The Universe - is it Created? or by Chance?

[xEOn]

truly created

[jayz_cast]

gihimu jud ni. its perfect kasi!

[Pein]

Right... Mukalit man gani'g tunga ang god nga wai hinungdan.

Again, read slowly. Reread if necessary -> The universe has always existed, therefore not needing any cause.

kung muingon pud mi nimo nga "God has always existed, therefore not needing any cause", dawaton kaha nimo?

if the universe existed lagi (effect), naa juy cause nganong ni exist na siya. asa raman ang cause? missing link napud?

basaha kunog balik ang title sa thread, ang title, Universe - is it Created? or by Chance?

now, niingon ka, "the universe has always existed, therefore not needing any cause", sa ato pa, ang pag exist diay sa universe is not by chance diay? dili diay aksidente ang pag butho sa universe? kay "it has always existed" man kaha?

kung mauhon na, unsa man jud diay ang stand nimo ani nga discussion? asa man ka sa duha? was it created? or by chance?

hmmmmm...

[Pein]

Earth is Billions of years old.
Proof.....Stalagmites and Stalactites - is estimated to form 1 CUBIC INCH per 100 years. This cave that i visited in San Antonio is bigger than a football field. So you do the math.So all Creationist must be converted to Evolutionist, NOW! KARON jud dayon. wahahhahahahaha!

pun an pa nako oh:



Diamonds were formed billions of years ago under intense heat and pressure existing at depths of 140 to 190 kilometers (87 to 120 mi) in the Earth's mantle. The correct combination of temperature and pressure is only found in the thick, ancient, and stable parts of continental plates where regions of lithosphere known as cratons exist. Brought to the Earth's surface through deep volcanic eruptions which act as an elevator, diamonds are carried to the surface of the earth within the magma, which cools into igneous rocks known as kimberlites and lamproites.

Every natural diamond is immensely old, formed long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. The youngest diamond is 900 million years old, and the oldest is 3.2 billion years old.

unsa may naa ana nganong magpa convert man mi?

[redhorse1L]

see hitch's reply for this.


You are making an assumption that self-consciousness and "freewill" can not be attained from an evolutionary process. When in fact it has already been extensively explained how a hominid which evolved a large enough brain will attain high levels of intelligence as a consequence.

And again you are implying that the self consciousness was attained in an instant. No, it would have been a gradual process of evolving increasing intelligence. Not instantaneously like "woah! Im human". IT would be so gradual, an organism would not know when the exact point it attained it. See my ladder analogy in the previous post. Another more clearer analogy, can you recall the earliest time in your childhood when you exaclty started remembering? No, you can't.

I am really starting to doubt whether you really have a good grasp of how evolution works.

btw, "freewill" is not limited to humans. Since freewill essentially means having choice and being able to make that choice of ones own accord. Animals have choice, they can choose who to mate with, when to sleep, which fruit to eat, or whether to kill you or not.


There is no contradiction. As I said, time and space was created when the singularity expanded. What does that mean? The singularity existed outside of space and time. Ka simple.



Read up more on String Theory. There are dimensions within 3 dimensional space, it also describes hyperdimensional space(outside our own space)


btw, you havent answered my question, do you still believe the universe is "finely-tuned" for life?
And your position on the extraterrestrial version Jesus.

Yes of course it would be gradual. I'm just exaggerating. What I'm trying to say is that having a self-conscious thought and freewill is what separate us from other species, and NOT our form.
Like you said, it's like a child.
But it doesn't mean that a child is not yet fully human.
Although we can't remember as a baby due to our limited memory capacity, but babies can even response to external environment even inside the womb.

Ok, let me ask you, from your own perspective, when do you consider a particular primival species to be a human? is Ardi already human? how about Lucy?
So, when did these "humans" actually came around?
Based from your yellow-orange-red, is the red-orange human? how about the orange? or yellow with a 1pt red tone?

btw, "freewill" is not limited to humans. Since freewill essentially means having choice and being able to make that choice of ones own accord. Animals have choice, they can choose who to mate with, when to sleep, which fruit to eat, or whether to kill you or not.
You gotta be kidding me. I don't know where you get that idea. Animals make their choice based on their instinct. They kill/attack if they're hungry or threaten. They sleep when they're tired or their biological clock says so. They mate with the best kind in order to have good offspring.
Now if you're telling me that your dog is tired eating his dogfood and wanted some bacon for a change, you must be watching too much Disney movies lately.

Animal intelligence is totally different from human intelligence.
Again, we are rational being, as opposed to the rest of creatures.
We know what is right or wrong. We can do good, we can do evil. At our own "freewill".

As I said, time and space was created when the singularity expanded. What does that mean? The singularity existed outside of space and time. Ka simple.
Mao nay gi-ingon nga, wala na ko'y mahimo ana.
I've already presented reasons that an actual infinite past arrives at self-contradiction.

There should be a series of past events happening before that Big-Bang occurred.
Now if you traverse backwards to those past events, like energy fluctuations, or energy building up, etc.. you should arrive on a point of beginning. But if you say there was an infinite series of past events before the BigBang, then that would be absurd.

btw, you havent answered my question, do you still believe the universe is "finely-tuned" for life?
And your position on the extraterrestrial version Jesus.
I don't have to give opinions on ET since I don't claim that they exists.
Our existence here already signifies that the Universe is indeed fine-tuned for life, as what most scientists agreed.

[redhorse1L]

I don't dispute about the difference between us and chimps. In pointing out the similarities, I meant to show why evolutionary biologists focus their attention on chimps and the great apes when studying their common descent with humans.

Get my point?

But I have to ask you this: What's your stance on the Theory of Evolution, particularly on Biological Evolution? You don't think humans and the great apes share common ancestry? Are you a creationist?



Save? Save from what? This is the only life, we believe, that we're ever going to have. Salvation is an idea from Theism, remember? You guys believe there's an after-life theme park, and everyone's going to show up as holographic images in a grand reunion. We don't. We believe that when we die, every part of our body goes back into nature. That's not entirely a bad thing. To quote Steve Jobs:


* That's taken from the commencement address he gave to Standford University graduates (click here to view his inspiring speech).

The difference between us is that I'm comfortable not getting an answer to the BIG QUESTIONS. You, on the other hand, somehow have to buy into one of the hundreds of supernatural vistas of the after-life and promises of salvation peddled by religions, in order to have those nagging BIG QUESTIONS answered. Just read what religions have to say about the origin of the universe (taken from Salman Rushdie's Letter to the Six Billionth Person - click here to read the whole letter):



You want to believe in them? Well, that's your choice. But leave me out of it.



Well, don't all religions say that? Magic, magic, magic. Case closed. No need to prove anything. Something cannot come from nothing, except God, therefore God exists. Everything has a cause, except God, therefore God exists. Don't you find the arguments rather curious? God's existence is already implied at the premise.

I've read that Immanuel Kant, perhaps the greatest German philosopher, provided one of the best refutations against every argument (cosmological, ontological, and teleological) for the existence of God in his book Critique of Pure Reason. It is said that the priests in Germany protested madly at this, that they revenged themselves by calling their dogs "Immanuel Kant". Needless to say, his book also ended up in the Vatican's Index of Prohibited Books. Kant should've realized that there's no prize for the winning arguments against the existence of God.

* I've only read Kant's bio, but I'm curious to read his Critique.



Wait. There are religious claims which science can test, in order to prove Divine Intervention. One is, God answers prayers. Science can do a double-blind test on this. Of course, we won't ask people to part the Red Sea...although that seemed doable a couple of thousand years ago. How about let's test those who claim they can heal the sick? You see, it is testable. And there's even an organization called the JREF in the US that's going to award $1 million to anyone who claims to have paranormal/supernatural ability and proves it. JREF was founded in the 70s, and to this date, no one has claimed the prize. Makes you wonder sometimes...but it would be wonderful if somebody does win it.

Theism makes claims like these. Deism, on the other hand, stops with God's existence. That's why I've said, to get from Deism to Theism, you still have a lot of work ahead of you. You have to prove that water can magically turn into wine, a virgin can give birth, a dead man can rise and walk again, and all those wonderful stories in that book.

I believe in Theistic evolution.
I don't believe that all things came up by chance.
I believe that an intelligent designer made these all happen.
The theory of evolution explains and describes the creatures' biological developments.
But it cannot explain how human as a person, a self-conscious being with freewill came to be.

Most of your comment shows that you have no idea about how man understands God.
Like science, man's knowledge about God also developed.
Once, men believed that gods live in mount Olympus, throwing bolts of lightning or creating huge tidal waves when angry.
Surely no one would believe on that these days, right?


Well, don't all religions say that? Magic, magic, magic. Case closed. No need to prove anything. Something cannot come from nothing, except God, therefore God exists.
I prefer to call it God's power since magic is just a trick.

Everything has a cause, except God, therefore God exists. Don't you find the arguments rather curious? God's existence is already implied at the premise.
Now what would you think might have started all these?
The Universe has just came all by itself? Or it just existed eternally? like Alpha-Omega?

[redhorse1L]

thanks bro for trying to be respectful with my ideas/beliefs...
hmmm.. the stalactites/stalagmites? nice pictures bro... very nice... but hmm... i never said that the earth is 10,000 yrs old... our planet is way,way, way older than that... and yes... i agree... billions tingali ang earth.... not sure of the exact number... i think naa na sa pikas forum bai (bible vs evolution thread)... and i believe nobody posted that...

so balik tah sa thread...
asa man gikan ang universe?
[A] created by a Supreme Being who is beyond space and time (dimensions conceptualized by humans); OR
[b]CHANCE ra oi, TAGHAP ra ning tanan, CHAMBA ra jud

Talking about chances, daghana chamba aneh oi. hehehe
We say "Our Universe is fine-tuned" - they say "Chamba ra na"
We say "Our planet is special" - they say "Chamba ra na"
We say "Life of earth is special"- they say "Chamba ra na"
We say "Human beings are special" - they say "Chamba ra na"


It would be like a nuclear time bomb about to explode. And you're in-front of a complex computer console asking for a thousand alphanumeric characters to disarm the bomb. Frustrated, you just typed in randomly. The time bomb hits zero as you hit the enter key, no explosions. You're alive!!

You don't just say: "Well, lucky me. I got all the keys correct!"
Instead, you will be amazed and ponder: "Wow, I don't believe I did that, someone must have disarmed it remotely, or the bomb was just a hoax".

[hitch22]

I believe in Theistic evolution.

I suppose you know what Theistic Evolution means. That means you accept that Evolution happened but that it happened as part of God's design.

If that's the case, then I have no disagreement with you on that regard (except that, on my part, I have to apply Occam's razor). In fact, I admire the Roman Catholic scientist, Ken Miller, who took up the case for Evolution in the Dover trial. If you are anything like Ken Miller, then two thumbs up for you too!

I don't believe that all things came up by chance.
I believe that an intelligent designer made these all happen.
The theory of evolution explains and describes the creatures' biological developments.
But it cannot explain how human as a person, a self-conscious being with freewill came to be.

You may think that I'm anti-religion, but I'm not. You may even think it's unbecoming of me to say what I'm about to say...which would be conciliatory in tone.

I respect what you said above. There are large areas of inquiry where science is able to give the best answers. However, I also think that science is not the only way, nor always the best way, to gain an understanding of the world. Religion (at its best) and philosophy (at its best)--I think--help us deal with questions about the meaning of life without the need for experimentation or mathematics (although in my case, philosophy works very well independently). Art, music, and literature as well provide us with aesthetic knowledge. I think these different ways of knowing can complement each other for most people.

Agree?

Once, men believed that gods live in mount Olympus, throwing bolts of lightning or creating huge tidal waves when angry.
Surely no one would believe on that these days, right?

So, you don't believe that God throws bolts of lightning when angry? Let's check the Bible.

Zechariah 9:14

And the LORD shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning and the LORD God shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the south.

Job 37:15

Do you know how God lays his command upon them and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine?

Psalm 29:7

The voice of the LORD strikes with flashes of lightning.

Job 36:32

He covers his hands with the lightning and commands it to strike the mark.

Anyway, I meant that as a joke. I hope the religious still have some sense of humor in them.

Now what would you think might have started all these?
The Universe has just came all by itself? Or it just existed eternally? like Alpha-Omega?

On your first question, I think I've said it before: I DON'T KNOW. If the answers are not going to come within my lifetime, I'm okay with it too.

On the rest of your questions...here's how I'd look at it. This will sound philosophical. So bear with me. On your part, I think you will agree with me that an endless chain of causes is inconceivable. On my part, I think a first cause that is uncaused is likewise inconceivable. Is there any exit from these blind alleys of thought?

According to Immanuel Kant, there is. Space, time, and cause are modes of perception which we attribute to experience....since they give structure and connections to experience (think about when you describe your experience). Likewise, we do not have any experience which is not interpreted in terms of space, time, and cause. In other words...space, time and cause are modes of interpretation and understanding for our sense experience.

Follow me so far? Okay...

Kant then went on to say that sense experiences are finite categories. Space, time, and cause can only apply to phenomena that appear to sense experiences. Therefore, we cannot apply these three conceptions to (what Kant calls) the "noumenal world" (which I think he means the world that is outside the world of phenomenon).

In short, Kant seems to be saying that cause only applies to the realm of phenomena...(unless I read him wrong. Has anyone here read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? Please feel free to correct me).

So that, in a nutshell, is my answer to those questions of causation. The realm of the supernatural just cannot enter into that question.

Get my point?

[bungot25]

It is a valid position, the universe has always been in existence. Unsa mai naka circular ana?

did you see the whole universe goy? NO...this means you are just speculating a valid position.
but not a fact yet.
did scientist believed its infinite? NO...most of them believe in a finite universe..
you actually evade the cause and effect of BIG BAng coz you believe it might be a trapped hole, so
you escape the unescapable argument..if you believe so, it looks like a baseless assertion to me. you dont
have any proofs...am i right or wrong? there must be an obvious answer to this...hmmmm?

[Tirong-say]

wa gyuy padulngan bro... maypa manganta ta'g "Pyramid" by Charice Pempengco... lingaw pa...

OT: Bitaw maayo pa................he-he