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Comment by raamdev | Hacker News Reader

For the past 26 years my dad has told me it has. He says this big bang is just one of many big bangs and that big bangs have been going on for an infinite amount of time (forever).

He also told me about particles smaller than atoms before quarks were moved from theory to fact. I never really thought much about all the stuff he told me until I started hearing of discoveries and theories about the same stuff.

He studies Sanskrit and the Vedas.

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No disrespect, but to assume there must be smaller and smaller particles than atoms and there must have been universes before ours is probably much more obvious and comforting than trying to think up wave mechanics or explain singularity.

Scientifically, your dads words carry no more merit than that old lady who thought "its the turtles all the way" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

None taken. My dad is a writer by profession (he was a technical writer while I was young, and that lead me to computers and programming). He is by no means scientific in anything he says or does and he always taught me and my siblings to think for ourselves and never take anything as fact simply because someone said so.

I was just sharing that I thought it was amazing how there are texts (the Vedas) that have been around for thousands and thousands of years that basically state as fact the very stuff people are discovering today. Most people would agree that it's absurd to say that people even one thousand years ago knew about atoms and the big bang, and yet there seem to be books that say they did.

My dad does appear to assume a lot of stuff, and we have argued (debated) on topics for hours and hours. But as someone who believes that it's statistically guaranteed that we're not alone in the universe, I also believe it's equally as probable that people knew about, and wrote about, stuff we're "discovering" today.

" ... here are texts (the Vedas) that have been around for thousands and thousands of years that basically state as fact the very stuff people are discovering today. "

There's a huge difference between a broad claim to there being things smaller than we can see and specifically describing these things ands how they interact.

These texts are thousands of years old and they say something about reality that isn't wrong! There were thousands of years of religion following that get the nature of reality wrong.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

I think you are correct, in fact this is common, at least to historians. It doesn't take many generations for knowledge to be lost. Look at how much is reinvented and rediscovered every so many years in computer programming :)

http://www.ams.org/mathmedia/archive/03-2007-media.html

There is also thought to be connections between ancient Taoist texts and physics.

Also the Greeks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_theory#Philosophical_ato...

And there's the Greek concepts of cosmos and chaos. That's not to say the Indo-Aryans weren't there first. Just that there appears to be something primal in these concepts to very early cultures. In populated areas, I think we've forgotten the impact of looking up at the nightly stars. Artificial light, whenever we need it, also seems to take the shine off that wonder.

I remember the first time I thought about an infinite array, in time and space, of big bangs. It's a cool thought especially with the realization that we're thinking it while stranded on a tiny, wet rock floating in the middle of nowhere.

I noticed you're already down to (-1) and seem to be new to the site... Just a little pro-tip, don't bring out any views around here that go against the tenets of scientific naturalism.

If you do, you're generally assumed to be yet another irrational religious fundamentalist and the drive-by downmods will come faster than you could imagine. Awhile ago I couldn't even discuss design theory in contrast to biological evolution without getting dismissed as someone irrational who just had an axe to grind.

The problem of course is that naturalism has it's own limit or else it too becomes dogmaticism. There's stuff we just can't know from empirical observation. Indeed, I'd argue the question "why" has a genesis just beyond rational thought. Empiricism might help to explain away those urges but I don't see how it will ever address their origin.

I'd like to say that you're mistaking HN with Reddit. I'd like to say that the people who are on HN are not so dense as to downmod legitimately intelligent discussion simply because they have a vendetta against religion. I'd like to say that people on HN are modded based on the content, not the subject, of their posts.

I'd like to say that. But this is, after all, the Internet.

I'm relatively new here, so thanks for the tip! I consider myself very science-oriented and I dislike religion. I didn't even realize my comment might be viewed as going "against the naturalistic worldview", but now I know better. :)

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