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In The Beginning ........

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Theland | 04:29 Wed 06th Jun 2018 | Religion & Spirituality
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If you are a materialistic secular atheist, then by definition, you believe that everything, that is all matter, energy, space, time and physical laws are contained within the universe.
Therefore, the cause of the universes existence must also be included somewhere in that list.
So, based on the latest from science and your own experiences and opinions, given that you preclude any outside agency, that is, God, as a cause, are you happy to shrug off the question of origin, and simply say, "don't know," or do you have a sensible theory you would be willing to defend?
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//Minimal violence in Oz....
Yes we do have minor outbursts from immigrants but as a whole Oz is multicultural ...
funnily enough it was the offspring of the immigrants that ...created the problem.
A few disgruntled people, a few white supremacists.
Minor problems ;-)//

A well-balanced take on the situation down under. A lot to smile about.

Here's another take. Look at this. There's a neo-Nazi and an "anti-abortionist" up till 2001. That's a very loose definition of a "white supremacist". Shift in emphasis after 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Australia
Is that the best you can do VE.

I'm sure wikipedia is a truthful indication of what life is like in this country.
From 1972 until 2018 17 incidents not all of which can be blamed on "terrorists" as they are known these days, some disgruntled individuals may have been responsible.

Get your *** together VE and put forward some real evidence.
//AUSTRALIA would have experienced 15 terror attacks including public beheadings on home soil over the past three years if most plots in their advanced stages hadn’t been foiled, according to police.//

https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/the-11-imminent-terror-attacks-australia-narrowly-escaped/news-story/86fc734df0963e21fe038c0eecce7d80
That's a better attempt than VE's Naomi.

But, they were foiled. As your link indicates.

I wonder how many other countries police force and secret service has foiled similar attempts?

I stand by my original claim that this is a generally happy country to live in.

We don't walk the streets worrying about what may be waiting around the corner.

If you do then you have my sympathy.
I'd hazard a guess that this thread has diverted from the original topic.

If people are truly interested in what life is like downunder start a thread on that subject.
// Oh you are so right. I know little of physics.
But I do have a smidgen of common sense.
So what acted on what and by what means to create the universe?
Bearing in mind that all three, "whats", did not exist//

You claim to have a smidgen of common sense and then believe in a ficticious figure like God. You ask what created the universe and made fun of Jim when he said that the universe was self-creating but you can not explain where "God" came from either. There is always going to be the eternal question of where the beginning of the universe started and one day science will prove it... but you will never be able to prove the existance of God.
"Self causing? Wow! I would never have enough faith to believe such claptrap."
Sorry, so I clearly understand, are we referring to deities here ?
1ozzy, yes, they were foiled, fortunately, and I don’t believe anyone here doubts that Australia is a happy place to live – I can say the same for my area in England – but I’m not in denial. I am aware and freely admit that people who wish us harm live among us. Wherever we call home, times have changed.

//I wonder how many other countries police force and secret service has foiled similar attempts?//

I’d guess most western countries.
Uncertainty comes from maths which isn't necessarily bound within or without a universe or universes.
In the beginning, there was nothing. A void. And God said, "Let there be light". And there was light. There was still nothing there, only you could see it better".
Maths doesn't have to act on anything, it simply is.
//You ask what created the universe and made fun of Jim when he said that the universe was self-creating but you can not explain where "God" came from either. //

He must have been self-creating. Oh .... hang on ..... nothing can be self-creating. Hmmm ... there's a dilemma.
The premise of the question is incorrect. Science does not preclude the cause of a universe existing outside of it at all.

Indeed, science suggests there are potentially about 10^500 different universes with distinct combinations of fundamental constants. Only some of them would support structures that persist long enough for anything interesting to happen.

Cognisant beings capable of observing the nature of their reality only occur in a small subset of those having a set of constants where cognisant beings can develop. Hence it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in one of those universes.

BTW. There are about 10^80 protons in our universe so please do appreciate the immense scale of 10^500.
Theland doesn't take any notice of the answers. I have explained before about the impossibility of a infinite void because it requires infinite order.

Theland waived it away by ignorantly and arrogantly insisting the void and the vacuum are the same thing. Quite ironic really since his "explanation" begins with "In the beginning there was God and there was the Void."

The scientific explanation is infinitely simpler. "In the beginning there was the Void", and goes on to explain why a perfect void cannot be sustained, and is hence prone to spontaneously manifesting universes of vast variety, of which our's is just one possibility among 10^500 variants.

Universes begin as single pixels of pure formless energy which we perceive from the inside as a "Big Bang". The structure that develops from that pixel is entirely due to the random fundamental constants that apply to that universe. There is no need for a creator, intelligence or anything else with even the slightest complexity.

The God notion holds that the most complex intelligence possible exists before anything else yet provides no explanation for its origin. It is clearly utter nonsense.
Old_Geezer // Uncertainty comes from maths which isn't necessarily bound within or without a universe or universes.//

No it doesn't. It has been proved that Uncertainty is fundamental and not "caused" (in the strictest scientific sense of the word) by an unrecognised factor.

Einstein always believe there was an unrecognised factor. He was wrong. Science does not recognise status, only verifiable observation.

Religion is totally about status, elevating the musings of ignorant, arrogant misogynists to ridiculous heights. Basically these people were too stupid to herd goat's so became self proclaimed "prophets".
Common sense doesn't really have much role to play in physics because so much of it would appear entirely nonsensical, until you start realising that it works.

Again, let me stress that I'm not claiming to have solved the problem. But since physics already has effective mechanisms for spontaneous creation, then it's not a radical stretch to say that even the Universe itself could have been spontaneously created. Since physics also tends to rule out the idea of a literal nothingness, then that objection doesn't appear reasonable either.

It comes back to the main point, really: you don't know enough about the subject to be able to dismiss it. There's an obvious solution to that: go and read up into it. And I don't mean by reading popular science books or watching YouTube videos, but grabbing actual textbooks.

Even then, you still wouldn't have the foggiest about how the Universe was created, because no-one does really, but it would be easier to assess the reasoning behind what I'm saying.
^ Whoops an apostrophe crept in there.

"To stupid to herd goats"
Grrr

"Too stupid to herd goats""

Too much wine tonight.... Or perhaps not enough to just turn off the computer.
The 10^500 figure really belongs in String Theory, which, at this point, is probably better described as "Theoretical Physics" -- ie, somewhere on the borderline between maths and science. There's no experimental measurement to date that would give even a hint of a second "Universe", let alone 10^500 of them. So, if we were being pedantic, I'm not sure I'd support the idea that "Science" says there are so many Universes. Not ruling it out, either, but I think it's important to be pedantic about these things.

Otherwise I agree with what beso's saying.
Don't know.

Don't care.

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