Which is exactly why I think assuming(jumping to conclusions) that reality exists is less rational than believing(accepting the truth) that reality exists. Yet many atheists based their reasoning on the assumption that reality exists and then they believe it exists because its most rational to believe this, but then they go back to their base assumption and contradict their previously established belief, causing an irrational cycle of reasoning.
I'm not sure that you are interpreting the matter correctly. Since so much of this has to do with interpreting how other people think, and I prefer not to engage in mind-reading, I'd prefer to just move on from that issue.
So you don't think an infinitely intelligent entity could have possibly created the universe?
Not precisely. I don't have any reason to think that it is possible. The notion just seems like an exercise of imagination, not a rationally justifiable possibility.
Read "Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking. A singularity would have to infinite, otherwise what came before it? Nothing? Well that still doesn't make sense, when considering unalterable truths.
Do you have a quote handy? I have read some Stephen Hawking (though not that particular book), and I find him much clearer than you on this issue.
Great, no one knows, so I'm just suppose to believe it?
I don't care what you believe. I'm explaining a little of what leads them to make those claims.
Please remember that I wasn't the one to bring up the issue of singularities. That was you.
I'm here to tell you it's making more and more sense the more science discovers and has to make up ridiculous theories to try and explain things without using God.
Tell me whatever you like. My experience is the opposite.
If the "singularity" is not infinite, then what came before it?
I cannot make much sense out of the first half of that sentence. What does it mean to describe a singularity as "infinite"? Infinite in what respect? Infinitely
what? Infinitely small? Infinitely young? Infinitely dense?
I'll try to answer the second part of that question, which I do understand. Assuming for the moment that the original entity was a singularity (and I make no such assumption), there was nothing that came "before", since there was no "before". It was the cosmic egg, to use a mythological metaphor. This cosmic egg stands at the beginning of change and is not itself a product of change. It wasn't produced by any cosmic chicken, even by a pure philosophical "nothingness". It was in its nature for the cosmic egg to hatch -- that is, to change. The property of change continues to this day, even if the universe is no longer what it was originally.
If you say nothing, then that posses a new problem of something "popping" into existence out of nothing.
That problem only exists if there was a "before" the cosmic egg. If there was no "before", then there was no popping into existence out of nothing.
Hasn't science determined that something can't just pop into existence?
No, science has not determined that. That's more of an old philosophical idea.
I entertained the thought of atheism and determined based on what science has recently discovered, that it doesn't make sense for there to be no God.
Okay, I'm happy that you have an active intellectual life.
Maybe it's most intelligent to strip our reasoning down to the basics and rethink things from there with the knowledge we have gained throughout human history.
I agree with you there.
eudaimonia,
Mark
