On 06 Jan 2015, at 05:43, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/5/2015 8:32 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/5/2015 4:43 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
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.
Like genetics has been in the USSR.
Theology has become a branch of politics, when politician made it so,
but it is an obscurantist move, to impose a theology (in our case,
mainly the aristotelian theology, used by atheists and christian to
prevent the progress in the field. yes *that* is political, but only
incidentally related to its subject matter.
Bruno
Brent
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