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I refuse to believe that the Universe isn't cyclical, because I believe the Universe has existed forever, otherwise there is no answer to the origin of everythi

I refuse to believe that the Universe isn't cyclical, because I believe the Universe has existed forever, otherwise there is no answer to the origin of everything other than something from nothing or God.

PUSH_AX 4y ago
Why is one of those answers better than the other?
- haswell 4y ago
  Believing one has a tendency to cause people to fundamentally alter how they live their lives, optimize for an afterlife at the expense of the life they actually have, and then fight wars over the belief that the afterlife is the only one that matters. As a default state of not knowing, one causes far more material harm in our current reality than the other.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    This seems like your biased interpretation actually. Most people believe in God and most people don’t start wars.
    - bandie91 4y ago
      altough I agree with this datapoint. however the parent post's concern was not about majority, but that monotheism causes violence at all, and it causes more damage to material goods than lack of monotheism. i once disagree that monotheism, which values non-material things more than material ones, neccessarily leads to destruction of the material. orthodox Christianity for example values material and non-material, soul and body equally. secondly i disagree that this argument is valid. since if you are in the viewpoint of "all that matters is the non-material" then wasting material does not harm the world. and simirarly, supposedly saving souls at the expense of the body is incomprehensible to the materialist. so the term "harm" understood in 2 disjunct ways per the 2 frameworks. circling back to orthodoxy: it unites the "saving souls" and "saving forests" (understand well, it's not about trees, but the whole material creation clamped together in a catchphrase) attitudes in the mystery of Incarnation.
  - bandie91 4y ago
    standing on a viewpoint of ca. "the cause of everything is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal being" (ie. the pilosophers' God) does not entail the Abrahamic religions' image of God directly, nor an afterlife of humans, nor a right to self defence, nor commission of evangelization nor jihad.
- detrites 4y ago
  Occam's razor. A perpetual universe is only required to exist - which also happens to be all we can 100% empirically confirm, whereas the other explanations require creating extra complexity such as a birth/creator or before/after. Even a before/after of "nothing" is still an extra complication that violates the principle. Not that Occam's razor is a law, but given something already as wieldy as everything, it's probably a prudent application.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    A perpetual universe has it's own set of very complicated problems, resetting entropy being the largest elephant in the room. Occam's razor is still twisted into nth dimensional shapes no matter what choice you make here. There are no easy answers, and it's highly likely whatever answer is true is unknownable.
  - caf 4y ago
    In the same way that the two-dimensional surface of a sphere has a finite extent, it's possible to imagine spacetime as a 4-dimensional surface in which the time dimension is finite in extent. In this way, "before the beginning" has no meaning in the same way that "north of the north pole" has no meaning.
  - yongjik 4y ago
    Occam's razor works when the two alternatives are equally likely. In our case, we have the ratio of primordial elements (which is well explained by the big bang) and the cosmic background radiation (which is extremely well explained by the universe coming out of a hot, fiery early stage, within an error of 1/1000th). I.e., a perpetual universe must explain why in every direction we see a uniform background radiation which looks exactly like it's coming from a hot universe of the past. Occam's razor dictates that the big bang is the simpler (thus preferable) model, given evidences.
    - detrites 4y ago
      If our view of the universe shows an infinitely compressed point of matter expanding, what can coax such expansion? An infinite surround of nothingness. Which must then be contained within what? More matter; endless ripples. As another commenter posited, a space-time surface that is curved along itself, perpetually. It doesn't negate the big bang, or the great death, rather it relies on these two properties - but exclusively and reductively. The original comment was regarding a cyclic universe - which I agreed with. Perhaps my use of the term "perpetual", while accurate - was confusing. I don't disagree with the big bang, we've observed it directly.
- burkaman 4y ago
  Well God doesn't really answer the question, then you just have to ask where God came from. I don't have a personal opinion on "eternal universe" vs. "something from nothing", they seem equally impossible and unfathomable.
  - PUSH_AX 4y ago
    I think they all spawn more questions equally.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Right now we have to ask where the universe came from. God is literally a word that means “the answer to that.” The nature of god is a mystery.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      That feels like kind of a cop out, doesn't it? I mean that works for any question. It's not very satisfying, and for me it's a lot less satisfying than "I don't know". The nature of the universe is a mystery, replacing "universe" with "god" is just a tautology that doesn't get us anywhere.
      - bandie91 4y ago
        IMO, in this context the "God" and the "I don't know" is the same answer: with an addition that the cause of everything is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal being, so we at least know something about the first cause. and let call this "thing" "God". but ultimately we don't know the "God" itself, since he's outside of our domain of natural philisophy. so this answer is still "ultimately we don't know". on the other hand the "i don't know at all" standpoint either does not engage with the "spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal" qualifications, because we can pretty well conclude these - altough not by scientific enquire but philosophicly -, or just refuse to label it. so no, universe and God are not the same kind of mysteries: universe is a miraculous field of riddles you can discover with reason, unlike God.
permo-w 4y ago
why does there have to be an answer?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Because people like the mental comfort of knowing their lives have meaning as foundation blocks in some eternal building. To hear that it all ultimately doesn't matter is not something most people are prepared to accept. The answer to me is simple: live as if it does matter and don't fret about the 'but what if it doesn't' question, anything you'd do different because of that you are likely better off without.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    You’re projecting here. Not all religions have some nice eternal afterlife.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      If you add in reincarnation the list of religions that don't have some form of 'life after death' gets surprisingly slim.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Saying there’s no answer is no different than replying with “God” as an answer
  - bandie91 4y ago
    Saying "Saying there’s no answer is no different than replying with “God” as an answer" is no different than have not been looking into the argument even for a second. Edit: looking through your other comments, I maybe misunderstood your statement here. first glance it very much sounded like the god-of-the-gaps argument to me.
- bandie91 4y ago
  well, strictly philosophically speaking, does not neccessarily have to be an answer there. it's just some answers are more plausible than others. so if there is an answer then you may find it around the more plausible one.
nullspace 4y ago
Amusingly (to me) the third attitude towards this is: "It just is that way. I'm sorry that the answer does not satisfy you, but the universe does not owe you a satifying answer." :)
- willis936 4y ago
  The universe does not owe an answer. Extrapolating 50 orders of magnitude when we don't even have an airtight model of existing observations is... not something to be confident about. It certainly won't affect my dreams.
gilleain 4y ago
This reminded me of the idea of a 'block universe' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time... which I first heard about in an interview with Alan Moore.
nh23423fefe 4y ago
I'm a "nothing" doesn't exist person
GordonS 4y ago
But... if there is a god, what created the god?
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Depends. Is the god eternal? Things that are eternal (at least, eternal into the past) don't have beginnings, and therefore don't need creators. (Same with an eternal, cyclical universe - no creator required. It just is, and always has been.)
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    >Depends. Is the god eternal? Things that are eternal (at least, eternal into the past) don't have beginnings, and therefore don't need creators. (Same with an eternal, cyclical universe - no creator required. It just is, and always has been.) I'd add that if "god" is/was/will be made entirely of photons (and/or other massless particles), then "god" moves at the speed of light, which means "god" doesn't experience the passage of time[0]; so no beginning, no end and no in-between, just existence outside of "time." This is, of course, a ridiculous idea. However, it does support the fantasy of an eternal being. Then again, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."[1] Which isn't to say that such claptrap as I suggest is true and, based on what we know now, it seems (at least to me) a ridiculous concept. That said, our understanding of the universe(s) is woefully incomplete. [0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/54162/how-does-a-photon-experience-space-and-time https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/54162/how-does-a... [1] http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quickquotes/quickquotehamletdreamt.html http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quickquotes/quickquotehaml... Edit: Used the correct conjunction.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  The whole point of god is that it’s the first cause. The unmoved mover.
  - drsnow 4y ago
    ... okay, the whole point is that the same excuse can be used for a necessary universe, one that came into existence and was its own first cause, unmoved mover
kypro 4y ago
I've often wondered whether something and nothing are just concepts that only make sense from the perspective of a subjective observer. Is `1 + -1` something or nothing? And what is `2 + -2`? Is it something, nothing, or also `1 + -1`? And I could continue like this proving every number you could possibly imagine can exist in some manifestation of nothing. So perhaps we're just one of the infinite manifestations of nothing. From our subjective perspective we are something, but from the perspective of an objective observer nothing is really happening because all the subjective manifestations equate to nothing. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but this always made more sense to me than trying to understand why there is something and how long that something existed for. Perhaps it's both.
efdee 4y ago
But "forever" only makes sense within our universe, since time itself is intrinsically a property of the universe. If the universe exists within something else, "forever" doesn't necessarily mean anything there.

PUSH_AX 4y ago

Why is one of those answers better than the other?

haswell 4y ago
Believing one has a tendency to cause people to fundamentally alter how they live their lives, optimize for an afterlife at the expense of the life they actually have, and then fight wars over the belief that the afterlife is the only one that matters. As a default state of not knowing, one causes far more material harm in our current reality than the other.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  This seems like your biased interpretation actually. Most people believe in God and most people don’t start wars.
  - bandie91 4y ago
    altough I agree with this datapoint. however the parent post's concern was not about majority, but that monotheism causes violence at all, and it causes more damage to material goods than lack of monotheism. i once disagree that monotheism, which values non-material things more than material ones, neccessarily leads to destruction of the material. orthodox Christianity for example values material and non-material, soul and body equally. secondly i disagree that this argument is valid. since if you are in the viewpoint of "all that matters is the non-material" then wasting material does not harm the world. and simirarly, supposedly saving souls at the expense of the body is incomprehensible to the materialist. so the term "harm" understood in 2 disjunct ways per the 2 frameworks. circling back to orthodoxy: it unites the "saving souls" and "saving forests" (understand well, it's not about trees, but the whole material creation clamped together in a catchphrase) attitudes in the mystery of Incarnation.
- bandie91 4y ago
  standing on a viewpoint of ca. "the cause of everything is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal being" (ie. the pilosophers' God) does not entail the Abrahamic religions' image of God directly, nor an afterlife of humans, nor a right to self defence, nor commission of evangelization nor jihad.
detrites 4y ago
Occam's razor. A perpetual universe is only required to exist - which also happens to be all we can 100% empirically confirm, whereas the other explanations require creating extra complexity such as a birth/creator or before/after. Even a before/after of "nothing" is still an extra complication that violates the principle. Not that Occam's razor is a law, but given something already as wieldy as everything, it's probably a prudent application.
- pixl97 4y ago
  A perpetual universe has it's own set of very complicated problems, resetting entropy being the largest elephant in the room. Occam's razor is still twisted into nth dimensional shapes no matter what choice you make here. There are no easy answers, and it's highly likely whatever answer is true is unknownable.
- caf 4y ago
  In the same way that the two-dimensional surface of a sphere has a finite extent, it's possible to imagine spacetime as a 4-dimensional surface in which the time dimension is finite in extent. In this way, "before the beginning" has no meaning in the same way that "north of the north pole" has no meaning.
- yongjik 4y ago
  Occam's razor works when the two alternatives are equally likely. In our case, we have the ratio of primordial elements (which is well explained by the big bang) and the cosmic background radiation (which is extremely well explained by the universe coming out of a hot, fiery early stage, within an error of 1/1000th). I.e., a perpetual universe must explain why in every direction we see a uniform background radiation which looks exactly like it's coming from a hot universe of the past. Occam's razor dictates that the big bang is the simpler (thus preferable) model, given evidences.
  - detrites 4y ago
    If our view of the universe shows an infinitely compressed point of matter expanding, what can coax such expansion? An infinite surround of nothingness. Which must then be contained within what? More matter; endless ripples. As another commenter posited, a space-time surface that is curved along itself, perpetually. It doesn't negate the big bang, or the great death, rather it relies on these two properties - but exclusively and reductively. The original comment was regarding a cyclic universe - which I agreed with. Perhaps my use of the term "perpetual", while accurate - was confusing. I don't disagree with the big bang, we've observed it directly.
burkaman 4y ago
Well God doesn't really answer the question, then you just have to ask where God came from. I don't have a personal opinion on "eternal universe" vs. "something from nothing", they seem equally impossible and unfathomable.
- PUSH_AX 4y ago
  I think they all spawn more questions equally.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Right now we have to ask where the universe came from. God is literally a word that means “the answer to that.” The nature of god is a mystery.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    That feels like kind of a cop out, doesn't it? I mean that works for any question. It's not very satisfying, and for me it's a lot less satisfying than "I don't know". The nature of the universe is a mystery, replacing "universe" with "god" is just a tautology that doesn't get us anywhere.
    - bandie91 4y ago
      IMO, in this context the "God" and the "I don't know" is the same answer: with an addition that the cause of everything is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal being, so we at least know something about the first cause. and let call this "thing" "God". but ultimately we don't know the "God" itself, since he's outside of our domain of natural philisophy. so this answer is still "ultimately we don't know". on the other hand the "i don't know at all" standpoint either does not engage with the "spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal" qualifications, because we can pretty well conclude these - altough not by scientific enquire but philosophicly -, or just refuse to label it. so no, universe and God are not the same kind of mysteries: universe is a miraculous field of riddles you can discover with reason, unlike God.

permo-w 4y ago

why does there have to be an answer?

jacquesm 4y ago
Because people like the mental comfort of knowing their lives have meaning as foundation blocks in some eternal building. To hear that it all ultimately doesn't matter is not something most people are prepared to accept. The answer to me is simple: live as if it does matter and don't fret about the 'but what if it doesn't' question, anything you'd do different because of that you are likely better off without.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  You’re projecting here. Not all religions have some nice eternal afterlife.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    If you add in reincarnation the list of religions that don't have some form of 'life after death' gets surprisingly slim.
edgyquant 4y ago
Saying there’s no answer is no different than replying with “God” as an answer
- bandie91 4y ago
  Saying "Saying there’s no answer is no different than replying with “God” as an answer" is no different than have not been looking into the argument even for a second. Edit: looking through your other comments, I maybe misunderstood your statement here. first glance it very much sounded like the god-of-the-gaps argument to me.
bandie91 4y ago
well, strictly philosophically speaking, does not neccessarily have to be an answer there. it's just some answers are more plausible than others. so if there is an answer then you may find it around the more plausible one.

nullspace 4y ago

Amusingly (to me) the third attitude towards this is: "It just is that way. I'm sorry that the answer does not satisfy you, but the universe does not owe you a satifying answer." :)

willis936 4y ago
The universe does not owe an answer. Extrapolating 50 orders of magnitude when we don't even have an airtight model of existing observations is... not something to be confident about. It certainly won't affect my dreams.

gilleain 4y ago

This reminded me of the idea of a 'block universe' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time... which I first heard about in an interview with Alan Moore.

nh23423fefe 4y ago

I'm a "nothing" doesn't exist person

GordonS 4y ago

But... if there is a god, what created the god?

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Depends. Is the god eternal? Things that are eternal (at least, eternal into the past) don't have beginnings, and therefore don't need creators. (Same with an eternal, cyclical universe - no creator required. It just is, and always has been.)
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >Depends. Is the god eternal? Things that are eternal (at least, eternal into the past) don't have beginnings, and therefore don't need creators. (Same with an eternal, cyclical universe - no creator required. It just is, and always has been.) I'd add that if "god" is/was/will be made entirely of photons (and/or other massless particles), then "god" moves at the speed of light, which means "god" doesn't experience the passage of time[0]; so no beginning, no end and no in-between, just existence outside of "time." This is, of course, a ridiculous idea. However, it does support the fantasy of an eternal being. Then again, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."[1] Which isn't to say that such claptrap as I suggest is true and, based on what we know now, it seems (at least to me) a ridiculous concept. That said, our understanding of the universe(s) is woefully incomplete. [0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/54162/how-does-a-photon-experience-space-and-time https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/54162/how-does-a... [1] http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quickquotes/quickquotehamletdreamt.html http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quickquotes/quickquotehaml... Edit: Used the correct conjunction.
edgyquant 4y ago
The whole point of god is that it’s the first cause. The unmoved mover.
- drsnow 4y ago
  ... okay, the whole point is that the same excuse can be used for a necessary universe, one that came into existence and was its own first cause, unmoved mover

kypro 4y ago

I've often wondered whether something and nothing are just concepts that only make sense from the perspective of a subjective observer. Is `1 + -1` something or nothing? And what is `2 + -2`? Is it something, nothing, or also `1 + -1`? And I could continue like this proving every number you could possibly imagine can exist in some manifestation of nothing. So perhaps we're just one of the infinite manifestations of nothing. From our subjective perspective we are something, but from the perspective of an objective observer nothing is really happening because all the subjective manifestations equate to nothing. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but this always made more sense to me than trying to understand why there is something and how long that something existed for. Perhaps it's both.

efdee 4y ago

But "forever" only makes sense within our universe, since time itself is intrinsically a property of the universe. If the universe exists within something else, "forever" doesn't necessarily mean anything there.