Frank, I guess just think of is this way. The universe is. It exists. I don't need multiverses and fine tuning arguments to understand that it exists. In my way of thinking, these are merely stories imagined to support a foregone conclusion that someone really wants to believe in. I say this because these ideas aren't supported by evidence. Rather these are stories woven with evidence through association. Evidence has no opinion. Opinions, most often already formed, drive our inference of what evidence means.

Unlikely universe? Then why are we and the universe here? Maybe it had to be and always has been. For all I know and all you know our universe is all there is and it doesn't need any help being the universe.

For me, the real questions lie in what it is and how it works. Understanding the laws governing the universe. I don't think there is anything special about our time in the universe (though indeed it may be special to each of us as thinking organisms) but in the end and I don't think it a miracle. It's just a physical system governed by the physics of the universe (not yet fully understood).

There are laws at play that inspire me to think the universe may be cyclical. But most prescient is the first law of thermodynamics. I am not aware of any evidence that suggests that energy or matter can be created from nothing. As far as I know, the law has never been observed to be broken. I have no reason to presume that something supernatural usurps the law. It is just much easier to imagine that all the energy existing at the onset of expansion was conserved in a collapse (thus preserving the law).

To be sure, we don't understand what could collapse the universe. We know it isn't gravity. Something in addition to gravity would have bind the universe if it were to collapse. Universal processes must be isoentropic in order to collapse the universe. This would require the universe to be self contained. These are things we already know (or suspect) are required in such a universe. What gives us pause is what this could mean for other ideas we presently consider to be true. In other words, there is much vested in the stories we have told and we might look foolish if we have to admit many of the things we had come to believe are actually false.

Last edited by jpsdad; 03/17/22 05:20 PM.

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers