On 1/5/2015 4:43 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
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*From:* meekerdb <[email protected]>
*To:* [email protected]
*Sent:* Monday, January 5, 2015 4:34 PM
*Subject:* Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to
dialectics?
On 1/5/2015 3:50 PM, LizR wrote:
Eternal inflation seems to assume there is something because "there has always been
something". However if so, it sidesteps the underlying issue - why is there this
(eternal) something? The question itself - and any attempted answer - can't be answered
causally.
"Sidesteps"? or shows it's an invented issue. If there were nothing would the issue be
why isn't there something? Why should /nothing/ be unquestionably accepted as the
default that needs no explanation?
Nice question.
No easy answer jumps out as being the obvious answer either. Why the human mind seems to
come up with this assumption over and over again across various cultures and periods of
history. Why do you think humans seem to accept this by and large as the default base
state of everything. Could it be an artifact of the way our minds work?
The idea of nothing as the default base state of the universe -- before God (or Nature)
created everything - seems quite widespread.
I think it's an aritfact of the way we make artifacts. We take simple stuff like mud or
rocks or tree limbs and make complex things like pottery or arrow heads or huts. So when
tribes/cities began to deify their leaders they attributed great creative ability to them.
And so the gods were conceived of as having made the world. At first the gods made the
world out of /stuff/: water, chaos, blood, feces. But as every cult magnified the power
of their god to show He was greater than those other false gods, god had to make more
(heavens, stars) out of less, so ultimately god had to make everything out of nothing -
otherwise some other god would out do him.
And it didn't end there. The greater a god is the less effort he would have to put out to
create things. Yaweh creates the world by six days of labor so tiring he had to rest.
But now theologians have one upped that and God created the world just by his word. You
might think that is the ultimate and no conceivable god could be greater than that, a god
who creates by merely speaking. But Peter DeVries has noted that "It is the final proof
of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us."
Brent
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has been widely regarded as a bad move.
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