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Present a BETTER explanation for our existence than God

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arg-fallbackName="Anachronous Rex"/>
Japhia888 said:
The Universe must be this big - as measured by the cosmic number N - to give intelligent life time to evolve. In addition, the cosmic numbers omega and Q must have just the right values for galaxies to form at all.

Seems a funny thing to say in defense of an omnipotent god...
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
godisabullet said:
The problem is that you don't have any proof that god even exists so really it's game over without a shot being fired.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/philosophy-and-god-f14/basics-of-theism-t368.htm#1287

theism is a metaphysical, not pseudoscientific, position that can complement rather than violate scientific principles and knowledge. It's an interpretation of all available experience and empirical observations, not a hypothesis concerning any specific observation. That's why demanding empirical proof of God's existence, as if God were an object within the empirical universe, is a category error, and why its lack doesn't make theism irrational.
 
arg-fallbackName="Story"/>
solipsism is a metaphysical, not pseudoscientific, position that can complement rather than violate scientific principles and knowledge. It's an interpretation of all available experience and empirical observations, not a hypothesis concerning any specific observation. That's why demanding empirical proof of other consciousnesses, as if other consciousnesses were objects within the empirical universe, is a category error, and why its lack doesn't make solipsism irrational.
 
arg-fallbackName="Blood Wraith"/>
last thursdayism is a metaphysical, not pseudoscientific, position that can complement rather than violate scientific principles and knowledge. It's an interpretation of all available experience and empirical observations, not a hypothesis concerning any specific observation. That's why demanding empirical proof of other days before last thursday, as if other days before last thursday were objects within the empirical universe, is a category error, and why its lack doesn't make last thursdayism irrational.
 
arg-fallbackName="borrofburi"/>
Still no response to my post :( Oh well, he'd probably just dodge the question anyway, as he has before.
Anachronous Rex said:
Japhia888 said:
The Universe must be this big - as measured by the cosmic number N - to give intelligent life time to evolve. In addition, the cosmic numbers omega and Q must have just the right values for galaxies to form at all.

Seems a funny thing to say in defense of an omnipotent god...
Yes, I've noticed this theme in his posts as well "god HAD to do it that way"... Such a god seems awfully constrained and limited.
 
arg-fallbackName="godisabullet"/>
theism is a metaphysical, not pseudoscientific, position that can complement rather than violate scientific principles and knowledge. It's an interpretation of all available experience and empirical observations, not a hypothesis concerning any specific observation. That's why demanding empirical proof of God's existence, as if God were an object within the empirical universe, is a category error, and why its lack doesn't make theism irrational.

So lets break it down then. You're saying not just that there's no proof of god but that there doesn't need to be any proof for god.

Come on. Gimme a break. That's in no way an explanation for our existence at all.

In Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the explanation, at least for human existence, is that there is a bunch of super mice that control the universe and that they had aliens design the Earth as a super computer to answer that question - life, the universe and everything.

This is an explanation of our existence but it's as bad as the "god did it" explanation because all it is is an idea. There's no proof for it at all.

The problem with your proposal is that YOU need to show that "god did it" IS an explanation before people can start working on their replies. You still haven't done that after what... 12 pages of conversation?

Another nail in the coffin for your proposal is ... which god then?

There are so many holes in this proposal that you'd need a whole book just to explain your own position before anyone else has a go at answering properly.

:roll:
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
borrofburi said:
1a. The universe had a beginning, and god as a sentient asshole who felt like creating some beings to torture as its cause
1b. The universe had a beginning, and god as a sentient non-personal being made the universe and then went on to do something else
1c. The universe had a beginning, and some being of some sort as its cause, but labeling or understanding such a being is extremely difficult, or even impossible (especially at the level of our species progression)
1d. The universe had a beginning, and the flying spaghetti monster as its cause
1e. The universe had a beginning, and thor as its cause
1f. The universe had a beginning, and god as its cause; god had a beginning, and the flying spaghetti monster as its cause; the flying spaghetti monster had a beginning, and Zeus as its cause; Zeus had a beginning, and uranus as its cause; Uranus had a beginning, and vishnu as its cause...
1g. The universe had a beginning, and a divine personal being made the palak'ulong of planet xepsilon in his image, and started some random stocahstic process on some other planets in order to not waste all this vast and incredible space he made
1g sub a. The universe had a beginning, and a divine personal being made the palak'ulong of planet xepsilon in his image, but because god made a bunch of pretty stars in nice formations for them, the laws of physics he made specifically so that hte palak-ulong could live happened to kick-off abiogenesis on earth and resulted in the evolution of a lower level of sentient life forms that are also extremely egocentric and think the whole universe was made just for them
1h. The universe had a beginning, and a divine being was bored so he decided that it'd be entertaining to run a gigantic war simulation, so he made this gigantic space we call the universe and then put the thing on fast-forward for billions of years to see what the gigantic inter-species inter-planet wars would arise; unfortunately the divine being made a mistake and put a speed limit on the universe, and so went and made a different simulation which the divine being enjoys much more.
1j.... Ok you get the point, there are infinite possibilities of ways the universe could have begun. You claim yours is superior to all others, but I as someone who prefers "I don't know" to an unfounded or unsubstantiated claim need evidence to believe you.

But all fall in category one.

If the universe had a beginning, what caused that beginning? If a divine being caused that beginning, what caused the divine being?

many times answered this already.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/does-god-exist-origin-of-god-metaphysical-reality-f10/who-created-god-t77.htm

God has always existed, independent from anything he created.Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time God is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity (Isaiah 57:15). Therefore He doesn't have a cause.So, if there were onces absolutely nothing, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

God is not a dependent being, but self-sufficient, self-existent. And this is exactly how the Bible describes God, and how God has revealed himself to be. Why must God be this way?Our universe cannot be explained any other way. It could not have created itself. It has not always existed. And it could not be created by something that itself is created. Why not?It isn't coherent to argue that the universe was created by God, but God was in turn created by God to the second power, who was in turn created by God to the third power, and so on. As Aristotle cogently argued, there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin.


The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, "What does blue smell like?" Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created or caused. God is uncaused and uncreated,He simply exists.

How do we know this? We know that from nothing, nothing comes. So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

If we posit that the divine being always existed, why not simply posit that the universe always existed?

Many times answered this already as well.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/astronomy-cosmology-and-god-f15/evidence-that-the-universe-had-a-beginning-t199.htm

http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s7-01/7-01.htm

Very soon after arriving at the final form of the field equations, Einstein began to consider their implications with regard to the overall structure of the universe. His 1917 paper presented a simple model of a closed spherical universe which "from the standpoint of the general theory of relativity lies nearest at hand". More evidence that supports the universe is a closed system :
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1008_031008_finiteuniverse.html


That means it has finite energy. Even though energy cannot be created or destroyed (by any natural processes), over time the useful energy in the universe becomes more and more useless. This is known in science as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If the universe were eternal then all of the energy would have become totally useless by now and I wouldn't be writing this article and you wouldn't be reading it either!

Isn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics merely an expression of probability? Yes, but the probability is so high and certain that the odds of just one calorie of energy spontaneously defying the Second Law would be trillions times trillions to one, and the universe is made up of far more than just one calorie of energy!

http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html

The Big Bang marking the beginning of the universe is amazing when one reflects on the fact that a state of "infinite density" is synonymous to "nothing." There can be no object that possesses infinite density, for if it had any size at all it could still be even more dense. Therefore, as Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang Theory requires the creation of matter from nothing. This is because as one goes back in time, one reaches a point at which, in Hoyle's words, the universe was "shrunk down to nothing at all."


http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/What%20is%20infinity.htm

Strictly speaking, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, a singularity does not contain anything that is actually infinite, only things that MOVE MATHEMATICALLY TOWARDS infinity. A black hole is formed when large stars collapse and their mass has been compressed down to a very small size and the powerful gravitational field so formed prevents anything, even light, from escaping from it. A black hole therefore forms a singularity at its centre from the concentrated mass of the collapsed star itself and from the accumulated mass that is sucked into it. A singularity's mass is therefore finite, the 'infinity' refers only to the maths.

Can we have an infinite universe for example? The answer is no, the universe is finite.

Alexander Vilenkin is Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. A theoretical physicist who has been working in the field of cosmology for 25 years, Vilenkin has written over 150 papers and is responsible for introducing the ideas of eternal inflation and quantum creation of the universe from nothing.

Vilenkin is blunt about the implications:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/If_the_Big_Bang_came_from_a_singularity_where_did_the_singularity_come_from

Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know.

http://thoughtlife.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/the-kalam-cosmological-argument-part-1-scientific-observations/

Stephen Hawking writes, "Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.

The Universe is Not Eternal, But Had A Beginning

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/beginning.html
Now, you posit god as a solution: why? Adding god is no solution so far as I can see. Either god came from nothing, or god has always existed: the problem still exists.

Or God existed beyond the universe in a timeless eternity.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/philosophy-and-god-f14/what-is-timeless-eternity-t296.htm

Eternity is the simultaneous possession of boundless life which is made clearer by comparison with temporal things.

This becomes clear when we consider temporal things: whatever lives in time lives only in the present, which passes from the past into the future, and no temporal thing has such a nature that it can simultaneously embrace its entire existence, for it has not yet arrived at tomorrow and no longer exists in yesterday.

We cannot be considered eternal: Even one's life today exists only in each and every transient moment. Therefore, anything which exists in time"¦ cannot properly be considered eternal, for anything in time does not embrace the infinity of life all at once, since it does not embrace the future or the past.

Since every intellect understands according to its own nature, and since God lives in an eternal present, with no past or future, his knowledge transcends the movement of time and exists only in a single, simple, unified present.

http://vintage.aomin.org/JOHN1_1.html

John 1:1 In the beginning 1 was the Word, and the Word was with God, 2 and the Word was fully God. 3 1:2 The Word 4 was with God in the beginning. 1:3 All things were created 5 by him, and apart from him not one thing was created 6 that has been created.

To understand what John is saying, we must delve into the verses themselves and analyze them carefully. We must bear in mind that we are reading only a translation of what John wrote, and hence some mention will have to be made of the Greek language.

John's first assertion is that "In the beginning was the Word." Which beginning? Considering the whole context of the prologue, many have identified this beginning as the same beginning mentioned in Genesis 1:1. But most see that the assertion of the Apostle goes far beyond that.

The key element in understanding this, the first phrase of this magnificent verse, is the form of the word "was," which in the Greek language in which John was writing, is the word en (the "e" pronounced as a long "a" as in "I ate the food"). It is a timeless word - that is, it simply points to existence before the present time without reference to a point of origin. One can push back the "beginning" as far as you can imagine, and, according to John, the Word still is. Hence, the Word is eternal, timeless. The Word is not a creation that came into existence at "the beginning," for He antedates that beginning.


Moreover you're adding a level of abstraction that is entirely unnecessary and unjustified (justification mostly coming from being necessary or having supporting evidence (evidence being fairly broad here, but mostly being based on predictive power, not post-hoc rationalizations)). When I apply occam's razor to the situation, the lack-of-solution of god must be dropped in favor of the universe (or laws of physics, or energy, or one of the many things that we can easily demonstrate do "exist") having always existed (though with energy: not necessarily in this form) or having come from nothing; as such god simply becomes superfluous.

Aren't exactly these two options the ones you discarded just a little above ?
Or hell, even "I don't know" is a better option (and in my opinion the best option) than an unfounded unjustified unhelpful non-predictive idea.

I think God is well justified based on all reasons presented in the introduction post of this topic.
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
borrofburi said:
Still no response to my post :( Oh well, he'd probably just dodge the question anyway, as he has before.

The Universe must be this big - as measured by the cosmic number N - to give intelligent life time to evolve. In addition, the cosmic numbers omega and Q must have just the right values for galaxies to form at all.

Seems a funny thing to say in defense of an omnipotent god...
Yes, I've noticed this theme in his posts as well "god HAD to do it that way"... Such a god seems awfully constrained and limited.[/quote]

Sir Rees is a atheist astronomer..... which said above....
 
arg-fallbackName="AndromedasWake"/>
Japhia, I don't think you're understanding the criticism here. It isn't about who makes the claim (incidentally, Rees 'Just Six Numbers' is a most exceptional book about the apparent precision of nature)

The problem is that when you make a fine-tuning argument for the existence of God (which must by definition be a being of unlimited power and ability) you are claiming that nature makes the rules, and God had to follow them. If the Universe must be fine-tuned for life, even by an infinitely capable God, then nature must be greater than God. This logically cannot follow, so your argument breaks down. In order for the argument to work, you must insert baseless assumptions about the nature of God; that it chose to create nature and fine-tune it.

Personally, I think you'd have a better case if the Universe was fine-tuned for no life and we still found ourselves in it. That would be pretty compelling!
 
arg-fallbackName="mirandansa"/>
Japhia888 said:
God has always existed, independent from anything he created.Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time.

[EDIT: highlights by mirandansa]

How can you attribute a property of time to something which you believe is independent of time?

How can you claim that God is independent from anything he created while also claiming that God had to create them?

Are you familiar with Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic? Briefly, the master cannot be the master without its ontological dependence on the slave, and vice versa:

 
arg-fallbackName="Rivius"/>
I didn't read through everything but you pretended to debunk someone's post about the universe being eternal. While it's true that the universe as we know it started with the big bang approximately 13.75 billion years ago, we don't know if the constituents which would later give rise to this are eternal. Furthermore, let your mind breach past the space-time barrier of the universe, and you can perhaps conceive of a sort of frabric where the universe itself came into being. While a great case can be made for a first-cause, you still have quite a alot of work to do to prove that this first cause is indeed a deity and not something naturalistic.
 
arg-fallbackName="borrofburi"/>
godisabullet said:
In Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the explanation, at least for human existence, is that there is a bunch of super mice that control the universe and that they had aliens design the Earth as a super computer to answer that question - life, the universe and everything.
Err, technically earth was a super computer built to find the *question* to life, the universe, and everything; they already had the answer.
 
arg-fallbackName="borrofburi"/>
Japhia888 said:
borrofburi said:
1a. The universe had a beginning, and god as a sentient asshole who felt like creating some beings to torture as its cause
1b. The universe had a beginning, and god as a sentient non-personal being made the universe and then went on to do something else
1c. The universe had a beginning, and some being of some sort as its cause, but labeling or understanding such a being is extremely difficult, or even impossible (especially at the level of our species progression)
1d. The universe had a beginning, and the flying spaghetti monster as its cause
1e. The universe had a beginning, and thor as its cause
1f. The universe had a beginning, and god as its cause; god had a beginning, and the flying spaghetti monster as its cause; the flying spaghetti monster had a beginning, and Zeus as its cause; Zeus had a beginning, and uranus as its cause; Uranus had a beginning, and vishnu as its cause...
1g. The universe had a beginning, and a divine personal being made the palak'ulong of planet xepsilon in his image, and started some random stocahstic process on some other planets in order to not waste all this vast and incredible space he made
1g sub a. The universe had a beginning, and a divine personal being made the palak'ulong of planet xepsilon in his image, but because god made a bunch of pretty stars in nice formations for them, the laws of physics he made specifically so that hte palak-ulong could live happened to kick-off abiogenesis on earth and resulted in the evolution of a lower level of sentient life forms that are also extremely egocentric and think the whole universe was made just for them
1h. The universe had a beginning, and a divine being was bored so he decided that it'd be entertaining to run a gigantic war simulation, so he made this gigantic space we call the universe and then put the thing on fast-forward for billions of years to see what the gigantic inter-species inter-planet wars would arise; unfortunately the divine being made a mistake and put a speed limit on the universe, and so went and made a different simulation which the divine being enjoys much more.
1j.... Ok you get the point, there are infinite possibilities of ways the universe could have begun. You claim yours is superior to all others, but I as someone who prefers "I don't know" to an unfounded or unsubstantiated claim need evidence to believe you.
But all fall in category one.
But not one of them support your position, and there's nothing (but your own incredulity) to distinguish one from the other.
Japhia888 said:
If the universe had a beginning, what caused that beginning? If a divine being caused that beginning, what caused the divine being?

many times answered this already.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/does-god-exist-origin-of-god-metaphysical-reality-f10/who-created-god-t77.htm

God has always existed, independent from anything he created.Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time God is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity (Isaiah 57:15). Therefore He doesn't have a cause.So, if there were onces absolutely nothing, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

God is not a dependent being, but self-sufficient, self-existent. And this is exactly how the Bible describes God, and how God has revealed himself to be. Why must God be this way?Our universe cannot be explained any other way. It could not have created itself. It has not always existed. And it could not be created by something that itself is created. Why not?It isn't coherent to argue that the universe was created by God, but God was in turn created by God to the second power, who was in turn created by God to the third power, and so on. As Aristotle cogently argued, there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin.

Hmm... reminds me of... The thing that made the things for which there is no known maker: "Oh. Umm. Um... uh He doesn't need a maker." "Why not?" "He just doesn't" "Really? How come?" "He just doesn't. He doesn't need a maker, he exists outside the things that need makers."

You can't just define god like that (others have already pointed out some contradictions); I've got another: you've now defined a barber who shaves the head of all the people who don't shave their own head.

Moreover, even if you can just define god like that (oh yah, the purple dragon in my garage is invisible and generally undetectable) that still leaves you with the fact that your argument boils down to: "I think a completely unverified 'explanation' that has no predictive power and is generally useless and unverifiable is better than all others (even all other possible explanations), including 'I don't know'". Well congratulations, but you're not going to win over ANY of us with such a position.

Japhia888 said:
The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, "What does blue smell like?" Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created or caused. God is uncaused and uncreated,He simply exists.
...
So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that the universe (i.e. "all that there is") came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, "What does blue smell like?" Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed. In the same way, the universe is not in the category of things that are created or caused. The universe is uncaused and uncreated--it simply exists.

Or, in slightly less satirical terms: you propose a second layer as an explanation for the universe, and when asked what value this layer has you have no answers, and when asked why the first layer needs a second layer, but the second doesn't need a third your answer is "oh well, the second layer is defined as not needing another layer"; why the hell introduce the second layer then, why not add the "definition" that there needs to be no further layers to the first layer itself? You propose a "solution" to a perceived problem you have that the universe must have a creator, but then posit that the universe's creator is special and doesn't need a creator; but in doing so you've added an extra set of complexity that is slashed away as useless by the simple observation that we could define "all there is" to not need a creator.

Why posit that god always existed, when it's just as simple (and more verifiable) that the universe ("everything there is") has always existed, at least in some form or another? (note: you probably shouldn't bother responding to this section, I noticed later that you attempted to respond to this question already, so I've already responded to your attempted response to the above few paragraphs).


Japhia888 said:
We know that from nothing, nothing comes.
Really? How do we know this? I'm not willing to grant you this premise (nor would I be willing to grant you the premise that "we know that from nothing, nothing comes", I see both as horribly unjustified presumptions).

Japhia888 said:
If we posit that the divine being always existed, why not simply posit that the universe always existed?
That means it has finite energy. Even though energy cannot be created or destroyed (by any natural processes), over time the useful energy in the universe becomes more and more useless. This is known in science as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If the universe were eternal then all of the energy would have become totally useless by now and I wouldn't be writing this article and you wouldn't be reading it either!

Isn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics merely an expression of probability? Yes, but the probability is so high and certain that the odds of just one calorie of energy spontaneously defying the Second Law would be trillions times trillions to one, and the universe is made up of far more than just one calorie of energy!
Bullshit. I'm actually quite competent at thermodynamics (at least compared to any creationist, I'm sure there are chemists (or even the odd mechanical engineer who loves fluid mechanics) that are better at it), and your "trillions times trillions to one" is simply a fudged number. Mayhaps you should be wary of philosophers who purport to having completed difficult technical work without actually showing any of it (at least, not that I could find on your "source").

But this is a mere pittance to the real problem: so fucking what if it's extraordinarily improbable? Remember: you're arguing against the proposition that this energy has ALWAYS existed and as a result it's had PLENTY of time to randomly, coincidentally, coalesced in such a way as to cause a big bang (an event which we actually have no way of really calculating the odds of). It is simply completely and utterly irrelevant if that event is "improbable" or not given an eternity of time.

Japhia888 said:
The Big Bang marking the beginning of the universe is amazing when one reflects on the fact that a state of "infinite density" is synonymous to "nothing." There can be no object that possesses infinite density, for if it had any size at all it could still be even more dense. Therefore, as Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang Theory requires the creation of matter from nothing. This is because as one goes back in time, one reaches a point at which, in Hoyle's words, the universe was "shrunk down to nothing at all."
http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/What%20is%20infinity.htm
Strictly speaking, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, a singularity does not contain anything that is actually infinite, only things that MOVE MATHEMATICALLY TOWARDS infinity. A black hole is formed when large stars collapse and their mass has been compressed down to a very small size and the powerful gravitational field so formed prevents anything, even light, from escaping from it. A black hole therefore forms a singularity at its centre from the concentrated mass of the collapsed star itself and from the accumulated mass that is sucked into it. A singularity's mass is therefore finite, the 'infinity' refers only to the maths.
"Infinite density" is synonymous for "the models we have are not accurate at this scale"; nothing more, nothing less. The whole rest of your paragraph builds on this flawed premise. Your own "source" and even you admit this, yet you STILL try to scrape some way by which this proves your god exists... That our models are flawed have no bearing on the existence of your variety of imaginary friend.


I've excised the rest of your post, as it was all unrelated to the topic at hand (e.g. some ramblings about the size of the universe, with revered and trustworthy sources such as wiki answers and some guy's wordpress blog) completely irrelevant in answering the question: if we posit a god created the universe, and that god needs no creator, why not just posit that the universe needs no creator? So I deleted it from my response.





Japhia888 said:
Now, you posit god as a solution: why? Adding god is no solution so far as I can see. Either god came from nothing, or god has always existed: the problem still exists.
Or God existed beyond the universe in a timeless eternity.
This is a fancy dodging-the-question way to say that god has always existed, and fails to answer the problem: either something came from nothing or something has always existed, there's no justification to posit god as a solution, as god only adds another layer of necessary unpredicted and untestable complexity. No amount of woo language and playing with definitions (and, as I predicted, goal posts) will change these simple facts.




Japhia888 said:
Moreover you're adding a level of abstraction that is entirely unnecessary and unjustified (justification mostly coming from being necessary or having supporting evidence (evidence being fairly broad here, but mostly being based on predictive power, not post-hoc rationalizations)). When I apply occam's razor to the situation, the lack-of-solution of god must be dropped in favor of the universe (or laws of physics, or energy, or one of the many things that we can easily demonstrate do "exist") having always existed (though with energy: not necessarily in this form) or having come from nothing; as such god simply becomes superfluous.

Aren't exactly these two options the ones you discarded just a little above ?
No, and if you think so then you have failed to understand: I dislike both options, but unfortunately it's a true dichotomy and one of them, regardless of how unpleasant, is true. Regardless, my favorite answer is very simple and realistic: I don't know. Until I see strong evidence of one or the other (none of this philosophical 'define god into existence' metaphysical bullshit, but actual physical evidence) I will continue to say "I don't know". Incidentally, it works the same way for god: until I see real world physical evidence, god will remain as "real" as unicorns; it is only with real world physical evidence that I will EVER think of god as "real" like my desk, or the keyboard I am typing on.


Japhia888 said:
Or hell, even "I don't know" is a better option (and in my opinion the best option) than an unfounded unjustified unhelpful non-predictive idea.

I think God is well justified based on all reasons presented in the introduction post of this topic.
And I've explained why those reasons are hardly compelling.
 
arg-fallbackName="godisabullet"/>
borrofburi said:
godisabullet said:
In Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the explanation, at least for human existence, is that there is a bunch of super mice that control the universe and that they had aliens design the Earth as a super computer to answer that question - life, the universe and everything.
Err, technically earth was a super computer built to find the *question* to life, the universe, and everything; they already had the answer.

Ahhh yes. You're right. Been a while since I've read it.

Still, until there's proof of the mice or that the earth is a supercomputer I wont be believing in any of it.

:)
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
borrofburi said:
but unfortunately it's a true dichotomy and one of them, regardless of how unpleasant, is true. .

then you have already made up your mind, and no further inquiry is required.....
 
arg-fallbackName="Logic-Nanaki"/>
Japhia888 said:
borrofburi said:
but unfortunately it's a true dichotomy and one of them, regardless of how unpleasant, is true. .

then you have already made up your mind, and no further inquiry is required.....

Sounds kind of like the same with you, as you seem to be dismissing eveything we put as a "better" explanation because you know that it is the making of the god of the christian bible, therefore cannot be anything we are trying to explain.
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
Logic-Nanaki said:
then you have already made up your mind, and no further inquiry is required.....

Sounds kind of like the same with you, as you seem to be dismissing eveything we put as a "better" explanation because you know that it is the making of the god of the christian bible, therefore cannot be anything we are trying to explain.[/quote]

Well, sure. I don't think there is a better explanation for our existence than God, and the answers of the participants of this thread just prove me right. they just cement further my position ;)
 
arg-fallbackName="Anachronous Rex"/>
Japhia888 said:
Well, sure. I don't think there is a better explanation for our existence than God, and the answers of the participants of this thread just prove me right. they just cement further my position ;)

Please do me the service of telling me what would falsify your belief?
 
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