Please Present The Best Explanation For Our Existence

[bornagainathiest]

 

Interested?

 

BAA.

 

Sure. Go ahead with your explanations. I am always all ear to learn new things.....

 

Ok then, let's start with some questions and see how you deal with them.

 

1.

Do we see the Sun as it is right now, or as it was eight minutes ago?

 

2.

Do we see what the Mars rovers see thru their cameras right now, or do their transmissions take up to twenty minutes to reach us?

 

3.

Do we see the images of Saturn as it is right now or as it was several hours ago.

 

4.

Do we see the nearest star as it is now or as it was four and a bit years ago, that is, the way it looked in 2007?

 

5.

Do we see the North Star (Polaris) as it is now or as it was 434 years ago, that is, the way it looked in 1577?

 

6.

Do we see the Andromeda galaxy (our closest neighbor) as it is now or as it was 2.5 million years ago, that is, the way it looked before human beings were around?

 

7.

Do we see all the galaxies in the Hubble telescope pics as they are now or as they were umpteen billion years ago, before the Earth existed?

 

8.

If we could build a big enough telescope that could look as far as it's possible to see, would we see things as they are now or as they looked in the very, very distant past?

 

9.

What is it that causes these delays?

 

10.

So, is the 'edge' of the universe a real and impenetrable barrier or is it just the limit of how far (and how far back in time) we can see?

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[believeingod]

 

So, is the 'edge' of the universe a real and impenetrable barrier or is it just the limit of how far (and how far back in time) we can see?

 

 

I guess you want me to answer only your last question, right ? Well, i don' t really know. But if sciene says , the universe is expanding, then the question is : expanding into what ? if outside our universe there is no space ? i have no answer to this question.

[mymistake]

We were simply intellectually honest enough to admit the evidence didn't support our belief in god.

 

But you have not been capable so far, to present a more compelling explanation.

 

 

That is not true. P .0000000000000000000000001 > P 0.

 

When it comes to origins of the universe our best science is still in it's infancy. As crude as our understanding is right now it is thousands of years ahead of the blind guess made by Bronze Age priests. If you are just going to define God as the something that came from nothing then you defeat your own arguments. Now if you really want to get good answers get Stephen Hawking's latest book on how Quantum Mechanics might allow something to come from nothing and in turn our universe might be going through an eternal cycle of membrane collisions. Any day now we might discover something that renders current understanding impossible. That is because science self corrects. Bad ideas get thrown out and replaced with better models.

 

MM

[believeingod]

We were simply intellectually honest enough to admit the evidence didn't support our belief in god.

 

But you have not been capable so far, to present a more compelling explanation.

 

 

That is not true. P .0000000000000000000000001 > P 0.

 

When it comes to origins of the universe our best science is still in it's infancy. As crude as our understanding is right now it is thousands of years ahead of the blind guess made by Bronze Age priests. If you are just going to define God as the something that came from nothing then you defeat your own arguments.

 

have you read my posts ? where did i say i believe this ?

 

 

 

 

Now if you really want to get good answers get Stephen Hawking's latest book on how Quantum Mechanics might allow something to come from nothing and in turn our universe might be going through an eternal cycle of membrane collisions. Any day now we might discover something that renders current understanding impossible. That is because science self corrects. Bad ideas get thrown out and replaced with better models.

 

Hawking has became just a bad philosopher. nothing more.

[mymistake]

When it comes to origins of the universe our best science is still in it's infancy. As crude as our understanding is right now it is thousands of years ahead of the blind guess made by Bronze Age priests. If you are just going to define God as the something that came from nothing then you defeat your own arguments.

 

have you read my posts ? where did i say i believe this ?

 

I have read many of your post in this thread. I don't think I read them all. My comment was a response to something you quoted at the end of post #108

 

The answer to "Who created God? Where did God come from?"

 

Perhaps I misunderstood your position. Feel free to clarify.

 

Hawking has became just a bad philosopher. nothing more.

 

You have a doctorate in Quantum Mechanics or are prepared to quote someone who does? How can you so quickly dismiss?

[MagickMonkey]

We were simply intellectually honest enough to admit the evidence didn't support our belief in god.

 

But you have not been capable so far, to present a more compelling explanation.

 

I believe I've given one time and time again. Also, god is no explanation what soever. I'd take no explanation any day over fairy tales. Granted I haven't looked at all the stuff you've thrown out there, but I have looked at some. The links I looked at were not compelling. I don't think you've given a second thought to my suggestions about looking into emergence and complexity. But in any case, I don't see you being convinced of anything. I so no further reason to bother with you. There's no point in me beating this dead horse any longer.

[skepticalme]

That is special pleading.

 

for a long time, it has been supposed, the universe had no beginning, and existed forever. Why is that not special pleading, but God is ?

 

Why are you argueing against a position nobody holds anymore?

 

beside this, how could there have been a time, where absolutely nothing existed, since from absolutely nothing, nothing derives ?

 

Thats the exact same thing that I am saying. There was no time when nothing existed. Time and the universe are coterminus. There cannot be a 'before the universe'. So the universe has quite literally existed for all of time.

 

it is obvious, that there must have been something, that was not created, but existed eternally, without beginning.

 

having a beggining and eternal are not mutually exclusive. Anything that is coterminus with time is eternal. What is the definition of eternal? Eternal means that something has existed for all of time. If the universe and time exist together then the universe is eternal. As I stated before, a line doesn't have to go from +infinity to - infinity to be infinite. Zero to infinity is just as infinite.

 

 

You have created a special catagory that bends the rules to accomedate god. If god can exist uncreated and uncaused, why can't the universe?

 

for several reasons. I wont go into details, you can read them at link below, but all scientific evidence shows our universe had a beginning.

 

http://www.y-origins...hp?p=beginning1

 

Maybe it is a failing of our language and we just don't have another word or concept to descripe it. Perhaps beggining is a poor word to describe the big bang. It is a loaded word that inplies something prior. However, we know that there was no prior to the big bang. Without a 'prior' it is for all intents and purposes, eternal, and any argument you can make for god in this scenario can also be made for the universe since neither have a 'prior'.

 

You are making the false assumption that there was a nothing.

Time exist WITHIN the universe so he universe has quite literally existed for all of time.

 

Time is finite in the past. Otherwise, we would not be here right now.

 

Again, you are disassociating time from the universe. You are assuming that it stretches to negative infinity. The evidence is to the contrary.

 

 

The universe HAS always been in existance.

 

thats not what scientific evidence suggests.

 

Again, you are assuming that there is a negative infinity to time. If time and the universe exist together, then the universe has existed for all of time. Is there any other definition for eternal besides, "for all of time"?

[Astreja]

Why would the truth be contingent upon you feeling subjectively compelled by it?

Excellent point. Reality might very well be upsetting, despair-inducing, impersonal, and a headache to wrap one's head around... But that doesn't make it false.

 

Personally, I find physical cosmology much more compelling than the creator-god hypothesis.

[bornagainathiest]

 

So, is the 'edge' of the universe a real and impenetrable barrier or is it just the limit of how far (and how far back in time) we can see?

 

 

I guess you want me to answer only your last question, right ? Well, i don' t really know. But if sciene says , the universe is expanding, then the question is : expanding into what ? if outside our universe there is no space ? i have no answer to this question.

 

Thank you for your frank admission of ignorance on this question, B.I.G.

 

Nobody knows for sure about the true volume of the universe. Nobody knows with absolute certainty. There are probabilities and there are the logical outcomes of certain theories. That's all.

 

Thank you also for cutting yourself off at the knees, metaphorically speaking.

 

Since nobody knows the true volume of the universe, it therefore follows that nobody can cite any kind of Fine-Tuning argument about it with any kind of certainty. True knowledge of the universe's volume is needed to say if any Constant is universal or not. Ditto for applying any math to arrive at a probability of life's existence. Simply stacking up the number of Constants or conditions won't work either, for the same reason.

 

Therefore, there is no case to be made for the Fine-Tuning argument proving the existence of a Fine Tuner, an Intelligent Designer or a Creator.

 

Thank you for your help in settling this issue.

 

BAA.

[agnosticator]

I find Deism much more rational then Christianity.

 

That was an interesting article that you linked. I, myself, agree most with naturalistic pantheism, or philosophically, monist physicalist pantheism. I see God as the eternal, mysterious force/energy/matter of life itself, rather than a Mind that created all. Everything evolves from God Itself.

[Vigile]

Quick question, if the universe is fine tuned for life, what's the purpose of the trillions of suns, planets, astroids, et al that are seemingly lifeless and that have no impact on life on earth?

 

Saying the universe is fine tuned seems like saying a volcano is fine tuned for life because a colony of bacteria were found to have adapted themselves to living in its outer core.

[believeingod]

Quick question, if the universe is fine tuned for life, what's the purpose of the trillions of suns, planets, astroids, et al that are seemingly lifeless and that have no impact on life on earth?

 

Saying the universe is fine tuned seems like saying a volcano is fine tuned for life because a colony of bacteria were found to have adapted themselves to living in its outer core.

 

http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/big-theories/recipe-for-the-universe-just-six-numbers-page-2-1_1230.html

 

The tremendous timespans involved in biological evolution offer a new perspective on the question 'why is our Universe so big?' The emergence of human life here on Earth has taken 4.5 billion years. Even before our Sun and its planets could form, earlier stars must have transmuted pristine hydrogen into carbon, oxygen and the other atoms of the periodic table. This has taken about ten billion years. The size of the observable Universe is, roughly, the distance travelled by light since the Big Bang, and so the present visible Universe must be around ten billion light-years across.

The galaxy pair NGC 6872 and IC 4970 indicate the vastness of the Universe. Light from the bright foreground star has taken a few centuries to reach us; the light from the galaxies has been travelling for 300 million years. The Universe must be this big - as measured by the cosmic number N - to give intelligent life time to evolve. In addition, the cosmic numbers omega and Q must have just the right values for galaxies to form at all.

This is a startling conclusion. The very hugeness of our Universe, which seems at first to signify how unimportant we are in the cosmic scheme, is actually entailed by our existence! This is not to say that there couldn't have been a smaller universe, only that we could not have existed in it. The expanse of cosmic space is not an extravagant superiority; it's a consequence of the prolonged chain of events, extending back before our Solar System formed, that preceded our arrival on the scene.

This may seem a regression to an ancient 'anthropocentric' perspective - something that was shattered by Copernicus's revelation that the Earth moves around the Sun rather than vice versa. But we shouldn't take Copernican modesty (some-times called the 'principle of mediocrity') too far. Creatures like us require special conditions to have evolved, so our perspective is bound to be in some sense atypical. The vastness of our universe shouldn't surprise us, even though we may still seek a deeper explanation for its distinctive features.

 

<

[Vigile]

Necessary for human evolution. What am I missing here?

[believeingod]

 

 

Perhaps I misunderstood your position. Feel free to clarify.

 

I think you rather did not see my answer :

 

http://www.everystudent.com/wires/created.html

 

If something comes into being, it must have been prompted by something else. A book has an author. Music has a music artist. A party has a party-thrower! All things that begin, that have a start, have a cause to their beginning.

 

Consider the universe. Scientists once held to the "steady-state" theory, that the universe has always existed without beginning.

 

Cosmological evidence now refers to the "Big bang" as the point in time that the universe came into being. Our space-time-matter-energy universe had a distinct and singular beginning.

 

Since it did not always exist, but came into existence (had a singular beginning), then some other reality must have caused or created it.1

 

Everything we observe in nature has a beginning. God however is in a different category, and must be so. God is different from all nature and humanity and everything that exists, in that he has always existed, independent from anything he created. God is not a dependent being, but self-sufficient, self-existent. And this is exactly how the Bible describes God, and how God has revealed himself to be. Why must God be this way?

 

Our universe cannot be explained any other way. It could not have created itself. It has not always existed. And it could not be created by something that itself is created. Why not?

 

It isn't coherent to argue that the universe was created by God, but God was in turn created by God to the second power, who was in turn created by God to the third power, and so on. As Aristotle cogently argued, there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin.

 

 

 

You have a doctorate in Quantum Mechanics or are prepared to quote someone who does? How can you so quickly dismiss?

 

Rather than go into why i dismiss it, i prefere you first expose, what exactly you understand about the subject, and why it convinces you, that through it, God is not necessary.

[mymistake]

Quick question, if the universe is fine tuned for life, what's the purpose of the trillions of suns, planets, astroids, et al that are seemingly lifeless and that have no impact on life on earth?

 

Saying the universe is fine tuned seems like saying a volcano is fine tuned for life because a colony of bacteria were found to have adapted themselves to living in its outer core.

 

http://www.firstscie...e-2-1_1230.html

 

 

The tremendous timespans involved in biological evolution offer a new perspective on the question 'why is our Universe so big?' The emergence of human life here on Earth has taken 4.5 billion years. Even before our Sun and its planets could form, earlier stars must have transmuted pristine hydrogen into carbon, oxygen and the other atoms of the periodic table. This has taken about ten billion years. The size of the observable Universe is, roughly, the distance travelled by light since the Big Bang, and so the present visible Universe must be around ten billion light-years across.

The galaxy pair NGC 6872 and IC 4970 indicate the vastness of the Universe. Light from the bright foreground star has taken a few centuries to reach us; the light from the galaxies has been travelling for 300 million years. The Universe must be this big - as measured by the cosmic number N - to give intelligent life time to evolve. In addition, the cosmic numbers omega and Q must have just the right values for galaxies to form at all.

This is a startling conclusion. The very hugeness of our Universe, which seems at first to signify how unimportant we are in the cosmic scheme, is actually entailed by our existence! This is not to say that there couldn't have been a smaller universe, only that we could not have existed in it.

<

 

The most startling thing about that conclusion is the fallacies and assumptions needed to arrive there. Vigile makes a powerful point. Since over 99.9% of our universe is hostile to Earth life that isn't what "fine tuned" means. Claims about a tuner fall flat. Maybe there is a God who created our universe. If so, then I wonder why God made it look like our universe and life on this planet came to exist without a creator.

[believeingod]

I don't think you've given a second thought to my suggestions about looking into emergence and complexity.

 

Why should complexity point to a natural origin, and not intelligent ?

[believeingod]

So the universe has quite literally existed for all of time.

 

Which is since time existed, that is, since the Big Bang.

 

it is obvious, that there must have been something, that was not created, but existed eternally, without beginning.

 

 

If the universe and time exist together then the universe is eternal.

 

i don't follow you. Why is that so ? If time and the universe began with the Big Bang, than both are not eternal , but finite.

 

 

Zero to infinity is just as infinite.

 

Starting at 0, than 1 , 2 .and so forth, indicates a beginning......

 

 

 

Without a 'prior' it is for all intents and purposes, eternal

 

Why ? The universe is by all means finite, and began to exist with the Big Bang. Therefore, its not eternal.

 

Again, you are disassociating time from the universe. You are assuming that it stretches to negative infinity. The evidence is to the contrary.

 

No, i just say the universe had a beginning, and so time. No negative infinity is proposed.

 

 

The universe HAS always been in existance.

 

Again, you are assuming that there is a negative infinity to time. If time and the universe exist together, then the universe has existed for all of time. Is there any other definition for eternal besides, "for all of time"?

 

The universe exists for all time that time exists. aka since the Big Bang. Prior there was nothing physical.

[believeingod]

Why would the truth be contingent upon you feeling subjectively compelled by it?

Excellent point. Reality might very well be upsetting, despair-inducing, impersonal, and a headache to wrap one's head around... But that doesn't make it false.

 

Personally, I find physical cosmology much more compelling than the creator-god hypothesis.

 

Physical cosmology does not explain our existence. It explains the properties of the universe......

[believeingod]

 

 

Since nobody knows the true volume of the universe, it therefore follows that nobody can cite any kind of Fine-Tuning argument about it with any kind of certainty.

 

I don't get it : what has one thing to do with the other ? Our solar system for example is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. Nothing of all that has to do with the expansion of the universe.

 

True knowledge of the universe's volume is needed to say if any Constant is universal or not.

 

ANY constant NO.... maibe one of the fundamental constants of the universe. But i still do not " get " the correlation of one thing, with the other.

 

 

Ditto for applying any math to arrive at a probability of life's existence. Simply stacking up the number of Constants or conditions won't work either, for the same reason.

 

Just one fine tune constant shows how improbable chance is.

 

 

http://biologos.org/questions/fine-tuning/

 

"A bottom-up approach to cosmology either requires one to postulate an initial state of the Universe that is carefully fine-tuned — as if prescribed by an outside agency — or it requires one to invoke the notion of eternal inflation, a mighty speculative notion to the generation of many different Universes, which prevents one from predicting what a typical observer would see." — Stephen Hawking

 

 

Therefore, there is no case to be made for the Fine-Tuning argument proving the existence of a Fine Tuner, an Intelligent Designer or a Creator.

 

If it were that easy, atheists would not be desperate searching for explanations for fine tuning, coming up with fantasious explanations as the multiverse proposal.

[believeingod]

I find Deism much more rational then Christianity.

 

That was an interesting article that you linked. I, myself, agree most with naturalistic pantheism, or philosophically, monist physicalist pantheism. I see God as the eternal, mysterious force/energy/matter of life itself, rather than a Mind that created all. Everything evolves from God Itself.

 

Than God would be finite, since matter / energy is finite.

[PatrickG]

Than God would be finite, since matter / energy is finite.

 

And what is wrong with that?

 

All things come to an end, as far as we can tell.

 

Our Ideas about God are finite.

 

We may well figure it all out and then it is over..............................Enjoy life in the now.

[Ouroboros]

Quick question, if the universe is fine tuned for life, what's the purpose of the trillions of suns, planets, astroids, et al that are seemingly lifeless and that have no impact on life on earth?

 

Saying the universe is fine tuned seems like saying a volcano is fine tuned for life because a colony of bacteria were found to have adapted themselves to living in its outer core.

One scientist once said, The universe is fine tuned for black holes, because there are a lot more of them than us.

[Ouroboros]

Quick question, if the universe is fine tuned for life, what's the purpose of the trillions of suns, planets, astroids, et al that are seemingly lifeless and that have no impact on life on earth?

 

Saying the universe is fine tuned seems like saying a volcano is fine tuned for life because a colony of bacteria were found to have adapted themselves to living in its outer core.

 

http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/big-theories/recipe-for-the-universe-just-six-numbers-page-2-1_1230.html

 

The tremendous timespans involved in biological evolution offer a new perspective on the question 'why is our Universe so big?' The emergence of human life here on Earth has taken 4.5 billion years. Even before our Sun and its planets could form, earlier stars must have transmuted pristine hydrogen into carbon, oxygen and the other atoms of the periodic table. This has taken about ten billion years. The size of the observable Universe is, roughly, the distance travelled by light since the Big Bang, and so the present visible Universe must be around ten billion light-years across.

The galaxy pair NGC 6872 and IC 4970 indicate the vastness of the Universe. Light from the bright foreground star has taken a few centuries to reach us; the light from the galaxies has been travelling for 300 million years. The Universe must be this big - as measured by the cosmic number N - to give intelligent life time to evolve. In addition, the cosmic numbers omega and Q must have just the right values for galaxies to form at all.

This is a startling conclusion. The very hugeness of our Universe, which seems at first to signify how unimportant we are in the cosmic scheme, is actually entailed by our existence! This is not to say that there couldn't have been a smaller universe, only that we could not have existed in it. The expanse of cosmic space is not an extravagant superiority; it's a consequence of the prolonged chain of events, extending back before our Solar System formed, that preceded our arrival on the scene.

This may seem a regression to an ancient 'anthropocentric' perspective - something that was shattered by Copernicus's revelation that the Earth moves around the Sun rather than vice versa. But we shouldn't take Copernican modesty (some-times called the 'principle of mediocrity') too far. Creatures like us require special conditions to have evolved, so our perspective is bound to be in some sense atypical. The vastness of our universe shouldn't surprise us, even though we may still seek a deeper explanation for its distinctive features.

 

<

Oh cool. so you do believe in evolution. I was under the impression you didn't.

[sdelsolray]

The quest is not to present proof's for God's existence, or non existence. We cannot proove conclusively either one of them.

But we can rationalize, and try to figure out what might be the best explanation for our existence. So i ask you to present a alternative to God, which makes more sense. Since you probably do not believe anymore

that a God creator of our universe exists, you have left as alternative naturalism. Please explain , why you think naturalism has a better explanation, and present this explanation.

Please do not rely your argumentation on a negative, aka, i do NOT believe in God, because Genesis does not make sense, for example. I want to see positive arguments. A world view and explanation, which stands by its own.

 

The simple and general explanation:

 

Naturalism explains existence better than Christian religious beliefs because:

 

1) It fits all of the available empirical evidence;

 

2) It utilizes the scientific method; and

 

3) It employs rational thinking and rules of logic.

 

I'm sure there are other reasons that I cannot think of right now.

 

In contrast, Christian religious beliefs do none of these things. This particular religion is primarily based on wishful thinking, belief without empirical evidence, anthropocentrism and apologetics.

 

More specifically addressing your question:

 

The best explanation for our existence is cause and effect subject to physical laws and constants operating with uniformity upon matter and energy. Of course, this explanation is tentative, and based on current empirical evidence. Feel free to falsify it utilizing the same intellectual rigor and honesty upon which it is based.

[agnosticator]

I find Deism much more rational then Christianity.

 

That was an interesting article that you linked. I, myself, agree most with naturalistic pantheism, or philosophically, monist physicalist pantheism. I see God as the eternal, mysterious force/energy/matter of life itself, rather than a Mind that created all. Everything evolves from God Itself.

 

Than God would be finite, since matter / energy is finite.

 

Not necessarily. I think this guy is correct (from another site in a comments section):

No one knows. The theory that best explains universe at the moment is general relativity, and it allows for several different scenarios. The universe can be infinite, or it can be bent so much that if you go far enough in one direction you will get back to the same point you started from. In the second case the universe as a whole is very much like the surface of the earth, follow a stright line and you will eventually come back to where you started from.

 

The universe is expanding, and could expand infinitely.

 

 

The ultimate fate of the universe is still unknown, because it depends critically on the curvature index k and the cosmological constant Λ. If the universe is sufficiently dense, k equals +1, meaning that its average curvature throughout is positive and the universe will eventually recollapse in a Big Crunch, possibly starting a new universe in a Big Bounce. Conversely, if the universe is insufficiently dense, k equals 0 or −1 and the universe will expand forever, cooling off and eventually becoming inhospitable for all life, as the stars die and all matter coalesces into black holes (the Big Freeze and the heat death of the universe). As noted above, recent data suggests that the expansion speed of the universe is not decreasing as originally expected, but increasing; if this continues indefinitely, the universe will eventually rip itself to shreds (the Big Rip). Experimentally, the universe has an overall density that is very close to the critical value between recollapse and eternal expansion; more careful astronomical observations are needed to resolve the question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe

 

 

Even without dark energy, a negatively curved universe expands forever, with gravity barely slowing the rate of expansion. With dark energy, the expansion not only continues but accelerates. The ultimate fate of an open universe is either universal heat death, the "Big Freeze", or the "Big Rip", where the acceleration caused by dark energy eventually becomes so strong that it completely overwhelms the effects of the gravitational, electromagnetic and weak binding forces.

http://en.wikipedia....of_the_universe