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Foreword: Thanks for the totally on-topic reply, i don't think you missed anything.



No problem.

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A note about arrogance: What I meant here was that religions always assume that we are the chosen people, a great race which the creator watches over, we have supernatural elements that return to him - but nothing else does - and all that.



No Christian that I know of asserts only humans will return to God. In fact, the bible says the entire creation will eventually be restored. Its not like we're necessarily going to some far away place. It seems more like we're going to a place much like this one, except our sin won't have corrupted it.

But.

The alternative to the arrogance of religion is the arrogance of naturalism. We're the greatest living thing that nature has ever created (as far as science can tell us) and we're the ultimate standard for right and wrong. That sounds fairly arrogant to me, too.

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I meant that this was arrogance on the part of our species when we are in fact tiny and insignifigant on the grand and glorious scale that is the universe.



I agree with what you say here, to an extent. I don't think we're completely unimportant. However, its important to stay humble, since after all pride is what got us into the situation we're in now.

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It's pretty much the opposite of arrogance to accept we are so tiny.




We can still be tiny while still existing as the result of a creator.

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Anyways, what I meant in my prior post was that what we call 'the universe' and assume is the extent of what exists,



Maybe its because I care more for testable science, but the only way we could maybe speculate on some other extra-universal existence is with mathematics. But either way, we can come up with all sorts of mathematical 'language' to describe something beyond the universe, and still be completely wrong, even if the math pans out. I don't find it very important to try and figure out if there is some natural state outside the universe. How could we even comprehend it? What exists beyond space? And stuff like that.

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Basically what we think of as the universe is a supercluster of clusters of galaxies, expanding in all dimensions from a central point. Maybe there are tonnes of superclusters. This would be part of the infinite universe argument



I think our universe is made up of matter, space, time, energy, what have you. What you're saying here sounds like a multiverse theory. I don't buy the whole multiverse thing, because the whole idea is just a way to rationalize away the fine tuning of the universe.

I can't get really more specific than that. I don't even know what makes people think there are multiple universes besides our own. Or why it matters, except that its yet another way to say we weren't designed.

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In any effect we have some arguable evidence for stellar evolution, the lifecycles of stars, and expansion of the supercluster which we see through red shift.



I think red shift is still quite an open topic, but I'm rather ignorant on astronomy or whatever.

Watching stars die, however, doesn't prove that they are created. I find it interesting that every source I read calls the birth of stars a sure thing, but I have yet to see any source provide any proof that stars have been born except they are sure that they are.

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So yes, I Suggested infinite time and space. Entirely because it's physically possible.



Then we get back into thermodynamics. I don't know if this applies to what you're saying, but if the universe is infinitely old, then there would be no more usable energy. The universe would be completely dark and motionless and completely cold.

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As to anything being created infinite, I believe this statement is a contradiction in terms, and would put your creator beyond infinite.




I was speaking more in terms of something infinitely large, because I don't believe something could be infinitely old (due to thermodynamics once again). Perhaps, if the universe were infinitely large that might solve the useable energy problem. I don't know all of the physics on that, but then that would make the big bang a useless theory (the universe would have to have been infinitely large to begin with, otherwise it could only be infinitely large by expanding for an infinite amount of time, and that brings us right back to thermodynamics). In which case, I think it would be all the more logical to assume that we were created, perfectly ordered, right from the start. Frankly, I hope the universe is infinitely large. But we'll see.

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There is a priciple in science called Ockham's razor: If you have two different hypotheses that both explain the same observation, the hypothesis that is less complicated and makes less assumptions is normally the true one.



I still have yet to hear an explanation of where it all came from. What I see is the question pushed back into infinity. The universe was created by the big bang, which was created by thing a, which was created by thing b, which was created by thing c. And its all speculation. So...Okham's razor works against you on this, I believe. Its more likely that we were created out of an infinite nothingness, by a creator, than that we have an infinite regress of events that we can barely even comprehend, none of which even explain the big question but simply explain the event after it that hadn't answered the question either. Its similar to watching science chase its tail like a dog.

It baffles my mind.

Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 06/26/06 21:44.
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