Did a God or Gods create the universe? EDITED
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@krisidious said:
... until there is more proof, the only honest religion is the agnostic one.
The Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac sits up all night wondering if there really is a DOG.
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well you said you were betting your life... and if you want to be real, you're not. it's just your afterlife slip on Snuggie that you're betting. so there is no real risk in being an Atheist, you simply do whatever you feel to be right. the christian or any other god lover has to live his life in a certain way, often sacrificing in some form or another, doing things he/she might not normally do... what if you tithed, volunteered, shaved your head, cut your penis, sacrificed your goat and gave up all those wonderful sins all your life only to wake up dead after death... no afterlife. now that's betting.
and what if you die and wake up in an afterlife? being the reasonable person I've found you to be I'm sure you would acknowledge your error and get on with things... how bad could it be? eternal life. (although I'm not to hip on spending eternity worshiping someone.) I mean pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity doesn't sound all that bad... at least you'd have your mind.
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Yes He did....in a puff of smoke.
You really like stirring things, don't you Mike?
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I'd just like to know how to get the figs in a fig roll.
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Is this logical:
Any entity whose conceptual recognition does not involve a necessary reference to any definite actual entities of the temporal world is called an eternal object"
No one can create eternal object, because if one creates an object, it is from start connected to him, which means it is not eternal by definition.
So, eternal object can not be created, (has no parent)...everything else can.
Every created object has its parent - creator...creator of creator...etc. ...so if there was a point in the past (BIG BANG) which had no parents, it had to be eternal object.
Man of course can not conceive eternal object because of its nature of not connected to anything, but it is burning inside as energy of life (love) - faith. To make it closer to people every religion has its human form.
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Let's try to understand what we're saying here.
Especially Pete, the most "mystical" among us. This "c'mon lets be real" pete...
Some Ludwig Wittgenstein's quotes.
-The world is all that is the case.
-The world is the totality of facts, not things.
-It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true.
-The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
-The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world.
-Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
-The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
-doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
-There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
And of course...
-Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. -
And to continue with Michalis' list (and which can at least be adopted for SketchUp works too)
- Every problem has a solution. Whatever does not have a solution is not a problem.
(BTW does/will this debate have a solution?) -
The question of whether [or not] 'God' created the universe, in no way requires a sentient being to have a 'soul' [or not]...
Conversely whether [or not] a sentient being has a soul, in no way demonstrates that there is a 'God' [or not]...
They are quite separate questions and issues...Now... onto the question of a 'soul'...
As set out in my earlier post, as sentient [human] beings we all agree [I hope!] that we have an existence outside of the physical universe - in our consciousness, thoughts and memories etc - which do not reside in the physical realm at all; however, to me it's quite clear that they do need the physical universe for their very existence - so the countless hyper-complex electro-chemical interactions in our brains and our interactions with the external world are what we consider to be our 'self'. If you destroy/heavily-damaged the physical brain then the 'self' is 'gone'.
So it is possible for 'something' to exist outside of the 'real' physical universe, whilst relying on that 'real' universe for its very continuance. If you equate 'self' with the 'soul' then it means this 'soul' is not then necessarily immortal...
However, an interesting hypothesis... if you consider your 'self' as the manifestation of a computer-program-like process happening in your brain, then there is a possibility that this process could continue after death when the brain ceases to function in its usual same way - for even in decay it is still 'functioning' at some level [albeit useless for your self's continuance]...
So let's backtrack for a minute... if you have a computer programs running it consists of a complex set of instructions and interactions of data, and it all happens very quickly - nows let's suppose you have the 'rules' of that computer-program clearly set out for you, and some pencils and a wad of paper... you could replicate what the computer-program did in a second, but by longhand it might take you a week to get to the same answer. So the 'process' can run independent of the 'machinery' on which it's running. It just comes down to 'timescale' - you take a week to do it longhand, whilst a computer takes a second. The core processes that make up 'you' [aka 'self'] run on the 'processor' called your brain, and these of course give rise to your [illusion of] consciousness [aka 'of being' - existence]. If we were skilled enough we could decode that process-program, then transfer it to another 'processor' [which doesn't need to be the same type - so 'brain' could then become 'hyper-computer'], then supposedly the 'self' resulting from the process would be cloned too and it could consider 'itself' conscious/existing - of course our perception includes all kinds of interactions with our senses and bodies too, so the cloned 'self' is unlikely to consider itself to be an exact replicant of the original [at least not after after the initial shock wears off!]. The alternative processor would almost certainly run at a different speed to the original, so a single thought might take a week rather than a second [or vice versa], but that thought would still happen, and although interaction with the outside [perhaps through new sensory add-ons] would be possible these interactions would be quite different to our 'normal' experience.Now if we accept that we could [given enough time, money, effort etc] replicate a 'self/soul' onto an alternative processor then that new 'self/soul' could become effectively 'immortal' as long as there were enough physical processors made available for it to run on as time passed [until of course the universe dies of 'entropy' - but then that'd be an end to 'everything', a bit like the start was from 'nothing' the end is 'entropy'].
So let's now make another jump... If we accept that we could replicate a 'self/soul' by 'manual' means. then who's to say it doesn't happen 'naturally'. If at the moment of death [of your brain] your self/soul-processes could slip into another existence, so they are now running on an alternative low-level processor - perhaps as interactions in a 'field' [beloved by both physicists and Mr Spock] - then you would continue to 'exist' in some form, and although you might take a century to have a single thought the thought would still happen [or conversely all of your thoughts, ever, might appear to happen in an instant when viewed by us mere mortals]; however, because of the inevitable timescale issues in this alternative processing scenario 'you' could never perceive the world as it exists for us other main-brainers, let alone communicate/interact with us: although perhaps would could detect other 'independent' processes running on the same 'field' as yours and somehow interact with them... So 'consciousness' could be a process that exists at many different levels of being, it doesn't necessarily need a 'brain' - although that is the main processor that we know off it could be acted out on other processors too.
So, is your 'self/soul' a result of your 'consciousness' or vice versa, or perhaps they are manifestations of the same thing ? Either way 'you' could exist outside of your brain, but of course without your brain and all of its add-on senses etc you would be a very different 'being' - unrecognizable to us and vive versa !
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@alan fraser said:
Yes He did....in a puff of smoke.
You really like stirring things, don't you Mike?Yep!
However the older I get the more I think about this. Like many it was ingrained into me that there is a God and an afterlife of some type. I have not ruled out the God part of it totally but I have ruled out the afterlife as outlined. As Stephen Hawkings says at the end of the documentary, this is our lot. Make the best of it and !!!
As far as I am concerned my remains will dissolve back into the Universe and form parts of other things. That is afterlife as I see it.
Then again! Mmmmmm reincarnation! Must look into that more. Does a thought, word, action have some continuing 'afterlife' once enacted?
As you say Alan, 'we' think we know far more than we actually do
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@TIG : Seems you are fan of Douglas Hofstadter and his famous
PS Can you insert some blank lines in your long texts ?
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To be honest, I don't think we know nearly as much as we think we do to be able to answer the question of whether there is a creator or whether consciousness continues after death. Probability based on current scientific knowledge says not. On the other hand, is God the standard Biblical Judaeo-Christian / Islamic model?....of course not...that's just mythology.
Given that it looks like 'reality' can't exist at all without the need for 11 dimensions, simplistic questions about the kind of creation that we can picture in our mind's eye are not of any real relevance. Statements that the universe must have been created because stuff can't just pop into existence by itself make no sense...because that's exactly what stuff does. Sub-atomic particles do it all the time. The only reason we tend to picture an atom as a tiny solar system is because our own experiences force us to think that way. The idea that the particles come and go, into and out of existence, inside a probability cloud is just too much to cope with....even though that appears to be the reality.
Personally, I'm with Descartes; it's all a dream...however real it might appear to be.
Still one of the best videos on the subject:
[flash=640,390:i8d1fp54]http://www.youtube.com/v/e8P1Y1a7-L4?version=3[/flash:i8d1fp54] -
Still one of the best videos on the subject:
Bravo and thanks for that one Alan, How about this:
Youtube Video -
In the Carl Sagan video, I especially like the bit starring Jack Nicholson as The Serpent.
Excellent video BTW, Paul.
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I do believe so! Case closed(for me)!
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http://nogg.co/
And the merry go round... -
@gilles said:
who is the first, egg or chicken?
You know...in light of evolution I think the egg was first. Since birds evolved from dinosaurs and they laid eggs, it's clear who came first. If we take that further back in time and think in terms of living organism vs egg then it's clear that the "chicken" came first. Ealy primitive single celled and multicelular organisms esentially cloned themselves.
@pmiller said:
Still one of the best videos on the subject:
Bravo and thanks for that one Alan, How about this:
Youtube VideoVery good and interesting talk. Much better to discuss the conundrums of the Universe than that of an imagined god.
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@mike lucey said:
The bottom line was that there was no time before the Big Bang, thus no cause, thus no God! I'm still not totally convinced but find it hard to argue with it.
Could you flesh that out a bit more for us who didn't see the program Mike?
It seems that based on Hawking's logic (I guess it was him making this argument?), there couldn't be a naturalistic'cause' but I'm not sure how it precludes a theistic cause (from a being who exists outside of time/space). It sounds like his argument proves the opposite of his conclusion. Was that explained at all in the program?
-Brodie
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The appearance of the whole universe out of 'nothing' is the inevitable result of quantum affects, that mainstream theories and experiment now support with some unanimity.
In fact if you have 'nothing' [and there's plenty of that since most of the universe is still 'nothing', as there's a lot more 'empty' space than there is solid 'stuff']... then 'somethings' are constantly appearing out of the 'nothingness', as energy and subatomic particles pop in and out of existence; usually they will disappear almost as fast as they appeared... but just occasionally they don't... and then you have the rare event when 'something' has appeared out of 'nothing'...
So it's a perfectly natural result or natural processes, even though it doesn't tie in with day to day 'common-sense' experience - but then the quantum level of things/nothing is counter-intuitive in many of its aspects !"
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