Hubbard seemed to be obsessed with the past, going back ever further attempting to discover “the beginning of existence”, assuming such an event is possible. There are numerous speculations in theoretical physics about “existence” like what existed before the big bang.

Here’s something from an Objectivism type philosophy called Neo-Tech presented by Frank R. Wallace. Here’s a brief excerpt from wiki about Objectivism which was originally developed by Ayn Rand.

[Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral[3] and opposed collectivism and statism as well as anarchism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system based on recognizing individual rights, including property rights.[4] In art, Rand promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and classical liberals.[5]]

Here is part of Wallace’s take on “existence”.

[The questions “Who Created Existence” and “Why of the Universe” are ancient, mind-subverting gimmicks of positing invalid, intellectually untenable questions that have no basis in reality. That false-question maneuver has been used by theologians and mystics for centuries.

………………………………………..(these questions) cannot or need never be answered because no causal explanations are needed for *existence* or the universe. Existence is axiomatic. It just exists; it always has and always will exist. Nothing created it and no causal explanation is needed or valid.]

Neo-Tech made money by selling pricey books promising Prosperity, Happiness and Romantic Love. Wallace trashed Scientology for it’s mysticism, yet later espoused a theory that million year advanced beings called Zon’s were influencing life on earth which got him trashed by true Objectivists. I guess book sales got slow and he needed a new twist.

Good luck with that. “News” is a business, just as straight entertainment is a business. Their purpose is not to inform you. Their purpose is to to SELL you something. If they inform you correctly along the way, fine. If correctly informing you threatens the sale of their product, you will not be correctly informed. They’re selling products and these products have their markets and the “news” is pitched to satisfy the various and varying demographics who buy their products. Sponsors rule, advertisers rule. This is why O’Reilly got kicked off the air. This is why Roseanne got kicked off the air. This is why PBS severed ties with Charlie Rose – not because of sponsors but because many who lean Left politically support PBS and his sex harrassment thing threatened donations. This is why Steve Bannon had to step down from Breitbart – their billionaire backer, Rebekkah Mercer, didn’t like the way he criticized Trump, so he was out of his keester pretty fast after Fire and Fury came out. This is why the Cult of Scientology targeted (unsuccessfully) the A &E ADVERTISERS who Sponsored Aftermath – to bully, shame and/or thrreaten them into dropping the show AND to get the general public to boycott their products.. If most people truly wanted to be informed, we would be. But the problem with being truly informed is that a person has to leave his or her comfort zone. Most people are incapable of leaving their comfort zones and just want to be “made right”. Anything they don’t agree with is “slanted” and very upsetting to them. Pissed off people stop reading, stop viewing. They’ll stop watching, they’ll stop reading that newspaper: they’ll cancel their subscriptions to that magazine. On the other hand, if they’re allowed to stay in their bubble, in their comfort zone, they’ll tell you that what they’re viewing or reading is NOT biased, no not in the least, its fair and accurate reporting!

And I might add that many print news outlets engage in bad fake news too. I wish journalists would get their integrity back and report the actual and verifiable news, as do we all.

That’s 4,000,000,000,000,000 years ago.

I don’t believe any estimate of the universe’s age because it changes, much like the predictions for the End of the Earth.”

What I’ve seen has pretty steadily approached 14 Billion years.Asfaar as I’m concerned, 13.7 and 13.8, both of which I’ve seen mentioned recently, are close enough as makes no matter to 14 Billion that I’m comfortable with using that figure. But Tubby’s wild outlier number is SO far off the mark! He couldn’t comprehend so MANY things, mis-duplicated most of the schooling he was supposed to have taken, but skipped out on to do other things which interested him (that day), like story ideas, flying, or even better, fictional flying stories.

Aquamarine:”WHERE’S THE BEEF?” There never was any beef, only the piece of blue sky Hubbard was selling. In my programming days, we might have called it “vaporware”, but that would have been an insult to vaporware, which SOMEone usually wanted to produce eventually. As I see it, Hubbard never intended to deliver on his promises and couldn’t have even if he’d tried. His basic premises were fatally flawed, and couldn’t have served as a foundation for anything other than the enslavement he did accomplish.

IMO, if you can’t do basic Math, you’re hardly house-broken, never mind being up to the level of “human” *I* was introduced to Algebra when I was sick in bed in 3rd grade; a way to keep me occupied and *quiet* for a few minutes. If course, ours was an engineering household, where Math and science were required subjects)