Serious philosophical question

I concur and have becpme very selective in my Asimov comsumption.

 

Was listening to Attia and his guest the other day. Interesting subject on time, finitude but ultimately a bit depressing to listen to him work his way towards the inevitable conclusion that time is him and he is time and whilst it's enjoyable it is all a bit pointless, but not to be happy or angry, just enjoy what we have, for the period of time that we have it.

 

Ask a rabbit the meaning of life and it might reply, “to make more bunnies” humans now seem obsessed with getting off this rock and onto another rock so that we can hedge our bets and make more humans elsewhere. Then team human can stare up at the stars from our new rock and ponder the same philosophical question…when the real answer likely lies beyond space and time and within the divine beauty of our intelligent design.

 

As long as you live through it, failure is just a learning experience in how not to do something.

 

If ever you find yourself in an existential fugue wondering about The Meaning of Life, I suggest you go outside and burn off some calories roughhousing with a dog.

Repeat as needed.

 

When we humans look at what is around us, we are no better equipped at understanding it than a grasshopper is at understanding a human.

The things around us are so interconnected and complex, I believe they were designed.

 

God was a civil engineer…

 

Humans design things, so people tend to look at the universe and think it was designed.

The Romans thought the pyramids were built by slaves, because that's how Romans did things.

 

If you look at some of the micro and macro structures of the universe, there are repeating patterns that are statistically impossible to be coincidence. I'm not a believer in any dogma, as I think they're just creations of humans to help deal with the uncomfortable realities that the OP pointed out, and typically stunt your ability to gather more information. While I don't think there's some bearded dude in the clouds....I sure as heck can't refute that there's someone pulling the strings on all this. It would be awesome to find out that our universe is actually in a snow globe in a cubicle on someone's desk, in another universe.

 

whether we understand why the universe is the way it is doesn't reflect on whether it is designed or not, it reflects on us. If the universe wasn't like this we wouldn't be here to ask the question. Therefore the universe has to be like this. The anthropic principle.

 

Then why the hell did he put a waste management facility a slip of the tongue away from a recreation area?

 

The younger generation doesn't seem to have a problem with that, maybe humans are evolving.......

 

slip...yeah- it slipped (again!)

 

To seek the Holy Grail?

 

At this point humans do not know or are mentally unequiped to know what the "first cause" was or is. And thus the grasshopper illustration.

Even if there was no "designer" there is currently something here. Whether the something is alien made, or a simulation (computer or organic) or a rabbits' dream or a creator or massless energy. The building blocks even if they are not physical came about. Even if it was random they still came about.

Because there is anything and not nothing there appeares to be a "first cause" that we do not understand.

My head hurts.

 

The life we are currently living in this temporal world will simply be reminder to us, in the eternal age to come, of what happens when creation is not wholly submitted to the creator. The creation rebelled against the creator and the creator said "fine have it your way for a season and see what the results are"
Once we have reached eternity we will never again question the creator's worthiness to be in control. We will never doubt that total submission and surrender to him is the greatest blessing we could ever experience.
The memory of this lifetime will be a constant reminder to keep us from giving into the temptation that anyone of us know better than our creator.

 

"buddy when your dead, you're a dead peckerhead". John Prine's Dad.

 

This has been an enjoyable discussion so far. Those of you with a strong religious inclination please refrain from proselytizing and ruining it for the rest of us. Whether we are living in a universe that spontaneously came into existence or one that was deliberately created, it follows a set of rules. We are learning more about these rules quite quickly. I find it all fascinating.

 

This is a question for Nigel.

I see some clearly religious posts.

I had mentioned the possibility of a first cause or a creator. Do you consider my posts proselytizing?

My point is there was possibly something before what we currently perceive.

 

Which is why the claim about "statistically impossible" assigned to chaos theory is about as revelatory as apples falling from trees.

"Why" questions are really about belief systems. "How" can be addressed by systematic testing. For the same reasons yeast geneticists can CRISPER in a gene to produce linalool just like Cascade hops, eventually, more will be found out about the cosmos. Then, presuming we have time, some of that "more" will get replaced with different more.