Potentially Big News On The Human Evolution Front

[Edwardo Piet]

In the natural, physical world, things have an origin. There is no evidence that anything can materialize out of nothing, only evidence to the contrary.

Not only is there no evidence of it but it's logically impossible and applies to supernatural things just as much as natural things. Something can't come from nothing because a existence cannot emerge from nonexistence. That applies to both natural things and supernatural things. An existent supernatural thing cannot emerge out of a nonexistent supernatural thing anymore than an existent natural thing can emerge out of a nonexistent natural thing. Because there's literally no such thing as a nonexistent thing whether it's a nonexistent natural thing or a nonexistent supernatural thing. Saying that there's a such thing as a thing that is nonexistent is just talking nonsense. It's like saying there's a such thing as a thing that there's no such thing as or that something that doesn't exist exists. Or that X is not X. It's just a nonsensical contradiction. And don't misunderstand me because of course people often use "nonexistent" as a snonym for "unreal" and "unreal" as a synonym for "imaginary" but remember we're not talking about something that has an imaginary existence we're talking about something that has no kind of existence at all. Even fictional or imaginary things like Superman at least exist as fiction and even things that haven't been written about or put on the TV but are at least conceivable at least have some sort of imaginary existence in the sense that we can conceive of such a thing even if such a thing is not present in reality outside of our minds. No, we're not talking about imaginary existence we're talking about absolute nonexistence. As in literally nothing. Or not something. Not empty space teeming with quantum activity, not space that has some sort of empty void-like existence, but literally nothing, absolute nonexistence. Not a thing at all, in any sense. A nonexistent thing in this sense is not a thing at all. Nothing can come from that because there is no that for anything to come from if that 'that' refers to nothing at all.

And not only is there no evidence of it, but there's no evidence of God either, and no reason to believe that supernatural things don't require causes just as much as natural things. I mean, fair enough if you say "A supernatural thing such as God by definition doesn't require a cause" but that supernatural thing/God you have defined is still just a definition of something that there is absolutely no evidence of. We can apply that kind of special pleading to anything. I can say that ghosts by definition don't require evidence to rationally believe in, because if it's a ghost that requires evidence to rationally believe in then that's not really a ghost as I mean it, because I define ghosts as not only spooky invisible paranormal beings that can go through walls, but spooky invisible paranormal beings that can go through walls and don't require evidence for us to rationally believe in. I can define ghosts that way, and you can define God as a being that doesn't require a cause. But why should either of us be taken seriously?

The problem there is that we're both making logical arguments that are valid but not remotely sound because our premises are unrealistic regardless of the fact that the conclusion follows from them.

Sure if God and supernatural beings don't require causes by definition then they obviously don't by defintion. That's just a tautology. But why should we take that seriously? It begs the question. And sure if paranormal beings like ghosts by definition can be rationally believed in without requiring evidence, then paranormal beings like ghosts by definition can be rationally believed in without requiring evidence. Again, that's just a tautology. But why should we take that seriously? It begs the question.

Until you provide something of more substance than merely asserting that God and supernatural beings don't require causes then your claim is no better than my ghost claim.

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 As I understand it, the universe represents our local reality so far as we can explore and comprehend it; the space-time that exists, that we're fairly certain exists as the result of the Big Bang and expansion.  The cosmos, on the other hand, represents everything that exists whether we know of it or not, including whatever else may exist "beyond" our universe.  A good example of what would be included in "the cosmos" is the hypothetical multiverse.  

On a side note it makes me happy that you have noticed this because this is exactly the point I am getting at when I say that the concept of 'time' that scientists study is ultimately the mathematical details of our and their experience of 'time' and not time itself and not the philosophical concept of 'whatever time itself is outside of our experience of it if it even exists outside of our experience at all'.

In the same way, the 'universe' you speak of, our local reality, is the phenomenon of the universe that scientists study and what science is all about. Whereas the 'cosmos' you speak of is outside of science, and is about philosophy, it's about 'whatever exists outside of the universe (or multiverse) that science can detect, if anything exists outside of that all'.

True, scientists may eventually find more evidence about the big bang or whatever happened before the universe, and science might not call that the universe. But still, really, that's still the universe (or multiverse) in the sense that it's still going to be reality as us humans can detect in some way (otherwise human scientists wouldn't be able to detect it). Scientists are never going to be able to detect whatever exists outside of what they are able to detect because that by defintion is whatever exists outside of what science can detect. And maybe some things do exist outside of what science can detect. Maybe not. But it's certainly possible and just because we are unable to detect or experience or study something or have evidence of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Maybe it doesn't exist in what we call 'the real world', the practical reality which we live in, because if it's impossible for us to ever experience it then it not only can't hurt us but we can never discover it by definition and it's therefore so useless that it may as well not exist (which is probably why people often feel philosophy is useless and pointless because philosophy is about thinking about even useless things that may be completely undiscoverable and beyond our experience.) . . . but does that mean that there may be things outside of 'the real world'? Yes. And time itself, as I suggest, may either be an illusion or the present may be all that exists or the time travel we speak of in science fiction may indeed be logically impossible as I suggest, and the concept of time that scientists speak of may indeed only be about the experience of time, because science deals with our experience of reality (what we call "the universe"), rather than 'reality itself whether we can experience it or not' (and remember even being able to discover things through microscopes or telescopes or even mathematical equations is still an indirect type of experience because it requires out experience for us to make sense of it and if it was completely outside of experience we wouldn't be able to even have the experience of making sense of it) . . . and I may indeed be right that time travel as conceived of in the movies, is logically impossible, even forwards, and when scientists talk about time travel being possible but only fowards, I may indeed be right that the kind of 'time travel' we're talking about is not the time travel of the movies, which is indeed impossible, any more than the scientific concept of an atom is an atom like the indivisible original ancient Greek definition of an atom, or any more than Lawrence Kraus's concept of 'nothing' is actually nothing. As far as I am concerned the type of 'time travel' scientists talk about isn't time travel that we normally think of. And not only that, it's so unlike it that we're going to be massively disappointed if scientists actually discover time travel. Remember, space and time are said to be one thing, space-time, so travelling through space is travelling through time. Would it impress you if I told you that I travel through time all the time, but only forwards, and at the same speed as everyone else?

I know you said your head hurts, and hopefully I didn't contribute to that further. I hope you enjoyed my post.