Saturday, 7 March 2009

Big Questions




If time is, as Einstein demonstrated, at least in some sense an extended
entity which exists "all at once" as though laid out in a tangible physical
line, how is it that we can have any sense of a differentiated past,
present and future ?

In a world delineated by a four-dimensional spacetime in such a way, where is there room for human free will when past, present and future are all (in some sense) already there ?

Does the possibility of a "multiverse" sidestep such ontological problems to allow all possibilities (i.e. choices or actions) to take place in parallel worlds which, ultimately, may give us only the appearance of possessing free will ?

Theology: if there is a God and this God gave us free will - how can it be truly free will if we had no choice in receiving it in the first place ?

Is the lack of a centrality in popular culture of a wide discussion of the magnificence and magnitude of contemporary astronomical/cosmological discovery not just due to the shallowness of profit-driven media but also the fact that many people just can not comprehend the immensity of the modern scientific cosmos and in many ways feel threatened by it ?

Is fear really the only thing we have to fear ?





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