Presents the author’s view of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems. These positions together suggest a skeptical or nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and contemporary philosophy that embraces our desire to live as best we can and the relative and psychological reality of values, free will and other phenomena while recognizing limitations on their foundations and our understanding. Readers may want to start with the first entry. - Marc Krellenstein (personal info here)
The Big Bang may explain the origin of the universe but it only provides an explanation up to a certain point in time…or perhaps to the beginning of time itself. It does not explain why there should be space-time or laws of physics that might allow a Big Bang and a universe to emerge from nothing at all. Some object that the question of an explanation or prior cause for the Big Bang is meaningless — how could there be a cause prior in time when there isn’t even time itself? In that case the creation of the universe from nothing, or an equally mysterious infinite sequence of a universe being born and dying (or an infinity of universes), is itself the final answer. But if it is the answer it is one that seems incomplete or literally incomprehensible. Wittgenstein said: “It is not how things are in the world that is mystical but that it exists” (1961, p. 149).