(June 10, 2014 at 12:07 am)orangebox21 Wrote:The consensus seems to be that either god or the universe is eternal, which is to say that they always existed in some form. Thus we would expect that no matter how far back we travel in time, there is always a universe or always a god.(June 9, 2014 at 5:41 am)Tonus Wrote: The concept of eternity going back seems nonsensical too, but it must be real for the universe to exist.Why must it be real for the universe to exist?
I guess the real question I'm wondering is: is there an environment that contains all that could possibly be? Does the universe exist within some other construct? If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
"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