Qualifications, and method

What I have put up so far is the result of some decades kicking around ideas and firming them up, and there are some more of those to come, but from now on I'll mainly be dotting around new territory.

What am I doing writing about this (arguably) biggest subject of all? Apart from a long-term and prevailing interest, I did a short Philosophy of Science course in my engineering degree in the 70s, I attended church regularly as a youth and for some brief periods since, I have read much science fiction (again mainly in the late 70s) of the practical kind of Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Azimov. In a 1st year University science course I did modules on relativity, and thermodynamics. I have to admit that both were beyond me academically, but some principles stuck, in particular the stunning simplicity of the energy-mass relationship e=m c^2, and the fact that the entropy (degree of chaos) of the universe is increasing. The existence of the Internet, for example, appears to belie that, but who can argue against the principles of thermodynamics? (I abbreviated it to TDS (=T(temperature)deltaS(entropy)) = tedious or TDM = tedium = Te Deum. Obscure coincidental connections, or what?) But I'd be the first to admit that I am not academically qualified to find answers in Cosmology. I just got tired of waiting for the professionals to get results from their very large particle accelerators. Hubble mus be the best telescope we have, there will be huge amounts of scientific data obtained, but the best value I have seen is in images showing the beauty of the distant universe.

Regarding method, I am using this blog to attract interest and discussion from people who are prepared to keep content at a level that ordinary but informed people can follow. The Internet gives this capability of the first time, to reach a very large number of people (and hence a fair number of active contributors) with a reasonable quality of discussion. We may not be well-informed about the scientific evidence, but have a deep pool of intuition and imagination.

For clues about where I'm going with this, I'll close now with the observations (a) that human perception is key to this part of the universe's understanding of itself - it is not the facts that matter, but what they mean to us. And (b) that religion plays a major part of our understanding. People can reconcile Science and Religion, but only by agreeing to disagree, I would suggest.