The Big Bang and Relative Immortality: Seminal Essays on the Creation of the Universe and the Advent of Biological Immortality

145 Pages·2008·0.64 MB·English

by  Sebastian Sisti

T B B
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T B B
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S e
eminal SSayS on
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The ReaTion of The niveRSe

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The dvenT of iologiCal mmoRTaliTy
Sebastian Sisti
Algora Publishing
New York
© 2008 by Algora Publishing.
All Rights Reserved
www.algora.com
No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by
Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the
express written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data —
Sisti, Sebastian.
The big bang and relative immortality : seminal essays on the creation of the
universe and the advent of biological immortality / Sebastian Sisti.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-87586-606-2 (trade paper : alk. paper) — ISBN
978-0-87586-607-9 (hard cover: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-87586-608-6 (ebook:
alk. paper) 1. Cosmology, Ancient. 2. Immortality. 3. Immortalism. I. Title.
BD495.S57 2008
113—dc22
2008017167
Front Cover: Big Bang Theory: Synthesized Image Taken By Satellite Cobe
Image: © Jeffrey Markowitz/Sygma/Corbis
Photographer: Jeffrey Markowitz
Date Photographed: April 1, 1992
Printed in the United States
T C
aBleof onTenTS
ChapTeR 1. Big BangiSm 1
The Ancient Greek Philosophers 1
Teetering on a Two-Legged Stool 2
The Second Law Denies the First Law 3
Running Down of Universe Implies a Perfect State of Beginning 3
Expansion and Contraction Does Not Deny First Law 4
What Nothing Means, Or Should Mean 4
The Folly of a Protogenesis 5
Conversion and Timing Factors 5
No Parts, Only Wholes 6
If It’s Finite, It Has an Edge 7
The Necessity of a Void 8
Protogenesis Within a Void 9
Plucking a Point from a Line 9
The Impenetrability of Fused Entities 10
Motion as the Fourth Dimension 11
The Alternatives to Motion as the Fourth Dimension 11
Newton’s Concept 12
The Alternative of Force Particles 13
Impenetrability Works Two Ways 14
vii
The Big Bang and Relative Immortality
Structuring the Folly of Protogenesis 15
Fusing the Conversion and the Timing Factors 16
Why Something Cannot Become Something Else 17
The Universe Always Was and Always Will Be 18
ChapTeR 2. Walking ThRoUgh infiniTy 21
Emergence Implies a Context within which to Emerge 22
An Infinitely Dormant Void? 22
The Problem Is the Presumption of a Beginning 23
The Void Must Be Infinite 24
Is the Void Chock Full of Energy? 25
Filling in the Spaces 26
Like a Flotilla of Eddington Balloons Popping
All Over the Place 27
ChapTeR 3. falling TReeS 2 9
Absolute Idealism 29
Subjective Idealism 29
God as the Ever-Present Perceiver 30
The Presumption of a Self 30
A Self Is Not Revealed in Experience 31
Meditation Does Not Reveal a Self 32
God as a Mathematician 32
Buddha the Materialist 32
Plato’s Old Souls 33
The Probable Origin of Belief in Souls 33
God Would Have Known That Something Cannot Become
Something Else 34
The Interaction of Soul and Cell 34
No Immortality in the Old Testament 35
Berkeley’s Folly 36
ChapTeR 4. The impRoBaBle Being of god 37
Jehovah as God 37
Jehovah’s Continuous Being 38
viii
Table of Contents
A Crazy Idea 38
No Beginnings 39
A Divine Existence? 39
Absolute Idealism 40
To Be Divine Is To Be Immortal 40
A Savagely Cruel God 42
Did Genesis Create Jehovah in Our Image? 43
Whom Can We Blame for Our Mortality? 44
The Redeemer 44
ChapTeR 5. pRogReSSive evolUTion 4 7
Natural Selection 47
Good Mutations 47
Lamarck’s Theory 48
The “Invisible Hand” 48
Modern Theory of Natural Selection 49
Best Genes 49
Progressive Evolution 49
Devolution 50
Static Evolution 50
Genetic Determinism 51
Biological Immortality 51
Extended Life Spans 52
Nature Does Not Leap 53
Lucy 53
This Cycle of Evolution Still Incomplete 54
Evidence of Evolutionary Immortality 55
ChapTeR 6. RelaTive immoRTaliTy 59
All Living Things Are Headed for Immortality 60
The Sound of Our Atoms 60
The Hayflick Limit 61
Henrietta’s Cells 62
The Discovery of Telomeres 62
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