RE: Afterlife - I was asked my speculations on this subject... also a little on reality as a simulation
I doubt it unless he has answered the two big question with proof. These are mutually exclusive so only one of them can be true.
- Has there always been something, and never a state of nothingness.
- Did everything in our universe come from an event?
As I stated in a comment elsewhere. If 1 is true then atheism works fine as there need not be any catalyst as there was always something and it is just a cycle.
If 2 is true then that implies a catalyst. That catalyst is something that started it. That could be called a creator, a God, etc which are just labels. It doesn't mean it was purposeful, or that they are superior, or anything of that nature. It simply means there was a catalyst. This is kind of necessary to turn nothing into something.
The good news... if either one of those is TRUE then my reaction is the same. Observe and use reason.
Life is about mysteriousness. I follow science myself, but it does take evidence to prove and disprove things. They are neither proven or disproven simply because we want them to be.
Honestly I doubt we'll ever be able to answer those two questions. Yet, ultimately it doesn't matter because my reaction is the same under either case. Observe and use reason.
For if you truly understood what I wrote about Deism. There is no mysticism and revelation, and prophecy, etc. Deists view that all as simply the works of man. So no need to dispel my mysterious beliefs.
As to my speculations on weird shit I've seen that science has not explained. That's all I consider them speculations.
Science begins with speculation after initial observation that is called a hypothesis.
Closing ones mind to the mysterious for things that we do not yet have proof of is actually not scientific. We must form hypothesis, try to come up with replicable experiments and test them. If the experiment fails that is useful information and we return to the hypothesis stage and try to come up with an explanation and more experiments. When an experiment succeeds we collect our data and form a Theory.
One thing we don't EVER do is stop questioning even our own techniques. We use the best tools we have available to us at the time, but we keep asking.
So mysteriousness will never go away. I checked out some of Mr. Carroll's work.
One thing I can say is that scientists do not agree on everything right now. There are quite a number of avenues for the birth of the Universe being pursued by cosmologists, theoretical physicists, etc.
Big Bang, Big Wave, Brane Hypothesis, etc.
The fun thing about science is when we ask questions and get answers, it usually results in more questions. So it does not dispel mysteriousness.
Mysterious BELIEFS. I don't have beliefs. I have speculations. I make up speculations left and right of WHAT MIGHT be. That is the difference between me and a lot of people. Just because I speculate a thing does not mean I BELIEVE my speculations to be true. I recognize it as my imagination seeking to bring order to the data I have, and I am quite good at making it find quite a few different orders.
So I did not state a SINGLE BELIEF in any of my articles. I stated speculations/hypothesis, and I stated multiple of them.
The closest thing I have to actual beliefs could be this:
- I BELIEVE that there was either a state of nothing and then we got something, or there has never been a state of nothing and there has always been something.
- I BELIEVE in the concept of infinity applied to many different things.
- I BELIEVE in math.
- I BELIEVE there are some pretty mysterious things even in our own world that we do not yet understand.
That's about it. So is Sean Carroll going to dispel those beliefs?
I dont know. I cannot tell. You'd probably have to read and see. And you'd probably perceive the book in a different way than I did. Anyway, I appreciate your insightful reply!