3 ms·

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.

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.