# Why is there anything?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [June 14, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095 "2010-06-14T03:58:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/81 "2010-06-16T02:55:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Small note: If he is referring to the event described in his blog, what he had was a bad dream, not an NDE. He wasn’t in a hospital, no doctor was there when it happened, he woke up the next morning in his own bed, and he didn’t bother to see a doctor the next day.
The infor Czarcasm is misquoting:
> **[My NDE, quick to read.](https://aleroy.com/Ndee.htm)**
>
> My NDE, quick to read.
> **[personal info, for the curious](https://aleroy.com/Person.htm)**
>
> Personal info, for the curious.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/82 "2010-06-16T03:03:46Z")
> [@lekatt](#):
>
> The infor Czarcasm is misquoting:
>
> [My NDE, quick to read.](http://aleroy.com/Ndee.htm)
>
> [personal info, for the curious](http://aleroy.com/Person.htm)
Not misquoting-accurately summarizing.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2010, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/83 "2010-06-16T03:08:47Z")
> [@sisu](#):
>
> To say “there is a god or there is not a god” is pretty narrow minded. The only correct answer is that based on my life experiences, culture, scientific proof [or lack thereof] and the shared collection of stories I have heard I believe X to be true.
I guess that is all any of us can claim, really. You take all that you got, even the parts you don’t like, and make a best guess based on the info available. In my opinion, this works as long as you are willing to change your best guess when the info changes.
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### Author:  [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/84 "2010-06-16T15:08:36Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Instead of “creator”, then, can we substitute “any non-corporal entity for which there is no evidence to date”?
That change wouldn’t really be germane to this discussion. The existence or nonexistence of, say, the Tooth Fairy is completely irrelevant to the question of why there is anything. What is relevant is the existence or nonexistence of a Creator of this spacetime bubble we reside in.
I agree (with **Der Trihs** , IIRC) that, from a logical perspective, positing a Creator simply moves the question back one step, from “why is there a Universe” to “why is there a Creator.”
If there’s not a Creator, there’s the question of causality of the Big Bang: ‘before’ the Big Bang (in terms of causality, not in terms of time as we know it, which doesn’t exist ‘until’ the Big Bang), as far as we know, there was nowhere to have a Big Bang, and nowhen for it to happen in. And yet happen it did. Fuck-all if I can make sense of that.
Assuming a Creator gets one around that difficult problem, but it does so by creating an equivalent problem in terms of explaining the Creator’s existence.
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### Author:  [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2010, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/85 "2010-06-16T19:54:14Z")
I also agree that we should just limit the discussion to the universe, but then, what’s left to say. Right now no-one knows how the universe came into being (or if it always was, then how that’s possible either).
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### Author:  [@InterestedObserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InterestedObserver)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2010, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/86 "2010-06-16T22:08:57Z")
> [@begbert2](#):
>
> I don’t feel that it’s a negative that life has no meaning, so I’m not _entirely_ sure I understand the question.
>
> Are you under the impression that people are arguing that a person should ignore the good in life to focus disproportionately on the bad?
No, no, no…(not to be negative :D) but no…as I tried to make clear, I think that even if life has no meaning/purpose beyond random chance/chemical reaction, it is still beautiful and something I consider worthy of experiencing and appreciating.
I was responding to someone who took issue with my view that “life is good” (overall and in my experience, not nec. in the experience of everyone) by acknowledging that life is not always rainbows and gumdrops but that there tend to be many “good” moments to enjoy regardless.
I was responding that it seemed like that poster was ignoring all the GOOD and focusing on the BAD and that I don’t see the point in that. If it all means nothing, why NOT focus on the positive and discount the negative (which means nothing, ultimately, same as the good does).
Like the monk who found himself hanging from a cliff, surounded by ravenous tigers who took the time to pluck and enjoy the strawberry within his reach before he fell to his death, why NOT choose to focus on the positive? It makes no difference except that you are happy/enjoying life in the moment as opposed to living in fear of the inevitable.
Or, as another parable puts it, you have a flat tire. You can either choose to be miserable over the situation and get it fixed OR be happy and fix the situation. Being miserable doesn’t change the situation or the need to fix it, it just makes you miserable for no reason.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [June 26, 2010, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/87 "2010-06-26T20:33:20Z")
The Hubble pictures have precisely the opposite effect on me as they do on the OP. I can think of no better image to demonstrate the impersonal, alien hostility of the universe than a photograph of an airless, freezing void, utterly inhospitable to life, with matter scattered through the infinite nothing like breadcrumbs.
Virtually all the matter in the universe is formed into titanic nuclear furnaces, billion year engines of destruction so intense that it rends atoms apart. Of the negligible remaining matter, almost all of it consists of interstellar dust, or dead, stony satellites open to vacuum, or vast gas giants with crushing mass, or toxic swamp worlds inimical to any form of life as we know it. Even the one infinitesimal speck where we are capable of surviving is a mass of molten rock surrounding an iron core, covered by only the thinnest of life-supporting biospheres. And even there, two thirds of it are covered by water, in which humans would drown. Of the rest, really, only a tiny equatorial belt contains an environment where humans could survive year round unaided by any technology.
If there is any sort of plan or consciousness to the universe, all the available evidence we have indicates that it hates us and wants to kill us. If there is any sort of sentience behind the images linked to in the OP, they almost certainly bear more resemblance to [this](http://whoyoucallingaskeptic.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/kraken-cthulhu.jpg) than to [this.](http://deusexeverriculum.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/hippie-j.jpg)
As such, I find great comfort in my atheism.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [June 26, 2010, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/88 "2010-06-26T20:58:52Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Virtually all the matter in the universe is formed into titanic nuclear furnaces, billion year engines of destruction so intense that it rends atoms apart.
Actually, they fuse atoms together. Fusion, remember?
Not that I want to detract from the nice imagery…
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [June 26, 2010, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/89 "2010-06-26T21:04:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Actually, they fuse atoms together. Fusion, remember?
Actually, stars do both fusion and fission; fusion is just where the energy for it all ultimately comes from. One reason why we have the distribution of elements we do is that some elements don’t survive the conditions at the core of a star.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [June 26, 2010, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/90 "2010-06-26T21:07:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Actually, they fuse atoms together. Fusion, remember?
And it doesn’t account for “most of the matter in the universe”. (or even most of the baryonic matter)
I’m not sure why the universe exists, but I exist to nitpick it.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [June 26, 2010, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/91 "2010-06-26T21:33:17Z")
As an aside, it should be noted that those eagle nebula pictures are “false color” and have had their spectrum mapped to use the entirety of the visual spectrum.
[This](http://eaglenebula.net/photos/photoPage.php?fileName=../astronomy/astrophotos/The_Eagle_Nebula/Eagle_Nebula_In_True_Color-med.jpg&size=med&css=) is how the nebula really appears – still pretty, but also pretty monochrome.
In any case, I don’t think you could make a very good case for the cosmos being a display of god’s artistic flair or love for us…it’s 99.999999…% featureless void.
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### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2010, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/92 "2010-06-27T01:59:17Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> The Hubble pictures have precisely the opposite effect on me as they do on the OP. I can think of no better image to demonstrate the impersonal, alien hostility of the universe than a photograph of an airless, freezing void, utterly inhospitable to life, with matter scattered through the infinite nothing like breadcrumbs.
The truly amazing thing about these images is that we are able to appreciate them.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2010, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/93 "2010-06-27T05:23:51Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#):
>
> One look at this picture:
>
> [http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2010-13-a-xlarge\_web.jpg](http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2010-13-a-xlarge_web.jpg)
>
> has to humble any one of us. Given this sort of thing, we must conclude there was some creator.
Not at all. The magnificence of the universe doesn’t humble me, but reminds me that of all the creatures who ever lived on this planet, we are the first to even partially understand these things. I take pride in the fact that I’m human. Even when we behave badly, we’re a far cry from whatever came before us.
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### Author:  [@Who\_me\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Who_me_1)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-anything/543095/94 "2010-06-27T23:14:01Z")
Okay, time to tell the truth.
God is an immense, super long-lived 4th grader and we’re his science project.
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