I just think it makes infinitely more sense that such a complex and apparently consequential system had a design and serves some cosmic plan, rather than it being a " Big Accident."
Ordinary men cannot know any of what this ‘plan’ is because of the limitations in his perception. It’s like microbes in a drop of water- poke around with a needle, apply an electric current, inject chemicals, and they won’t have even the faintest inkling that anything is being manipulated.
That’s more of an assertion than an argument. What’s the evidence for the design, the designer, the cosmic plan?
Well, at least this is the right forum for proselyting.
So what’s the point? Does the above article of faith affect your life in any measurable way?
Disclaimer: I am not religious; I don’t really believe in a higher anything.
When I was a pre-teen, I spent a lot of time playing a board game called Strat-O-Matic Baseball. The details aren’t important, but the essence of the game was that you had a bunch of cards representing real life players, and you rolled dice to determine the outcomes of each at bat based on the real-life statistics of the players. I guess you could play with other people, but I mostly played it as a kind of nerdy solitaire. I’d “manage” both teams lineups, keep score, and track every player’s statistics over time in a little spiral notebook.
(God, I was a nerd)
Now, I made a strict effort to follow the rules. Whatever the dice said, that’s what happened. But of course I had preferred outcomes. I wanted the Mets to win. I wanted my favorite players to do well. And of course, sometimes the dice rolls didn’t align with my preferences. Nine times out of ten, I lived with it. But every once in a while, it’d be Darryl Strawberry with the bases loaded and I’d roll a six and the card would say Darryl struck out. And I’d just say, “well, it’s my fake world, so no, Darryl hit a double.”
So: in the “world” I had created, I was effectively omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. But because I self-imposed limits on my power, I had unfulfilled wants, and I occasionally took action and/or got frustrated or angry.
Like I said, I don’t think there is a god. But if there is, the Strat-O-Matic Baseball model is the one that makes the most sense to me.
If the Universe couldn’t have been created except by some conscious plan, what about the entity that planned the Universe? Did it come about by some even greater plan? Or what?
The point is, either there’s an infinite regress of causes, or there was an uncaused first cause. Either choice seems ridiculous. Every effect has a cause, right? Yeah, it does…in our Universe, with our laws of physics and causality. Everything in the Universe obeys the physical laws of the Universe. But our Universe didn’t come into being from our Universe. The laws that govern everything in our Universe don’t necessarily apply to the Universe itself. Or maybe they do. But how could we know? We’re part of the Universe, and know nothing about any larger context–if any–our Universe exists in.
Or if you’re not talking about the creation of the Universe, but rather life on Earth? Abiogenesis, or evolution, or whatever? Dude, come on. Maybe life on Earth didn’t arise “naturally”, or maybe it did. But what does that have to do with God? Because however life on Earth arose, it’s been bacteria and pond scum for billions of years, and then multicellular life for 650 million years, and then the age of Mammals for 65 million years. Humans are just a particular species of ape with a particularly large brain, and apes are just a particular type of primate, and primates are just a particular type of mammal.
The idea that God set up this planet and seeded it with life 4 billion years ago, all so that life would evolve into human beings so that God would get amusement from torturing us is just bonkers. Like, seriously bonkers.
What about the simple fact that there is something here? This implies a ‘creator’, at least for those of us who believe that ‘something cannot come from nothing’ in the absolute meaning of those terms.
More evidence would be cosmic order. This implies ‘conscious intent’, at least for those of us who don’t believe that order can come about solely by accident or randomness
More evidence would be the inherent inefficiency of nature. This suggests a design, as one would expect a mechanical process to be more efficient.
Additional evidence would be the alleged existence of consciousness in the universe and in ourselves. This also implies the existence of a conscious creator, at least for those of us who don’t believe that consciousness can somehow ‘arise’ solely via the interaction of mechanical forces.
So the evidence suggests a creator, for people who believe in a creator. Tautolo-licious!
Wait…so you’re saying that the inefficiency of nature proves a creator, because only a creator could be so inefficient? Do I have that right?
And if “something cannot come from nothing” then where did the creator come from? A creator is something, right?
The creator itself excepted, I assume.
This is all begging the question: assuming that life as we know it can’t arise through non-supernatural means, then using that belief as evidence for supernatural creation.
Point being, since your belief in supernatural creation is thus based on nothing but gut feelings and assumptions (nothing external to yourself, no data), don’t you think it’s very possible for this belief to be influenced by your mood or general disposition? You feel negatively about the world, so you believe in an evil creator.
If you’re willing to believe that God came from nothing, you have no basis whatsoever for denying that the Universe could just as easily have come from nothing.
Just to expand slightly: attributing human characteristics to aspects of nature is nothing new, it’s called the anthropomorphic fallacy. As a human, you interpret events through a human lens, and assign it human motivations.
Holding to this assumption would also require a creator for that creator, and so on.
Considering that we can see natural/accidental/random order occurring all around us, this seems nonsensical.
I don’t get this at all. Why would we expect it to be more efficient? Why would we expect a creator to be less efficient? Nature is as efficient as it needs to be, pretty much by definition.
This circles back to the first problem – if consciousness can’t arise “naturally”, then something created the conscious creator.
IMO, all of these assertions further complicate the universe, rather than simplify it. Adding a creator adds more questions than it answers. If there could be a creator without a creator of its own, then there can be a universe without a creator. If a universe requires a creator, then how can a creator exist without a creator of its own? If a creator can be eternal, then so can the universe (or whatever existence allows things like the Big Bang to occur). If the universe or existence can’t be eternal, then why can a creator?
There was one acacia tree in the trackless Sahara. All by itself. The nearest tree to it was 250 miles away. A drunk semi driver managed to hit and destroy it.
Which is to say that if an accident can happen it will happen. If we are here by accident, it is because we had to happen. I mean, the universe is slightly larger than the Sahara.
You should be skeptical- I can’t say for sure that this theory adds up. Hopefully the answer to your question is contained in my explanation though.
What do we know (or think we know) about the universe? That it started with the Big Bang. The story there is that there was no universe at all, “then” there was this sort of primordial egg (“then” in quotes because there is no time at this point), then the primordial egg goes kablooey and Big Bangs into the universe we inhabit today. Some people might argue that the primordial egg was always there. I think this theory makes more sense if things start out as just plain nothing, but it doesn’t really matter.
What do we know about the primordial egg? Well, “before” the Big Bang (again, there is no time “yet”), the universe exists in a timeless, dimensionless “space” (it is dimensionless, no X, Y, or Z, so “space” isn’t quite accurate, but never mind that). Presumably time and space do not even exist until the first instant of the Big Bang. Imagine, the entire universe squeezed into a point!
The universe nowadays, as you can tell just by looking around, especially with telescopes &etc, is composed of perhaps an infinite number of separate objects. Right? But at the start, the whole thing was timeless and without dimension.
Which brings us to the crux of the theory. One of the foundations of mathematics is the Identity Axiom, the notion that A = A. Well, looking at the progression of the universe, it seems that there can be no identity in the primordial egg- pick any one of the infinite number of objects in the universe, and in the original state it is indistinguishable from any other object, or indeed from the entire rest of the universe.
Which means that, if it isn’t still true, at least at the start it was the case that A != A, Identity does/did not hold. K? A != A.
So, hang on to this and think about the “pre”-primordial egg phase, the one in which there is no universe at all. There is no time, no space, and also no universe. Well, A != A, so if A = nada, nada != nada. Nonexistence is apparently unstable, it just flips into existence because A != A.
So the universe isn’t created, it arises spontaneously because A != A. You could call A =! A “non-duality”, but that may be a whole 'nother leap. But there ya go.
In other words, nothing is a state, but it is stateless, so it cannot be a state. Considering all things, nothing must be classified as a thing, but it is not a thing, being nothing. Nothing is not an “it”, so no description can be given. Nothing is paradoxical – which is ok, because paradoxes do exist. But nothing does not exist. Logically, nothing must become something, in order to resolve the stateless state.
Or something like that.
More ‘both at the same time’, I think. And quantum physics is actually like that!
Well, I think that is not quite right. Quantum entities are things, which have a state. They are never stateless, as such. We cannot observe quantum particles without affecting their state, which we perceive as behaving in a particle-like way or a wave-like way, but the quantum duality is merely a side effect of our limited means of observing them and their behavior. I suspect that there could be a gauge field construction that might provide a single definition of quantum entities that satisfactorily resolves the duality.
Nothing, by contrast, cannot be observed or studied, because it does not exist. We can only infer and extrapolate its non-qualities. Rather like what we can guess about the region between an event horizon and a singularity, but with less to go on.
I don’t think so. Consider the Qubit:
Turns out it isn’t about “our” observing a thing, but the universe interacting with it, as if everything is the observer. The quantum duality is not a side effect.
Do you personally think the Universe began as nothing? Or was it always something? And, why wouldn’t axioms break down at the surface of the primordial egg?
I personally believe that the lifespan of the universe is an oversimplification. It neither began nor was it always ever there. Fact is, I do not know. Things coming into existence and later going out of existence are concepts that make sense to us. As far as I can tell, the universe has no obligation to make any kind of sense.
And then there are the layers. When we discover something, we peel back its cloak, and once it is exposed, we see that there is another layer under it, hiding a new thing to discover. I suspect that the layers may be endless, for all intents and purposes. Anyone who claims to have a flat, pat answer to all of it has never had a chance to see the layers.
Those doors predated Trek. And I hope you got the correct prediction that the rocket making the first moon landing would take off on a Wednesday. Which Apollo 11 did.