A question for athiests

[Axioma]

I'm always kind of bothered by the idea that life is the Universe's self awareness...because that means that the Universe is pretty stupid.

 

[Eudaimonist]

I'm always kind of bothered by the idea that life is the Universe's self awareness...because that means that the Universe is pretty stupid.

Axioma has won the Internet today.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[RyanLeeParis]

Atheists don't believe in a governor. Most atheists believe chances are what created the big bang and the earth.

 

[MrGoodBytes]

Atheists don't believe in a governor. Most atheists believe chances are what created the big bang and the earth.

In the words of my generation: LOL WUT

 

[Eudaimonist]

Atheists don't believe in a governor. Most atheists believe chances are what created the big bang and the earth.

"Natural processes" is a better term than "chance" here.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Sockroteez]

Just out of curiosity, if you don't believe that God is real, what do you believe governs reality? What's your theory? What is it that determines the rules of physics, the architecture of everything that is?

To be literal, an Atheist would not believe in anything or anyone that govenrs reality. Rather, reality consists in itself of the reasons, causes, effects and manifestations of itself. IE: there is no outside governance of electricity. It is merely a fact of reality that atoms gain and lose electrons, and that given certain situations the electrons behave in specific ways.

There are many theories as to why the many facets of reality are the way they are.

I believe the best way I can think to sum it up is this:

What 'is' 'is', and the Atheist accepts what 'is' without the need for there to be an Intelligence to guide it. There does not of necessity need to be a determined cause for what exists. The 'Laws of Nature' do not compel Nature to act 'lawfully', but rather are derived from the evidence of how Nature acts 'Naturally'.

 

[Sockroteez]

Atheists don't believe in a governor. Most atheists believe chances are what created the big bang and the earth.

The whole 'chance' thing is really a title which has been applied by Theists to Atheists in order to make the unbeliever's position seem less credible. I believe it more correct to say that Atheists believe that certain 'Laws' of nature are the reason for all that occurs. It is not known what all of them are, why they are, or how they work... but that there are certain ways in which matter and energy behave that ultimately bring about the phenomena we observe in the cosmos.

 

[Sockroteez]

"Natural processes" is a better term than "chance" here.


eudaimonia,

Mark

That, in fewer words is what I was getting at in my last post...

 

[Asimov]

Just out of curiosity, if you don't believe that God is real, what do you believe governs reality? What's your theory? What is it that determines the rules of physics, the architecture of everything that is?

Pretty old thread, but the laws of physics are descriptive, not prescriptive. Why reality behaves the way it behaves in our universe is a huge question, not really one that I'm qualified to answer with any knowledge.

Suffice it to say, I have no idea.

 

[Rauffenburg]

Atheists don't believe in a governor. Most atheists believe chances are what created the big bang and the earth.

The interesting thing about this answer is, that is does not work any better than the theistic creation if one also believes that all of reality is governed by laws which are in principle accessible by scientific methods. If our universe was created by chance then this chance must have been governed by some statistical law (just as in quantum mechanics). But in this case we will just arrive at a higher-order law from which we can explain the existence of the laws of our universe. This is not an answer to the question of why there is anything rather than nothing at all.

If in turn we assume that the world was created by an absolute singular event which was not governed by any laws whatsoever - then what is the difference of such an event to God revealing himself? I'd say that "an absolute singular event" is a nice modern definition for "wonder". In fact the philosophers of the enlightenment such as Hume or Spinoza argued against the possibilities of wonders just on the basis that all events are governed by natural laws.

So it seems to me that, for an atheist, it is not an option to assume the world was created by chance. It seems more plausible (at first sight) to say it is eternal.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Just out of curiosity, if you don't believe that God is real, what do you believe governs reality? What's your theory? What is it that determines the rules of physics, the architecture of everything that is?

This seems to be more of a semantic problem than anything else. The way I understand reality, it means everything that there is. So, by definition there can not be anything that is not part of reality (i.e. of everthing that is) and govern it.

It may sound trivial and be tautologous, things just are however they are.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

The interesting thing about this answer is, that is does not work any better than the theistic creation if one also believes that all of reality is governed by laws which are in principle accessible by scientific methods. If our universe was created by chance then this chance must have been governed by some statistical law (just as in quantum mechanics). But in this case we will just arrive at a higher-order law from which we can explain the existence of the laws of our universe.

If you conceive of laws this way, you'll never come to end, so to speak. You'll always, no matter what, be in need of some further law. QM behaves the way it does, because of statistical laws. Which in turn does what it does because of some meta law. Which in turn does what it does because of some meta meta law. Etc pp.

I think the error in this approach, lies with the misconception that what we might term statistical law, or natural law, are prescriptive.

If all these laws are conceived of as descriptions of how things already behave anyway then the problem vanishes. Things just behave the way they do. How they behave might be formulated in a law, or termed a law itself, but that is it.

This is not an answer to the question of why there is anything rather than nothing at all.

Indeed it isn't. But in any case, "why" questions can be asked ad nauseam. Why this? Because X. Why X? Because Y. Etc

Why is there something rather than nothing? Something is because of something else maybe? Hrmph.

 

[Im_A]

Just out of curiosity, if you don't believe that God is real, what do you believe governs reality? What's your theory? What is it that determines the rules of physics, the architecture of everything that is?

the way that we've discovered through science, that the laws are just are and have been since existence started.

why would there be a reason to assume that there'd be a divine entity to govern the laws of our universe?

 

[gawosany]

So .... you say that everything started with one molecule of some sort, but where did that molecule come from? I guess it's just always been there until it exploded into the universe?

 

[Axioma]

So .... you say that everything started with one molecule of some sort, but where did that molecule come from? I guess it's just always been there until it exploded into the universe?

No, nobody says that, and quite honestly, that's one of the stupidest misreadings of the Big Bang theory I've ever seen.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Be nice, Axioma. She wasn't being rude. Not everyone is well-read in physics, and it's an honest question.

So .... you say that everything started with one molecule of some sort, but where did that molecule come from? I guess it's just always been there until it exploded into the universe?

Whatever the form the universe may have originally taken, it was probably not a molecule in the sense that H20 is a molecule. We don't know for sure what this original form may have been, though there are scientific speculations.

My answer to your question is that, yes, I personally conclude that it was "always there". However, since this was the beginning of time, and there was no time before the beginning of time, "always there" took virtually no passage of time at all.

Imagine that you have a time machine that allows you to go into the past by following the change of the universe in reverse. Everything starts to move backwards in your eyes. People grow younger. Birth happens in reverse. You see the pyramids being unbuilt.

You kick your time machine into overdrive, and now you are seeing dinosaurs, and then the Earth unforms into matter swirling about an ancient Sun. And then you see the galaxies themselves converge into a hot plasma.

And finally... your time machine stops as if you had hit a brick wall. You can't follow change back any further because you've reached the very start of change. Since time is a measure of change, you've reached a point at which time has no meaning. There is no nothingness "before" this initial form of the universe, because there is no "before". Yes, this initial form did not come from anywhere, since everything comes from it. It was "always there" in the sense of being uncreated from something else.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[MrGoodBytes]

So .... you say that everything started with one molecule of some sort, but where did that molecule come from? I guess it's just always been there until it exploded into the universe?

That's not quite what the Big Bang theory says. To put it at simply as possible, space itself expanded. Nothing "exploded" in the strict sense of the word.

BTW, Eudaimonist, I love that picture!

 

[Eudaimonist]

BTW, Eudaimonist, I love that picture!

Thanks. Some context to that picture:

It's me at a music festival in Sweden, keeping a drunk girl who was wobbly on her feet from falling flat on her face. That's my wife standing next to me.

It was a bit of a challenge keeping my hands from rising too far as I held on to the drunk girl. I managed to get her to a chair before I crossed a line, though just barely. Someone snapped a shot of me that lends a suitably heroic air to the experience.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[gawosany]

No, nobody says that, and quite honestly, that's one of the stupidest misreadings of the Big Bang theory I've ever seen.

I wasn't talking about the Big Bang theory I was talking about the start of EVERYTHING in the universe, the universe itself

The big bang theory is what they use to explain the start of Earth, isn't it

 

[Eudaimonist]

I wasn't talking about the Big Bang theory I was talking about the start of EVERYTHING in the universe, the universe itself

The big bang theory is what they use to explain the start of Earth, isn't it

No, the Big Bang theory refers to start of everything in the universe, not of the Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

eudaimonia,

Mark