The Purpose Behind our Existence

[NoName55]

alidagreat:

.........................
(as I’ll outline in response to “NoName55”, below)................

any answers for me please? in numbered order please lest I get confused, thank you

1.Where did the universe come from?
2.Do you believe you came from stardust?
3.If so, where did the original matter or energy come from?
4.Has Science proven that you can either create or destroy energy or matter.
5.Where did the universe begin?
6.Is it possible for something not to have a beginning?
7.Where did it start?
8.What existed before that?
9.Where did life begin?
10.How can nothing become something?
11.How can something become life?
12.How can life become man?
13.How can nothing take on intelligence?
14.How can nothing evolve and reproduce? Is it possible according to science facts?
15.How big is the universe?
16.Where does it end?
17.Is it ever expanding, if so, what’s beyond its outer limits?
18.Universe MUST have an end to it. If so, what is beyond the end?
19.If the universe has no boundaries, then where does it end?
20.If the universe expands outward forever, what is beyond it reaches?

 

[root]

A few quick replies. Guess man has come a long way to answer a few of those questions and shows us we have much to discover

1.Where did the universe come from?

No one kow's despite religous claims to know.

2.Do you believe you came from stardust?

No one knows despite religous claims to know.

3.If so, where did the original matter or energy come from?

Energy = matter.... matter = energy Ask the Iranians since they are developing the nukes, on second thought ask the scientist from pakistan that gave the info I forgot the dudes name though.

4.Has Science proven that you can either create or destroy energy or matter.

It results in a nuclear explosion when you destroy matter!

5.Where did the universe begin?

No one truly knows, but what a surprise it involved a big bang and a shed load of energy

6.Is it possible for something not to have a beginning?

Yes, numbers for one. they have no beginning and no end.

7.Where did it start?

"it"?

8.What existed before that?

Before what?

9.Where did life begin?

Refer to answer 1

10.How can nothing become something?

The space inside a bucket becomes something from nothing?

11.How can something become life?

Refer to answer 1

12.How can life become man?

Evolution

13.How can nothing take on intelligence?

It can't.

14.How can nothing evolve and reproduce? Is it possible according to science facts?

Define "nothing"

15.How big is the universe?

The part we can see or cant see?

16.Where does it end?

Where light has not yet penetrated?

17.Is it ever expanding, if so, what’s beyond its outer limits?

Refer to question 1

18.Universe MUST have an end to it. If so, what is beyond the end?

Refer to question 1

19.If the universe has no boundaries, then where does it end?

Where the light ends at any given point in time

20.If the universe expands outward forever, what is beyond it reaches?

"If"? what if it does, what if it don't.

 

[NoName55]

Wow, what an explanation! If I were to say that it betrays lack of even primary school education, I'm bound to get a 30% infraction for being personal, so consider the matter closed, as far as you and I are concerned

 

[zoro]

NoName55:

That’s quite a shopping list! Here, I’ll respond only briefly; you can find my more “long winded” explanations and some references to the scientific literature at http://zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf and at http://www.advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6992 .

1.Where did the universe come from?

It seems to have come from a symmetry-breaking fluctuation in a total void (a “total nothingness”), which then led to the Big Bang. Of course we don’t yet know what the first “symmetry-breaking fluctuation” was, but I’d put my money on the possibility that it was some form of positive energy that “congealed”, either as a “string of energy” (of string theory) or some elementary particle.

2.Do you believe you came from stardust?

All evidence supports that hypothesis.

3.If so, where did the original matter or energy come from?

The positive energy (some of which “congealed” into mass) is the complement to the negative energy that currently exists in “space” or “the vacuum”. That is, the total energy of the universe still sums exactly to zero, i.e., as it was before the Big Bang (and which, incidentally, is why my website and book use the phrase “the Zen of Zero”).

4.Has Science proven that you can either create or destroy energy or matter.

Well, if you stated your question a little more carefully, I could respond that science has never yet found any case in which the total energy (including the energy in mass, via E = mc^2) isn’t conserved. That’s known as the first principle of thermodynamics.

5.Where did the universe begin?

At the point where the first symmetry-breaking event occurred, starting time (which requires positive energy for it to exist), then leading to the Big Bang.

6.Is it possible for something not to have a beginning?

No. If there is “something”, if there is some energy, then there is time.

7.Where did it start?

See my response to your #5.

8.What existed before that?

Before there was any energy, there was no time.

9.Where did life begin?

Well, as far as we know, it began on Earth; however, it seems highly likely that it also exists elsewhere in the universe.

10.How can nothing become something?

By separating into positive and negative components, as in 0 = S – S, where “S” is “something” and 0 is “nothing”. (And thus, again, “the Zen of Zero”.)

11.How can something become life?

We don’t yet know how it occurred, but my guess is that some molecules of the ubiquitous “organic goo” of the early Earth aligned themselves with some crystalline structure and managed to begin an autocatalytic reaction, reproducing itself, starting “life”.

12.How can life become man?

Evolution.

13.How can nothing take on intelligence?

As humans did, by evolution.

14.How can nothing evolve and reproduce? Is it possible according to science facts?

Yes – again, via evolution.

15.How big is the universe?

Approximately 40 billion light years.

16.Where does it end?

At its boundaries.

17.Is it ever expanding, if so, what’s beyond its outer limits?

We don’t know if it’s “ever expanding”, but my guess is that it is – into more of the “total nothingness” in which it created itself.

18.Universe MUST have an end to it. If so, what is beyond the end?

See my response to #17.

19.If the universe has no boundaries, then where does it end?

See my response to #17.

20.If the universe expands outward forever, what is beyond it reaches?

Seem my response to #17.

 

[Pygoscelis]

There are a lot of unanswered questions. There is a lot that we as human beings simply do not know and will likely never know.

Yet we humans have a desperate thirst for knowledge, so strong that we often make up irrational answers, just so we have them. We somehow find irrational answers better than no answers at all. Gods are invented to explain the gaps in knowledge.

Again and again even the brightest thinkers in history at the limit of their knowledge have tended to invoke God. They don't do it with things they can explain, only with what they can not. That is, until technology and knowledge progresses and another person comes along with a rational explanation for what was previously thought devine. Then God is erased from that particular inquiry and moved again, to the new limit of our understanding. This is the God of the Gaps.

 

[جوري]

lol.... truly All I can get out of that is a laugh... rather than take my entire day to respond to this... I would just like to pose a few questions about the perfection of this fluctuating congealing nothingness.

1st-- and please use the (universe evolution guide for dummies)... I like it when people write from the heart and not hide behind convoluted borrowed words they don't understand the meaning of, forgive me for saying so--write what makes sense to you and use all the scientific vigor you can muster! So here we go-- how did this congealed fluctuating nothingness create so many different species? Why the perfection and diversity? why not just one huge ill formed mass of crap? and I really would like some details that would on some level be satisfactory --so please don't skimp on the details of how this congealed mass formed for instance our urinary system?

Tell me where along the way did it learn to filter 47 gallons of fluid a day only to absorb the majority and excrete only 2% of that so that you aren't dying of fluid depletion, or how it knows how to separate your ions just right so that you aren't peeing out pure acid and frying your bladder along with it.... How is it that the congealed mass of nothing got it right the very first time around, and I have to take a chance and say it got it right the very first time around, because if it didn't we wouldn't be here you'd have fried your bladder to death with the very first act of micturition !...

Any anomaly in any enzymatic or organ pathway leads to death! Also considering there was no modern science to correct any anomaly that might have existed... tell me how your body knows when it is in a state of acid base imbalance so that it starts Chemical buffering by intracellular and extracellular ions by controlling your pCO2 by normal respiratory function and HCO3- concentration and acid excretion by the kidney again working perfectly in sync, so that we wouldn't have died some where early on for not being able to Acquiesce to noxiousness from high altitudes to ingesting something that isn't balanced with your body's chemicals?

tell me how it is that your aorticopulmonary septum spirals 180 degrees during embryonic development so that you don't end up with a transposition of the great vessels which is in fact incompatible with life and again we would have perished early on if it didn't occur just exactly that way .....

Tell me how it is that we just from cholesterol we can synthesize progesterone, cortiocsterone, Aldosterone, estrogens and DHT, so that each of us functions normally without hypotension, hypertension, or salt wasting, or even end up as hermaphrodites? All of that from a congealed fluctuating nothing....

I can just go on and on, all day on any process in your body or the universe that goes seemingly smooth uninterrupted, flawless, that if it had time to evolve and perfect over the ages we wouldn't be here... any one mal-function is deadly initially and there is no chance to perfect it... unless it were created perfect... I am sorry but a congealed fluctuating nothing that burst into a thousand beautiful viable thing is just not only illogical but doesn't even satisfy the laws of probability if we are going to stick with science all the way!

peace!

 

[zoro]

PurestAmbrosia: my answer is "time".

 

[جوري]

PurestAmbrosia: my answer is "time".

I am sorry but I don't understand what that means...... yes time is nice... time can go on even when you don't exist. If you leave a room surely the sun will rise and set on it regardless of your presence! if any of your biochemical pathways or organ systems failed early on we'd have collectively perished & not re-exist again! We all know the dead can't come back to life! So frankly (time) isn't a satisfactory answer!
If you want to flex your muscles and get all cerebral and show us, not only how ridiculous but dead wrong we are then here is your chance......... I took 35 mins to write all what I can think of, and would actually like an answer to it. I know you don't have one... and there will never be one... so for the rest of us we are perfectly content The G-D is above all... creator of heaven and earth and what is in between...

Peace!

 

[Skavau]

The flaw in your question, PurestAmbrosia is that you make the assumption that all life on this earth is perfect. That everything functions perfectly, as it should. That is not true. Not a single species here is perfect and has the qualities of perfection and beauty.

You only create the idea of perfection. There isn't any and if there was, that doesn't imply that a creator designed it as neither does complication. You make the jump from 'it is so very complex' to, 'God must of designed it'.

For a start:

So here we go-- how did this congealed fluctuating nothingness create so many different species?

It didn't.

Why the perfection and diversity?

There is no perfection and explain how diversity = God.

why not just one huge ill formed mass of crap?

Look at some species out there... this isn't a world of beauty and order.

Tell me where along the way did it learn to filter 47 gallons of fluid a day only to absorb the majority and excrete only 2% of that so that you aren't dying of fluid depletion, or how it knows how to separate your ions just right so that you aren't peeing out pure acid and frying your bladder along with it.... How is it that the congealed mass of nothing got it right the very first time around, and I have to take a chance and say it got it right the very first time around, because if it didn't we wouldn't be here you'd have fried your bladder to death with the very first act of micturition !...

The 'congealed mass of nothing' didn't get it right the very first time. You're making assumptions.

 

[جوري]

A minor flaw that happens sporadically can hardly be equated with imperfection of creation as a whole.... I'll go as far and say and this is a conjecture that any flaw is really here to grab our attention to how millions of possibilities that can go wrong daily in fact end up going right....

Your analogy reminds me of people who have a loved one in a coma and they swear he or she will come out of it... sure it can happen people have come out of comas, they make the news all the time-- one case in a million and everyone hangs on to a straw of hope--but cells in the brain are usually arrested in G0 and don't regenerate... ... yes! it can happen but isn't the norm..... similarly, a flaw can happen-- it isn't the norm!

I wouldn't be able to write any of the above if a state of the converse didn't exist... but when a state of the converse exists it is incompatible with life-- if it were the norm by which we are to measure our standards, we would have ceased to exist as a specie very early one. That doesn't mean evolve into something else because of failure to acquiesce, or due to a mal-function in your body... you'll cease to become something else period! something doesn't spring out of nothing --and the dead don't evolve into another better specie so they can live! .. today I'll burn half of my bladder with acid, tomorrow my kidney tubules will find a way to separate that hydrogen ion and keep it out and I'll have a perfect urinary system?

look at this alone seperate from all other systems or even the universe, and tell me how it is imperfect? or how it came to be this glorious system, on trial and error-- that even your best water filter couldn't keep up with, for just a period of three months let alone the load your kidney handles per day-- and you take for granted that it should work for you everyday and for life!... Truly we are an ungrateful bunch!

There is really no room for trial and error should it have been imperfect from the beginning there would be no possible way of rectifying it. & frankly a thousand correct possibility doesn't loan itself much credence on chance happening alone! You are free to point out the imperfections one by one-- you are free to be an atheist... until you can explain every last happening on this earth from seasons changing to stars revolving, to the oceans to our own bodies scientifically, can we have this conversation of the imperfection you see everywhere and how G-D doesn't/couldn't exist! If G-D to you is a fairy tale, so tp us is a congealed mass of nothing that burst into something!
Again! the rest of us know there is a divine diety behind this-- and we are grateful for the life he has given us!
peace!

 

[Skavau]

you are free to be an atheist... until you can explain every last happening on this earth from seasons changing to stars revolving, to the oceans to our own bodies can we have this conversation of the imperfection you see everywhere!

Why should I explain everything? You're making the claim here about the existence of something.

look at this alone seperate from all other systems or even the universe, and tell me how it is imperfect? or how it came to be this glorious system, on trial and error-- that even your best water filter couldn't keep up with just for three months and you take for granted that it should work for you for life!... Truly we are an ungrateful bunch!

Again, you're exercising the attitude that the Atheists must explain everything. Why do we have the burden of proof?

Life here on earth it is imperfect. We are contigent. We will eventually die. That is an imperfection in itself. We can pick up diseases, we can be born with severe disabilities both mentally and physically. This applies to every species as well.

 

[Pygoscelis]

PurestAmbrosia, you make a valid point but I don't think its the one you are trying to make.

Science it is true can not fully explain the world in the absence of God. The only way we can explain everything is by appealing to a catch-all magic non-answer - God did it (how? who knows, he's god). Without appealing to that magic all we have is unknowns.

Its too bad so many people can't simply live with unknowns and have to appeal to magic.

 

[جوري]

You don't have to explain anything-- I marvel at how many of you participate in a discussion and with bravado and assertion to the "fairy tale" of G-D' existence yet fail to answer one single simple question of how it all came to be using your much celebrated evolution theories and gunk of congealed matter that came to be from the nothing!

Some of us would also argue that death like life is a very natural state... your cells age perfectly naturally with time... Can't live forever at some point you have to account for how you lived!

so spare me the one liners... this thread was started by a Muslim for the purpose of our existence and the anti-creationist squad came a trolling and honking with their usual Ad hominem.. if you can't handle it or have no answers then don't participate feigning knowledge!

 

[جوري]

PurestAmbrosia, you make a valid point but I don't think its the one you are trying to make. .

What is the point I am trying to make?-- you seem to know me better than me which I find rather amusing!

Science it is true can not fully explain the world in the absence of God. The only way we can explain everything is by appealing to a catch-all magic non-answer - God did it (how? who knows, he's god). Without appealing to that magic all we have is unknowns. .

I see lots of "magical thinking" in a congealed mass from which all else sprang forth... No matter how you slice it-- there will be a non-scientific thought!

Its too bad so many people can't simply live with unknowns and have to appeal to magic.

That is a defeatist approach! every single cell in your body screams something to you which you deny... and why? all would be unknown-- I agree, if we didn't have holy books... whose words and transcendence also cannot be explained by scientists...... we aren't Uni-dimensional beings... just like we have a digestive system, and a urinary system, and a neurological system etc etc--do we also have a spiritual one that seeks peace and guidance!

one this note I need to really move on with my duties for the day
peace!

 

[Skavau]

single simple question of how it all came to be

Yes, that is such a simple question! ^o)

 

[zoro]

PurestAmbrosia:

By responding “time”, I was trying to get you to think of the vast expanse of geological time.

Maybe it would be useful to draw an analogy from my daily walk. For the past 33 years, for on average 333 days per year, I’ve been walking 3 miles per day – for the exercise and for the opportunity to think without interruption. If the distance is summed, I’ve now walked approximately 3 times around the world.

But probably better would be for me to quote an expert on evolution. My knowledge of the topic is poor. The following quotations, taken from the internet, are all from Richard Dawkins

Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, "I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection." I have dubbed this kind of fallacy "the Argument from Personal Incredulity." Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience…

Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation…

All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker…

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. It is the only known explanation for the rich diversity of animals, pants, fungi and bacteria…

The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That, in a sentence, is Darwinism… Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators…

It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that if Darwinism was really a theory of chance, it could not work… Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing… you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession…

…the genetic code is in fact literally identical in all animals, plants and bacteria… All earthly living things are certainly descended from a single ancestor…

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria…

What is the selfish gene? It is not just one single physical bit of DNA. Just as in the primeval soup, it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world… We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment…

You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life – all living things – is descended from a single common ancestor, which lived about 4,000 million years ago, and that we are all cousins, well, that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific worldview is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading…

Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain…

…Textbooks describe DNA as a blueprint for a body. It's better seen as a recipe for making a body, because it is irreversible. But today I want to present it as something different again, and even more intriguing. The DNA in you is a coded description of ancient worlds in which your ancestors lived. DNA is the wisdom out of the old days, and I mean very old days indeed… What changes is the long programs that natural selection has written using those 64 basic words. The messages that have come down to us are the ones that have survived millions, in some cases hundreds of millions, of generations. For every successful message that has reached the present, countless failures have fallen away like the chippings on a sculptor's floor. That's what Darwinian natural selection means. We are the descendants of a tiny elite of successful ancestors. Our DNA has proved itself successful, because it is here. Geological time has carved and sculpted our DNA to survive down to the present…

I am very seriously interested in the sorts of questions which 500 years ago would have been given religious answers. What are we here for? Where did it all come from? In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.

 

[جوري]

PurestAmbrosia:

By responding “time”, I was trying to get you to think of the vast expanse of geological time.

Maybe it would be useful to draw an analogy from my daily walk. For the past 33 years, for on average 333 days per year, I’ve been walking 3 miles per day – for the exercise and for the opportunity to think without interruption. If the distance is summed, I’ve now walked approximately 3 times around the world.

But probably better would be for me to quote an expert on evolution. My knowledge of the topic is poor. The following quotations, taken from the internet, are all from Richard Dawkins

Why let another man dictate to you something that should be inherently instinctive?... if a scientist came and stated we should all move to Asia because the United states will sink in the ocean in three days would you do it? Man will never be united on opinion so take charge of your own life and decide for yourself!

I once attended a lecture by a Doctor-- a Harvard graduate who honestly couldn't get his cations from anions correct... there he stood in the auditorium with his own published paper, most of the audience skimmed over the details... after all the man is from Harvard... yet when error was pointed out by some third world country resident... it was swept under the rug with a warning-- of not correcting your attending in front of a large audience... What should all of this tell? be your own person... follow what you know in your heart to be true, not what is disguised behind bombastic words...

Now, I understand what you mean by time in the context that you've used just described... but in the context of congealing mass evolving into the life form that we are now... I just don't see it! And I won't unless it can be duplicated scientifically... lots of theories are nice on paper but they have no place in life... technically a man who has schizophrenia can't have Parkinson DZ. since one is deficiency of dopamine and the other is an excess... yet we can have a schizophrenic with Parkinsonism like syndrome... what do you know science cannot explain everything..

peace!

 

[zoro]

PurestAmbrosia: You state

something doesn't spring out of nothing

As I tried to show in my original post (to which you began your responses), your statement is incorrect. As the physicist Edward Tryon put it (in his 1974 article in Nature, vol. 248, pp. 396-397 and to which I've added the notes in "square brackets"):

If it is true that our Universe has a zero net value for all conserved quantities [such as electrical charge, momentum, and total energy], then it [our Universe] may simply be a fluctuation of the vacuum [i.e., the original “zero” or “total nothingness”], the vacuum of some larger space [which stretches the meaning of the word “space”] in which our Universe is imbedded. In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things [that] happen from time to time.

Also, as the physicist Alan Guth stated (quoted here from p. 129 of the book A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkins):

It is said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch.

Again, how something can be created from nothing is to separate the original nothing into equal and opposite parts. That's how electrical charge, momentum, and energy are "created" -- and seems to be the way that our universe was created: 0 = S - S.

 

[جوري]

PurestAmbrosia: You state

As I tried to show in my original post (to which you began your responses), your statement is incorrect. As the physicist Edward Tryon put it (in his 1974 article in Nature, vol. 248, pp. 396-397 and to which I've added the notes in "square brackets"):.

ha? your own understanding of what you have written pls.....the pages you have quoted really mean nothing to me and they certainly don't explain how I am incorrect!

Also, as the physicist Alan Guth stated (quoted here from p. 129 of the book A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkins):.

???????

Again, how something can be created from nothing is to separate the original nothing into equal and opposite parts. That's how electrical charge, momentum, and energy are "created" -- and seems to be the way that our universe was created: 0 = S - S.

lol.... pls go ahead and prove that to me... when you have a "nothing" you can't seperate it into two equal parts!.... if I give you zero dollars can you divide it into two fifty cents? Duplicate that for me and then advance it to the level we are in today in terms of the complexity of matter--and you'll make a believer out of me... I mean a non-believer! :rollseyes

 

[zoro]

PurestAmbrosia: Three responses come to mind, in reaction to your statements:

Why let another man dictate to you something that should be inherently instinctive?... so take charge of your own life and decide for yourself! … be your own person... follow what you know in your heart to be true…

but in the context of congealing mass evolving into the life form that we are now... I just don't see it! And I won't unless it can be duplicated scientifically... lots of theories are nice on paper but they have no place in life.

1. When it took science so long to develop the theory of evolution, it seems inappropriate to call it “inherently instinctive”. Quantum mechanics is an even better example of something that’s not “inherently instinctive”. But both theories seem to work!

2. In general, I agree with your recommendation to “take charge of your own life and decide for yourself”, but reality has a way of imposing its restrictions on investigating everything on your own.

For example, from your posts, it would seem to be appropriate for me to seek your advice if I have medical problems. There isn’t time for me to learn all that you know. Similarly, I go to experts committed to the scientific method to learn about evolution, because there isn’t time for me to learn all that, for example, Dawkins knows. And similarly, my impression is that should you be interested, you might want to learn some from me about specific aspects of mathematics and the physical sciences, since I have my Ph.D. in those fields plus more than a decade of experience teaching them at various universities. Further, if you should seek information about specific aspects of environmental sciences, I have more than 20 years research experience in my specialty (with more than 50 open-literature publications), and when I retired, an international conference was named after me, to honor my accomplishments – at least I assume that was the reason, rather than their just being glad to get rid of me!

So, again, there is too much knowledge for any one of us to be an expert in all fields; therefore, we must rely on the knowledge and honesty of others. Thus, for example, when you state “but in the context of congealing mass evolving into the life form that we are now... I just don't see it!”, my recommendation to you is that you consider what competent people knowledgeably and honestly report.

And of course I agree that it’s wise to be skeptical (agreeing with your “And I won't [believe it] unless it can be duplicated scientifically…”), but I disagree with your “lots of theories are nice on paper but they have no place in life”. As you know, the scientific method starts by trying to make sense of some data (followed by proposing succinct hypotheses that have predictive power and that generally are consistent with well-established principles). In the case of how this universe came into existence, in particular, one can’t jump immediately to a “full-fledged theory”. At present, we’re trying to make sense of the data – and I maintain (and surely you agree) that such as step has an important “place in life”.

3. I would have you seriously reconsider your suggestion “follow what you know in your heart to be true”. That’s what’s called “the proof-by-pleasure fallacy”, which has caused humanity an enormous amount of harm -- and continues to do so.