(May 7, 2013 at 8:38 am)Harris Wrote:

(May 6, 2013 at 11:51 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: Humanity as a whole is about disrespect. Respect should never be freely given, but conscientiously earned. With an obviously disrespectful first original post as one's first post on this forum, you do not deserve respect from anyone here, Harris.

I think respect starts from home among the beloved ones. Then it spread among friends and relatives whom we love. Then it is spread among social community members. If in the foundation of respect there is some problem say you don't want to respect someone but you want respect from everyone of course in that case you are 100% correct in what you have stated above.

Respect is earned! And when you insult a community, you lose that respect.

Harris Wrote:I think respect starts from home among the beloved ones

Umm no it doesn't because even there you have to EARN respect. At "home" they just put up with you until you prove yourself or they can escape you....

True story.

(May 6, 2013 at 11:32 pm)Darkstar Wrote: So....are we going to discuss the pertinent 12% of the OP, or are you going to continue complaining about the negative responses your highly judgmental OP got? If one of us made a post like that about religion on a theistic forum, we'd probably be banned.

If you want to discuss the OP then you must also ignore being insulted and just discuss the 12% of your OP that was actually on topic.

Now then: atheists don't necessarily believe the universe came from nothing. Many do not. As for nihilism, which sort of nihilism are you inquiring about?

See, I don't want to get involved in responding hateful Quotes. What you expect from me to ignore fateful responses or refute them?

Coming to your point, if you think nothingness is not existing as well as God is not existing so what in your rational thoughts is the picture about beginning of everything. Are you waiting for science to find out the answer and don't bother till that time?

As someone who has been on several muslim forums for long periods of time before being banned I know the sort of language you can hear from these places is no better than the atheist forums.

I've heard of blatant support for terrorism, insults like kuffar scum, been told I should have my face rubbed in the dirt, been called a moron an idiot a racist, while at the same time listening to them talk casually about their hatred for entire nations.

But it is a nice idea to have all forums not being bias towards the beliefs or non beliefs they represent but I don't see it happening.

I don't know what nothingness is or how somethingness popped out of it so I can't help you there.

(May 6, 2013 at 5:17 pm)Faith No More Wrote: I've never understood why some people get so up-in-arms about this so-called "vulgar" language. They're just words, and by being offended by them, you're giving them a power that they otherwise would not have.

Because there is meaning behind them, and we read intent into them. I don't swear frequently in real life, but I do so freely around those friends and family that I know are comfortable with it. Sure, some will take offense because they are "dirty words." In that case, it isn't intent or meaning that offends them, but the usage itself. I'm willing to respect that for people who I happen to care about, and I'm cautious around strangers because I don't know which type they are.

But words do have meaning, and language does transmit intent. Telling someone "leave me alone" is passive and weak but it gets the meaning across. Telling them "fuck off, asshole" gets the same meaning across, but the intent is aggressive. A person may comply with the first request more easily because it makes them feel in control, whereas they are more likely to instigate a confrontation in response to the latter because it's an attempt to force them into a subordinate position, and they'll subconsciously react to that.

I read the OP and shrugged my shoulders. Two paragraphs of telling us that we're uncouth louts followed by a question that's been discussed pretty frequently here? Not very civil, IMO. The passive-aggressive approach strikes me as much more insulting than one or the other.

(May 7, 2013 at 6:43 am)Harris Wrote: NOTHINGNESS is an identity just like SPACE is an identity. However, to what this NOTHINGNESS is pointing. If this NOTHINGNESS has existence, at least in form of word/language, it should points to something or some idea. Would you like to put some light over NOTHINGNESS. This is an interesting point that I am keen to learn from you. You are an atheist who doesn’t believe in the existence of God. In your opinion, what can be the substitution of God? If there is no God then there should be NOTHINGNESS. So what do you think of this NOTHINGNESS?

I understand you are talking from a philosophy POV. I'm no philosopher. I can only give you a physicist POV. So bear with me.

Now, you are comparing nothingness with space. In GR, that would be incorrect. In relativistic classical physics, time is another dimension with space, why we use space-time (sometimes without a hypen), and space-time can have dynamical properties. That means it does interact with matter/energy.

Secondly, if you mean nothingness is vacuum energy, then it is something. So continuing in labelling it as "nothingness" will bring confusion.

You are also asking, Is there a substitution for God? I'm not sure if I understand your question. For instance, why would there be a necessity for a substitution? It could be that the universe always existed, and what we are witnessing is its present state. At some earlier times, it might have been in a completely different state, and our job is to find that out. And so you have many theories on the market trying to answer that - cyclic theories, multiverse theories, fecund theories, conformal theories, to name a few. Which one will prevail, only time will tell as we will require new discoveries to filter out the incorrect ones.

At present, the Big Bang Theory is the prevailing paradigm. But it has deficiencies, the primary one being that it has a singularity. A singularity is a mathematical entity, not a real one. If it is present in a theory, it's a red flag that either the theory is not applied correctly, or it is invalid at a certain scale. In the case of the BBT, we think that we need a new theory that will combine Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, as none of them can deal with the Planck scale. And so this is another thing that physicists are trying to work out.

(May 7, 2013 at 7:19 am)Harris Wrote:

(May 6, 2013 at 6:49 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Observation: the Universe is spreading more or less homogeneously (That means at the same speed in every direction).
Since it is spreading, then, if we turn the clock backwards, it will come together.... closer and closer until it is at one single point in the space-time continuum.
What happens after that one point? we don't know. No one knows. We may speculate, the human mind is great at speculating...

.One option is an entity from some different dimensionality, that simply created a 3+1D drawing.
.Another option is that the space-time continuum is infinite and present zero average energy, but some quantum fluctuations bring forth a few virtual particles here and there and, on occasion, these come together and generate real particles. For each particle, a suitable anti-particle is generated also, so the net energy content is ZERO. The infinity of space-time makes it possible that a location exists where too many of these real particles are generated, thus yielding a Universe.
.Another option is.... lots of Universes.
.Another option is... we're inside the matrix.
.
.
.

Any guess is as good as any other, as long as we're aware that they're only guesses.

The trouble starts when some people claim they have the answer, but have nothing to support it, and push that answer onto other people as if it was the magic bullet. And harm those people who do not accept that answer.

I respect your Sentiments and trust me I am not here to push you or anyone to a magic bullet. I have many debates with theist minded people (I am one of them) and heard their ideas on different topics. Atheist minds I have not touched yet and it is my curiosity to learn how their minds work without the support of God idea.

Coming to your explanation, the options that you have proposed are somewhat irrelevant to my question. I agree that no one knows what happened before Big Bang in terms of science but my questioned about NOTHINGNESS is about rational understanding rather empirical kind.

Very well...
Nothingness... nothing is nothing. Total absence of particles, energy, mass, fields, real or virtual.
There's a rational discourse.
Now for the empirical backing...
Empty space is, according to the currently accepted theory and measurements, not nothing. It has something which is not mass nor energy, but has fields, at least "virtual" ones.

Given that, please do not try to pin your god as a means of getting something out of your nothingness which should, in fact, be empty space which, as I told you, is not nothing.


Now, if this was 50 years ago, I could not say that empty space is not nothing and I'd have a problem with how to get at something from nothing... Even so, I could dismiss your feeble attempt at pinning your god in there, because I'd want some proof for that god thing.

Luckily, we're in today and science has come through with this very elegant theory which lets me make sense of how to get something from empty space.

There is also the observation that space isn't really THAT empty as we would like to think, or is that a vacuum ins't as empty as we would like to think.

Either way, still no evidence for a deity.

(May 7, 2013 at 9:02 am)Tonus Wrote: I read the OP and shrugged my shoulders. Two paragraphs of telling us that we're uncouth louts followed by a question that's been discussed pretty frequently here? Not very civil, IMO. The passive-aggressive approach strikes me as much more insulting than one or the other.

Agreed!

Quote:See, I don't want to get involved in responding hateful Quotes.

Wow, just wow. You are in big trouble here and IF you HAD done your research you would know that topics get rather vociferous and include this "hateful quotes" you seem too puerile to stand up to. This does seem to be an issue with those of religious intent...the inability to stand their ground in the face of vociferous argument and talk their way out of it, the norm is lame excuses, dogmatic rhetoric and inane quotes. or so it seems to me.