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Your reason for atheism
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intheclouds wrote: »Im not sure here if you are talking about the creation of the universe as a whole or just the creation of "You and me and shep the dog and Daisy the cow" (ie, life).
Either or. But lets keep it simple, why not start with the creation of life?0 -
realdanbreen wrote:That's kinda the only part that I'm interested in hearing an explanation for.realdanbreen wrote:Either or. But lets keep it simple, why not start with the creation of life?
I don't know the answer to either of those questions. Do you?0 -
Well I believe that something/someone created them.0
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Why, because people have just stated that we don't have a definitive answer?realdanbreen wrote: »That's kinda the only part that I'm interested in hearing an explanation for.
It's not really a question we can fully answer from this planet. We can't even see the majority of the universe from here. All we have is our observations of what we can see, our scientific research and mathematical models.
You could probably learn enough physics to satisfy your curiosity, just because we can't see the whole universe doesn't mean what we can see is some sort of bizarre anomaly, the rest of the universe more than likely works exactly the same way. So the maths should be the same.
Trying to convince people that the entire journey is worthless because we haven't gotten over the hill in front of us yet isn't going to do much good. The fact we don't know how the universe started with certainty doesn't do anything to help the god theory. There's still everything else we know showing the god theory is just a story made up by primitive people trying to explain the mysteries of life.0 -
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My reason for atheism: I started to think for myself.0
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El_Duderino 09 wrote: »Based on?
Based on the fact that if something exists as I do and you do then something or someone created or formed or developed( or whatever wording you want to use) us. Maybe God or a creator is the wrong title but something started the ball rolling surely.0 -
realdanbreen wrote:Based on the fact that if something exists as I do and you do then something or someone created or formed or developed( or whatever wording you want to use) us. Maybe God or a creator is the wrong title but something started the ball rolling surely.
Have you thought about the possibility of a natural process causing things to be the way they are?0 -
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realdanbreen wrote: »Based on the fact that if something exists as I do and you do then something or someone created or formed or developed( or whatever wording you want to use) us. Maybe God or a creator is the wrong title but something started the ball rolling surely.
If god exists, then what created god?0 -
A lot of modern cosmic physics suggests that's not the case, as we understand it.realdanbreen wrote: »Maybe God or a creator is the wrong title but something started the ball rolling surely.
But to put your counter-argument to bed, if you're saying that everything must have a preceding cause, then what caused your God to start to exist?0 -
A lot of modern cosmic physics suggests that's not the case, as we understand it.
But to put your counter-argument to bed, if you're saying that everything must have a preceding cause, then what caused your God to start to exist?
I'll have to find my thinking cap for that as it's a bit of a chicken & egg situation.0 -
realdanbreen wrote:I'll have to find my thinking cap for that as it's a bit of a chicken & egg situation.
Fair play for thinking about it.
Had you really never considered that before now?0 -
Ares Magnificent Kale wrote: »Do you wouldn't have wanted to see the end to slavery and chimney boys. Both of which were championed by "religious" people ( whatever they are!) and abolished. It was the "non religious who opposed their abolition.
I fear you may be engaging in a little historical revisionism or selective reading there. Historically a lot of arguments and justification FOR things like slavery found their origins in religious texts.
The reality there, I suspect, is that things like slavery, and abolishment of slavery, did not come from religion at all. Rather people formed opinions for and against slavery first...... then tried to find biblical justification for them retrospectively.
And it is not just slavery we see that in either. We see it on most hot topics. Most recently topics about sexuality and abortion and scientific topics like Biological Evolution.TheQuietFella wrote: »Why do atheists spend so much time talking about God?
Because we live in a society dominated, historically and to a lesser extend currently, by religious thought, religious people, religious ideas, religious horrors and religious differences.
There is no clear reason I can discern for us to be optimistic about surviving our religious differences as a species indefinitely.
And even when we do not want to talk about gods at all..... and trust me I genuinely do not....... when we go to the realms of discourse we DO want to engage in...... politics, equality, science, medicine, ethics, morality, sexuality, education.... and much more......... we find the purveyors of unsubstantiated woo there at every turn bring the god issue to US. Not the other way around.0 -
realdanbreen wrote: »Single data point? IMO anyone that needs to type more than 4 or 5 lines to make a point is a waffler .
So you think every idea, every concept, every fact, every notion that we as humans come up with should be compressible down into little more than a paragraph?
Thankfully you appear to be alone in that belief, or I am not sure what level our species would currently be at. Politically. Scientifically. Philosophically. Or anything.realdanbreen wrote: »So you reckon the whole reason that we are in existance is just happenchance?
No, I reckon the reason for our existence is an open question. I assume no more than that.
And I reckon that the current data set has NO evidence in it at this time to suggest the reason for our existence is a non-human intelligent and intentional agent. So I do not assume there is one.realdanbreen wrote: »Somewhere at sometime something was created to get you, me, shep & daisy to this point-fact.
That is not a safe assumption to make. ALL we know currently is that our universe expanded from a singularity.
Where this singularity "came from"...... or if it always existed..... or even if phrases like "before", "caused" or "came from" even make sense when applied to it.... we simply do not know.
It could be "eternal" for all we know which, I hasten to note, is what theists often claim about their god. So in essence we would be making the exact same assumptions but you guys, unlike us, merely add one extra tier to the assumption in contrast to occams razor.realdanbreen wrote: »Just as I figured, apart from attempted put downs you haven't anything to offer. You're just another one of those' It's all too complicated for a 5/8 like me' to comprehend.
I trust you do not find that tone in MY posts however. I have not moved to talk down to, or insult you, in any way ever.
That said however, if on one breath you say you do not like the "too complicated for you" tone, but in the next breath you essentially say "my attention span can not parse anything more complex than 4 lines of text"..... there is a small chance you might be bringing those negative tones and comments on yourself.
The issue however is that at this point in time it is not just too complicated for you to understand, but too complicated for ANY of us to understand. We simply do not know why or how we are here in this universe. It is an OPEN QUESTION.
But what we do know is that AT THIS TIME there is no arguments, evidence, data or reasoning on offer to suggest an intelligent intentional agency is the explanation.
Or put simpler and shorter, since this is the format you prefer: Invoking a creator does not answer ANY questions we have asked. It merely moves all those same questions from our universe to the creator.realdanbreen wrote: »I'll have to find my thinking cap for that as it's a bit of a chicken & egg situation.
Well not really because evolution already tells us that we know the answer to that one. The egg came first.
But tongue back out of cheek, the issue for "First cause" arguments of the sort you put forward is that "cause" is based on time. No time.... no causality.
But time came into form at the Big Bang too. So, although it boggles our human brains entirely.... mine as well as yours..... talking about things "causing" or "creating" each other may simply be meaningless when discussing our origins.
We think in terms of time and causality, we can not BUT think that way, and all our earthly languages other than mathematics is based on thinking that way............... but when considering our origins we may have to learn how to not think that way.
And a lot of people with attention spans similar to the ones you have described will not be up for it and will simply resort to "Ah feck all this for a lark.... god did it.... case closed..... now turn on some XFactor or some short flashy music videos, let me read twitter, and slap a ready meal in the zapper for me".0 -
learn_more wrote: »But forget the arguments, what is your NO.1 reason for believing that God does not exist.
You assume those two positions are the only ones available. Rather than the third position of not knowing whether a god exists or not, but recognizing that currently there is not a single solitary reason to think one does.
There could for all I know be one. All I can do is look at our current data set and recognize that there is ZERO arguments, evidence, data or reasoning on offer there to suggest our universe, and the life within it, were created by a non-human intelligent and intentional agency.learn_more wrote: »I see absolutely zero difference between wildlife of any kind and humans.
I too see very little difference, but not no difference. For example I do not see much flora and fauna outside of the human world throwing themselves willingly at death for an ideal. I do not see much other flora and fauna forming religions and belief in deities. And I do not see much flora and fauna deriving actual pleasure from egregious and imaginative torture of their own kind. And I do not see much flora and fauna not only contemplating it's own existence, but even contemplating their own contemplation of their own existence. Nor do I see much flora and fauna losing any sleep worrying about concepts like rights, ethics and morality.
So I certainly see differences, good and bad, noble and horrific. But I do so without losing sight of the fact we ARE animals at the end of the day, much like any other.learn_more wrote: »The fact we're the most intelligent is an utterly trivial difference.
Yet you do admit it is a difference. Which means before you even finished your own post you have already somewhat backpedaled from the declaration of "absolutely zero difference" does it not?learn_more wrote: »I think if aliens were to come to this planet and plant cameras to document and analyse our lives without us knowing it, it wouldn't look to dissimilar to any of our own nature documentaries.
Actually one of my more minor life ambitions which I never got around to doing was to shoot a nature documentary on humans from the perspective of aliens who were filming us from behind "The Predator" style cloaking technology.
I had quite a lot of it planned, except for the dialog of the documentary itself which was going to be styled so that the aliens would come across as finding OUR concerns as trivial and incidental as we do in our own nature documentaries about animals other than ourselves.
Never did get around to doing it, and I missed a big chance when a group of Media Students I was quite friendly with up and went to college in Scotland.learn_more wrote: »Some responders have said so far well it was all the bull they heard at mass. Or the multitude of different religions that exist. Or the pain and suffering that especially some kids have to suffer. None of these things disprove god or a creator.
Nothing disproves god or a creator, because the assertion there is one is not falsifiable by definition.
However we can disprove CERTAIN gods by definition. Just like, by definition, you can disprove the existence of a married bachelor..... you can disprove the existence of a god that is BOTH all knowing AND all powerful.
In fact in a televised debate on the existence of god between Dan Barker....... and the unfortunately named Kyle Butt....... former preacher Dan Barker goes into many such definition contradictions which mean the Bible God could not exist.
But none of that disproves the existence of ANY god. Just particular gods subscribed to by particular people.0 -
Ever since I was a kid , we had a copy of the childrens bible, and "Life before man" ... I knew which one made sense ..0
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Not having a go at you Nick, but that is disgrace on the behalf of the Independent's editors(or whoever comes up with headlines).Nick Park wrote:There might even be a scientific reason: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...-a7330076.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27317929
Effects of oxytocin administration on spirituality and emotional responses to meditation0 -
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Trent Houseboat wrote: »Not having a go at you Nick, but that is disgrace on the behalf of the Independent's editors(or whoever comes up with headlines).
That's par for the course for any newspaper when it comes to reports on scientific papers. That's why whenever you see a newspaper report on a study, always jump to the end and read the last few sentences or paragraph to see if the article is being accurate or not. That's were you will get the actual context of the study or the opinion of the study's author on the point the newspaper is trying to make. E.g. the last 3 sentences of the Independent article actually contradict what the article is claiming:The results provide the first experimental evidence that spirituality appears to be supported by Oxytocin.
But Ms Van Cappellen [The author of the study] warned the findings should not be over-generalised.
“Spirituality is complex and affected by many factors,” she said.0 -
Trent Houseboat wrote: »Not having a go at you Nick, but that is disgrace on the behalf of the Independent's editors(or whoever comes up with headlines).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27317929
Effects of oxytocin administration on spirituality and emotional responses to meditation
Oh you should have a go, since my tongue was firmly placed in my cheek as I was typing.
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So thats why she always screamed oh god oh god oh god
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robindch wrote:A lot of modern cosmic physics suggests that's not the case, as we understand it.
But to put your counter-argument to bed, if you're saying that everything must have a preceding cause, then what caused your God to start to exist?realdanbreen wrote:I'll have to find my thinking cap for that as it's a bit of a chicken & egg situation.
I wonder did Dan ever find his thinking cap. I was genuinely curious to see what they would say after thinking about what caused god to start to exist.0 -
The main reason why I don't believe in god is because believing in magic and gods is childish and silly
My 5 year old daughter believes that a fairy will move into the little painted door in our garden. She has an excuse, she's 5.0 -
I never really did believe in god even as a kid. In fact I believed in Santa more. Probably because the presents at Xmas and seeing him on the news Xmas eve was the tangible evidence I needed at the time, while all the god stuff just sounded like Fiction.
50% right ain't bad0 -
realdanbreen wrote: »That's kinda the only part that I'm interested in hearing an explanation for.
Alway looking for a good excuse to roll this one out. Here is my suggestion for the creation of the universe.Isaac Asimov wrote:
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:
Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough -- so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was Multivac's.
For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.
But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.
The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.
Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.
They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.
"It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."
Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said.
"Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."
"That's not forever."
"All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"
Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Twenty billion years isn't forever."
"Will, it will last our time, won't it?"
"So would the coal and uranium."
"All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do THAT on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me."
"I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that."
"Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up. "It did all right."
"Who says it didn't? What I say is that a sun won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. We're safe for twenty billion years, but then what?" Lupov pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another sun."
There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. They rested.
Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?"
"I'm not thinking."
"Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and Who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."
"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."
"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."
"I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity.
"The hell you do."
"I know as much as you do."
"Then you know everything's got to run down someday."
"All right. Who says they won't?"
"You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever.'"
"It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said.
"Never."
"Why not? Someday."
"Never."
"Ask Multivac."
"You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done."
Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?
Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?
Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.
Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
"No bet," whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.
By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten about the incident.
Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright marble-disk, centered.
"That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.
The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of inside-outness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached X-23 -- we've reached X-23 -- we've ----"
"Quiet, children," said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?"
"What is there to be but sure?" asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.
Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspacial jumps.
Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship.
Someone had once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for "analog computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.
Jerrodine's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth."
"Why for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded."
Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing."
"I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably.
Jerrodette I said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world."
"I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.
It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.
Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetary AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible.
"So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now."
"Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase."
"What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled Jerrodette II.
"Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?"
"Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?"
The stars are the power-units, dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units."
Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the stars run down."
"Now look what you've done, " whispered Jerrodine, exasperated.
"How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jerrodd whispered back.
"Ask the Microvac," wailed Jerrodette I. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again."
"Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.)
Jarrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worry, he'll tell us."
He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer."
Jerrodd cupped the strip of thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry."
Jerrodine said, "and now children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon."
Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.
VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder, in being so concerned about the matter?"
MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."
Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.
"Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council."
"I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."
VJ-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More."
"A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years --"
VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."
"Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problems of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."
"Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."
"Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"
"Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"
"I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this Galaxy is filled, we'll have another filled in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known Universe. Then what?"
VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next."
"A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year."
"Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those."
"Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we can only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point."
"We'll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas."
"Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ-17J, sarcastically.
"There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC."
VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.
"I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the human race will have to face someday."
He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC.
MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of sub-mesons took the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite it's sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.
MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?"
VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."
"Why not?"
"We both know entropy can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."
"Do you have trees on your world?" asked MQ-17J.
The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
VJ-23X said, "See!"
The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.
Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity - but a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space.
Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.
Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.
"I am Zee Prime," said Zee Prime. "And you?"
"I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?"
"We call it only the Galaxy. And you?"
"We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?"
"True. Since all Galaxies are the same."
"Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different."
Zee Prime said, "On which one?"
"I cannot say. The Universal AC would know."
"Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious."
Zee Prime's perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrunk and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the originals Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.
Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and called, out: "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?"
The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor lead through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.
Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.
"But how can that be all of Universal AC?" Zee Prime had asked.
"Most of it, " had been the answer, "is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine."
Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.
The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.
A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GALAXY OF MAN."
But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Zee Prime stifled his disappointment.
Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And Is one of these stars the original star of Man?"
The Universal AC said, "MAN'S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS NOW A WHITE DWARF."
"Did the men upon it die?" asked Zee Prime, startled and without thinking.
The Universal AC said, "A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES, WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TIME."
"Yes, of course," said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. He never wanted to see it again.
Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?"
"The stars are dying. The original star is dead."
"They must all die. Why not?"
"But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them."
"It will take billions of years."
"I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?"
Dee sub Wun said in amusement, "You're asking how entropy might be reversed in direction."
And the Universal AC answered. "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter.
Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.
Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.
Man said, "The Universe is dying."
Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.
New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.
Man said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years."
"But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase to the maximum."
Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC."
The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and Nature no longer had meaning to any terms that Man could comprehend.
"Cosmic AC," said Man, "How may entropy be reversed?"
The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Man said, "Collect additional data."
The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL DO SO. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESSORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TIMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT."
"Will there come a time," said Man, "when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"
The Cosmic AC said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."
Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?"
"THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
"Will you keep working on it?" asked Man.
The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL."
Man said, "We shall wait."
"The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.
One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.
Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.
Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?"
AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
Man's last mind fused and only AC existed -- and that in hyperspace.
Matter and energy had ended and with it, space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.
All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.
All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.
A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.
The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
And there was light----
Better explaination than anything in your bible.
MrP0 -
Reason I'm an atheist is because I don't believe there is a God or gods on the basis I've yet to find a reason to suggest there is.
Reason I'm a secularist is I don't want society that discriminates against me and my family for being atheist.
Reason I dislike the Catholic church in Ireland is that they do routinely discriminate against anyone who opposes their dogma.0 -
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