Does the universe have consciousness?

[Fuzznuts]

Far out.

[Thorngrub]

As Far out as it goes (presumably).

Someone once asked STephen Hawking: "What lies outside the Universe?"

His answer:

(paraphrased)

"Asking what lies beyond, or outside the Universe is the same thing as asking what lies 1 mile north of the North pole; it is a moot question" (i.e, there IS no "North" of the north pole; it starts going south again...)

I always believed that was a tasty morsel for thought.

[Rit]

hey, i done read that 'un before.

at the centre is conflict and change.

[pauledwardwagemann]

~Albert Einstein's theory of relativity points out that time & locality in space cannot be regarded independent if the observer & object is moving fast relative to each other. Differently moving observers will experience different speeds of time even when using the same watches. They will disagree on the order of different events. A 'Universal' time do not exist:

~Another implication of Einstein's theory (& also of quantum
mechanics) is that matter cannot be regarded to be continuously existing in time nor in space. A movement of a body is therefore events of disappearance in one place & its reappearance in the next place. This process is though so incredible fast, that we experience it as continuous existence.

[Thorngrub]

Hey did you know that if Albert Einstein had been aborted before birth, some other bloke would've come up w/the same theories, sooner or later? We might know of it today as "Bohr's Theory of Relativity" or "Besso's Theory of Relativity", who knows.

I'm quite fascinated with the particular dynamic that allegedly puts our POV's "at odds" w/each other.

Sometimes I feel we are all completely in agreement, and that it would be fundamentally impossible to be otherwise.

(Meaning, sometimes I feel that we all believe the same things -- that the only difference lies in not WHAT we believe, but in HOW we believe...)

[Rit]

* golf claps *

[sisyphus]

As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture. These two modes of thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher nature." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Matheus]

Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

A material, a material, a material, a material world

Living in a material world [material]
Living in a material world

[Thorngrub]

I like a gal who knows what she wants.

[Thorngrub]

Yes, the universe absolutely, unequivocally, and most certainly has consciousness.

I figured it out just the other day.