On 1/5/2015 8:32 PM, meekerdb wrote:
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
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and
has been widely regarded as a bad move.
--- Douglas Adam
Incidentally, to comment on my own post, this shows that theology is a branch of politics,
not science.
Brent
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