Well, not really. A person with amnesia is still conscious.

Actually it appears matter/energy is eternal. This is supported by laws of physics.

I'm glad scientists finally figured that out.

It has been a standard since the turn of the previous century.

E=MC^2 and the law of the conservation of energy pretty well seals this deal. At the very least it offers very little in the way of empirical justification for energy or matter coming into existence.

So if we hold that energy/matter has always existed and is fundamental, then there is no reason to ponder what created matter/energy, but only to understand how it changes.

Physics does just that. Science is successful becuase it is based on methodological naturalism which is based on materialism. Adding in a layer of non-matter/energy adds nothing to our knowledge.

Clearly there is a misconception about the word materialism. The word has many meanings and philosophically the word is relavent to naturalism, eliminative materialism and reductive materialism.

You would also find that various ideas of materialism are debated in conjunction with idealism and dualism.

To say that one is a materialist leaves the door open for any number of possibilities.

If you are going to label someone, at least have the decency of understanding the label and applying it aptly.

It also makes for better discussion if the topic is understood by the OP who started it.

If the term "materialism" has so many different meanings, then perhaps you will let people know which one you are using.

So why does everyone keep pointing to the big bang??

Why don't they just admit that there was no big bang and shut up about it?

Bushidobillyclub,

So your claim is that it has been a standard since the turn of the previous century that scientists believe that matter and/or energy is eternal?

So what I would like to know is why all the hype over the "big bang?" What's that all about?

Is matter and/or energy conscious?

IF NOT, at what point does science claim consciousness appeared?

Is the universe conscious?

If not, how did unconscious matter/energy give birth to conscious living entities?

In your materialistic view of reality where does consciousness fit in? When did it arrive?

Silly wabbit (trix are for kids)

You started the thead, you brought up materiaism and referred to "some people" as materialists. It is, however, completely unclear by your posts what you are referring to by the term.

I offered options from which you can gain a better perspective of what you were trying to 'point to' in the first place, of which I have no clue. In what philosophical reference were you using the term materialist?

Case in point. By referring to Bushido...s "materialistic view" what exactly are you referring to? Is that a term to which you have applied your own definition? If not there are several ways in which the term is used, many of which are philosophical.

I offerd some of the philosophical options, it's up to you to review them, choose one and explain what it is about the person that has led you to so label him or her.

Bushidobillyclub,

Your answers are stating the obvious appearance of it, but it has no logical answers as to how unthinking unconscious matter/energy could possibly "evolve" or change and combine (intelligently) to a point of realizing that it needed to form a brain in order to achieve consciousness.

It is utterly ridiculous to believe that dead unconscious unthinkng matter/energy could evolve into living conscious beings or accidentally combine just the right elements to eventually produce a brain that eventually produces a conscious thinking entity.

This is the reason that I am saying that kind of materialist thinking is illogical. What you are claiming is literally impossible. What you describe is a dead universe if you are saying that matter/energy has no consciousness. You cannot get a living conscious entity from a dead unconscious universe or from dead unconscious matter/energy.

Until you can bring something dead to life you have no proof that it happened that way. You are describing what you think happened because you cannot see or prove that consciousness is in everything.

My claim is that the universe is a living conscious entity and I have more to back up my claim than you do yours that the universe is NOT conscious.

If we evolved from dead unconscious matter/energy there has to be that magical point where the dead becomes alive, and where consciousness is born.

Even if in a single quantum unit of any element.... that moment had to have taken place to go from dead to alive.

Specifically, my interpretation of someone I view as a Materialist is a person who denies any spiritual side to themselves.

They believe that they evolved from chaos and the unconscious primordial soup into a living conscious organism simply by chance and somewhere along on the journey their ancestors went from dead matter to a living thinking conscious entity.

It is a person who believes that consciousness is a product of the brain and that the brain evolved from unconscious energy/matter.

Which in my view is totally illogical and impossible.

Only in the loosest sense is that correct. Usable energy is constantly decreasing while unusable energy is constantly increasing.

That is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

A "big crunch" to cause another big bang would produce a smaller and smaller universe, because of the energy lost to entropy. This, plus the increasing speed of the expansion of the universe, has permanently falsified the cyclical universe theory.

This is extremely far from certain. Read anything about inflation or dark energy? You should take some time to go over the various cosmological models, infinite regression through big crunch is only one of many candidates all of which are not ruled out nor falsified. Also not my field of study, I claim no authority.

Your perspective seems very very narrow.

JB I am forming a proper response to you, you have shotgunned so many questions into such a small space it will take time to organize my answers in a thorough manner.

In what way is my perspective "very very narrow"? There is only one cyclical theory that attempts to deal with the entropy issue. This theory has some serious flaws. While it does eliminate the entropy issue, it creates more problems than it eliminated. It suggests a multitude of universes, when one dies, it produces many more smaller universes. This process obviously could not be supported infinitely, which results in the issue of the needing a first cause.

I dont know about you, but there is nothing obvious about such complex topics. I remain humble when reading about the various cosmological modules of which there are many. Not my field, I do not make sweeping conclusions.

Well lets throw out that word intelligently, as it is begging the question. Let us instead just ask, how does life come from non thinking material.
I think it is helpful to first read up a bit about the subject before we dig in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Asking the question how does consciouness form from non living material is a huge leap and unessarily complex, first we must ask how simple single celled life arose from inorganic matter thorugh natural processes.

After reading the subject in detail what really drew me to accept this as a good answer is understanding structures in gerneral, and what characteristics of structures allowed that structure to form, and to remain whole and not deteriorate into its component parts.

Some structures are created by intelligences, however many are not, many are created through natural processes. So we have a plethora of structures to look at to attempt to glean what characteristics of the structures promote stability, and allow it to form in the first place.

Life is a structure, it has a form which fullfills a set of roles which promote reproduction. Many defintions of life have been created some are more complex, some less, but none seem to be able to capture everything in a simple singular definition.

The reality is that this topic is one of the most advanced scientific fields. It requires an understanding of chemistry, evolution, biology, physics, and many maths not least of all statistics. JB, it is my humble opinion that I myself am not truly qualified to profess the topic properly, so I will not. On that same note from my knowledge of your education, you will not be able to really appreciate the topic without much reading and remedial study.

Currently I want you to understand that your position is an argument from ignorance. This is not a jab, not a put down, not a character judgement. It is just a fact of human reasoning, "I cannot explain it there for god, magic, or something not material" . . . that is an argument from ignorance.

Why?

The function of something is dictated by its form, the defintion of life is fuzzy, almost no one agrees on a singular defitniion, so this makes pinpointing an exact step along the process from non-life to life an imposible endevor not becuase it didnt happen, but because what we concider life, dependent on our current working defitnion may or may not include all of the same characteristics of that given stage of advancement for that given structure. This is a problem with labeling, not a problem with the structural advancement of a given entity.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg
Dr Jack Szostak, 2009 Nobel Laurette in medicine for his work on telomerase, on the topic of abiogensis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerization
Chemistry: needed.

I think you'll find that I'm not the only one who has commented on the problems with the Baum–Frampton model.

The two major problems that I see are:

1) The theory is based on the belief of an original universe that then split into multiple. This model does not resolve the "first cause" issue, but moved it back to a first parent universe.

2) The theory states that each child universe is smaller than the parent. Eventually this will result in tiny universes without the energy necessary to even produce matter.

EDIT: Added Bushidobillyclub's name to the quote to make the post more readable.

Ok, Im just nodding becuase any given model is not something I am supporting or not supporting, I really dont see the relevance to this thread. Cosmology is a complex topic, one I do not often spend time researching. My point was only to say it is narrow to focus on a single model. If you think that model is falsified . . . ok. And whats your point?

Your original quote was about the nature of energy, in what way does falsifying the big crunch model throw the concept of eternal energy/matter into disregard?

(You mentioned usable energy, like that adjective made the difference?)

My point is that there is no working cyclical model due to the conservation of entropy. Was that not clear from my posts?

It's a refutation of your statement that "Actually it appears matter/energy is eternal. This is supported by laws of physics. " Matter is not eternal and although entropy is energy, it isn't usable energy, so it hardly counts. I wasn't getting into the subject of the thread, if I had been, I wouldn't have quoted just two sentences. I was just correcting your course on that one point, because you are way off base and what you said could lead other people to make bad conclusions.