Why did God create the universe?

[LastPoet]

It must hurt for GC to use a tool of science (technology) to post here

[Thor]

And yet our planet sustains life,

Yes, IN SPITE of all the dangers that surround us, life manages to exist.

and most likely will for the next million years or so.

You think life will exist here for only another "million years or so"? Life will no doubt continue to exist until the sun blows up into a red giant and boils away the oceans a few BILLION years from now.

As far as I know we are in no immediate threat of black holes, exploding stars, comets, or asteroids.

Meteors have impacted the planet since it was formed. One was big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. In fact, the asteroid Hermes passed by Earth at about twice the distance of the moon on October 30, 1937. There's stuff floating around in space that could kill the planet if it were to impact Earth. And it could pop up at any time. And there's nothing we could do to stop it. ( I can guarantee your praying would have no effect whatsoever.)

Maybe God created all that stuff for us to discover, and enable us to learn more about "him" by studying his creation.

Or maybe he didn't. I would say the "didn't" scenario is much more likely.

---

My view comes from my faith in God as creator, I believe that the harmful ultraviolet light from the sun was blocked until after the flood,

And I believe Tinkerbell protects us from ultraviolet rays by sprinkling pixie dust in the atmosphere. There's an equal amount of evidence to support either of these scenarios.

with the harmful light coming through after the flood these single celled creatures mutated into deadly ones.

Oh.... so they EVOLVED? So the polio virus was harmless until after the flood? And in any case, your deity must have created the single celled creatures and his actions resulted in them transforming into little monsters. So, he is directly responsible for the existence of these things. Nice try in attempting to spin this so your deity somehow isn't responsible for creating a living thing. You should work on a political campaign.

This is what's responsible for animals not being able to live long lives.

Elephants can live for 80 years. Parrots and tuataras can live for 100 years. Tortoises and geoducks can live for 150 years. Greenland sharks, bowhead whales, red sea urchins and koi can live for 200 years. The antarctic sponge can live for well over 1,000 years. And the Turritopsis nutricula jellyfish is basically immortal.

You would think a deity who creates a universe for people would give his most precious creation the longest life span of all. But that's not the case. Why would that be.....?

[Whateverist]

Sorry but I have to get this out of my system. This thread has been popping up on "Today's Posts" for a very long time and every time it does I have the same thought. If only to exorcise that thought I share it now.

Q: "Why did God create the universe?"

A: "To get to the other side."

[Godscreated]

The bible says the earth is flat, we proved it wrong, christians just pretended the bible meant something different, so why can't christians today, just pretend the bible meant something different, and accept the fact that the world was not created 6000 years ago, this friday?

I've never seen the world called flat in scripture, please show me .

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My view comes from my faith in God as creator, I believe that the harmful ultraviolet light from the sun was blocked until after the flood, with the harmful light coming through after the flood these single celled creatures mutated into deadly ones. This is what's responsible for animals not being able to live long lives.

---

That's nice, any actual evidence to back that claim up?

Or is this just another example of your wishful thinking?

Nope, still not seeing it. Put up or shut up.

MADE

And that means what exactly?

Surely you are not that dumb, if so explaining will not help you.

[Cato]

I've never seen the world called flat in scripture, please show me .

A circle has only two dimensions. Circle is used several times in your scripture; sphere is never used. A circle is not a sphere. Perhaps you, but I think I will leave it to Drich, will exclaim that in the original Hebrew the word for circle could also mean sphere. Assuming the translation argument, you or Drich or some other ignorant bastard, has to accept the idea that the almighty creator of the cosmos chose as his pets, after the tower of Bable story, the ones that couldn't differentiate a circle and a sphere in common language.

[Zen Badger]

That's nice, any actual evidence to back that claim up?

Or is this just another example of your wishful thinking?


And that means what exactly?

Surely you are not that dumb, if so explaining will not help you.

How about you give it your best shot champ and we'll see how we go.

And I see you ignored the first part of my post, he he he.

[KichigaiNeko]

---

If you really want a headache (the good kind), take a long look at this "photo." No, this is not a photo of the cosmic microwave background radiation. (which you can actually see for yourself if you change your television channel to one of the fuzzy stations) Nor is it a collection of graphs of a cell structure. So, instead of telling you what it isn't, how about I tell you what it is? This is, well... everything. Everything we can see and observe anyway. What you're looking at is the "observable" universe. This particular map has a cellular appearance due to how the galaxies tend to collect into vast sheets and super clusters of stars that are surrounded by stunningly large voids in between them. You and I and everything we've ever known are smack in the middle there, along with our Local group, which is a part of the Virgo Supercluster.

Since the speed of light is a constant in the vacuum of space, there is an outer edge to what is observable from Earth. That outer edge is defined by the objects within 14 billion years away (how old the universe is estimated to be), which is the time it would take for the light from these distant objects to reach us here on Earth. In this sense, the objects that are the farthest away from us are literally some of the earliest stars and galaxies in the young universe. it's quite likely that the stars we're observing are no longer burning and the ones that have sprung up from the gases expelled during the supernova are in another place entirely.

Since the universe has been expanding indefinitely since the big bang, the number of objects seen in the observable universe will shorten with time and it will appear as if the universe is much smaller than it does now - even though the light from these objects will eventually have enough time to reach us. This expansion is also the reason why our solar system appears to lie in the middle of the universe. In fact, every inhabited planet circling a distant star will look out into the universe and they will see that the universe is expanding away from them, giving the impression that they are located smack in the center.

The "observable" universe consists of:
- *10 million superclusters
- *25 billion galaxy groups
- *350 billion large galaxies
- *7 trillion dwarf galaxies
and *30 billion trillion (3X10^22) stars
(of which, almost 30 stars go supernova per second)

According to some math that I have no desire to go into, If you imagine the size of the observable universe (13.7 billion light-years) to be that of one nucleus of an atom and compare that with the size of the observable universe, then the total universe is 10 billion times larger than the size of the observable universe compared to a nucleus of an atom. (and it will continue to get bigger!)

(You can look at those numbers here: http://tinyurl.com/observableu)

Keep in mind that it's impossible for us to know the exact size of the unobservable universe, so the above is an estimation. It could be much larger than that.

- Jaime

Sources:
http://pdgusers.lbl.gov/~pslii/uabackup/...00500.html
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/201...pular.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-obse...iverse.htm
http://www.exploratorium.edu/hubble/tools/center.html
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/universe.html

For further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

*Note* These numbers may vary source by source, but these estimates came from here:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/201...verse.html

---

We are just SO small!!

[Zen Badger]

Actually this reminds me of you GC.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%...=2AQGzKIjL

IT sounds like a plot dreamed up by the creators of Southpark, but it's all true: schoolchildren in Louisiana are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid by religious educators to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution.

Yep, using one unsubstantiated load of bullshit to support another unsubstantiated load of bullshit.

Sounds about par for the course.

[KichigaiNeko]

Sad really. More like a bunch of two year olds who just don't want to grow up.

[Brian37]

And yet our planet sustains life,

Yes, IN SPITE of all the dangers that surround us, life manages to exist.

and most likely will for the next million years or so.

You think life will exist here for only another "million years or so"? Life will no doubt continue to exist until the sun blows up into a red giant and boils away the oceans a few BILLION years from now.

As far as I know we are in no immediate threat of black holes, exploding stars, comets, or asteroids.

Meteors have impacted the planet since it was formed. One was big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. In fact, the asteroid Hermes passed by Earth at about twice the distance of the moon on October 30, 1937. There's stuff floating around in space that could kill the planet if it were to impact Earth. And it could pop up at any time. And there's nothing we could do to stop it. ( I can guarantee your praying would have no effect whatsoever.)

Maybe God created all that stuff for us to discover, and enable us to learn more about "him" by studying his creation.

Or maybe he didn't. I would say the "didn't" scenario is much more likely.

---

My view comes from my faith in God as creator, I believe that the harmful ultraviolet light from the sun was blocked until after the flood,

And I believe Tinkerbell protects us from ultraviolet rays by sprinkling pixie dust in the atmosphere. There's an equal amount of evidence to support either of these scenarios.

with the harmful light coming through after the flood these single celled creatures mutated into deadly ones.

Oh.... so they EVOLVED? So the polio virus was harmless until after the flood? And in any case, your deity must have created the single celled creatures and his actions resulted in them transforming into little monsters. So, he is directly responsible for the existence of these things. Nice try in attempting to spin this so your deity somehow isn't responsible for creating a living thing. You should work on a political campaign.

This is what's responsible for animals not being able to live long lives.

Elephants can live for 80 years. Parrots and tuataras can live for 100 years. Tortoises and geoducks can live for 150 years. Greenland sharks, bowhead whales, red sea urchins and koi can live for 200 years. The antarctic sponge can live for well over 1,000 years. And the Turritopsis nutricula jellyfish is basically immortal.

You would think a deity who creates a universe for people would give his most precious creation the longest life span of all. But that's not the case. Why would that be.....?

I hate that "we're special" bullshit theists pull. On top of all of what you said, cockroaches have been around longer than humans and OUTNUMBER humans and are far more likely to adapt to a worldwide catastrophe. Eagles have much better eyesight than humans.

Long before humans concocted these monotheistic myths of Abraham, humans have always credulously invented reasons to feel "special'. It does create a real safety in numbers that can have a benefit, but that does not make the gods real. The ancient Egyptians were successful for 3,000 years falsely believing the sun was a thinking god. That placebo of falsely believing the sun was a god acted like a sugar pill which did create the safety in numbers to help them get to the point of reproduction, but the sun was never a god.

Any human today who believes in any god today is fooling themselves in thinking they are doing anything differently than what caused the Egyptians to falsely believe the sun was a god.