INTRODUCTION
Cosmology combines all sciences to answer the question: `Why is everything the way it is?' But from the moment the first cosmologists started to occupy themselves with that question about seventy years ago, cosmology has reduced itself to: `How did our universe start?' Or even: `How did the big bang scatter matter in the universe?' Where is the desire to see the whole forest instead of all the trees? `How'-answers have to fit with the philosophical/psychological/biological-`why?'. Astrological/physical/mathematical-big bang-answers that `fit' with the measured physics of the universe may be wrong like Einstein's static universe with its wonderful theory of general relativity, as long as big bang-answers don't include the final `why'. This article has the ambition to bring back cosmology to its original why-state. In doing so it joins astronomy and physics with philosophy, psychology and biology in a search for final answers.
From the oldest theories about nature and the universe our thoughts have always been marked by sharp lines, sharp boundaries, which capture the how and why of our world and our existence within a defined framework. We use sharp lines to make it easy for our rationality to develop a series of thoughts within a, at that moment present, field of knowledge. But at a certain moment the sharp boundaries of our rationality prohibit us from finding an overall-understanding of ourselves and our world, because they make our thoughts search after the 'meaning of life' in a closed religious, philosophical or scientific framework. Hence we limit our rational abilities and this way they rather will deviate us from the Big Why instead of bringing us towards it.
Seven examples of sharp lines I will discuss in section A of this article:
A1 feelings versus thoughts
A2 consciousness versus subconsciousness
A3 living versus non-living
A4 uniqueness versus no uniqueness
A5 time versus no time
A6 space versus no space
A7 big bang versus steady state
In section A I will try to tackle the sharp lines as much as possible. After that I will discuss the only ever standing sharp line (being versus non-being) in section B, and from there I will picture a new way to look at the `whole forest':
B1 being versus non-being
B2 feelings versus the Big Why
B3 feelings versus finity
B4 appearing of mass versus disappearing of mass
B5 expansion (cosmological) redshift versus two new (hypothetical) redshifts
B6 beginning versus ending of mass and the universe
A1 feelings versus thoughts
(I have not succeeded defining 'feelings', or: to explain what feelings are. But I did succeed explaining why there are feelings and on what they are founded. See for this: B2, B3 and B4.)
We are used to draw a line between what we think and what we feel; let us take a closer look at what thoughts in essence are.
If you look at this article as if it were one long thought, then this thought could be split into words. The words bring, standing by themselves, one or more feelings (or associations) into us, but combined to sentences by logic they seem to represent something more than just a series of feelings. Still, in essence this long thought (this article) is nothing but a series of feelings. Thoughts are very quick rows of feelings that go so fast that we don't recognize them anymore as feelings and which we therefore have called thoughts. In essence thoughts are nothing but feelings (with a certain amount of logic) and our rationality is nothing but logic in the pot of feelings that we are. Rationality is logic we use to make our (fine) feelings in their integrated form as large as possible. Concluding: you can not draw a sharp line between thoughts and feelings like you can not draw a sharp line between molecules and subatomic particles if you know that molecules are built by subatomic particles.
A2 consciousness versus subconsciousness
Suppose you feel an itch on your back and you are about to reach out and scratch, but at that very moment there is an earthquake and you run out of your house and forget about the itch.
Something that is in us one moment very consciously (the itch) can be pushed aside by another feeling (fear for the earthquake) and so become subconscious the next moment. If you look at it this way then there is no sharp line between consciousness and subconsciousness. In fact the two can be put on a scale with two ends; end X is where there is 0% consciousness and 100% subconsciousness, end Y is where there is 100% consciousness and 0% subconsciousness. In X a certain feeling is pushed aside completely by every other feeling, in Y a certain feeling completely pushes aside every other feeling. X and Y will never be established, like a sheet of paper can not be 100% white nor 100% black.
A3 living versus non-living
Is there an organism, for example a bacterium, virus, protein or an amino acid, on Earth of which you can say: here is where 'life' begins? Is there a point in the evolution where 'life' started? What do you refer to as living? When something is able to replicate, like bacteria or certain proteins? Or when something is able to `feel'? I define `living' here as: the capability to feel.
If you can't draw a sharp line like: `here is where life begins' or `that is where life started', then you have to refer to bacteria, proteins, amino acids, atoms and subatomic particles as living. If so then everything that exists, everything that is, is living. (I define/posit hereby too: everything that exists, everything that is, is matter and matter is: all (mass)particles and radiation; also gravity I see as something consisting of some kind of (gravity) particles/waves.)
In my opinion there is no such thing as non-living matter, and so: everything that exists lives. To put it more bluntly: what we call living can be addressed to as: being or existence; so living is existence/being and: everything that exists lives.
Everything that exists has feelings. Proteins, atoms, subatomic particles and photons have some kind of feelings. If you combine the (extremely weak) feelings of an atom or a photon with the before mentioned consciousness/subconsciousness scale (or: the lack of a sharp line between consciousness and subconsciousness) then atoms and photons (and everything that exists, everything that is) have some kind of (extremely weak) consciousness as well.
Everything that is can be seen as one great (living) entity when everything that is is seen as being related to each other in one way or the other. In this article I will refer to `entities' where there can be spoken of some kind of (central) `conscious' force that dominates the entity to remain in the same state of being. In this article a stone is not seen as a living entity nor the Earth. In this article (living) entities are: humans, animals, (all) cells of the human body, plants, plant cells, bacteria, DNA, viruses, proteins, amino acids, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, photons. Maybe the best definition for a (living) entity is: a living entity is an entity that has as such a beginning and an end and is able to experience its movement from its beginning till its end. (This `movement' I define as: all kinds of movement, e.g. intergalactic and subatomic, of an entity plus the mutual interfering of the (mass)entity with (all) other (mass)entities.) Of course it is hard to imagine an atom `experiencing' his life, but can you imagine a bacterium experiencing his life?
(Could it be that the movement of particles like a planet described by the theory of relativity never can be according the movement of subatomic particles described by the theory of quantum mechanics because subatomic particles are `living' entities and hence have a `will of their own'?)
A4 uniqueness versus no uniqueness
We know now that there are not two flies that are exactly the same, even if they have exactly the same DNA-code. There are not two bacteria or yeast-cells that are exactly the same. But what about two water molecules? Or two electrons? I state here: there never have been two living things, two mass-particles, two entities, that were exactly the same. The charge of an electron is 1.60 x 10-19 coulombs. Two electrons will always differ from each other, whether it is 0,00000071 x 10-19 or 4 x 10-237 coulombs. Nothing that is can be labelled by a sharp amount of charge, weight or length. Everything that is is unique; or one might say: every entity has a `life of its own'. And: if two particles could possibly have exactly the same charge/weight/length, then their `life' would still be different because their movement would be different because they could not be possibly both in exactly the same place in the universe at the same moment. So, again: everything (every entity) that is is unique; and hence every feeling is unique.
A5 time versus no time
There is no such thing as time when it comes to the understanding of the essence of life. There is only: beginning of entities, movement of entities and ending of entities. We can only use time to compare the movement of entities, but time by itself is nothing, time by itself does not exist. We can only use time when there are entities, whether it is one particle in the whole universe or 1080 particles. Time helps to make the comparison of one, two, three... 1080 mass particles' movement easier, that is all. And so: when there is no matter there is no time.
You can compare the use of time and space with the use of logic: the logic of our rationality; we use logic to compare and hence understand things, but logic by itself is nothing, does not exist; what is (in our brains) are feelings. Similar: we use time and space to compare and understand, but what is are (mass)particles, or, more correct: what is is the movement of mass. Time and space are not physically real, only mass is physically real.
A6 space versus no space
There is no such thing as space when it comes to the understanding of the essence of life. Again: there is only the beginning, movement end ending of matter (or entities). We use space to be able to compare the interfering of (mass)entities with each other, but space by itself is nothing, space by itself does not exist. There is only (moving) matter and the distances between mass-particles. Hence if we talk about the universe or space we are (in essence) not talking about space, we are talking about matter that moves at certain distances of other matter. So: space nor time is physically real; only mass (particles and radiation) is physically real.
A7 big bang versus steady state
Bluntly cosmologists can be divided into two camps. One camp takes the line that we live in a big bang universe, the other camp thinks we live in a steady state universe.
Steady state universes (in general) never change their appearance, and what happens now has always happened and will always happen. The steady state universe label is commonly used when referring to the universe model proposed by Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle, that expands, but in which matter is replenished by continuous creation of matter and so the density of matter in the universe is constant (this in contrast to the big bang model in which the density of matter becomes ever smaller).
There is no sharp line between the big bang-theory and steady state-theories if you take in mind that all theories assume that mass-particles jump out of nothing. You can feel more for big bang theories in which (for example) 1080 particles bang at once (revolution) out of nothing or you can feel more for a 'slow' steady state-theories in which matter particles jump out of nothing one by one (evolution). (Hoyle calculated: one hydrogen atom per billion years per cubic decimeter.) However, there is no sharp line between a big bang of 1080 particles and a big bang of one particle, in essence they both say: matter comes out of nothing and both theories need to explain: why does matter come out of nothing; and: will matter last forever and why or why not? This way the differences between big bang and steady state theories are gradual: the start (and end) of 1080 particles deals with the same infinity/finity problem as the start (and end) of one particle.
B1 being versus non-being
There is only one sharp line we can draw that explains everything, including the meaning of life. Imagine a big bang of one particle (or, if you prefer, two particles: particle + anti-particle). From nothing the particle comes (quantum mechanics explains how particles apparently can come out of nothing), exists for a while, and vanishes again. The sharp line is: the beginning versus the end, or: the beginning of being versus the end of being. And what was was: the life of one particle; and the meaning of its life was: the particle's experience of his life (or: its `feelings').
B2 feelings versus the Big Why
Everything that really matters in the Big Why is the beginning and ending of mass and what is in between: the movement of (and mutual interaction between) mass particles.
In this paragraph I am going to write down the same thing over and over again. This same thing is: everything wants the biggest amount of (fine) feelings; feelings are what life is made for; feelings are what life is made of; feeling is matter; matter is feeling.
Why is it that we can life? The answer is: because we can die. Our life can be thanks to our death. Or: we can be because we also can not be. In A1 and A2 I explained that our thoughts are feelings (A1) and that consciousness is only a rate for how strongly certain feelings come through (A2). In other words: all what we are are feelings. Now you may say: then what are feelings? All I can say at that is: `Just feel it.' (Perhaps I can make the concept feeling a little more clear by: feeling = experiencing = existing = life = to be). But there is some more to say about where feelings are based on and how (primitive) feelings could develop themselves to our (human) feelings.
Feelings are (because of their origin) direct or indirect related to: the drift to keep on existing. Bluntly you may say: everything that increases existing gives fine feelings and everything that decreases existing gives bad feelings. Hunger gives a bad feeling, but eating gives a good feeling. A bacterium in distilled water won't feel good, but with enough nutrients you may presume that it will feel good. As I wrote before in A3 it is my opinion that also bacteria and even atoms and subatomic particles have `feelings', because there is no sharp line that can be drawn along the path: humans, animals, insects, plants, bacteria, proteins, amino acids, atoms and subatomic particles.
Now from our feelings to the subatomic particle's feelings: suppose something hot touches our skin and our skin cells send a message to our brain cells to do something against it and so to make sure the skin cells can keep on existing. What I want to say with this is: because of the (chemical/electronic) interaction between cells of our body we feel as an entity (in our case as a human being) and hence as an entity (of interacting cells) we feel more (because of all the interactions) than all the cells on their own would be capable to feel. Inside our cells there is also (chemical/electronic) interaction between the different cell compounds (for example a certain protein in a cell) and you may expect that the feelings of the cell as an entity are stronger than the feelings of the single cell compounds. In a protein there is electronic interaction between the protein's atoms and you may expect that the feelings of the protein as an entity are stronger than the feelings of its single atoms. The same goes for atoms versus their subatomic particles. If you call the chemical/electronic interactions movement of matter then you may address this 'movement' with 'feelings'. And you can state: in the evolution (mass)particles started from a subatomic level and formed respectively atoms, molecules, amino acids, macromolecules, proteins, DNA and cellular life because entities wanted as much fine feelings/fine interactions as possible and hence that may be the reason why smaller particles (entities) started to 'co-operate' in order to become more complex entities. If you look at it this way you may say that along with survival of the fittest we have to do with survival of (desire for/longing for) happiness. Why did we develop something like thoughts and language? Because by better thoughts/language we were capable of inventing better tricks to survive. But the development of thoughts/language has also something to do with experiencing life, with desire for happiness: with thoughts and language we were capable of describing more subtle (fine) feelings and so our thoughts/language enabled us to experience higher peaks of happiness. The same you can say about our capability of (more) consciousness. Because we have this consciousness mechanism we can give priority to certain important things, therefore we have more chance to survive in certain situations. But we also use this put aside mechanism to put aside certain feelings and certain thoughts that makes us less happy and by doing so we can, thanks to our (stronger) consciousness, reach for higher peaks of (integrated forms of) happiness. Bluntly you can describe survival of happiness along with survival of the fittest as: quality of existence along with quantity of existence.
If we take the `no sharp line rule' once again into account then desire for happiness has been in the whole evolution of (non-biological and biological) life on our planet and one may explain it by: more complex entities have the possibility to reach for higher peaks of happiness, to more (fine) feelings. The desire for happiness can be the reason why atoms formed amino acids and other macro-molecules, for atoms didn't need any survival of the fittest to survive. Within the evolution theory there are problems with respect to chance. According to some scientists too many coincidences of circumstance are needed to explain the origin of living cells by chance. However, things are different when matter 'feels' and hence 'consciously looks for' peaks of happiness, or: 'consciously looks for' the possibilities to become a more complex entity; then you need less 'chance' to explain the origin of living cells.
Desire for happiness may also explain the appearance of (mass)particles out of nothing: particles may have jumped out of nothing because their existence gave them `joy'. In this `appearing of matter' you find the sharp line of: the beginning versus the end, or: being versus non-being. In this way everything could be based on: the fight against finity. You may look at appearing of matter as a trial-and-error-jumping of particles out of nothing; one particle staying for very short time, the other staying (much) longer. Finally you may consider a very long evolution of particles coming one by one (some kind of steady state-appearance) or a revolution of particles multiplying themselves very fast when the first (specific) particle appears (some kind of big bang-appearance).
Of course it is very difficult to quantify with respect to feelings, but one can imagine that thousand hydrogen atoms `feel' more than one hydrogen atom under the same circumstances. Also one may imagine that hydrogen atoms in the Sun may feel more than hydrogen atoms in a (relative static) cloud of hydrogen gas. Also one may expect that we (as humans, with all the interaction between our cells) `feel' more than a (biological) lifeless heap of matter with the same amounts and proportions of atoms. I think that `feelings' may be comparable with the `movement of matter', where `movement' includes all possible movement, and `matter' includes all possible particles and radiation. In that respect human kind may have the capability of experiencing the strongest feelings on Earth because of the flux of chemicals/electronics in our big brains and large amount of nerves.)
[Addition July 5 2005: I like to add here: Happiness may need consciousness. Without consciousness happiness may not be felt. With stronger consciousness higher peaks of happiness may be felt. Actually, this flows naturally from the statement in A2: (strong) consciousness makes certain feelings push aside other feelings (and thus certain feelings can be felt stronger; or: stronger happiness can be felt with stronger consciousness). End July 5 2005 addition]
B3 feelings versus finity
How would we feel if we lived forever? Would we feel anything at all within 5 billion years? All biological (DNA) living creatures die. We die, that is why we can live, that is why we feel that we live, that is why we can experience our existence. We can only be because we can also not be. According to the 'no sharp line rule' about feelings this being versus non-being must be the same for bacteria and atoms. So it may be that an atom can only exist because its existence is finite.
It is my opinion that every living creature (every entity) can only feel its existence when it is able to dissolve into nothing, or: into non-existence; this is the same statement as: we feel that we live because we are going to die. If we (and other biological living creatures on Earth) feel that we live because we are going to die then, if I was right with my 'no sharp line rule' about feelings (A3), all mass particles `feel' that they exist because they are going towards non-existence. You may put it, when you combine it with the 'no sharp line rule' about consciousness (A2), even like this: atoms or subatomic particles are in some way `aware' of the fact that they are going to vanish one day. (I know it is hard to imagine how an atom would `feel' or `have consciousness', but can you imagine how much weight one hydrogen atom has when you know that our body has a weight of approximately 1029 hydrogen atoms?)
If feelings are the essence of being and if they are wrapped together with the beginning and ending of being, and if feelings are the reason why there is existence of mass, then feelings have to cause the end of an entity. To put it different: existence costs energy; or: matter burns to nothing because feelings are only possible on the road to the end.
B4 appearing of mass versus disappearing of mass
If feelings can be seen as `movement of matter towards its end', and, as has been stated before in this article, everything that is is matter, then: the existence of matter must cause matter to disappear. (I will come back to this later when talking about the redshift of light waves.)
A tiger that eats a peace of meat gets energy because his body cuts meat in smaller pieces. The same with a bacterium that breaks down chemical compounds. Energy from the Sun is (mainly) radiated away by light waves. The energy comes from the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms while emitting small mass-particles, partly in the form of photons. A photon can be used by plants to make glucose from water and carbon dioxide. We can eat the glucose and burn it with oxygen back to water and carbon dioxide. In these processes it is generally presumed that energy can turn into mass and mass can turn into energy (the famous formula of Einstein: E=mc2), but there never will be energy lost (the conservation-of-energy principle). My opinion is that during all the energy-transactions (= movement of mass towards its end = feeling) there is a (very little) loss of energy because `movement of mass' or `being' or `existence' or `living' or `feeling' costs energy.
If feelings can only exist because of the finity of everything, then finity is caused by feelings. One may therefore raise the question which one of: 1. stone of 100 kilo. 2. a human of 100 kilogram 3. 100 kilogram of Sun-mass, `loses' more mass because of energy/mass-movement, or rather: because of their `feelings'. I like to emphasize here that if mass/matter disappears then this disappearing goes extremely slowly, otherwise all the mass in the (more than 10 billions years old) universe would already be `burnt away'.
Resuming: you can call it feelings, mass-flow or energy-flow; but its all the same: movement of mass/matter (towards its end). Movement of matter, the existence of matter, may or must cause its own decay.
B5 expansion (cosmological) redshift versus two new (hypothetical) redshifts
There are 3 sorts of redshift (redshift = when wavelengths of light shift to longer `red' wavelengths that have less energy). Two of them, the Doppler redshift and the gravitational redshift, are not controversial, but can not explain the major amount of redshift of faraway galaxies. The third redshift, the expansion (or cosmological) redshift, that originated the big bang-theory, is controversial (for cosmologists who favour a steady state theory), but is able to explain the major amount of redshift of galaxies: all wavelengths of light are stretched by the expansion of the universe. I would like to suggest here two other (hypothetic) redshifts (which may be related to each other) that (too) may cause the major amount of redshift of galaxies. The redshifts are to be seen of the type of the tired light hypothesis advanced in 1929 by Fritz Zwicky (See: Harrison, H. Cosmology. The science of the universe, page 240. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981): light loses energy progressively while travelling across large distances of extragalactic space. According to Zwicky's tired light hypothesis the vibrations of light are steadily slowed down (which means that the wavelengths become longer) over long periods of time travelling trough the universe, and so the redshift is (also) the result of 'fatigue'. The idea of the tired light phenomenon has died away because so far there has not been a good explanation why light might suffer from 'fatigue' while travelling through the universe.
We take a look again to the in B4 posited (hypothetical) statement: matter disappears because its being, its existence, costs (very little) energy. Let us at the same time look at a light wave/light particle, a photon, that speeds through intergalactic space and suppose that this particle keeps on moving for billions and billions of years without interfering with other radiation or other particles. If the light particle's existence costs energy, then how can we imagine that it is losing energy? The answer may be very simple: by redshifting to a longer wave length (with less energy). This (hypothetic) redshift I call: existence redshift.
Back to the gravitational redshift: if a light wave leaves the Sun then the gravity of the Sun will cost the light wave energy and so the light wave shifts to red. If the light wave falls on the Earth the gravity of the Earth will give the light wave energy and so the light wave shifts to blue (shorter more energy containing waves). Once again the sharp line: is there a point between the Sun and the Earth where the light wave won't be effected by the gravity of the Sun or the Earth at all? Probably not, there will always be gravity forces (of the Sun, Earth, and other planets and stars) that work on the light wave. The same you may say about a light wave that travels through intergalactic space: there will always be (very small) gravitational forces working on the light wave. I don't want to explain that the expansion redshift may have to compete with gravitational (intergalactic) redshift, for the gravitational forces on the light wave are (almost) the same in all directions in intergalactic space; and if not in a certain (intergalactic light wave) case: the gravitational (intergalactic) redshift would be exceedingly small compared with expansion redshift. What I want to emphasize is that, though very small, there are gravitational forces working on the light wave in (intergalactic) space. Now something else: imagine a bullet has been shot away and floats through the air (everywhere equally filled with air particles). Imagine too that there are no gravitational forces (of the Earth) working on the bullet, there are only air particles that diminish the bullets speed because the bullet hits the air particles. Imagine too that (in contrast with the Earth) the air particles do have (strong) gravitational attracting forces working on the bullet. In that case the bullet won't be stopped by the gravitational forces because the gravitational forces are the same in all directions; the bullet will be stopped (or: loses its energy) because it hits the air particles.
Back to the light wave travelling through intergalactic space. How do we have to imagine the gravitational forces of galaxies? If we imagine them as particles (or some (unknown) sort of particle-waves) the light wave may lose energy because it hits gravity particles. The loss of energy then translates itself in redshift of the light wave. This (hypothetic) redshift I call: gravitational decay redshift.
The mentioned gravitational decay redshift may be verified somehow by measuring redshifts of light rays that pass through strong gravitational fields and comparing the measured values with (in other respects equal) light rays that passed through weak gravitational fields. And: could gravitational decay redshift be the explanation for (long and energy-poor) radio waves coming from the centre of our galaxy? And: could gravitational decay redshift (and/or existence redshift) somehow be an explanation for the microwave background radiation? (Expansion redshift initiated the big bang-theory. The big bang-theory predicted a microwave background radiation coming from all directions out of the universe. Since 1965, when the microwave background radiation was discovered with measuring-instruments, the microwave background radiation is seen as the strongest evidence for of the big bang-theory.)
In the case of gravitational decay redshift matter is responsible for its own decay; one may compare this with: matter can exist because of its finity and therefore the existence of matter causes its own finity (B4).
(One may also think of this: is it possible that a photon travels through space for an infinite billions of years without any changing? And if a light wave travelling through space is limited by some kind of maximum `age' then could it be that this `age' limits the distance we can see in the universe?)
B6 beginning versus ending of mass and the universe
If there is redshift of light waves during travelling through the universe because of `existence costs energy' or `hitting against gravity particles' next to, or instead of, expansion redshift then this doesn't mean the big bang-theory is wrong, but certainly it will undermine it. If the big bang-theory turns out to be wrong and if it turns out that there was some kind of `religious' resistance against the idea of abandoning the big bang-idea, then could there be a parallel with believing in a great creator (God)? Because one: our inclination towards an absolute begin? Two: our natural resistance against the feeling that we are only small particles (entities) in an endless ocean of matter? Born without a reason except to be happy during our existence? Three: the resistance against the idea that we are going to end and vanish into absolutely nothing?
If we think about religion and compare it with current (big bang) cosmology then in both cases there is a (powerful creating) begin and there is trouble with the end. Children (and their children) wouldn't have a chance; in fact our generation wouldn't exist, if humans could live for ever. So next to the reason that we must have an end in order to be able to feel that we live (that we exist), there is another reason: we must end to give others a chance. Or: if we never end then others can't begin. I think that there can't be a begin without an end. Like religion the theories with respect to the cosmos deal with the start (of matter and the universe), but have trouble with the end (of matter and the universe). Where it comes to our lifes: we have a begin and an end. But where it concerns life in general: there has not been a begin and there won't be an end if matter can originate from nothing and disappear into nothing, and hence the universe should be seen as infinite in space and time.
From ourselves (or our begin and end) to the smallest mass-particles that ever begun. Particles must have some way to end too, and therefore: energy (= mass) must be able to end, and so: there must be exceptions to the conservation-of-energy principle. A possible exception has been given in B4. Another exception can be found in the big bang-theory: light waves in an expanding universe stretch and hence energy in the expanding universe is not conserved. But: if the expanding universe expands for ever (I won't discuss the possibility of collapsing here, because it gives even less answer to the ending of mass) then that means that there will never be an end and that there will never be a new begin. Of course you can say: if the expansion has reached a very (almost infinite) diluted state then there is `space' for a new begin, a new big bang; but in that case there are endless big bang-universes in an endless time and an endless space (which is all right to me, but not to a large number of cosmologists). It is curious that so many people on this world have problems with the finity of their lifes and that, at the same time, so very many scientists exist who have problems with the infinity of life in general: the infinity of time and space (or: the existence 'somewhere' of matter). Strange, next to people who believe in Paradise, in God, and hence in the infinity of life, stand scientists who believe in the finity of life in general; and perhaps both groups very well may be wrong because they deny respectively the finity of the individual and the infinity of the whole. Both groups may have a wrong perception of the world if life in general turns out to be infinite and our lifes finite. Perhaps that the basis of both denials can be found in the fear for death: people in general (our feelings) are afraid for (their own) death; science (our pure ratio) is afraid for the death of the idea that everything can be understood by ratio. The idea that the most important part of your life can not be caught by our rationality, is the crux of this article: the essence of your life can only be caught, understood, with your feelings.
In my opinion there is, next to the big bang-theory, enough to stand up for the steady state-theory, or even a static steady state-theory with no (overall) expanding universe: a universe that is infinite in both time and space, or: infinite in its continuous and everywhere beginning and ending of (different kinds of?) matter. In fact big bang-theories and steady state-theories may come closer to each other when we concentrate on the only (ever) remaining sharp line: (the why of) appearing and disappearing of matter. To be or not to be, feelings or no feelings, that is what it's all about.
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