The existence of this universe, it is a bit of a conundrum.

[originalpckelly]

The universe spontaneously created itself out of nothing 15 billion years ago. 0 = 1 Fuck! That's crazy. I'm crazy, I know crazy when I see it, and that's crazy.

Those are Stephen Hawking's words:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stephen_hawking_asks_big_questions_about_the_universe.html

The universe was created by God. God is some weird ever present being, one that's given us free will, but has a plan for us. How does something exist forever? Why does everything else have a start and an end? Or even just a start? A logical person should ask, "Where did God come from?" Where the fuck did God come from? Huh?

With either approach you eventually end up creating something out of nothing. It's all a bunch of nonsense. Even if you reduce God down to a generic God, one that could fit the observations of science, you still must ask where God came from.

Even if you answer this all by saying that the big bang is just one part of an unending cycle, you still have to ask where that cycle came from. Even if the history of time is like a big circle (where does a circle start or end?), where did the circle itself come from.

No matter what you do, either way, it all doesn't make sense. Our universes' existence doesn't appear to have a logical start. That's pretty fucked up. I'll freely admit my stupidity, and I imagine that I am greatly simplifying either view, but in general I think these questions do hold. In a way, I'm trying to cut the crap and get to the point. Damn, I don't think there's going to be a truly logical answer. That's so disappointing to me.

DU ERROR: YOU HAVE CRASHED THE UNIVERSE, PLEASE WAIT WHILE IT REBOOTS!

On a side note: there is some proof that God may exist, the Bug King has been convicted.

[trotsky]

1. Does the universe owe us a "logical start"?

Besides, the creation of something from nothing happens all the time. Look up "vacuum energy."

[RC]

3. Not really from nothing, just the appearance of appearing from nothing.

We can only see and measure the physical in the plane in which we exist. Some things exist in more than one plane or move between them.
That still doesn't explain beginnings and endings.

[trotsky]

4. No, really, it's from nothing.

So if "we can only see and measure the physical in the plane in which we exist," how do YOU know that "things exist in more than one plane or move between them"? Do you have magic sensory powers that no other human does?

[cleanhippie]

5. Can you prove that?

Can you prove that "things exist in more than one plane or move between them"?

[edhopper]

2. We simply don't know right now

Physicists have some interesting theories, but of course they must wait for further evidence and information to refine and revise.
One thing for sure, the sentient God/Creator theory is one of the stupidest with a complete lack of any evidence for it.

[rrneck]

6. Welcome to the human condition.

Reason? Hell, there's no reason. That's just how it works.

[DeadEyeDyck]

7. Nothing makes sense to the fish in the fish-bowel, either.

As long as you are in the fish-bowel, you cannot understand the bowel.

[GliderGuider]

8. That's where Jonah lived for a while, right? nt

[GliderGuider]

9. I love conundrums and paradoxes.

Holding two mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously and feeling no pull to reconcile or choose between them is the most utterly liberating thing I've ever done.

[struggle4progress]

10. "The universe created itself from nothing" can't possibly be a scientific theory

There's a singularity in our model; we may or may not ever discover a way to peer around it

But "the universe created itself from nothing" is an untestable and meaningless hypothesis

[skepticscott]

11. So we have no solution to the problem

of infinite regress, and may never have one. So? What's your point, exactly? How does that affect all of the other discoveries of science?

[humblebum]

12. It doesn't affect them in the least, but just as equally true is the fact

that no scientific discovery or scenerio can prove nor disprove the existence of a diety.

[dimbear]

13. Let's clear this up. The universe doesn't come from nothing. It comes from

chaos. There is always plenty of chaos.

[humblebum]

15. If you are so certain of that, then you know more than anyone else does

It's all just an educated guess.

[ZombieHorde]

16. Or mind reading toasters. nt

[dimbear]

21. No use trying to disprove those.........

..........Jonny Zavant • Everything but the Mime • (407)-xxxxxxx • MentalistPsychic of the Year 2017! For his unique and dynamic approach to mind reading, Jonny Z will be voted Psychic of the Year 2017. He specializes in making people from the audience the stars of the show, and cultivates abilities they didn’t know they had. Psychic cockroaches,mind reading toasters, incredible feats of mental abilities, and shooting paintball guns while blindfolded is par for the course during the mind reading show. Every mind is different, and so is every show!

........end paste.........

Most people think the only useful modification to a toaster is to make a time machine. American ingenuity!

[darkstar3]

18. "disprove the existence of a deity" is a worthless statement.

There is no such thing as a logical disproof.

[skepticscott]

23. Science doesn't prove or disprove things

Do you even understand that? Silly me...of course you don't. Do you even grasp what scientists mean when they use the word "prove"? Silly me...

[humblebum]

24. I think I certainly understand more than you do from past examples

of your difficiencies.

[skepticscott]

25. More lame, substance-free handwaving

Your usual. But please enlighten us with your understanding of what scientists mean when they use the word "prove".

[cleanhippie]

27. He uses it the same way he "proves"

militant atheists...

[skepticscott]

35. Apparently you understand nothing

since you can't even answer a simple question. No surprise...

[rug]

14. There is nothing in nature that comes from nothing.

The problem is defined by its own laws.

[struggle4progress]

17. My point is: "The universe created itself from nothing" can't possibly be a scientific theory

I have no interest whatsoever in "the problem of infinite regress" and made no claims about "other discoveries of science"

[skepticscott]

22. More disingenuous BS

Your claim touches directly on the problem of infinite regress, but you're apparently either too clueless to realize that or too intellectually dishonest to admit it.

And what scientists have made a "theory" out of this anyway? Please cite for us the scientific literature that treats this as an integrated, strongly supported set of facts about the way the world is. You can't, because no one has. What you cite is merely a possibility, one of two to be wrestled with. Either the universe we see came into being from nothing, or it originated from a prior something. And if the latter, then that prior something either came from nothing or an even earlier something. And so on.

This is all trivial and obvious to anyone with gray matter? So again, what is your point and purpose in attacking such a silly strawman?

[struggle4progress]

26. Hawkings, in popularizing his views, has written: "Because there is a law such as gravity,

the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Hawkings is, of course, a competent cosmologist, but such a popularization serves no useful end: it does not enhance anyone's understanding of cosmology, and it reeks of metaphysical speculation

I suppose we are discussing this in R/T because of issues associated with the third sentence, namely, whether or not it is "necessary to invoke &c&c." I have no idea how to resolve the philosophical question whether or not it is "necessary to invoke &c&c" -- but on my view, often and clearly stated here, science by definition cannot appeal to theological notions, and so scientific inquiry simply cannot invoke theological notions. In other words, if Hawkings were more clear-headed, he would not write It is not necessary to invoke &c&c because the actual state of affairs is Science by definition cannot invoke &c&c. I find arguments about whether or not it is "necessary to invoke &c&c" to be uninformative and uninteresting, and I consider such arguments unrelated to any of my own scientific or theological perspectives

Putting that aside, and moving back several sentences, I consider "the universe can and will create itself from nothing" to be a meaningless sentence. Hawkings may have some useful mathematical model, that he is trying to explain here in popularized language, but if that is the case, then the actual idea is that particular mathematical model and not the sloppy attempt at popularization -- there was nothing and then suddenly the universe created itself! is absolutely useless as explanation of anything. The fact is simply that, on our current knowledge, space and time seem to have a "beginning." Whether or not we could eventually peer past that apparent "beginning," I do not know

[skepticscott]

28. Blah, blah, blah, blah

As usual, you dodge the simple and direct questions posed to you and waste bandwidth with irrelevant quotes from people other than you. Is it possible for you to do your own thinking here, for a change. Or at the very least, abandon your intellectual pretensions until you do.

[humblebum]

29. I think it is rather comical to see you arguing a position that

even 50 years ago would have been considered metaphysical and even theological in nature. Ontological and teleological speculation were once considered to be worthless.

[darkstar3]

30. They still are worthless, as I have pointed out to you before.

Ontological arguments are simply a jump to a conclusion, while the teleological argument is the thoroughly debunked argument from design. Neither is an inquiry, and both are worthless.

[skepticscott]

31. The true comedy

is in seeing you try to talk about issues that you have no grasp of whatsoever. Which is pretty much every post of yours.

[humblebum]

32. The fact is you and I have been through all of this before and now

these issues, which I have no grasp of, are staring you right in the face.

[darkstar3]

19. No scientist claims that the universe created itself from nothing.

A singularity is not nothing. As for what came before the singularity, or what caused the singularity, those are meaningless questions. By the very definition of a singularity, time and causality break down within it, and therefore the concepts of "before" and "because" cease to have meaning.

[LAGC]

20. I subscribe to the multi-verse theory.

This universe is but one of many other ones out there, with properties probably not quite the same as ours. The "fine-tuned" forces of this universe may not hold true in other universes.

As for where all these universes came from, could just be that energy/matter has always existed in some basic shape or form, never had a beginning. After all, if a complex being such as God can be posited to exist eternally, why not just more basic energy/matter instead? We may someday with future technology be able to peer beyond the Big Bang event and see what may have come before. We just aren't able to yet, with our current technology.

You might ask that age-old question: "Well, why something rather than nothing?"

Why would energy/matter ever exist at all, why wouldn't there just be nothingness throughout the cosmos and beyond? Maybe, as hard as it is for our finite minds to comprehend, its "easier" for there to be something rather than nothing. Maybe the default state of things is for stuff to simply exist, and non-existence only happens from our limited perspective, once the neurons that make up our brains and fuel our minds dissipate and no longer form a consciousness -- yet matter can never be destroyed, it goes on, just in other forms not necessarily favorable to us and our limited perspective.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bemildred]

34. True, AFAIK, nobody has really solved that one.

This last week I've been struggling through Montaigne's "Apology for Raymond Sebond". He examines arguments similar to those I see in this thread. His own position, to paraphrase, seems to be that the deity is infinite and that therefore it is no surprise that our puny finite minds cannot grasp it. Oddly enough, that does have the advantage that it avoids the recursive explanatory descent which one sees so often with other approaches.

[darkstar3]

36. No it doesn't.

It violates the single rule that leads down the regression to this deity.

To get to a creator deity, one must use the nearly infinite regress of causality to trace back to the beginning of the universe and state that, due to this causality, something must have created the universe. Internal consistency is then thrown to the wind as it is claimed that this creator is exempt from the rules of causality. This doesn't make any sense. Why should the rules of causality apply to EVERYTHING else in the universe except for one being who we've never seen any evidence for?

The argument of an infinite creator deity is not internally consistent.

In all the universe, there is only one thing that can neither be created nor destroyed: energy. This is the only thing that we have observed that qualifies as eternal and infinite. When we know that simple energy has always been here, and we know that it has the tendency to ebb, flow, and change, why is it then necessary to posit the existence of a complex and infinite, yet separate, deity?

[bemildred]

37. What does not what?

I infer you mean that an assumption that the deity is infinite does not avoid "recursive explanatory descent". Well, it does if you are Montaigne. He too, like you, pooh-poohs the idea of rationally deriving the necessity of the deity, and since he says that rational explanation of the deity is impossible, not in our power, he avoids explanation altogether. It is exclusively a matter of divine grace and divinely granted faith, rational examination of the problem may be edifying and useful, but it is ultimately inadequate.

I agree that there is no need to posit a deity that "made" everything. Things can indeed just happen all by themselves. But that really does not explain anything either, it also dismisses the need for an explanation. "It just happened like this" is not noticeably better than "God did it." And the OP is right, in my view, in pointing out that we really do not have any credible answers to the question: "So why the heck is the universe here? Why is there something instead of nothing, and why this particular something?" We have stories about how things evolved, but it all starts with a singularity of one form or another.

[darkstar3]

38. What exactly is your point?

The fact that we don't have an answer isn't problematic. It simply means we can keep searching.

BTW: Montaigne dodges the issue through the use of special pleading. The answer that the universe as we know it was most likely created somehow out of the energy we know but through a process we can't really explain yet isn't special pleading, but rather a recognition of the fact that we don't have all the answers.

[bemildred]

39. Does one have to have a point? May one converse to exchange ideas?

That is what I thought I was doing. Do you always get annoyed this easily? Everybody dodges the issue, that's what the OP points out, some are more candid about it than others.

[darkstar3]

40. Annoyance doesn't enter into it.

I simply tried to point out that Montaigne's argument doesn't work out, and it's OK to simply admit that we don't have all the answers. Admitting that you don't know is not dodging the issue.

[bemildred]

41. I'm OK with that.

I like Montaigne, but I am neither Christian or Catholic, and not trying to defend him or his argument. He is an astute observer and thinker for all that.

[skepticscott]

42. No, everyone doesn't dodge the issue

Pointing out that positing a "god" to explain how the physical universe came into being is just bogus special pleading dodges nothing. There are some questions that we may never have the answer to, but that doesn't mean that inventing imaginary sky-daddies is any kind of solution for sensible, rational, intelligent people.

[bemildred]

43. That was not the question being considered. nt