Perhaps it requires a spot of theology, philosophy or mythology to get a thread going. How's this for a start?
I just finished reading a three-paged artucle from the NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html?pagewanted=1Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: January 15, 2008
Here is how it opens:
It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.
If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions....
===================== Here is how it concludes:
...In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones. The main way life emerges, he said, is not by reincarnation but by the creation of new parts of the universe. “So maybe we don’t need to care too much” about the Boltzmann brains,” he said.
“If you are reincarnated, why do you care about where you are reincarnated?” he asked. “It sounds crazy because here we are touching issues we are not supposed to be touching in ordinary science. Can we be reincarnated?”
“People are not prepared for this discussion,” Dr. Linde said.
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Ordinary science? Is this supposed to be ordinary science?
Bill S, may I ask: Does this article strike you as "ordinary science"? If so, does it grab your attention? In what way?
BTW, thanks for your thoughtful response to my last post in the "Philosophyof Religion..." thread.
