New guy with questions

[Mudhammam]

What are two other books, besides things from Dawkins, which you could recommend?

Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett is excellent.

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The how generally informs the why.

Why would that be?

Because how questions involve "retro-engineering," developing "Just So Stories" and making predictions based on them. Why do humans have eyes? That is a question largely answered by the "how," the biological evolution through gene recombination, mutations, and selective pressures that caused Pax6 to become a highly beneficial regulatory "light-detecting gene," to greatly oversimplify, for some lineages on the Tree of Life.

[Cyberman]

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

Our BB Code Guide is a good place to start. You might want to check out the Forum Netiquette one as well - that goes for everyone, by the way.

Oh, and welcome aboard.

[Aractus]

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.

We no not quite, even a self-replicating universe needs a starting point, and as part of that it requires the existence of space-time whether dimensional in the classic notion or in another form. By scientific definition, empty space in space-time isn't really empty, thus your starting conditions are not "nothing". Energy must exist within the system.

So while you can theoretically have self-creating universes, they still require a plane of existence to already exist and meet the required conditions.

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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.

Hawking's ideas on the beginning of the universe fall outside of general scientific thought, and there's no reason to entertain his fringe ideas any more than say Halton Arp's.

If you like I'll ask Ken what he thinks about self-creating universes next time I see him and post the answer?

[pocaracas]

Welcome, New guy.
So much text for the same old loaded question... "Why?"
This "why?" presupposes some intelligence that thought up the Universe and then proceeded to create it.
If you want some form of honest discussion, please refrain from posing loaded questions.

[downbeatplumb]

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?

In this context "why" and "how" are the same question.

[Napoléon]

We humans are obsessed with knowing why.

Well, why are we so sure the universe gives a shit about such a question?

[The Last Lamenter]

Welcome, New guy.
So much text for the same old loaded question... "Why?"
This "why?" presupposes some intelligence that thought up the Universe and then proceeded to create it.
If you want some form of honest discussion, please refrain from posing loaded questions.

If you'll pardon me, I'm new to all this and I'm still navigating what is and is not considered constructive. I wanted to know how the atheist community responded to this question, I meant no offense.

[Whateverist]

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?

First of all welcome. And good luck with your question.

Speaking for exactly one atheist I can say I don't find the why question at all compelling. I assume that what we see today is the result of preexisting conditions. Same with the big 'bang' - preexisting conditions. I do believe it truly is turtles all the way down.

Even if we posit a god, if you really must know why, how can you stop there? Why is there a god? Why is this god as it is? (Does this god have 'free will' in the matter?) What gave rise to god?

Philosophically I'm more interested in why we ask why. (I have theories.)

[pocaracas]

Welcome, New guy.
So much text for the same old loaded question... "Why?"
This "why?" presupposes some intelligence that thought up the Universe and then proceeded to create it.
If you want some form of honest discussion, please refrain from posing loaded questions.

If you'll pardon me, I'm new to all this and I'm still navigating what is and is not considered constructive. I wanted to know how the atheist community responded to this question, I meant no offense.

Someone once referred to "the atheist community" as a herd of cats, meaning impossible to keep then all in agreement, nor together...
I was showing you that there are some questions which do not lead to honest and constructive discussion.

[WesOlsen]

Welcome, New guy.
So much text for the same old loaded question... "Why?"
This "why?" presupposes some intelligence that thought up the Universe and then proceeded to create it.
If you want some form of honest discussion, please refrain from posing loaded questions.

If you'll pardon me, I'm new to all this and I'm still navigating what is and is not considered constructive. I wanted to know how the atheist community responded to this question, I meant no offense.

You'll have to learn to be thick skinned here. We have a daily torrent of new theist arrivals, some are polite and reasonable like you, others come to call us faggots and bags of sinful shit. As a result, some of us have a tendency to react defensively and sarcastically, but if you can 'turn the other cheek' you'll be fine

As some of the others have said, 'why' is arbitrary in a certain sense, it kinda arises from a psychological need to imprint human/intelligent agency on absolutely everything we see. Sometimes why is not the correct way to instigate a question, such as 'why is a tree?' or 'why does toast?'. As others have mentioned to, 'why' and 'how' in certain contexts are interchangeable. I'd recommend reading some Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss (who discusses T=0 a fair bit) and perhaps just glancing at any recent physics journals (or even just the news websites) to see what the latest developments are in the world of 'beginning' debates.

The nutshell of any Dawkins argument you're likely to read is that invoking god to attempt to halt the regress simply complicates matters further, because by adding such a poorly defined but supposedly ultra-powerful agent to the beginning of everything we are introduced with a shit-ton more questions. Complicated proposals need complicated details, and there's no reason to suppose that an ultra-powerful agent should be exempt from the same Darwinian principles that govern life on our planet. If you really want to save time, you could take the stance that most people of the atheist ilk take;

There are some things we can't be sure of yet, but that's what enquiry is all about. Ignorance is an absolute necessity in order for science and progress to take place, and using god of the gaps is not only lazy, but sometimes stifles further progress as well.