R3NNiS

So, nobody wants to discuss Leibniz's arguement? I guess I should have known better than to link an article of that length. :P I'll admit it is a bit academic, but I know that there are many minds here capable of the language and ideas.

The reason i bring this up is that regardless of BB/Evolution or a Six days scenario, is that at some point either in time or in some other causal chain, there must be a Reason for the existence of the Universe, something that authors existence itself....evolution is NOT at odds with the essentials of Creation.

Og

That article was pretty long. Think you could summarize?

lemmex

The reason i bring this up is that regardless of BB/Evolution or a Six days scenario, is that at some point either in time or in some other causal chain, there must be a Reason for the existence of the Universe, something that authors existence itself....evolution is NOT at odds with the essentials of Creation.[/quote]

Why must there be this Reason. If God gave you a very simple answer would you accept it. The answer is probably not. Like Leivniz we begin with the belief God rules, that God is active and present. Evolution is counter to this. Evolution does not need God where creation does. Why do we find this offensive.

God may have started things off and since expired. There are many alternate theories but no one knows for sure. There are things we feel confortable with. The classic reason I would give is God may have just wanted man to have this opporunity to exist without any strings attached. Do you find life joyful or painful, are you satisfied or unsatisfied with it. I'm going to take a leap here and say we project onto God needs and wants that simply don't exist or matter to it. There's an assumption here, that man is the center, the reason, but not the answer.

I believe in a creator force. Whether I believe in a Supreme Being, force, or God specific there's no disagreement with Leibniz. He believes in cause and effect and what he sees with his eyes. He presupposes God so there's no arguement to be made and in a way he disqualies himself. The fact we have something over nothing defines nothing. It reveals nothing. I have a personal belief that don't focus on what Leibniz believes relavent. The Reason of existence is found in the value of it. As I don't know his specific intentions I personally find I can't agrue for or against them.



Leibniz seems to be troubled that laws of universe have no trouble understanding there purpose. In a way the physical has always been more important then the spiritual.

R3NNiS

My point in bringing up the Leibniz article is two-fold.

1. To reject the atheist's and Christian's use of evolution as a divider. It is certainly possible that God used evolution. Scientifically, God could miraclulously/magically make grass appear from nothing to feed cows, but instead he ordains the whole process of germination..photosynthesis, etc... I beleive God IS personally involved in such processes, but he leaves it up to discover not just how things happen, but WHY. Theologically it is not at odds with a God who ordains (creates, purposes, and sustains) nature and its processes. Some object because it does not follow a literal interpretation of Genesis, and that it necessitates physical death before Sin, but for the Christian, it is our Soul's mortallity at stake with regard to sin. "he who believes in me will never die." -Jesus. "we were dead in sin when Christ saved us."-Paul. I'll stop there for brevity and to make the next point.

2. To point an atheist beyond the BB/evolutionary chain of events to why in the first place anything exists. One of Leibniz'z key conclusions is that "existing things cannot derive from anything other than other existing things...So...the reason for the reality of essenses and existences must lie in one thing, which must be grater than the world, be higher than the world, and have existed before the world." This is a question that is almost always unanswered by the atheist, and ignored by focussing on an arguement of Science vs Magic(an imagined lable that I assume woould characterise their view)

Og

This would be equivalent to something my grandfather told me:

"Legislation presuposes a legislator."

My response was "That is true if what is legislated has a causal relationship with anything other than the future"

That's the general view of science and relativity. What we know about matter is that given everything at a single point (i.e. the concept based on the background radiation of the universe), There is no concept of time.

The statement "Before the big bang" is just a jumble of letters with no meaning. We can observe this every day in gravitational lensing, observation of particles in high energy accelerators, and in the corrections we have to apply to the time reference signals coming from GPS satellites in orbit. Time is a relative property of matter.

These people trying to make claims about the existence of existence should realize that it's a question unlike anything else that's asked and that perhaps our own ideas of causality may not apply.

Personally, I make no claims that the big bang is true. It's an extrapolation of observations, nothing more. There's nothing requiring it have a cause and that does not conflict with observations of modern science.

R3NNiS

No, i dont thinkit has the equivalent meaning. That could be said easily enough. "A Creation presupposes a Creator."...which is just an arguement based on language.

Leibniz starts with few things that are real knowledge. A variation of The Unmoved Mover-the casusal chain, and that things exist rather than not existing. There are certainly the possibilities to exist, but the fact that certain things do exist and not others, at least in our universe, necessitate that at a foundational level there must be some entity outside of the world that gives it existence. "before bb" as you say relative to matter, is illogical. sure. the 4th dimension time has no real meaning except in addition to a 3 dimensional universe space and matter. But according to Leibniz's arguement, there must be a metaphysical CAUSE to initiate those dimensions, or in the possibility that time itself is infinite, then a REASON, not before but, outside of time.

Yes youare right in that it s a question unlike others. And our understanding of causation is inadequate, or we might say it has certain obstacles to overcome, not least of which is an imagination rooted in time.

alexie

Hi Guys

First time on this site and it looks great with heaps to chat about.
As far as evolution is concerned I used to believe it.
I beacme a Christian believing evolution but reading the Bible confirmed for me that you cannot hold both as true. Genesis 1-11 is either true literally or not. If it is not true then the rest of the Bible does not make sense. Why then did Jesus die for our sins? Jesus remarks on genesis often and he reads it as literal? Is then the whole new testament not a literal hostorical account then? The scholars say otherwise.
Why could God not create as He wanted? As for the evolution facts, they are on shaky ground.
1-The universe has a beginning(science says so)
2-As it has a beginning then something caused it.(Law of causality)
3- The cause must be outside of time, space and physical laws.
4- One can reasonbly presume that God fits this criteria.

If one is an atheist then one beliefs everything comes from nothing. This is scientifically unreasonable. This requires more faith then to believ in God and I do not have that much faith.
Alexie

Og

Your #1 and #2 are mixed up.

No matter where you point a radio telesope into space, there's always background noise that indicates the oldest photons from billions and billions of years ago back at the beginning of the universe. What we see when we look deep into space is everything highly energetic and dense.

That is what science demonstrates and anyone can see it with these powerful sensors we've designed. It's independently verifiable.

Big bang is an EXTRAPOLATION from observation. It's not a claim. The whole point of the theory is that everything was at a singularity which we claim to know nothing about other than it's not observable. So in this sense, the theory of the big bang, under our current understanding of the universe, can never be proven.

What we do know about these extrapolations into singularities is described in general relativity and demonstrates time as a relative property of matter.. Like position or speed.

So when you say that scientists say that the universe had a beginning, that's not true technically. They demonstrate how causality and reality were once very dense.

Given the observations of general relativity that time is a property of matter, causality doesn't apply at a singularity.

So your second assertion that the universe needs a cause does not necessarily apply either.

As I said earlier, you're addressing a question (unlike any other question) using local variables and ideas that are part of the creation.

How could you possibly speak in terms of any existence "outside" this one?!

At best, you're just applying the rules you understand from reality to some supernatural concept and I can see absolutely no basis for that extrapolation.

R3NNiS

Geez, this is like trying to fish with a big tangled knot in line. it would be nice if we could put the disputes and varied ideas about evolution and big bang on the shelf for a moment. At least for this thread...

Speaking in terms of an existence other than this one...the anthropic principle, the fact that this is a universe that, as unlikely as it is, has inhabitants able to observe the universe, might suggest that if it were the result of random variables, it is a unique universe, or unique among many uninhabitable existences. The fact that we live in 3 dimensions plus time, and that the weak atomic force is as just so, and that we are in such a window of time that stars have aged enough to precipitate carbon are all variables that uniquely enough allow for the universe to produce observers. So one might conclude (within a Christian framework of creation) that God has made our universe precicely so that animal life, and perhaps finally, human life would come to be. OR... if we hold that the universe is truely random, yet unique, then it must be that it is unique among variety of random universes. Perhaps there are an plentitude of 2 dimensional universes, or 6 dimensional universes, etc. Proportionately how many of these support life? based on the variables, very few.

BUT, these too, if they exist, random or not, must be the result of a Root cause which must be outside of their own existence. In this theory i could imagine God creating, via dice rolls, knowing that each roll will create such and such a universe, but rolling all the same, until (darn temporal language) this one is made. Or to be slightly less centric on this universe and on humanity, perhaps God, whose nature is Creative, is still rolling the dice. :P

kinda went off tangent in my own topic, lol.

Og

I don't get what you're saying r3nnis. What do you mean when you talk about "other universes." What's your basis for comparison? Where do they exist? What are your properties?

Saying "another universe" just sounds like a word jumble to me. By definition, the universe is what there is. We, as a people, have no basis for anything else.

We are complex protoplasm with urges to reproduce and some other complex processes that we call consciousness. 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion interconnections in your brain! That's consciousness! Doctors can scoop out parts of your personality with a spoon! It's done all the time!

Talk about fishing with a big tangled knot in the line!