Do you belive in god/ a god

Philly-Red said:
Nope. Given the vastness of the universe and the apparent isolation we have as a planet with life on, it doesn't make sense to me that we are the product of a creator. surely if there were one, either the immediate solar system would have more life or the universe wouldn't be as infinite?

Not sure I've explained my thinking particularly well there. I know what I mean. 😂
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no, I get it. Why create all this other stuff, most of it entirely invisible to the naked eye just for us. Makes no sense and leads to the conclusion that if the universe is created by a god, we are in no way special to them because they created so much more that has no relevance to us. In which case the universe should be teaming with intelligent life....but it doesn't seem to be.
 
Laughing said:
but we don't know why the universe works in such a counter-intuitive way.
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intuition is just an output from experience and perspective. I wouldn't expect the universe to be intuitive to people that have largely never left one little grain of sand in a giant desert
 
BoroMart said:
that theory gained a lot of traction a 20- 30 years ago but started to wain in popularity in the last decade.

The big crunch theory, creates the concept of a never ending universe and that makes a lot of questions go away, like 'how did the universe come into existance', the answer could then be it always existed and always will. But......I'm not personally comfortable with that as an answer because it falls into the realms of 'god did it', an answer of convenience rather than one of knowledge.

I wouldn't rule out the big crunch theory, it would explain how the big bang came to be, but we have no idea how a big crunch could start from our current state. Galaxies are moving further away from each other, and exponentially so. The only galaxies not moving away from us are the ones in our local cluster like andromeda. The gravitational force between us and distant galaxies is getting weaker, but you need it to get stronger to create a big crunch. That's a huge dilemma for astrophysicists looking at the big bang-big crunch model. So as of today, it appears unlikely but not impossible.
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When it comes to Astro Physics I think it's important to try and detach your mind from all conventional ideas of Physics, because some of the concepts are truly mind bending!
 
BoroMart said:
that theory gained a lot of traction a 20- 30 years ago but started to wain in popularity in the last decade.

The big crunch theory, creates the concept of a never ending universe and that makes a lot of questions go away, like 'how did the universe come into existance', the answer could then be it always existed and always will. But......I'm not personally comfortable with that as an answer because it falls into the realms of 'god did it', an answer of convenience rather than one of knowledge.

I wouldn't rule out the big crunch theory, it would explain how the big bang came to be, but we have no idea how a big crunch could start from our current state. Galaxies are moving further away from each other, and exponentially so. The only galaxies not moving away from us are the ones in our local cluster like andromeda. The gravitational force between us and distant galaxies is getting weaker, but you need it to get stronger to create a big crunch. That's a huge dilemma for astrophysicists looking at the big bang-big crunch model. So as of today, it appears unlikely but not impossible.
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There is some real problems with the big crunch theory that I have gone in to earlier in this thread Mart.

Briefly, the big bang starts to fall apart about 100,000 years before the big bang happened. We don't see any light from that period, which we should, given our best theories today. For a reversal of inflation, it would have to reverse to a singularity or we would be able to see light from the "last" universe, which we don't.

Singularities do show our measly maths up for what it is, but that itself doesn't discount a big bang/big crunch.

For the oldest light in the universe to be an accurate representation of the past, we would have to see older light, and we don't. this alone, doesn't end the big bang theory, but it doesn't half open up a lot of questions on what happened between the big bang and observable light appearing in our universe. Bare in mind light isn't just the light spectrum, light, electricity and magnetism are fundamentally the same thing, as is radiation.

Of course, the observable universe may not be all there is and the universe could be infinite which precludes a big bang, you can't reverse infinity, take a bit off it and you still have infinity.
 
BoroMart said:
intuition is just an output from experience and perspective. I wouldn't expect the universe to be intuitive to people that have largely never left one little grain of sand in a giant desert
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Except for the fact at the macro scale it works in a very intuitive way. We evolved to know and work in that predictable, intuitive universe.
 
We don't know for sure that we're not just part of an advanced Sims like computer simulation. Our God could be a kid from an advanced civilisation. We need to hope his Mam doesn't unplug his computer to do the hoovering in his bedroom.
 
I've long been agnostic, not fully atheist, because I don't have 100% certainty about anything. Life itself is uncertain. I've found this out personally, and we're seeing it this decade with the plagues and war and pestilence... What I do think is that the God(s) and religions people worship now came out of a need to explain the world and the universe which in turn became organised and codified and used as a means to control and divide people. Scientific understanding has filled a lot of the knowledge gaps, but not all of them, and new discoveries and theories come up all the time. Philosophically speaking I think there may be some kind of higher consciousness/life force (Yoda told me) and we're all connected on some quantum level, but I don't have the intelligence to articulate it. I quite like the idea that the Earth is an organism itself, like Gaia. I also take some comfort knowing that my atoms were forged in the stars and will return to the stars one day.

But anyway, we all know the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42.
 
Ian Bairds Ears said:
On the back of some of the horrendous events of the last few decades...and in general throughout humanity....
I have to say I was brought up as a Christian...by 12 or 13 that had gone and I became neutral

By 40 I was atheist
Strongly atheist
But weirdly....I have had some experiences that are of a spiritual nature which has left me thinking....there is no god but the soul goes to somewhere and becomes something else...a different energy.
That may sound weird being an atheist but feeling spiritual
But what great creator would make something capable of child abuse ...murder....rape.....etc...genocide....why...?
You just wouldn't do that unless you yourself were evil
So I'll settle with evolution over billions of years into the loathsome freaks some of us are now...and rhat energy literally cannot die..but be converted.
Other than that....UTFB
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Strict believers would all give the same answer/excuse in their argument FOR a God and that is, that he gives us all a free will and therefore the people who commit those heinous crimes do so by choice, thereby absolving their God.
I prefer to ask the question when I sadly see some terribly disabled people, WHY ! why can't they enjoy the same quality of life as the majority of us ? Their sad situation has nothing whatsoever to do with choice, or THEIR Free Will.
 
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Laughing said:
Briefly, the big bang starts to fall apart about 100,000 years before the big bang happened. We don't see any light from that period, which we should, given our best theories today. For a reversal of inflation, it would have to reverse to a singularity or we would be able to see light from the "last" universe, which we don't.

Singularities do show our measly maths up for what it is, but that itself doesn't discount a big bang/big crunch.
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there is a theory that at a singularity, light cannot escape, thus we can't see it, there are also other theories to do with the status of physics in the singularity period and big bang period, being exponentially different to today. Big bang is still rightly regarded as highly probable, and a strongly supported theory, although some of the key details may not have been worked out.
 
Laughing said:
Except for the fact at the macro scale it works in a very intuitive way. We evolved to know and work in that predictable, intuitive universe.
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macro scale is just that, a fraction of what the universe really is, which is what I'm saying, we don't live and breath on the galactic level, but just on our little rock. We continued as a species for the vast majority of our history not evening having a scooby that there was anywhere else in the universe, but what we can touch on earth.
 
Littlejimmy said:
I've long been agnostic, not fully atheist, because I don't have 100% certainty about anything.
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I think this is one of those areas where the vast majority of people misuse certain terms, and that is partly due to misinformation and stigma attached to certain words.

I'm atheist and agnostic, there is no 'certainty', I call myself atheist for shorthand, but prefer the term 'de facto atheist' or 'agnostic atheist' when pressed on it. There is no evidence of a god, and ok, we cannot rule out god because we can't check under every rock, inside every teapot, and on top of every cloud to see if there is one sat there, but in all likelihood there isn't one or we would have some kind of evidence by now.

In my experience most 'agnostics' fall into this category. Most people think you can be only atheist or agnostic, and not both. Theists believe in one or more gods, atheists don't believe in the existence of gods.
Gnostics know with certainty, agnostics accept uncertainty.

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Centralscrutinizer said:
We don't know for sure that we're not just part of an advanced Sims like computer simulation. Our God could be a kid from an advanced civilisation. We need to hope his Mam doesn't unplug his computer to do the hoovering in his bedroom.
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Simulation hypothesis, Nick Bostrom wrote a philosophical paper on this which I find interesting.

Are we Sims?

I've thought about this a lot. How would we know we are sims, this is the only consciousness we know?
 
BaronSmoggie said:
Simulation hypothesis, Nick Bostrom wrote a philosophical paper on this which I find interesting.

Are we Sims?

I've thought about this a lot. How would we know we are sims, this is the only consciousness we know?
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Ideally we wouldn't know, but we have to remember it's a hypothesis and not a theorem. There are a billion hypothesis and most are nonsense.
 
BoroMart said:
I think this is one of those areas where the vast majority of people misuse certain terms, and that is partly due to misinformation and stigma attached to certain words.

I'm atheist and agnostic, there is no 'certainty', I call myself atheist for shorthand, but prefer the term 'de facto atheist' or 'agnostic atheist' when pressed on it. There is no evidence of a god, and ok, we cannot rule out god because we can't check under every rock, inside every teapot, and on top of every cloud to see if there is one sat there, but in all likelihood there isn't one or we would have some kind of evidence by now.

In my experience most 'agnostics' fall into this category. Most people think you can be only atheist or agnostic, and not both. Theists believe in one or more gods, atheists don't believe in the existence of gods.
Gnostics know with certainty, agnostics accept uncertainty.

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I'm also Agnostic Atheist going by that then.
 
BoroMart said:
Ideally we wouldn't know, but we have to remember it's a hypothesis and not a theorem. There are a billion hypothesis and most are nonsense.
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Agreed, but this has merit. The irony in sims (humans) themselves creating a game that replicates human life actually being sims themselves is not lost on me. There is another paper which I am trying to find which talks about mathematical coincidences in the Universe that could only happen inside a computer simulation. I am not for one second saying I am a staunch believer, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that it has some merit in being real. If it is, it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. It just means the end of the Universe is someone's hard drive finally borking :)
 
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