>> ^KnivesOut:
<EM class=smiley src="http://static1.videosift.com/videosift/i/emoticon/smilecute.gif" <img>^dirkdeagler7
There doesn't have to have been a beginning. It's entirely possible that everything has always existed, forever, and will continue to exist, forever.
It's only our abbreviated, framed existence (frame by our own births and deaths) that drives man to assume that everything begins and ends.


I've given this some thought as well, as i said we're limited by our need for time in understanding the universe. However if you think about it the big bang is our biggest fore runner for explaining the universe. We know that time as we know it started at the big bang, and thus our big concern is what existed prior to it right?

I don't know quite how to wrap my mind around it all but to say that maybe the universe as an infinitely dense ball of mass existed forever and the big bang just changed it into our universe is to say that existence in general has always been. That is to say by definition the presense of that ball of mass requires that existence is a given. My problem arises when i consider the alternative to existence which I can not fathom. I feel like it's easy to take existence for granted because it has always been as far as our universe is concerned and its all we know, the entirety of our knowledge is based on it. But scientifically speaking, if you wanted to explain the universe completely and definitively, you have to account for how existence came into being dont you? Otherwise you havent explained how the universe came to be completely. Any book ive read regarding cosmology and the early universe necessarily ignores anything prior to the big bang.

This is the problem that science will face and why you will likely never be able to convince creationists they are wrong. At some point you'll have to come up with an alternative to God creating existence or being existence, whatever. TO do that you have to explain existence. If you just assume that existence has always been, isnt that a sort of "faith" in itself? You have faith that existence has always existed, but until you can prove or explain it, its just that, a belief. IF you come to this conclusion without explaination, then you're just at the point of debating whose belief is more believable/valid, and that unfortunately has no objective outcome.

^EndAll

OK, I'll refute the arguments:

1. Argument from Cosmology, also called the Kalam Argument:

* Everything that begins to exist has a cause
* The Universe began to exist
* Thus, the Universe had a cause

Wrong on both the premises. No one can say with certainty that everything that begins to exist has a cause because no one has ever observed anything beginning to exist. The universe is already all here with nothing beginning to exist at any place or time. Things simply go from one form to another, for example going from energy to mass in compliance with the famous E=mc².

Neither can anyone say that the universe began to exist. The Big Bang theory only says something about the universe back to a point a small fraction of time after the bang.

This argument falls because the premises are wrong.

2. The argument from Fine Tuning

Apart from the points Hitchens made and the point that we would have to live in a habitable universe in order to have this conversation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle), there are some promising naturalistic explanations for the supposed fine tuning of the universe as well. One of them is the Multiverse thesis which has some promise in finding supporting evidence.

Further, the common argument that if you change only one constant only a fraction you would end up with a universe unsupportive of life is unsound. They only talk about changing one constant at a time. If you run a simulation of multiple universes where every constant is changed randomly, you'll end up with 1 in 3 universes supporting something similar to stars if I remember correctly.

1. i was baptized mormon
2. i spent ages 12-19 being thrown out of my house, tossed around to relatives and eventually just running away
3. it gave me a righteous love of travel and the desert
4. every single person in my family (extended too) is mentally ill, or has a personality disorder, excluding my children, seriously.
5. rush limbaugh is my cousin
6. i have ridden freight trains across the american west
7. i have hitchhiked in 15 states
8. i dont really like female authors
9. i almost aborted both of my children
10. i have a nephew with cri du chat, agenesis of the corpus collosum and cerebal palsy
11.i am very disappointed in the videos on cri du chat available on youtube, all those little pricks should have failed their biology projects
12. it annoys me when holistic wellness ignores or misrepresents science, but i fall for it sometimes, and also when science disregards the importance of taking care of yourself holistically, there is balance in the middle.
13. my brother is working on a phd in cosmology, 15 years ago he was addicted to crack, im proud of him
14. i spent 4 years married to an alcholic who beat me.
15. my kids have an imaginery dad that they made up, he likes dinosaurs, science, playing candy land, and bob the builder, at night he goes to his own house because we are divorced
16. men have shit their pants to be near me, yeah im that fucking charming videosift
17. arguments do not hold my attention very long
18. i will not talk to people who scream
19. im completely fascintated by the human body, and both of my careers are centered around it.
20. im completely fascinated by the evolution of culture. baking bread gets me going on a hardcore cultural evolution tangent FOR HOURS, my friends are sick of hearing it
21. i have lived and been sustained with zero material posessions (except, the clothes on my back and the shank in my boot) for an extended amount of time
22. all i really want to be when i grow up is a mom
23. my tubes have been tied for almost 4 years, i still take pregnancy tests regularly
24. i only post this shit so i can read what i wrote about me later
25. as a child of abuse, im a little more narcisistic than id like to be

All latest, (credible), cosmological theories point towards no possibility of faster than light speed travel. Warping or folding space, tachyons.. even worm-holes bit the dust. I think other life forms couldn't get here if they wanted to, and if they could the odds of them discovering our puny planet are pretty much zero given the size of the universe.

Not to douse the hopes any foil-heads, just sayin':)

^ because, just as on the planetary scale?
we don't have the right to all those resources, on the cosmological scale.

we're not the only ones in this universe.
just the only ones we know of so far, which means almost nothing.
and would mean even less to an immortal.

sorry if i inspired a derailment, joe.
and season's greetings from europa, dag.

>> ^HadouKen24:
>> ^bluecliff:
heres a metaphor for you
your walking down a path which leads over a cliff, do you go ahead across the cliff and then if you fall blame gravity?
Hell, in the christian world view, is a constant of the human condition, it is the nature of the world, not of God. He doesn't send you to hell, you send yourself to hell - essentially speaking (although crudely put)
Now this leads you theological and cosmological problems about who created the world etc. but thats not his current argument.

That interpretation is not consistent with the plain language of the New Testament. Damnation always presented as an act of condemnation by a divine Judge. A more poetic interpretation may serve to salve one's conscience, but probably isn't very sound doctrine by Scriptural standards. The prose of the Pauline epistles does not really admit of the looseness of poetic interpretation.
Hell is not merely the suffering one inflicts upon oneself, either here or in the afterlife, but suffering that is inflicted by another.

I have no idea what you mean with your rant about how "the world is purely parodic." Whatever logical connection it has with the argument at hand didn't make it out of your head and into the post.


I was trying to discombobulate the torrent of sociological shit that often ails most of the comments.
(anyway its a quote from a french guy)
I suppose it ended as a FAIL...


But
I really don't think hell being "inflicted by another" is accurate. The standard theology goes (as far as I know) - hell is the absence of God. And the choice, in christian terms, is between the search for God and a life of sin, which is inherent to the world. It's a much more naturalist world view, if you look at it from that perspective. The "act of condemnation" is there, but need not be, it's only because the judeo-christian God communicates with his people, in a sort of one on one, that this is possible. As far as I know christians take this communication to be an act of divine mercy


(You may be right about St. Paul.)

>> ^bluecliff:
heres a metaphor for you
your walking down a path which leads over a cliff, do you go ahead across the cliff and then if you fall blame gravity?
Hell, in the christian world view, is a constant of the human condition, it is the nature of the world, not of God. He doesn't send you to hell, you send yourself to hell - essentially speaking (although crudely put)
Now this leads you theological and cosmological problems about who created the world etc. but thats not his current argument.


That interpretation is not consistent with the plain language of the New Testament. Damnation always presented as an act of condemnation by a divine Judge. A more poetic interpretation may serve to salve one's conscience, but probably isn't very sound doctrine by Scriptural standards. The prose of the Pauline epistles does not really admit of the looseness of poetic interpretation.

Hell is not merely the suffering one inflicts upon oneself, either here or in the afterlife, but suffering that is inflicted by another.


I have no idea what you mean with your rant about how "the world is purely parodic." Whatever logical connection it has with the argument at hand didn't make it out of your head and into the post.

heres a metaphor for you
your walking down a path which leads over a cliff, do you go ahead across the cliff and then if you fall blame gravity?

Hell, in the christian world view, is a constant of the human condition, it is the nature of the world, not of God. He doesn't send you to hell, you send yourself to hell - essentially speaking (although crudely put)

Now this leads you theological and cosmological problems about who created the world etc. but thats not his current argument.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'stephen hawking, cosmology, black holes' to 'stephen hawking, cosmology, astrophysics, physics, black holes, universe' - edited by mauz15

Penrose is an interesting guy. He's an intellectual jack-of-all-trades. His main work is in mathematical physics and cosmology, but he's presented some fascinating--but very controversial--theories about consciousness and AI.

I find these hosts to be overly dismissing, but on the other hand I do understand their position, they are being attacked by people who are amazingly ignorant and silly, i personally would have tried to respond by starting to explain evolution to this guy, but there wouldnt be enough time I guess, so I'd end up with the same stalemate.. I guess what I'm saying is that hey are basically right, but since the caller is ignorant, and because they've heard that ignorance so many times, they end up arguing simplisticly

EDIT:

The one question I'm sorta screaming at the screen is "Where does complexity come from?" we start out as complex, thinking individuals and work our way back, what we find , is that as a matter of FACT, we are the result of 3.5 billion years of increasing complexity, before that, our planet is a result of an expanding universe that started as extremely hot and dense energy that cooled of and expanded for 10 billion years, when we look at cosmology, the uniiverse gets simpler, smaller and hotter for every second of that time. It takes some mind-bending physics to explain beyond that, but at no point in that process there seems to be a good time to start with an all-powerful COMPLEX intelligent agent. Compexity and intelligence are LATE arrivals in our universe

^If "God" is defined by a tangible, or personification, of a supreme deity that created all we see, touch and feel, it is a silly, and not necessarily a probable notion.

If "God" is defined by the collective "consciousness" of the known (and unknown) Universe, that we are all a part of on either a quantum or sub-conscious level, it is a silly and not necessarily a probable notion.

If "God" is an "Ultimate Reality" that we cannot experience until we leave this "false reality", meaning he/she/it is not physical entity but an abstraction of existence, it is a silly and not necessariy probable notion.

If "God" is as Spinoza defined it, just the vastness of the ancient, uncaring, indifferent Cosmos, then it is a perfectly sound notion, and quite probable.

There is no evidence, or proofs, for the first three ideas, or definitions of a "God", which are not precise (I admit) and summarized a great deal. There are also many more variations and definitions of "God", I am sure. I am also sure that for all the others there is no evidence, or proof either. They are based on faith, and faith alone. One who looks at a tree and must postulate that such a thing is only there because an intelligence higher than them must have created it is, indeed, silly.

In this era we live, there should be no reason to conjure up thoughts of deities or supernatural explainations for the things we see and experience that we cannot immediately explain. We have answers for most of them, all it takes is asking questions and doing research.

I might be an "atheist asshole", but I don't put everyone's belief in a "God" into such narrow, stupid definitions. I gave four above that are the most common. And the last one is probably the most accepted by people of science, specifically cosmology and astronomy.

If you have a thought provoking definition of your idea of what "God" is to you, MINK, I would sincerely love to be privy to it. In all seriousness, I am addicted to knowledge of any form, and to learn other people's beliefs and how they arrived at them is some of the most interesting knowledge to be had.

I can't believe people still follow Aquinas' cosmological arguments.

>> ^gorgonheap:
I think where a lot of conflict is generated is where people try to substitute science for religion, or vice versa.

I think you are ignoring the historical context, religion was once the ONLY source of answers, science has been replacing it steadily in this regard.

The physical vs spiritual distinction is an artifact of this shift, before science displaced religion in cosmology everyone in Christendom simply accepted that religion answered everything. That heaven was as physical a place as Rome, that angels and souls exist in the same sense that human bodies and rocks do. As science provided accurate, and more importantly useful, answers which conflicted with the church the church needed a refuge. They were tired of being proven wrong, they created a new category, "real but unobservable" which we call spiritual.

As we learn more and more, as we enter an arena of understanding where we can start asking questions about what is consciousness in a scientific way we pierce the veil of the physical/spiritual boundary, religion is again put to the test.

At some point "spiritual" starts to look like "imaginary", and that is were we stand now, religion can either be put to the test, and run the very real risk of failure, or it can refuse the test, argue that religion is not only irrelevant to Newtonian mechanics, but also to the question of what it is to be human, and declare itself useless to humanity as a source of answers at all.

Science also suffers from this conflict, it's structural need to find answers is threatened by those who claim to have the answers without being able to prove, or even understand the work that would challenge them. Science is harmed because it can not counter non-scientific challenges, but neither does it, or should it, have a way to ignore the answers which follow from the data it collects.

If religion wants science to stop at some boundary it will have to provide some scientifically valid proof that it is taking care of finding the truth in that sphere. Religious people who campaign against science don't even seem to be aware that their objections are meaningless to the scientific community for the same reason the scientific community annoys them in the first place. Science is a set of consistent rules, which means hypotheses can lose, religious institutions are not comfortable with impartial judgment, it is not the nature of their endeavor to allow arbitration, but to be arbitrators.

No consensus can be reached unless we can agree to rules which make sense to all sides, the old rules worked before science passed the event horizon of structural consciousness, it is not clear that new rules can be found which are acceptable to all sides, now that the landscape of understanding has changed.

Science has nothing to say about self awareness, religion has nothing to say about science.

People have emerged on both sides questioning their respective fields' dogma. For example the head of the Anglican Church in England does not believe that God created the universe, he believes that God "made the universe make itself", which strikes me as a *huge* paradigm shift.

Physicists like Lee Smolin, Milo Wolff, Halton Arp, etc, are absolutely convinced that string theory and in fact the last 30 years of particle physics are seriously misguided, even questioning the interpretation of early quantum experiments, Big Bang theory (which has had to be modified and patched with each new discovery to the point that it isn't a good foundation for cosmology any more, inflation, dark matter, dark energy, mis-interpretation of red shifts etc etc)

Neither the scientific rationalists nor the religious irrationalists have their house in order, and disciples of each shouldn't be so smug.