die in the wars" - end quote.
On Religion And Cosmology
I am an agnostic – I don’t believe in god as a being or super-being, but I cannot prove there is no such entity. If I had to choose a religion it would be Buddhism.
This can be explained as follows: I believe that to any answer there is always another question that can be asked. For example - the question of god.
Modern physics and astronomy tell us that the universe as we know it – and see it, started with a “big bang” 13.7 billion years ago. It appears that all the things in the entire universe we know and see are moving away from what was a single point. Therefore we postulate that everything came from this point and “at the beginning” it was all concentrated there as a single infinitely dense mass. Then it exploded – the "big bang,” and the expanding universe we now see was created with all the “stuff” (matter and energy) moving away from this point of origin at astronomical speeds. Most scientists are content to say that is all we need to know. They simply believe that before that there was nothing.
But I ask; what is nothing and how could everything (we now know of) come from nothing? Also if the entire universe as we know it started from a single lump of infinitely dense mass – where did that come from?
The only answer we can give to that question is – ask god.
But I can answer that myself and may not need to ask god - yet. If everything in existance that we know about started 13.7 billion years ago with an infinite mass exploding (BANG) then a vast amount of energy was released to make it all fly apart. In fact the big bang was just that, a vast release of energy from a single point.
Now we have an explosion of pure energy starting everything. It starts expanding and creating the universe. As it goes along distortions due to gravity occur changing some of the energy into galaxies - matter is born.
The energy continues to expand and we measure the size of the universe currently at approximately 156 light years in diameter. From what we see the universe is still expanding which means the energy from the “big bang” has not run out. But, suppose this energy is not inexhaustible. It is being used up. Suppose at some point it runs out. Then, just like a car driving up a mountain (using energy from gasoline to go up and having no brakes), when it runs out of gas, the car will stop and roll back down to the point where it came from.
So when the universe runs out of energy* to expand it will start falling back toward the center from where it started. Eventually all of the matter and energy are accelerating back toward the origin point. When it gets there it is squeezed ultimately into a single, infinitely dense point.
Now an infinitely dense point with all the energy and mass of the known universe cannot exist for the slightest length of time so it explodes (again) and we have the next “big bang. “
Now this could happen again and again so there could be an infinite number of big bangs and a cycle of bangs and new universes could go on forever. The problem is what is forever? This concept takes us out of the realm of physic and into metaphysics and we can still: only ask GOD.
P.S.
Even if you assume the “big bang” is cyclic as I postulate, there remains the final question of what or who started the cycle. In fact we are no further along at answering the question, what came first. Perhaps the question is probably just a human concept that really is a misconception. The real philosophical religions of the East (especially Buddhism) ponder this very question - what is time and forever and is there any meaning to the idea of a beginning?
* I guess our expanding universe "running out of
energy to expand" is contentious - but if not by energy then by what means is
the universe expanding?
Illustration and references to relevant NASA websites (WMAP project)
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/astro/wmap.html#c1
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