Throwing out any ethical or other religious differences, I would like you guys to give me your hypothesis on how this infinite void with matter floating around in it in complex forms came about. Do you believe in Intelligent Design, or the Big Bang, or Creationism or what. Also what is your theory of the way the Universe IS. If you believe in the Big Bang, then what do you propose caused the Big Bang to occur if not some kind of "intelligent force", and why do you propose things are the way they are. I personally believe in an infinite Universe, since the prefix Uni- implies One. Also it is the only possible way it could be, since there cannot be "walls" to the universe, or "walls that when u go through you come out the other side like pacman", because it would be finite and thus still have to be inside of something. Now, it is possible there are multiple if not infinite "multiverses", however these are still contained within something, and that something is either infinite or contained in something even more incomprehensibly large, and so on into infinity, but regardless, the UNIverse cannot logically be anything other than Infinite. I also believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God that is this underlying Being/Force that is the Causeless Cause of this Universe, yet at the same time It is no force, It is "no thing" yet at the same time It is ALL things, It is unmanifest yet MOST manifest. Omnipotent because within it is contained all power/force, and since it is infinite, it is infinitely powerful. Omnipresent because It existed before matter and ether, and we "Live and move and have our being in God", meaning all of creation is inside of this Infinite Being, yet it exists in everything, but also as it is not matter, but exists within the same space as matter. And Omniscient because everything that was created was created by and from this Being, and therefor it knows everything within It's creation. I also believe that although one cannot comprehend this Being in it's true form, we can understand certain things by the study of Nature (not necessarily forest nature, but the nature of things in general), since the microcosm is alike to the macrocosm, the ancient hermetic axiom of "as above, so below, as within, so without". People make fun of the Biblical creation story that God did nothing for eternity and then decided to make a universe. However, in our microcosm all things happen according to cycles, and in Hindu philosophy the Universe comes into manifestation in cycles as well, between manifestation and nothingness, with the time of each spanning trillions of years. I believe this has gone on for eternity, since by the study of Nature we know that nothing can occur without a cause, everything that happens has it's cause, and that cause is nothing but an effect of a former cause. Also as we know atoms have a similar makeup to a solar system, but instead of planets revolving around a star, it is protons and neutrons revolving around a nucleus. We can come to understand more of the higher Nature by studying the lower Nature. It is possible that our galaxy is nothing but a cell to some larger thing, since we know that atoms are mostly empty space. Also as everything on our planet evolves, it can safely be assumed that the manifestations also evolve each time, in the shape of an upward spiral, everything occuring in cycles, but ever evolving and at a higher level each time the cycle comes full circle. I also believe that the purpose of all life in this Universe is evolution, and that even the mineral kingdom will attain to human consciousness far in the future, after we have evolved to a stage that we cannot even comprehend in our current state, the way an insect has no comprehension of what it is like to have a human consciousness. It is a well known theory that life evolved from non living matter, first as simple single cell organisms, and then further. The fact that consciousness came from unconscious matter, suggests to me that consciousness exists in all things, and as matter evolves to life it's complexity increases, allowing it grasp more of the omnipresent consciousness that is a lower form of God. I believe we will continue to evolve to harness more and more of this God-consciousness. What is your belief.
what i believe ..... my beliefs are kind of fluid..... in that as i change thru this life and learn what i can along the way.....what i believe grows and changes with me....... i have for most of my life believed that we would all be much better off if everyone stopped worrying about what other people are doing and fixed what is wrong with themselves..... i believe without a doubt that people fucking suck...... not all of them of coarse...just most of them.... the masses in general..... i do believe there is more out there then what we will ever be capable of figuring out or "understanding" from this life...... i dont try and define it.... people have been doing a terrible job of that for centuries.... when im dead....i know more.....or less as the case may be... i personally believe without a doubt..... the whole "point" is to make the most of this life as you possibly can!!!!! fuck the world!!!!!! save yourself!!!!! fix what bothers you about yourself...and get the fuck out there and live this life!!!!! there may not be another one!!!! and if there is ...the general consensus is the better you do with this one ...the better the next one is.......so ither way you win! of coarse....i personally believe what you do comes back to you right away.....in little ways you may or may not notice....... i believe we each create the world around us with our choices...... if you are in a bad place...it is some choice you made that got you there.... you cant blame anyone elts and it is some choice you are still making that keeps you there..... if you want change....the only way to effect it is to make it happen!!! how? easy......with your thoughts and actions! i believe 95% or more of what the world tries to sell us is bullshit! i believe we each have inside us everything we need to find our own way the "way" is not the same for everyone at all!!!!! we each have our own hell to face.... our own path to take..... in the end it is all about what you do with it all along the way that counts! my personal "way" involves a whole lot of chaos!!!!!!!! and i wouldnt have it any other way!!!!!
i believe people hold themselves back with fear!!! constantly...... fear destroys peoples lives!!!! when we spend all our time "worrying" about something happening.....in the end it is our actions.....whatever that worry causes us to do..... that will cause what we were worrying about to happen...... fear distorts everything! how things effect you is determined by how you look at those things..... your perspective determines your reality.....
The uncertainty principle allows for enormous amounts of energy the smaller you go. The scientific community regards our universe, prior to it's existence, as being in a quantum state. You can go two routes from here; if you subscribe to String Theory then what created the big bang was the collision of multi-dimensional membranes. Brane cosmology is really a fresh field and there's a lot more development it needs to undergo for it really to be relied on, however as Susskind pointed out, the mathematical logic works but at the demand of extra dimensions. If you support inflationary theory, what started the big bang was an insanely small/dense (energetic) singularity. The singularity could have even (mixing and matching String and inflation now) derived from a string particle. Seeing as now in the theoretical physics, the string is the densest 'particle' we can hypothesize. Our universe might be in fact, one hyper-inflated string - or something even denser. It's important to remember the Big Bang wasn't an explosion but an inflation like a balloon. Either way it comes down to our understanding of quantum mechanics. Unlike our grip on classical mechanics which describes most natural phenomena we observe, there's more to be learned from quantum mechanics. Many theoretical physicists say the problem with the theories now-a-days is that they're so ahead of our technology that we're not going to be able to test them for awhile.
At one point I thought the idea of 2 membranes colliding made sense, but then I got to thinking, it doesn't really answer the question, because how were they created in order to be able to collide, it doesn't really get to the bottom of anything imho. Quantum mechanics is a pretty fascinating subject though.
By your logic that god was always there, then isn't it also logical that the membranes could have always been there? The creation thing always runs into an infinite regress. If you must have a creator, then who created your god, and who created him, etc, etc ad nauseum to an infinite regress.
Yeah but that's why logically there can be no creator of God, It's the unborn, the causeless cause. Like I said originally I'm open to the idea of their being multiverses, but there has to be something that has never been created and has always been that is the creator of the uni or multiverses, that is incomprehensible, and that thing is God in the highest absolute true form, although I also believe in the possibility lesser God-forces (that are as temporary as this manifestation) that sort of reign over each solar system, such as YHVH of the Jews, but that goes a bit to far into mysticism for this boards taste. Of course I do not know the mechanics of any other solar system so I cannot even speak on if that's the case.
I don't see how a conscious creator god can avoid 'begging the question' (a logical fallacy). We are aware that consciousness is a result of the evolution of the brain, and that would suggest that god itself has evolved as well (from some original source - god had to receive his wisdom somehow?). Now a non-conscious, non-omnipotent god suggested by the likes of pantheism is something I can support, even if it violates Occam's razor. Either way, you're going to say god is/was always there. I'm going to say science was always there. It's the stalemate that both sides end up on. Who created existence if god is subject to it?
I tend to think the universe/multiverse/whathaveyou is stranger than we can possibly imagine right now. That being said, it is still a worthy pursuit to understand our surroundings to the best of our abilities and the scientific method has proved its worth countless times as the best means of furthering our knowledge. All the evidence seems to support the Big Bang Theory, and although we may not understand what came "before" the expansion or what "caused" it, I'm comfortable with saying I don't know yet. Empirically derived knowledge, however limited, is still far better than assumed knowledge based off of a priori assumptions.
Your post reminds me of why I love being conscious beings capable of introspection. For the universe, I think this also has to do with your perception of reality. I mean, if this life that you are currently living is your one and only reality, then I think you will see this universe as the only possible (and logical) one. But if you have more than one reality (or different levels of them) than an entire universe or more than one can exist. Also, as far as the infinity-ness P) of the universe, I don't think you can measure it in forms of walls and barriers. If a universe is infinite, then there's no possibility for a stopping or beginning points. It's just all. You know? Which is why it's so fascinating! There's no place, no matter how far we travel, that we can go that will be outside of our universe, there's no possibility of falling off the edge. I generally agree with your beliefs, except for an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God. My belief about that is that instead of turning outward to find God (or a diety) that inward is the direction to find our answers. I mean, we create the world around us (physically, emotionally, metaphysically), we give life. Our brains have SO much capabilites..I guess I don't know where I'm going with that one. I just know that after going to a private catholic school my whole life, I don't think it's possible for God to be that father-figure in the sky judging us. I think it just goes with the basic interconnection of all things, living and dead. Biologically, spiritually, physically, atomically, everything, we're all conntected and generally striving for the same goal. When I picture it, I get a sortof cycle-like image where everything just transmigrates into each other with the completion of every cycle. We live, die, our bodies are reused and recontributed into the earth, bread molds, trees rot, but it all is in sync and contributes to the changing world. Except, of course, for the shit man made like styrofoam that won't do anything. Buuuuut that's a whole different topic heh. Your post was awesome! I think that regardless of what people believe, it's important to believe in something. Humans are capable of understanding and precieving in such an advanced way, it's almost criminal NOT to think about the world around us and question our nature. Clearly you're a thinker, and anyone who uses their noodle is okay in my book!
I imagine with all the discoveries of quantum physics lately and the subatomic level, human consciousness and all that good stuff, is just us humans using materialistic science to define an unmaterialistic being. We are pretty much inside a giant simulation trying to figure out how we got here. Imagine if the characters in Grand Theft Auto one day decided to try to figure out how he got there. He would stumble across all these mind boggling things such as, everything that is in his 3 Dimensional world is all actually on a video game disc, a flat pretty much 2-D object holds his 3-D world(hologram theory). He would have a very hard time understanding that if the reality inside the game was the only reality he'd ever known. He'd also come across that everything that was in his universe had somehow came out of from one single point and that everything in his world at one point didn't exist at all then suddenly came into existence when the computer programmers began working on the game(big bang). He'd also come to find that he did not invent math, for the math was already there and through this math along with numbered code(dna) is actually used to form the universe that he resides in. He would also findout that when he wasn't in a certain part of his universe, the matter that make up the universe wouldn't necessarily exist without him being there to observe it(quantum physics). Then he'd come to findout that all the matter in his universe doesn't actually necessarily exist, or atleast how it appears to the eye and touch to exist, and that it's only an illusion created by the processors inside the xbox/ps3 that take in the software code and turn it into images/sounds and so forth(human consciousness). Lastly he'd finally make the realization that what makes him really him doesn't truly exist in his universe, that whatever is controlling his body movements and observing everything is actually a consciousness on a different dimension of his known universe (the spirit). Since I've been studying quantum physics lately this is somewhat how I now view the world haha
so your characters "big bang" happens everytime you hit the power button? and his/her universe also collapses everytime you turn it off.....you are not a very kind god
i never really try to answer this question i could write about what i really do believe happened but to me it seems like i can never get past the theory level of it , doubt will always follow in my mind something you mentioned is something i'm really interested in , the idea that "conciousness creates matter" over "matter creates consciousness"
Doubt is a good default position. No one can really be certain how or why it came into existence until we replicate something like it. And for your last bit, both sides will ask where the consciousness came from and where the matter came from. Due to our understanding of biology, it is known that a conscious being must have undergone evolution to obtain it's consciousness.