From: david@edenroad.demon.co.uk   
      
   On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:37:49 -0800, h elmer | espeance wrote:   
      
      
      
   >> What the "mass-belief" crowd also seem to conveniently forget is that the   
   >> Universe seeemd to manage quite well for the ten billion years or so   
   >> before even bacterial life existed on Earth, let alone conscious   
   >> observers; and yet we can take measurements today from just after the Big   
   >> Bang which seem to show the same laws of physics operating as do today.   
      
   > no, what they'd say is that the present gives life to the past and   
   > future, so we're creating that particular version of the universe's   
   > history   
      
   How could there _be_ a present to "give life to" the past, without a past   
   to create it?   
      
   Besides, isn't that a logical contradiction?   
   If the present "gives life to" the future, wasn't time zero once the   
   present, and didn't it therefore "give life to" all the rest of time?   
      
   Or are you saying that it somehow magically requires conscious observers   
   on one particular ball of rock out of hundreds of billions in one random   
   galaxy out of trillions?   
      
   If you are:   
   a) That's quite an ego you have there ;-)   
   b) What _kind_ of observer are you talking about?  Protoplasm?   
   Single-celled life?  Mammal?  Cro-magnon?  Neanderthal?  Homo Sap?   
   And, more to the point, if the conscious observer is required to collapse   
   all the alternative possibilities, how does he do this, since he himself   
   has no more existence than a rock at that point?   
      
   --   
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   = David    --- No, not that one.   
   = Mitchell ---   
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