(April 21, 2014 at 7:20 pm)Metalogos Wrote: If we can all agree that everything in the known universe does indeed have a beginning and an end, then we can rule out the idea that things can go on existing ad infinitum and also that the universe could have existed forever, can we not? If we can, then positing some prime mover or creator being for the origin of the universe does not seem to me to be out of the question. Conversely, and nobody seems to want to tackle this, is the question of what would be a plausible alternative explanation for the origin of the universe without an agent that brings it into existence and sets it all into motion. Please, dear fellow thinkers, bring forth your best fruits and lay them on the table for us all to examine openly.What you are asking is "if it's not god, then what is it?" But if you have no evidence for god, then it's dishonest to assume that god should be the default explanation for questions of the origins of the universe. Especially since we know that humans have, for as long as we can tell, assigned "god" as an explanation for anything that they didn't understand at the time. And when they did gain an understanding, "god" was never the answer. Why would we accept "god" (or any such supernatural explanation) in this case?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
