Does God exist? the definitive answer.

Shield

The post you refer to is over 2 years old!

CuriousOne

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0210/1224264114285.html?via=mr

Link to article appearing in Irish Times today, 10/02/10, which may have relevance to original thread question.

Gary L

If there was a creator, does it make sense that he doesn't perceive time like we do? He could have created the universe with a thought and that one thought is still playing out as all the passage of time.

Cunsiderthis

Gary L wrote: »

If there was a creator, does it make sense that he doesn't perceive time like we do? He could have created the universe with a thought and that one thought is still playing out as all the passage of time.

If he created us, then it's likely he also created our ability to perceive time.

Gary L

Yes obviously. What I mean is the universe could essentially be the creators mind. I'm not saying it is or anything but its probably how it would work if there was a god. It just thought about the material universe and bam here we are. It feels like 17 billion years here but it to the creator it could just be a passing thought.

nyarlothothep

I don't believe that there is a creator necessarily in the sense that we envision it although I'm open to it as a possibility. However I believe that the existence of everything is attributable to something we haven't anticipated or even analyzed yet. Hence it is incomprehensible to us now. But I would be inclined to go with the idea that its probably counter intuitive or something which fits seamlessly with the patterns we find in nature or both. In essence I don't know, and I don't what I'm talking about so please disregard everything I've said as its cod philosophizing with american spelling as I prefer it to the counter intuitive french version with the letter s replacing every z.

Azhrei

Thread title fails - there is no definitive answer.

As for whether I believe in the existence of a divine creator? I don't know. Our hopelessly small minds limit our perspective, clouding the real possibilities. We cannot comprehend the distance between the Earth and the moon, and that is less than a molecule in a drop of water compared to what is out there. The universe is so incredibly huge, beyond our reach and understanding. I was watching a documentary on black holes and it explained that they were so mysterious, that all the known laws of physics fall apart the closer you get to one. Since the laws of physics are the best explanation for what happens around us, it just goes to show how little we know.

In the documentary, they explained how they first went looking for black holes in both "active" and "quiet" galaxies - they expected to find black holes in the active galaxies, and to find none in the quiet galaxies, such as Andromeda. They were stunned to find that every single galaxy they looked at had a black hole at it's centre, including all the quiet, inactive galaxies. Something as massive and as destructive as a black hole was found sitting right at Andromeda's centre. I was talking about it to a friend about what might be inside a black hole, and he said something I find to be very insightful - he doesn't think we are meant to know.

I think it's possible there is a creator of some sort; the universe exists for a reason, and there are no accidents of existence. But as Billy Connolly once said, we are something mundane, like the side of a chair or a cup of tea. After all, a single planet in our solar system happens to support life, and that solar system is a tiny speck in the backwater neighbourhood of the Milky Way, one of trillions of galaxies in the universe.

Gary L

I think we're it. To the best of our knowledge we are the top of the ladder. Wrap your head around how powerful your brain is. Its beyond super computers, its self aware. You say we've got small minds but only in relation to imagined entities. We might well be the only show in town, why sit around inventing masters for ourselves?

RandolphEsq

Azhrei wrote: »

Thread title fails - there is no definitive answer.

As for whether I believe in the existence of a divine creator? I don't know. Our hopelessly small minds limit our perspective, clouding the real possibilities. We cannot comprehend the distance between the Earth and the moon, and that is less than a molecule in a drop of water compared to what is out there. The universe is so incredibly huge, beyond our reach and understanding. I was watching a documentary on black holes and it explained that they were so mysterious, that all the known laws of physics fall apart the closer you get to one. Since the laws of physics are the best explanation for what happens around us, it just goes to show how little we know.

In the documentary, they explained how they first went looking for black holes in both "active" and "quiet" galaxies - they expected to find black holes in the active galaxies, and to find none in the quiet galaxies, such as Andromeda. They were stunned to find that every single galaxy they looked at had a black hole at it's centre, including all the quiet, inactive galaxies. Something as massive and as destructive as a black hole was found sitting right at Andromeda's centre. I was talking about it to a friend about what might be inside a black hole, and he said something I find to be very insightful - he doesn't think we are meant to know.

I think it's possible there is a creator of some sort; the universe exists for a reason, and there are no accidents of existence. But as Billy Connolly once said, we are something mundane, like the side of a chair or a cup of tea. After all, a single planet in our solar system happens to support life, and that solar system is a tiny speck in the backwater neighbourhood of the Milky Way, one of trillions of galaxies in the universe.

I think that by putting the scale of our universe into perspective you conclude that 'there probably was intelligent life (possibly like us), but it got destroyed and turned into a black hole.' The evolution of life is so slow relative to the life span of a planet so it is unsurprising that intelligent life forms do not come 'visit us' as no life can live long enough to evolve to the point where they become super intelligent.

This then begs the question; what the hell is the point of anything? It seems as if the universe simply repeats its creating and destroying of planets/glaxies/nebulas etc. without any aim. It merely is, but that is impossible to comprehend (where did it come from? If it ends, is there nothing?). And rather than getting frantic and stressed and concluding that there must be a creator, I cannot but see it to be logical to at least assume that there is a creator.

We need to work on evolving faster so as to establish a secured, future existence for mankind so we can work everything out! That should be the entire point of our existence until it happens

Azhrei

GaryL wrote:

I think we're it. To the best of our knowledge we are the top of the ladder. Wrap your head around how powerful your brain is. Its beyond super computers, its self aware. You say we've got small minds but only in relation to imagined entities. We might well be the only show in town, why sit around inventing masters for ourselves?

I'm not saying we should be trying to solve the problem of the existence of a creator that is interested and involved in our existence - if there is one, it most certainly is not. I said that I don't believe in accidents of existence and I meant it, but I certainly do believe in accidents of evolution. A simple change at any point of our evolutionary past could have diverted the chance for intelligence (as we know it) to appear.

We are not the only species on our planet to show intelligence - there are varying levels of intelligence in species of very different types - dolphins in the sea (use of tools, complex play, self aware, able to recognise individuals, cooperation with other cetacean species, problem solving ability, awareness of the future), birds in the air (some of them can count and use tools), elephants on land (they display grief, learning, altruism, play, use of tools, compassion, self-awareness, memory and are thought to use language). And this is without going near the many primates that display intelligence.

We appear to be the most intelligent species on the planet. That does not mean we are the peak of evolutionary intelligence, nor that we will be forever alone in creating math, music, literature on this planet. The one constant and infinite thing we know to exist, after all, is time, and there is plenty of it.

RandolphEsq wrote: »

I think that by putting the scale of our universe into perspective you conclude that 'there probably was intelligent life (possibly like us), but it got destroyed and turned into a black hole.' The evolution of life is so slow relative to the life span of a planet so it is unsurprising that intelligent life forms do not come 'visit us' as no life can live long enough to evolve to the point where they become super intelligent.

This then begs the question; what the hell is the point of anything? It seems as if the universe simply repeats its creating and destroying of planets/glaxies/nebulas etc. without any aim. It merely is, but that is impossible to comprehend (where did it come from? If it ends, is there nothing?). And rather than getting frantic and stressed and concluding that there must be a creator, I cannot but see it to be logical to at least assume that there is a creator.

We need to work on evolving faster so as to establish a secured, future existence for mankind so we can work everything out! That should be the entire point of our existence until it happens

I'm not saying anything about black holes destroying intelligent life, nor life becoming black holes (?!). I am saying that everything we know, our understanding of the universe, is thrown apart when black holes are entered into the equation. The laws of physics, that we use to understand how the universe came to be, that govern our existence, do not appear to exist in a black hole. And black holes are everywhere. Giant super black holes exist at galactic cores (such as our own), and the latest news in science shows that mini black holes are flying past us all the time.

They terrify us because we fear the unknown, and they are the ultimate unknown, without going anywhere near the fact that they devour matter and light. Our universe exists - yet the black hole, the ultimate destructive force, is not only numerous, but slowly eating it all up. Why? If there is a divine creator, and it has a plan, why should black holes exist at all? I do not know what the point of existence is, and it seems black holes exist purely to destroy existence. As my friend said, perhaps we are not meant to know.

If we look at our own solar system, it may exist in the most ass-backwards part of the Milky Way as I said, but it is interesting nonetheless. The inner planets seem like a lesson on how life can begin to exist - Venus, too close to the sun, too hot. Mars, just that little bit too far, too cold. And the Earth, which seems to be just right, to quote the old fable of Goldilocks and the bears. In my opinion, suspiciously just right. Then there are the outer planets. Jupiter, with it's lethal radiation and intense gravity, and to a lesser extent Saturn, attract objects in the solar system that would be a danger to Earth and thus our existence. It's true that Jupiter also drags objects into the solar system that threaten said existence, but the fact that the former happens at all is interesting.

Going back again to Billy Connolly, he said once that looked down on, the solar system looks and acts much like an atom - the sun, the nucleus, being orbited and circled by the electrons and neutrons, the planets. He spoke of bacterial cells in a pond being unable to comprehend the enormity of existence beyond it's tiny world, being unable to comprehend us and our existence. He likened that to us trying to understand our existence and the universe around us. The similarities are interesting and scary beyond all reason.

To repeat, if there is a divine creator, it is not interested in us at all and our idea of belief and religion is just ludicrous. Our intelligence is an accident of evolution and we are nothing special beyond what we would like to think of ourselves. Going by the numbers game alone, there should be millions of worlds out there, teeming with life, even if that life is merely microbial. We haven't found any yet, but hey, we can barely travel beyond the orbit of the Earth. Sending humans to Mars is an extremely dangerous proposition and that is just one of the nearest planets in our own solar system - hell, getting into orbit at all is risky. I believe there is life out there, but the universe is so massively beyond our reach and understanding, we will never find it if it exists outside our solar system.

It is the greatest question of all questions, and I doubt we will ever find an answer.

CuriousOne

I think in order to attempt an answer to this question one must first identify what is the natural state of man. The bible promotes original sin – shame, Freud proposes a deep insecurity – fear, and existentialism establishes existential angst – dread. There are of course many others, but for the purposes of this post, I postulate that existential angst is the most accurate, from my subjective viewpoint.

Existential angst, in my understanding, is the dread, or feeling of foreboding, directly arising from the understanding that freedom and responsibility are both sides of the same coin, so to speak, and the responsibility side of this coin is the most disconcerting. Therefore, any construct that could greatly reduce, or postpone, personal culpability or responsibility would be acceptable. Enter god(s), a psychological construct, designed by man, to absolve man from the responsibility his freedom requires.

The idea of god(s) becomes popular, psychological constructs evolve to deities, deities ‘communicate’ with man to implement the religious and social construct, societies establish the economic and political construct, and, in no time at all, we live in an incredibly complex world where no one is actually responsible, and naturally, where no one is really free. There is no benevolent or malevolent external force directing mans’ affairs. What started as freedom and responsibility is presently enslavement and powerlessness, and the worst thing is, we did it to ourselves.

That notwithstanding, a further deconstruction of existential angst establishes, in the subjective understanding of this viewer, a disconnection I cannot deny. Disconnected from what or from whom - I don’t know, nevertheless, it is reminiscent of the story of Adam’s expulsion, by god, from the Garden of Eden.

There are laws that govern the entire Universe, and everything from the largest stars to the smallest molecules, obey these laws. Everything does what it’s designed to do, with no exceptions. No exceptions, that is, apart from man. We are the anomaly. Some posters have referred to the possibility of life existing in other parts of the Universe, which is probably true, but I suggest that if extraterrestrial life does exist, its existence is a harmonious and connected one.

We constantly look to the society for guidance and reassurance, where, unfortunately, we find only sophists and their theories. We look outside, when the questions and answers are inside.

So, is there a god?
I don’t know, but, there is definitely something, something perceptible.:)

Gary L

From my subjective viewpoint, you are a hero.

CuriousOne

There are no heroes; there are only actors.

I do, however, acknowledge and accept the sentiment.

Thanks.:)

Shield

I think it's best to wrap this one up. It's years old now and it's strayed off course a lot since it was started.

Thanks to all who contributed.