I will need to reread this article many times before I can say
much of anything intelligent about it as there are many concepts to think about.
I did note somethings that I thought I would give you some feedback on.
"If the entire universe was once nothing but empty space then there would have been nothing else either
-- no waves, no fields, no spirits, no beings, no
anything."
From my limited understanding of modern
cosmology, it is not generally believed that there was a time of empty space.
Space and time are to have come into existence and expanded rapidly. From what I
have read, many physicists calculate that the sum of all matter and energy in
the universe (including the estimate of dark mater by gravitational influences)
would neatly match the negative side of the ledger, represented by the loss of
energy that would have been needed to separate the matter and energy against
gravity. It would mean that creation ex nihilo (my Latin spelling is suspect)
would not require any investment in energy by a god or natural
processes.
As far as why there were laws of physics that allow for such
an event, an emergence of existence, there is only speculation. This leads to
another question: Why is there an existent universe with space and time and not
just nothing? It seems more probable to the human mind that there should be
nothing unless there is a preceding cause (God or an infinite course of events).
But probability is dependent on time. Before the existence of time you can not
meaningfully say that an event has low odds of occurring because you can always
frame a probability as "in a certain period of time, event x can be expected to
happen only y number of times.
However you can ask, "Is it logically
consistent that an existence (or causative agent of existence like God or
fairies) could manifest itself especially in a way that could permit intelligent
life?" We know the answer to that is yes because we are here. (if pre-big bang
reality had more than one dimension of time there would not need to be a first
cause - a string has a beginning and an end but a loop does not - God or the
Universe could be self-creating) But you could then ask, "How would the beings
in a 'possible universe' differ from those in an 'actual universe'?" They would
not. There is no experiment that can determine if we are real or just possible.
Damn.
Since quantum mechanics shows properties of existence to be
counter-intuitive (positional existence is mixed with the momentum existence -
smaller spaces and times show greater uncertainty of how much energy exists
there and then - two slit experiments show that a particle can interfere with
its own position to alter the probability of it existing at certain parts of the
pattern) maybe existence and nonexistence are just single faces of one reality.
I hope not though. It will mean I will have to shave my head and wear a
yellow robe.