Thoughts

Of course the species is old. You must be a time traveler to know that those things are recent constructs though.

 

Stuff I've read says morality is hardwired. I doubt that has occurred in 3000 years.

 

I don't have to be a time traveler to know that prior to the formation of complex language, which is the largest percentage of time our specie has been on this planet, justice, truth and all those philosophical constructs couldn't have been pondered. These are acquired concepts, and as IP points out, are actually more Western than anything else, and highly individualized.

What is meaning, justice and truth to me, is not so to you.

 

Considering that morality is a loose concept, even today, you'd have to be more specific. Even the Bible had to define some concepts of morality, and by all accounts, one of the earliest creations rebelled against the Father. And another killed his brother.

 

Probably directed at Young Earth proponents.

 

The point is not that we're good. It's that we know good from bad. Ancients spent a lot of time writing about right and wrong because it was important to them.

 

I bet you anything there's a huge overlap in mine and yours as well as in eastern and western.

 

I would say we are more subservient than anything else. Who we are subservient to may be a different matter. Be it gods, kings, or just the stronger male in our tribe--we do what is "right" so we aren't struck down, heads lopped off, or just killed.

It's hard for me to accept the idea that we are hardwired for "right" and "wrong," when human history is littered with cannibalism, blood sport, eugenics, tribal warfare for considering the other tribe to be "lesser."

I will concede that we will do what is best for the group. But only because that's how we survived. So we'll do what is "right," but only as far as "right" is "right" by and for the group. Usually the tribe.

 

Condense to form the big bang?

There are many hypothesis about this: different universes (branes) slapping together to start the big bang. Or we are actually in a black hole and every black hole in our universe forms another universe, and thus our Universe is just a son of a black hole that was the son of a black hole back through beginningless time.

Thus nothing has to "condense". It starts condensed. So there is no "breathing" back and forth of the universe, just big bang after big bang, without any kind of crunch to start the next one.

 

"It starts condensed."

So you are saying there was a start?

 

I can live with the black hole belief. Let's say that a black hole is a super dense area where gravity's force exceeds light's escape velocity. May be a simplification, but that is how it has been presented to me, back in the day.

But if so, and objects slamming together and becoming attracted to each other, could, theoretically, over eons slam into other objects repeatedly, until a black hole was created. As more and more areas of the universe expand into other areas, the density increases until a Big Bang. Thus starting the cycle over.

I can live with that. Simplified. Probably not an exact representation, but it works for me.

 

Sorry. Bad diction.

The new universe arising from the action of the two branes colliding is dense and starts to inflate from there. It doesn't require an old universe to recondense before expanding again.

 

I'm pretty sure we could.

 

I don't think so. We are not solitary creatures, and we go mad from loneliness. Just like all primates, we have a need to live in a social structure.