Hello Atheist Community.
I’m a Christian (just to get that out of the way, and I fully acknowledge that 99% of faith-based statutes are indefensible)
I have many agnostic friends but only one atheist friend, and he is really more of a buddy, so I don’t have much of a source to engage my questions directly. When I bring up these questions to my agnostic friends they usually say something along the lines of, “I don’t know and you don’t know either,” almost to where it’s become a bad joke within our circle. And within my church, there are only a handful of other people who have studied the things I have studied, and we just end up agreeing with each other, which won’t lead to any growth, and I do not think that is good.
I know that I’m hiding behind the safety and anonymity of the internet but I’m nervous about coming to this community with my questions because I’ve heard the horror stories about militant atheists who are dogmatic or aggressive just as I’m sure you have heard of, and perhaps even experienced, the fanaticism, intolerance, and ignorance of people of faith, but I’ve had these burning questions for years now, and I want to know how the atheist community deals with these questions so that I can understand.
As I said before, I am a person of faith, yet I am not here to practice Apologetics, or try to convert anyone to my beliefs, I only want to see what the atheist community has to say about these questions, because Google sucks, and the rebuttals I’ve read have come from books written by Christians or other theists, so if any of these questions seem old or redundant or QED, please keep in mind I’m new to the forum, and if there is a thread which could address the issue, please send the link.
Let’s start here:
"A common linchpin of theistic arguments is the idea of Aristotle’s Causal Axiom, which seems to logically require a demiurgic entity to have flipped the switch to set things in motion.
Our present position, then, is this: We have argued that there always was motion and always will be motion throughout all time, and we have explained what is the first principle of this eternal motion: we have explained further which is the primary motion and which is the only motion that can be eternal: and we have pronounced the first movement [or: “Prime Mover”] to be unmoved."
- Aristotle, Physics, #8, chap. 9
I entertained this thought for years, until I read Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion which delves into Plato’s Timaeus dialogue, (As a side note, Plato also advocated a similar Etiological argument)
In the Timeaus though, Plato brings up the possibility of the illusion of time. At that point, I had been well-versed in Relativity and the absolute absurdity of Quantum theory, but had never thought that time may perhaps be something in and of itself to make us comfortable with our view of the world. Time is a measuring tool, used to describe matter, just like weight and height, therefore time might not exist without matter to describe, so the eternal questions surrounding the beginning of the universe may be irrelevant because vocabulary like beginning, middle, and end imply the existence of time both before and after the point of creation, which may not be correct.
This view is becoming increasingly popular, the negation of the Beginning to irrelevance, to the point that models of the universe need no beginning, sending theists and cosmologists scrambling, till now we have models of self-replicating existences which always are and always will be. Admittedly they are very sketchy, but the implication is quite fascinating while we work out the details: that the universe no longer requires a point of creation, at least with regards to time, no beginning, at least in the classical sense.
Most of my Christian brothers have chosen to ignore this fact, calling it scientific gymnastics and saying it's more absurd to deny creation than to acknowledge a god, and I’ll admit, they’ve got a point, but still I entertained the idea and saw the validity in the science, so I chose to live uncomfortably with my faith till, if you’ll please pardon my attempt at transparency, God brought me a new revelation.
From there, I read about a dozen books on physics and watched Donnie Darko, and realized that I hated string theory and get bored to the point of anger and tears whenever my pot head friends try to insist it’s the greatest movie ever, and that string theory holds the potential for a unified theory, salvation, time-travel, and free tacos. Then I found Hawking, pop-science I know, but it was new to me, and his book of essays has been a powerful eye-opener.
In Black Holes, Baby Universes, and Other Essays, Hawking entertains the idea that perhaps we have, or at least we can discover the secrets to how the universe came to exist, but he quickly adds that even if we do know this, we still do not know why the universe bothers to exist in the first place.
This question, why? Even if we know the what, the why is what has driven me back into an uneasy faith. My first question to this Atheist community is how do you respond to Hawking’s question? We may know “the how?” and “the what?” of the universe’s origins, but why does it bother to exist in the first place?

Quote:"A common linchpin of theistic arguments is the idea of Aristotle’s Causal Axiom, which seems to logically require a demiurgic entity to have flipped the switch to set things in motion.

Aristotle lived in the 4th century BC. We've come a long way since then.

Quote:we still do not know why the universe bothers to exist in the first place.

Humans love to ask "why" so they can create answers to make themselves feel very special.

We're not that special.

Lamenter.

So essentially your issue is "Not only HOW the universe began, but WHY it began and continues to exist"?

Firstly, have you perused the numerous threads on this forum with those questions? I say this because it might give you a starting point. Check out the sciences forums and don't pass up the philosophy forums.

For me, these are very interesting forums and while I will need to think about your questions I am hoping you will find some answers

(January 24, 2014 at 8:00 pm)The Last Lamenter Wrote:

---

Hello Atheist Community.
I’m a Christian (just to get that out of the way, and I fully acknowledge that 99% of faith-based statutes are indefensible)
I have many agnostic friends but only one atheist friend, and he is really more of a buddy, so I don’t have much of a source to engage my questions directly. When I bring up these questions to my agnostic friends they usually say something along the lines of, “I don’t know and you don’t know either,” almost to where it’s become a bad joke within our circle. And within my church, there are only a handful of other people who have studied the things I have studied, and we just end up agreeing with each other, which won’t lead to any growth, and I do not think that is good.
I know that I’m hiding behind the safety and anonymity of the internet but I’m nervous about coming to this community with my questions because I’ve heard the horror stories about militant atheists who are dogmatic or aggressive just as I’m sure you have heard of, and perhaps even experienced, the fanaticism, intolerance, and ignorance of people of faith, but I’ve had these burning questions for years now, and I want to know how the atheist community deals with these questions so that I can understand.
As I said before, I am a person of faith, yet I am not here to practice Apologetics, or try to convert anyone to my beliefs, I only want to see what the atheist community has to say about these questions, because Google sucks, and the rebuttals I’ve read have come from books written by Christians or other theists, so if any of these questions seem old or redundant or QED, please keep in mind I’m new to the forum, and if there is a thread which could address the issue, please send the link.
Let’s start here:
"A common linchpin of theistic arguments is the idea of Aristotle’s Causal Axiom, which seems to logically require a demiurgic entity to have flipped the switch to set things in motion.
Our present position, then, is this: We have argued that there always was motion and always will be motion throughout all time, and we have explained what is the first principle of this eternal motion: we have explained further which is the primary motion and which is the only motion that can be eternal: and we have pronounced the first movement [or: “Prime Mover”] to be unmoved."
- Aristotle, Physics, #8, chap. 9
I entertained this thought for years, until I read Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion which delves into Plato’s Timaeus dialogue, (As a side note, Plato also advocated a similar Etiological argument)
In the Timeaus though, Plato brings up the possibility of the illusion of time. At that point, I had been well-versed in Relativity and the absolute absurdity of Quantum theory, but had never thought that time may perhaps be something in and of itself to make us comfortable with our view of the world. Time is a measuring tool, used to describe matter, just like weight and height, therefore time might not exist without matter to describe, so the eternal questions surrounding the beginning of the universe may be irrelevant because vocabulary like beginning, middle, and end imply the existence of time both before and after the point of creation, which may not be correct.
This view is becoming increasingly popular, the negation of the Beginning to irrelevance, to the point that models of the universe need no beginning, sending theists and cosmologists scrambling, till now we have models of self-replicating existences which always are and always will be. Admittedly they are very sketchy, but the implication is quite fascinating while we work out the details: that the universe no longer requires a point of creation, at least with regards to time, no beginning, at least in the classical sense.
Most of my Christian brothers have chosen to ignore this fact, calling it scientific gymnastics and saying it's more absurd to deny creation than to acknowledge a god, and I’ll admit, they’ve got a point, but still I entertained the idea and saw the validity in the science, so I chose to live uncomfortably with my faith till, if you’ll please pardon my attempt at transparency, God brought me a new revelation.
From there, I read about a dozen books on physics and watched Donnie Darko, and realized that I hated string theory and get bored to the point of anger and tears whenever my pot head friends try to insist it’s the greatest movie ever, and that string theory holds the potential for a unified theory, salvation, time-travel, and free tacos. Then I found Hawking, pop-science I know, but it was new to me, and his book of essays has been a powerful eye-opener.
In Black Holes, Baby Universes, and Other Essays, Hawking entertains the idea that perhaps we have, or at least we can discover the secrets to how the universe came to exist, but he quickly adds that even if we do know this, we still do not know why the universe bothers to exist in the first place.
This question, why? Even if we know the what, the why is what has driven me back into an uneasy faith. My first question to this Atheist community is how do you respond to Hawking’s question? We may know “the how?” and “the what?” of the universe’s origins, but why does it bother to exist in the first place?

---

I don't have the IQ for this
If we figure out how it came to be, maybe we can the figure out why it bothers to exist?

anyways

Why is a question humans ask and then try to answer for themselves. The only answer that seems meaningful is that such questions bare no relevance to the Universe's ontology.

How is the correct question and our answers are predicated on the information we apprehend through modern developments in technology and theoretical physics, not ancient stone tablets made by rabble-rousers.

So what I'm gleaning here, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that "why?" is either irrelevant, relative, or at worst juvenile; Is this correct? If I assume this will I be safe in saying that most Atheists think this way? Or are there other major answers to this issue? No entrapment here, no bait for arguing, promise, just trying to learn.

(January 24, 2014 at 11:00 pm)The Last Lamenter Wrote: So what I'm gleaning here, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that "why?" is either irrelevant, relative, or at worst juvenile; Is this correct? If I assume this will I be safe in saying that most Atheists think this way? Or are there other major answers to this issue? No entrapment here, no bait for arguing, promise, just trying to learn.

Correct. No Intelligent Designer. No Unmeant Meaner. No intention.

Until humans arrived on the scene.

(January 24, 2014 at 8:12 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:"A common linchpin of theistic arguments is the idea of Aristotle’s Causal Axiom, which seems to logically require a demiurgic entity to have flipped the switch to set things in motion.

Aristotle lived in the 4th century BC. We've come a long way since then.

Now wait a second, In my post, I agreed that the Causal Axiom had become irrelevant because of the implications of the Timaeus in most models, in this we agree. However, can we really be so dismissive of one of the greatest minds who has ever lived? The problems of humanity that the ancients pose are still relevant right?

The simplest answer, one which may or may not satisfy, as to why the universe exists is - why not?

Science doesn't readily answer why questions because science looks at processes, the what questions, the how questions. For instance, the theory of evolution is an idea that explains the processes that produce biological change over time and makes predictions with regard to that change. It doesn't explain how life began in the first place or why it even exists.

The big bang theory explains what happens when we wind the physical processes governing the universe backwards in time. At time=0 we get the big bang, which wasn't really a bang (that is a term coined by Boyle, who fought futilely against the theory until the day he died).

I screwed that up... is there a formatting tutorial? I can't do the quote blocks in my response.