"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? ... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" --Job 38:4,7
Was there a creator?
As a child I found myself playing on the center of God's stage. From some hidden celestial vantage point, so I thought, I was being scrutinized and watched by the Supreme Creator, perhaps almost as narrowly as I, as a medical student with a microscope, would one day scrutinize the cells growing in a Petri dish. But that was long ago, before I had seen micrographs of DNA, or the tracks of matter and antimatter created in a bubble chamber by the collision of high-energy particles. But as I became engaged upon the task of squeezing 300 years of scientific achievement into a few convolutions of brain tissue, it became increasingly clear -- in my new sophistication -- that there was no need for a creator.
After four decades of scientific study, I have learned that there are natural explanations for the evolution of the stars, planets and even life. There are hundreds of textbooks and scientific journals that describe in detail how hadrons and leptons assemble into atoms and molecules, and how they in turn assemble into ants, musicians and football players. As a scientist, I was taught that an outside creator isn't needed to complete this mechanical explanation of life and the universe.
"What," wrote Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher "is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body." Indeed, biologists have discovered that the entire human body is made up of trillions of tiny machines -− called cells. These are made up of smaller components, such as the ribosomes, mitochondria and Golgi bodies, which in turn are made up of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins. As the wheels get smaller and smaller -− and the cogs spin faster and faster -− it all dissolves away into a swarm of energy.
As for the energy, when asked if he believed in God, Albert Einstein replied "There must be something behind the energy."
Was there a creator who just said "Let there be light" (or more scientifically speaking "Let there be electromagnetic energy") 13.6 billion years ago? Of course, he, she or it had to also worry about all the other details, such as the laws, forces and constants of the universe that had to be just right, or else you and I -− and all the stars and galaxies −- wouldn't exist. If the strong nuclear force were decreased a couple of percent, atomic nuclei wouldn't hold together and plain-vanilla hydrogen would be the only kind of atom in the universe. Oops, no carbon or oxygen!
And then there's the big question I had as a young boy: If, indeed, God made the world, then who made God? But biocentrism suggests that this is a humanly created dilemma −- that the primacy of consciousness, which features in the work of Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, Berkeley, Schopenhauer and Bergson, supports the claim that what we call space and time are forms of animal sense intuition, rather than physical objects. They are the tools our mind uses to put everything together. Our consciousness animates reality much like a phonograph. Listening to it doesn't alter the record, and depending on where the needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we call "now." In reality, there is no before or after. All nows, past, present and future, always have existed and will always exist, even though we can only listen to the songs one by one.
Indeed, it's us, the observer, who create space and time (which is why, in a long series of experiments, they are relative to the observer). The universe is simply the spatio-temporal logic of your existence -− that is, the way all the pieces, your cells, the proteins, and all the other wheels and cogs fit together.
However, "I have come to suspect," said Loren Eiseley, the great naturalist, "that this long descent down the ladder of life, beautiful and instructive though it may be, will not lead us to the final secret. ... I will wonder what strange forces at the heart of matter regulate the tiny beating of a rabbit's heart or the dim dream that builds a milkweed pod."
Space and time are how we make sense of it all. But they represent only one of many possible information systems, and it's just conceivable that some of them require the influence of an outside entity. In fact, in the lapse of eternity, advanced life forms have almost certainly figured out how to change these algorithms so that their consciousness moves beyond the dimensions we find ourselves.
Alas! It appears increasingly likely that our universe is not a closed system and that science may not be playing with a full deck. Among other things, the most current data suggests the universe will continue to expand forever and that an extraordinary "inflationary" period has to be artificially added at the beginning to make everything work correctly.
And if space and time aren't things, then what's really out there? What don't we see? What don't we know?
"Can you comprehend the marvels of the stars," asked God "the animals, the infinite wonders of existence? You, a worm that lives a few moments, and dies?" And thus, in their soaring argument, he concedes to Job that the missing piece is with him.
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Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-black-holes-alternate-universe-multiverse-einstein-wormholes/
2. Was it a fluke? Born of circumstance & nothing more?
3. Are there, in fact, accidents (earth, super universes, etc?)
For my money, I'm sticking with the idea there ARE no accidents. I think it's part of something bigger (black holes and all) than we know and that something is divine.
I think there are scientific explanations (of course that includes "just math") but that doesn't make any of it less than divine.
What a great comment and analogy for many to grasp this by. Thank You Dr. Robert Lanza . Truly, recent scientific tests regarding the speed of light indicate there are other answers to the questions we've asked and answered years ago. Perhaps their is no beginning and end of our entirety as we have thought. Perhaps an endless parallel existence of energy, cells, and matter is prevalent. How exciting is it that we could have to recalculate all over again as a result of learning more.
And, you cannot have it both ways. Either one can access god by natural means, and therefore can, in theory, prove it, or one can access Him only through supernatural means, in which case one has to admit to possess supernatural powers.
The principle of Inaccessism stipulates that Man cannot access any divine entity and that such an entity cannot access Man, reciprocally. Moreover, if there is no communication, it is as if there were no entity.
1)Do the scriptures speak of a Jesus that really existed?
And even if proof of his existence were to surface tomorrow;
2)How much of the scriptures are accurate as to what he may have said and/or done? According to scholars like Bart Ehrman, "MisquotinÂg Jesus", there is much doubt.
Unfortunately there is no corroborative evidence for either one. The scriptures are to be taken on faith alone, I'm afraid. No absolute truths here.
As for scientific reference, archeology only shows that those who wrote them used the geographical contexts of their (various) times to place the events in a context. But that is what fiction writers do even today.
Consider his many personal letters, one of which I will excerpt here:
In a letter from Albert Einstein to Eric Gutkind from Princeton in January 1954, translated from German by Joan Stambaugh:
"... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
That statement does not preclude a possibility, but it does provide better insight to Einstein's personal feelings than the quote mined by Lanza in the article, which seems to be disingenuous use of Einstein at best.
I realize that infinite regression is unappetizing to the human mental palate; the issue is how we avoid it. Perhaps the most scientific approach to this "unknown" is to consider it "unknowable" and irrelevant, if for no other reason than that it has no potential for practical utility.
I'm obviously not a physicist so please don't spare the disdain! :)
I think part of the problem is thinking everything needs a before. But if we say, what if there is a level of existence, a base level, that simply *is*, there was no *before* that base level because it isn't a thing to be created, it is *existence* itself.
What could that answer? if it were true. A god would not be necessary, something coming from nothing wouldn't be necessary to answer, because there was never an *actual* nothingness. What was the beginning? well there was only a "beginning" to the universe and matter but not existence itself, which is an eternal state with infinite forms.
Anyway, fun stuff to think about.
Physicists say that time started with the big bang because it is the moment this iteration began. There may have been something prior to the big bang, but we have no way of determining that at this point.
We don't deny a possible event prior to the big-bang, but it is useless at this point to speculate.
Where is your evidence that existence is an eternal state with infinite forms?
The only reason we talk about time beginning with the big bang is because we count time from that moment. It is irrelevant what may or may not have existed prior to that moment because we currently have no way of detecting it.
There can be no evidence to support your contention that existence "is an eternal state with infinite forms." I presume you think it reads like an intellectual statement, but IMHO it is just fabricated nonsense.
It is unscientific to make positive claims you cannot support.
So you know when people say "If the strong nuclear force were decreased a couple of percent, atomic nuclei wouldn't hold together and plain-vanilla hydrogen would be the only kind of atom in the universe."
Well in this understanding, it's possible that that was one of the infinite outcomes that occurred, and we just happen to be living in this outcome.
In this understanding, we don't have to worry about something coming from nothing because there was always an existence of something for something to come about. In this as well, has no need for a God to create anything.
So there was a beginning to the universe and matter, but existence in a fundamental sense is eternal.
Because we can not exist, planets and stars and the universe can not exist, but I believe EXISTENCE can never not be itself.
What is your definition of existence?
In what way can this existence "be itself."
Existence:
1 Reality as opposed to appearance.
2 The *state* or fact of having being especially independently of human consciousness
Those are the definitions i'm referring to.
So in this, i'm conceptualizing that the big bang, the universe is not existence itself but that it exists *within* a larger foundation, one that has no beginning and no end, because it is a *State* If the universe, space/time is expanding, what is it expanding within? If there's literal nothingness outside of the universe, how can it be expanding? but we *know* it *is* expanding. A what the universe is expanding within is that level of existence at it's most base.
And in this understanding, we don't need to believe in Gods, we don't need to be conflicted by the question how can something come from nothing.
When grappling with the big questions, Did a god create the universe, is there a god or more, then who created the God? How can something come from nothing? is it all just chance? is our consciousness just producing existence?
I find these all just lead to basically holding a mirror up to a mirror.
But I discovered a belief, a sense of understanding past the road signs of Science that to me, makes sense and handles those questions. It comes from some things Hawking has stated and Krauss and a few others.
Nothingness is an abstract concept, (nothing in the glass) but *actual* nothingness (actual non-existence) is an impossibility.
The Universe and Existence are two different things.
The Universe exists *within* the broader scope of *existence itself*
So the universe (and all the matter within) can, and did have a beginning, and an end, and many beginnings and ends.
Before the beginning of the universe though, there still was *Existence*, an eternal foundational, fundamental existence, a canvas of which any possible material outcome is possible.
Personally I think being aware of our consciousness is really where this comes from. Dinosaurs existed, we know this. Was Space/Time just a perception of their conscious? If so how did a perception of space/time hurl a giant rock at them?
".....supports the claim that what we call space and time are forms of animal sense intuition, rather than physical objects."
One, who ever said Space and Time were physical? I've never heard that one.
Space is space, non physical area, Time is the measurement of the expansion of and movement *within* that non-physical area, and *aging* is the measurement of the effect of the expansion and movement.
And how we know Space/Time exists outside our perception and not a production of consciousness is the aging process, the seasons, the *effect* matter has on said space.
Unless the argument truly is, it's all in our brains, which is just another trump card argument akin to "God did it" and nothing can be proven otherwise.
we inside entitites INTERPRET our outside entity but i think it's safe to say it existed before there was an inside me to look outward so it's all hogwash
hence we are not creating anything but delusions in our mind
and the universe exsists as it does regardless of whether our inside entity looks up and says the moon is made of blue cheese...it is not and so our outside is independent