'God': A Possible Definition

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If we accept the standard definition of 'the universe' as being 'the cosmos, physical reality, all that we know of that is material', then it most certainly had what we could call a beginning. Unlike many creationists, I actually understand the Second Law of thermodynamics, and it points in the direction of our reality being finite in time, due to the fact that an equilibrium state will be reached when the level of entropy within this universe reaches its maximum extent. We generally accept the universe is a closed system, and unless it isn't (possible? - maybe) there will be a point in time in the future when all possible activity will cease. If our universe has always existed, then we should not see the order that we find within it, because it would have run down aeons ago - in fact, an infinite amount of time ago.

There is also the widely accepted Big Bang theory, which has our universe as being 13.7 thousand million years of age. Cosmologists no longer accept Steady State (endorsed by Fred Hoyle), nor do they accept the oscillating model (so far as I know).

Contingency means that the entity, phenomenon or whatever it is that one has in mind has not existed eternally, has a reason for why it exists and in the manner it does, and could possibly have been otherwise or failed to exist in the first place.



First hand experience of the world we live in. If something does not have a cause (ex. the mathematical truth that 2+2=4), then it is considered to be 'necessary' (i.e. self-explanatory, eternally true). I don't really like using the word 'cause' myself, if only because it presupposes conventional causality; that is, it presupposes the existence of time which apparently did not, because it could not, have existed in any sense 'prior' to the existence of the universe itself. The word 'explanation' would be a better choice, because it allows for phenomena that from our perspective don't seem to have 'causes' (ex. virtual particles). Apparently our universe was in this sense without a cause, but a) so much of cosmology is at this point in time purely speculative, and b) even if there was no cause we must acccpt that it at least can be explained. We generally don't accept that events or phenomena or what-have-you is simply inexplicable. We always look for an explanation, because we would be unsatisfied without at least the possibility of finding one.



Simply because for something to be responsible for its own existence, it would have to exist prior in time to the point when it actually began to. I don't believe that this would ever be possible, because it doesn't even make sense in the first place.



Atemporal causality - when the effect is simultaneous in time with the cause. Ex. when a person plants their foot into soft sand, the placement of their foot and the impression - the effect - made in the sand occur at the same moment. What we call temporal causality is when the effect of an event prior in time can be attributed to that prior event.



Well, many of the rules dealing with day-to-day situations don't apply, but if an idea is logically incoherent (ex. all we know of - an entire universe - just popping into existence from nothing, and for no reason) we can safely reject it.

Anyway, I hope that this time I have been much clearer, because for whatever reason I just could not effectively convey what I meant to say to 'adifferentname'. I thought I had been clear enough, but apparently I hadn't been.

I don't know much about the study of consciousness I have to admit, but I think you are saying here that consciousness is not in any sense dependent upon that which it uses to manifest itself, but that it can and does transcend what we usually attribute as the cause of it (i.e. the brain), and that as the universe evolves it becomes evermore 'Godlike'. Am I right?

The way I'd put it is that, at a minimum - NDE stories and strapping reincarnational cosmologies aside - just to look at matter it would seem like consciousness is always waiting to crop up. The subjective evidence for it being independent is high but that kind of evidence usually doesn't go very far in such debates. What I was however was the possibility that systems - ie. planets, solar systems, galaxies, are sentient. The 'consciousness doesn't exist' crowd often just says that we're an amalgamation of cells and that our consciousness is an amalgamation of cells. That line of reasoning isn't nearly as much of an endigtment against consciousness however as they might think. That probably gets closer to what I'm fundamentally trying to say about consciousness and perhaps fewer words - it's granular in existence and it's level of self-awareness is reflective of the ways in which it evolves itself.

As for the multiverse - I really mean the whole of everything we both know and don't know about - that's probably what you might consider the All, the system of all systems. A lot of people would say that the universe/multiverse/totality is experiencing itself but more just in a manner of unfolding itself into increasing partitions and details - not for the sake of becoming more Godlike - it's the Absolute which as Godlike as something can be, just that for whatever reason it loves, enjoys loving, and is nursing the involution and evolution of consciousness through form, through self-awareness.

OK, so your argument here is that the universe must be contingent on something else because it probably had a beginning. I don't think that necessarily follows.

But you don't have any first hand experience of the start of universes.


And yet that's exactly what your "solution" to the problem is. You hypothesise an inexplicable entity is responsible for the existence of everything else. Why can't that entity be the universe?


It doesn't make sense to your human mind, trapped in the universe. It might make sense from the "perspective" of a universe, which contains time rather than participates in it.


That isn't logically incoherent, and it's also not an accurate description of the BBT, although I accept that's probably laziness on your part rather than the attempt to form an argument from complexity or something.

If the universe itself is an exception to the rule, then it is the first one I've come across. I don't have 100% proof for any claims I make here, but, all else considered, I believe that the explanation for any given event or phenomenon that is logically sound and coherent is far more sensible to place one's bets on than something that just does not seem right, like the notion that something can arise from literally nothing.



I guess this point is debatable. I have heard it said, by people who are far better at this than I am, that part of the very definition of what it would mean for God to be 'God', would be that the... let's call it 'entity', although that word has unfortunate connotations, in question would contain within itself the reason for why it is. In other words, it would exist necessarily in the same way that the rules of logic, and mathematical truths, do. Does that make sense?



Provide a real example of something - anything at all - arising out of nothing (i.e. the correct, literal meaning of the term 'nothing', as in, 'not anything as such, no-thing, an absence of all there could possibly be'). Virtual particles are not an example of this - http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-a ... -are-they/

It just doesn't happen. Ever. The reason? Logical incoherence. Time travel into the past will never be possible either, due to, among other reasons, the paradoxes that arise (ex. the Grandfather Paradox). Some things just are not possible.

It can't be the universe itself, because it was the universe itself that was created (or 'created', in inverted commas, if you don't like the theological implications of creation) in the first place. How can something be responsible for its own beginning? How could that possibly work? Everything we know of, without exception, that has what could be termed a beginning has an explanation for why it began. Why should the universe itself be the single exception to the rule?

Being subjective it is, by definition, inaccessible to others, and that's the problem. I've also been looking into N.D.E.'s, and no purely naturalistic explanation (ex. anoxia, 'dying brain hypothesis') has thus far been able to comprehensively account for why they happen. This article - http://io9.com/a-new-scientific-explana ... 1110395345
claims to be able to, but strangely enough doesn't even consider the many objections that have been raised for why these 'hallucinations' (an unjustified assumption if ever there was one) cannot be explained away as this writer attempts to.

Quote: "There are countless tales of people from all walks of life seeing bright lights and other vivid hallucinations when they're at the brink of death."

There's a name for this kind of fallacy, when you try to prove a conclusion but you already assume the conclusion is true within one of the premises, which I've forgotten the name of.

The other thing that gets sticky with these is that they tend to flow with people's beliefs, at least in so far as you have believers of various faiths; atheists seem to run the gamut of Christian-like experiences to having the sort of underworld or dark-limbo experience (depending I think on their dispositions aside from that belief). That behavior tends to weigh in favor of hallucination but only if one comes at it from the premise that an event as such, if real, would need to match a particular religious dogma. That behavior however seems to suggest more that you charge yourself with an orientation toward what you pay attention to or what you choose to relate to and that if you don't have any inclinations higher than the physical, even if it's just art and music, you end up without much to spread into when the physical departs or worse - a lot of pessimism.

What you see as "order", others call randomness.

Randomness is at the heart of the other side's arguments.

It is not far-fetched, because everywhere, always, random particles are colliding, thus, the universe progresses always, everywhere, based on the outcome of these random particle collisions.

Your definition of 'contingency' appears to just assumes randomness was not the cause of the universe.

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 13 Aug 2015, 7:03 am, edited 2 times in total.

Atomic and molecular structure make it dificult for me to believe in radomness. There can only be so many possible types of atom. The way molecules are formed is a limiting factor.

But oil + water don't bind and we see their interaction causes changes.

Random particle collision can simply change the speed or trajectory of another particle.

Lots of things don't seem right - it doesn't stop them from being true!


It makes sense, it's just unfounded, and seems completely detached from the day-to-day use of the word "God". Again, still not convinced there's any need to posit a new entity.


Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, and is a property of the universe. To talk of time "prior" to the universe doesn't make sense. The heuristics of causality therefore can't be applied. (I believe this also addresses your next post)


... The universe?

It hasn't existed forever. As the universe is everything that exists, that means it was "created" ex nihilo.

If, as Walrus believes, the rules that apply within the universe do not necessarily hold when it comes to the formation of that universe (i.e. a universe arising from nothing is not as impossible as it may seem to us), then there was no cause, it just is. If we accept this idea for the sake of argument, then the randomness you mention becomes irrelevant, as does the order we perceive, because absent the existence of anything at all there can be neither, and the argument about order vs. randomness becomes irrelevant.

That, I think, is what I have more trouble accepting than anything else - the notion that something can arise from nothing, because a) an understanding of the term 'nothing' literally means 'not anything at all, a complete absence of everything', and our observations of nature have never, ever provided us with a single example of something materialising from nothing, for any reason, and b) the claim that universes can create themselves, even though those who argue this position will also claim that time and therefore causality did not exist 'prior' to the universe coming into being, is incoherent. This isn't science, this is magic, and I don't believe in magic.

People are afraid of death and the nothingness and wish to believe there is another world they go to after they die which is why they become religious, that and growing up being indocrinated with religion throughout childhood I sure was and as I grew up I did not buy into that crap especially when I discovered that Santa Clause was not real when I was 2 years old.

But you see, if death really is complete nothingness and oblivion then we've got nothing at all to fear, because we won't be aware of the fact that we no longer are. It seems to me that there are those who think that we will somehow be able to experience 'nothingness', that it will be like existing in some dark pit, but that can't be true, so the argument that religious beliefs arise due to a fear of death just doesn't make sense, and the evidence for this position of mine is the existence of religions like Judaism and Buddhism that don't actually require one to believe in an afterlife, and don't have scriptures that push this view.

However, even if you had a point here (and you don't), so what? Isn't this the genetic fallacy you are making here? You know, the belief that how a belief arises in the first place determines whether or not the belief in question is true or not. It doesn't. The afterlife could still be real, those who accept this notion could still be right, even if they believe what they do for all the wrong reasons.

I would rather experience nothingness than eternal burning and torture but then again with the eternal burning and torture at least I wont be bored and in due time I will be so used to it and adapt to it and might even take pleasure out of it. Eternal BDSM does not seem so bad after all!