Evidence and Royal flushes

@vivify said
Think about what exists in the universe: hot flaming balls of gas, floating rocks, and monsters called black holes that do nothing but swallow and destroy anything that gets close enough.

And that's pretty much it. That, and cold, dead empty space stretching infinitely; an unfathomable amount of absolutely nothing.

This was designed? This?

What about the asteroi ...[text shortened]... th shows signs of design, fine. But the universe? It's just a vast, unlivable, infinite wasteland.

Yes, all the things in it contribute to the whole, which contributes to this tiny sliver called earth, whereon we are, in all the complexity of our physical makeup to our emotions, awareness, and intellect. We see how rare life is, in all of the vastness; we see how hard life is to make as we study it, and yet some think it can happen under a rock in all of the harshnesses there is.

@moonbus said
You're really hung up on origins, aren't you? It's a Jewish thing. Other religions don't make such a fuss about origins. In the Greek pantheon, Chaos came first, gods and other beings came later. In Buddhism, it simply does not matter whether the universe had a beginning or no beginning. It's man's wherefore that matters, not his whence. For all other beings, whether c ...[text shortened]... has to do with how he perceives his own destiny and how he acts on it to make it real in the future.

To see a car moving down the highway at 70 mph is not enough information to know where it started. You may know the make and model all about it’s structural makeup, it’s State license plate, but all of that including it’s current rate of tells you where the car was an hour ago. You don’t know if it sped up, slowed down, just pulled onto the highway 3 minutes ago.

Not knowing how everything began means we are all simply making it up as we go, quite possibly making foundational assumptions that keep us from understanding it all.

Every explanation that arises from within the universe itself excludes the possibility of something that transcends the universe. So we have either X gets Y, or X gets X, or X. The one that explains it all is the transcendent one, as I ponder all of this.

@kellyjay said
To see a car moving down the highway at 70 mph is not enough information to know where it started. You may know the make and model all about it’s structural makeup, it’s State license plate, but all of that including it’s current rate of tells you where the car was an hour ago. You don’t know if it sped up, slowed down, just pulled onto the highway 3 minutes ago.

Not know ...[text shortened]... Y, or X gets X, or X. The one that explains it all is the transcendent one, as I ponder all of this.

It doesn't follow that we need to make anything up, just because we are unsure of how things began.

We have learned many things about how the physical world works in the last few centuries. We have proved that knowledge correct by making things like this smart phone I'm using currently.

There is no reason to despair over the gaps remaining in our knowledge. We're doing the best we can with what we have.

@bigdogg said
It doesn't follow that we need to make anything up, just because we are unsure of how things began.

We have learned many things about how the physical world works in the last few centuries. We have proved that knowledge correct by making things like this smart phone I'm using currently.

There is no reason to despair over the gaps remaining in our knowledge. We're doing the best we can with what we have.

I have listed 3 possible ways all of this started, do you think the way it actually began changes the meaning of all we have and think we know, no matter which is true?

@kellyjay said
I have listed 3 possible ways all of this started, do you think the way it actually began changes the meaning of all we have and think we know, no matter which is true?

I think knowing the truth of the origin changes SOME of the things we know. Mostly, scientific stuff. Our concept of physics would have to adjust.

As far as daily lives, hardly anything would change.

I mean, say that we became convinced the universe was designed by a creator. It still doesn't follow that the Bible is the best way to understand that creator. Maybe the creator is quite different than we imagined.

There would still be big questions to answer, in that case. How did the creator make the universe? What was space like before it happened? Etc.

@bigdogg said
I think knowing the truth of the origin changes SOME of the things we know. Mostly, scientific stuff. Our concept of physics would have to adjust.

As far as daily lives, hardly anything would change.

I mean, say that we became convinced the universe was designed by a creator. It still doesn't follow that the Bible is the best way to understand that creator. Maybe the cr ...[text shortened]... r, in that case. How did the creator make the universe? What was space like before it happened? Etc.

It would change things I'd say all around.

@bigdogg said
I think knowing the truth of the origin changes SOME of the things we know. Mostly, scientific stuff. Our concept of physics would have to adjust.

As far as daily lives, hardly anything would change.

I mean, say that we became convinced the universe was designed by a creator. It still doesn't follow that the Bible is the best way to understand that creator. Maybe the cr ...[text shortened]... r, in that case. How did the creator make the universe? What was space like before it happened? Etc.

Concerning science, it would no longer be chance but a top-down design; the questions of how would remain except we would be looking for a logical reason for it being done that way. That would be different from looking at it from the bottom-up, thinking, man, we were lucky it happened that way.

Concerning daily lives, the why are we here question could not be found in looking at the universe, but why we here question it would change it all.