Athiests.. How do you explain the beginning of time?

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Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
MaxFusion16 said:
this world came into being the moment I was born and will cease to exist the moment I pass.

in other words, as an atheist, I DON'T CARE.
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And as crazy as that kind of idea sounds, I think this is the psychology behind all the end-of-the-world nonsense.
"If I have to die, everyone else is going down with me!"

Thus far, the score for the end-of-world people is still stuck at zero.
 
Dumac

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,391
1
0
TechBoyJK said:
By the world I live in. I don't buy that this all happened by "chance" and life has no meaning.
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The same world you live in is evidence for god's absence, when seen through my eyes.

I don't buy that all this happened on the whimsy of some god or super being. That is just too convenient, shallow, and avoiding the issue. Not to mention, such an existence would give life less meaning to me than the alternative.

Thank god (heh) not everyone thinks like you, or scientific breakthroughs would be nonexistent.
 
AyashiKaibutsu

AyashiKaibutsu

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2004
9,306
4
81
Jeff7 said:
And as crazy as that kind of idea sounds, I think this is the psychology behind all the end-of-the-world nonsense.
"If I have to die, everyone else is going down with me!"

Thus far, the score for the end-of-world people is still stuck at zero.
Click to expand...

You have no proof this isn't happening undetected.
 
T

totalnoob

Golden Member
Jul 17, 2009
1,389
1
81
JohnOfSheffield said:
If you are going to screw with God being all powerful, choose free will vs omniscience.

If god knows exactly what you will choose every time, do you really have a choice?
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A better question would be, does GOD have a choice? If he is timeless and omniscient, then he knows every event that will ever happen..including the actions he will take in the future. That being the case, he can never change his mind and act differently. Omnipotence and omniscience are impossible to reconcile with a god free to make choices. He would basically be an all-powerful robot, locked on the fixed path he saw with his omniscience..forced to act exactly as he forsaw himself acting, which makes him a pretty useless object of worship.

These two attributes alone disprove the biblical god, who makes numerous mistakes that require an intervention to correct later..kicking Adam out of the garden, flooding the entire planet, etc. If he really knew the future, he would not make a single mistake that needed a later intervention. With his omniscience, he could see himself intervening in the future to correct the problems that arise..and if he were omnipotent he could simply change things beforehand to prevent bad situations from arising...yet he can't. He is not free to change his mind about anything because doing so would alter the future, meaning he didn't see future events with infallible certainty (he was not really omniscient).
 
N

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
4,149
1
91
Wow, 12 pages in a day.....

Here's the thing, there is no real proof one way or another that God exists or does not.

Chances are "He" is not a "he". Chances are that there is no easy way to explain the being that may be as advanced to us as we are to algae. This is not the demon XanTh leaking out crap into our world while sitting in the celestial penalty box. We are not a disk being carried by a giant turtle, and God is not a big lion that likes kids in closets.

The key here is simple. Keep your mind open to what MAY be out there, but don't let it run your life. 90% of modern religion is all social dictate. Only a small portion of it states anything but "Be nice" and "help your neighbor you schmuck!".

That remaining 10% is a hodgepodge of righteous blather, hierarchal machinations, human plays for (papal and otherwise) power and a smidgeon of belief in a higher being that may be out there.

There MAY be a god out there, but the mere fact that humans seem to think God is this guy sitting up there that has a similar outlook on things like Gays, Marriage, clothing, haircuts, days off, tithes as the current dominant culture is testament to the fact that most of the "God" we see, hear and tell about on this planet is nothing but our own construction made to make us feel better about the big bad unknown....


Or to explain to the wife about that peculiar stain on the bedsheets, but that is another story, alltogether.
 
HAL9000

HAL9000

Lifer
Oct 17, 2010
22,021
3
76
Cerpin Taxt said:
No, you are talking about a different reason that isn't reason at all. Reason is a path to knowledge. Faith is its antithesis. Faith is not path to anything. It is deciding arbitrarily that a belief is true and justified without any actual justification.
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Agreed, thankyou. There is no reason to faith, it is just what people who don't want to believe in logic hide behind...
 
B

Blintok

Senior member
Jan 30, 2007
429
0
0
neckarb said:
It depends on your classification of the universe, if you mean the matter that we are currently able to perceive surrounding us, the no the universe hasn't always existed, but if your defining it as all matter that can be comprehended to exist throughout all of time, then the universe has always existed.
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and lets not forget that what we can see in the universe is only ~20% of whats out there.
There is Dark Matter and Dark Energy. May the schwartz be with you.
 
HAL9000

HAL9000

Lifer
Oct 17, 2010
22,021
3
76
Blintok said:
and lets not forget that what we can see in the universe is only ~20% of whats out there.
There is Dark Matter and Dark Energy. May the schwartz be with you.
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A very good point, which is why my definition of the universe encompasses more than we currently are aware exists.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
AyashiKaibutsu said:
Jeff7 said:
And as crazy as that kind of idea sounds, I think this is the psychology behind all the end-of-the-world nonsense.
"If I have to die, everyone else is going down with me!"

Thus far, the score for the end-of-world people is still stuck at zero.
Click to expand...

You have no proof this isn't happening undetected.
Click to expand...
To what does "this" refer? That there's an end-of-world thing going on, or that it's already ended and we just don't know about it, or what? I don't follow what you're referring to.


Edit: Ah, I see.
You were likely referring to MaxFusion's statement:
this world came into being the moment I was born and will cease to exist the moment I pass.
Click to expand...

Well, there's a lot of people entering and exiting conscious existence every day, and 1) The world was here prior to their birth, 2) It continues to exist following their death, and 3) There's considerable evidence pointing to a planet that is thousands of millions of years old. I see no reason why the existence of some advanced primate should have any impact on the existence of the rest of the Universe, any more than saying it should stop existing when a specific bacterium is killed.
 
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N

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
4,149
1
91
Jeff,

The question is this (and many a philosopher and comic book writer have contemplated it)....

What if the world was just you? All of it. Like Zaphoid Beeblebrox going int the chamber that shows you ALL the universe (by its influence on a piece of Angel Food Cake) at once and being told he was the most important thing in it.

There IS the possibility that all we see and do is merely our own cosmos that comes into existance when we are born and blinks out when we die.

Thing is, that is something UTTERLY impossible to prove.
 
sandorski

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,697
6,257
126
Ninjahedge said:
Jeff,

The question is this (and many a philosopher and comic book writer have contemplated it)....

What if the world was just you? All of it. Like Zaphoid Beeblebrox going int the chamber that shows you ALL the universe (by its influence on a piece of Angel Food Cake) at once and being told he was the most important thing in it.

There IS the possibility that all we see and do is merely our own cosmos that comes into existance when we are born and blinks out when we die.

Thing is, that is something UTTERLY impossible to prove.
Click to expand...

When I sleep, y'all disappear. Sorry, I try to stay awake, but maintaining this fantasy of y'alls existence is tiring.
 
N

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
4,149
1
91
Well, all I have to say is that if I am creating everything that I see around me, I have one F'd up sub-super-consciousness imagination!
 
K

KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
3,342
23
81
The question of origins... Why do we, as humans, assume that our awareness permits us to define such a thing? Are we that arrogant to think our miniscule existence, a nanoscopic insignificant dot in the universe, can even possibly perceive or conceive of what reality is?

Understandably, we seek meaning in life. It's an internal drive to find purpose, motivation, reason to live life. It's all a mystery and the element of the unknown is fun, provides a goal. In the end, we'll live our entire lives driven towards finding a meaning, then we die without ever truly knowing, truly believing.

So what's the point? Life is what you make of it, rather than simply living within it. You can choose what your meaning is, individually, and they are all correct! Convincing others of your meaning is irrelevant because each meaning is tailored for each individual.

Many people are scared, lazy or unmotivated to find their custom tailored meaning so they resort to letting others figure that out, whether that be religion or science. And that is perfectly acceptable, if they realize what they have given up.

To the OP, you have a perfectly valid question. It doesn't make sense to those who have chosen the path of "science" as we know it. It is analogous to asking what is 1/0. The answer is simply undefined.

To those who have chosen the path of "religion" as we know it, the answer is simple: Some higher being or beings did it.

Both answers are correct (not necessarily the truth, but what do we really know about truth anyways, look at first paragraph).
 
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