FTFY
It usually comes down to "definitions". The big bang seems to have "brought forth" the physical universe we inhabit and can observe and measure. That alone leave lots of unanswered questions. Zard set a Christianish framework to his OP, but even that leaves quite a lot of varying definitions/descriptions of god which have never been agreed upon.
What we do know is that
"Religious" experiences continue to overwhelm many people into believing that the observable universe is not all there is to existence
Observable in what sense? What our physical eyes can see, or what Hubble and the other space telescopes can observe and measure?
My physical eyes can't see as much as they could at this time last year; the eye surgeon told me that some people need more than one set of cataract operations. So that may be in my future. It doesn't mean I attribute everything I can't see anymore to some supernatural being.
Actually, I think
BigBang is supernatural.
"We cannot speak of a time before the Big Bang because time did not exist as such before the Big Bang," Hawking writes. - We have finally found something that has no prior phenomenon because there was no time in which that phenomenon could have existed"
Even if we can prove that was something BEFORE the BB - we can never explain it. It is beyond the power of our consciousness, simply because we exist and operate within the framework of our universe, which emerged AFTER the BB. Even if we accept the theory that the universe expands and then contracts again to the point of BB, there will be an instant - which we can name, to use some analogy - an event horizon.
And the fact that something was there before BB - can be asserted for sure, because "What is Darkness? A place where there is no Light."
According to Hawking, it is pointless to ask about what was before the Big Bang, since there was no such thing as time at all back then. This is a question that has no answer and cannot be answered.
We can give it a name - God. Or the Big Horizon. Depending on personal beliefs.
Hawking also advised against contacting aliens. I'm not qualified to criticize his take on physics, but I completely disagree with him about aliens. Unless they're obviously hostile from the get-go, there's no reason not to.
And just because we don't know the answer to what happened before the Big Bang, it doesn't mean we never will know it.
Except it obviously doesn't satisfy all the humans. There are several atheists in this thread who have made that abundantly clear.
I hear what you're saying and I see this reaction a lot. I think you're therefor implying I'm scamming? It's ok if that is what you think I am.
I am not implying anything bad about you personally. It's personal experience of multiple attempts of other people and companies to scam me, government employees who outright lied to me ("we don't disadvantage one family member to help another" - outright BS as they absolutely did try to do that, but I guess that's how my province rolls), and the whole thing of "do this NOW and your problems will go away" or "Do this NOW and something worse won't happen to you later".
I don't like being pressured or demands made that I consider unreasonable. Mormon missionaries don't pressure as much as JWs do, but they still want you to read their literature.
Information and consciousness are not physical. Admittedly I am not sure there is any way to store information that doesn't rely on a physical substrate but information itself can be distinguished from the means to store it just as a dollar is not synonymous with a dollar bill, or a meter is not synonymous with a meter stick.
Consciousness consists of qualia, which are sensations. It's sort of hard to explain but the taste of wine or the feel of the breeze on your face are things that obviously exist, because we experience them, but they don't exist physically.
I wonder. When I think of the smell of the water and sand in front of our cabin on Okanagan Lake, there must be something measurable going on in my brain, because those are such clear memories nearly 50 years after the last time I was there.
yes how we define things is most important. Non physical consciousness that is not supernatural in an interesting concept. Does "natural" = physical to you?
