59 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
59 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
.SH
|
|
Preface
|
|
|
|
.PP
|
|
The preface is about what simplistic ideas we have of the creation of the universe, mostly religious ones.
|
|
Religion argues for an infinite regression that could only be solved by some magic being that conveniently appears to be
|
|
.I infinite
|
|
and
|
|
.I eternal
|
|
so our universe doesn't have to.
|
|
Theologians and religious people are a bit mocked for their many, many dishonest arguments to keep their beliefs.
|
|
For example, the
|
|
.I "Intelligent Design"
|
|
concept, which not only requires to ignore a lot of what we actually
|
|
.B do
|
|
know about life on earth, but also serves as a magic all-in-one concept without any consistency to reject evolution.
|
|
Invoking a god to explain
|
|
.I how
|
|
stuff appears is intellectually lazy and is at best irrelevant.
|
|
|
|
Science is our best effort to understand our universe, and it follows three key principles\*[*]
|
|
.FS
|
|
The following definition really is simplistic and only covers the general idea behind science.
|
|
Do not take it for an absolute definition.
|
|
.FE
|
|
:
|
|
.BULLET
|
|
.UL "follow the evidence"
|
|
wherever it leads;
|
|
.BULLET
|
|
.UL "theories should be tried to prove wrong"
|
|
as much as we try to prove them right;
|
|
.BULLET
|
|
.UL "experiment is the only truth" ,
|
|
not beliefs nor mathematical elegance of a model.
|
|
.ENDBULLET
|
|
Science can make people uncomfortable since it changes how we view the world, and this happened quite a few times in history.
|
|
With recent discoveries, one may even wonder if the
|
|
.I "laws of nature"
|
|
really are fundamentals.
|
|
|
|
Krauss introduces the concept that maybe the universe could come from nothing.
|
|
And
|
|
.I nothing
|
|
is something rather odd, and we don't actually have experienced it so we can't make much assumptions on it.
|
|
First we thought that
|
|
.I nothing
|
|
could be a simple
|
|
.I "quantum vacuum"
|
|
but now we know that a vacuum (a space without any material entity) isn't really nothing since there are still space and time applied to it.
|
|
Even then, we know that space and time can spontaneously appear.
|
|
Since the concept of
|
|
.I nothing
|
|
isn't by any mean trivial to understand, the book
|
|
.[
|
|
a-universe-from-nothing
|
|
.]
|
|
will explain it in details later.
|