Why anxious? the answers to those questions, while interesting and entertaining, aren't relevant to you today. Just be glad you get to experience this tiny little part of the universe for the brief time you're here.
Is the universe gigantic enough and long-lasting enough that my consciousness will come back in some form after I die?
Uncountably many will that differ from you by random degree on uncountably many dimensions. How much like you do they have to be, to actually be you?
Everybody reading this differs from you by only small degree. You differ from yourself-of-yesterday by a typically smaller amount, and -of-last-year by a less-small amount.
That's a very narrow reading of it. There's always an implicit "to the best of our current knowledge" caveat with every sound scientific statement. And it's true, to the best of our current knowledge, we can never know what it's like inside a black hole or very close to the time our universe began because the physics that we know tells us no person or probe can ever go there and come back to tell. If you're no so gen…
This just falls completely apart when you look at the history of physics. Einstein for example is usually considered to be one of the smarter people, and even he thought it would be impossible to ever measure gravitational waves directly. He simply could not foresee the future developments of quantum mechanics, like lasers or squeezed light states. And yet here we are. Even if the author was the best physicist in the…
Sure, but that's an example of measuring something that's happening now. It's not quite in the same category as measuring something that happened 13.7 billion years ago.
the issue with a god is "who created god, and who created that who created god..." It is if you assume God is bound to the chain of causation, but obviously any creator is likely unbound by the system of laws in which his creation exists, the same as when we create a video game we stand apart from it. I always liked the Dr. Quantum Flatland as an example of god-like capabilities wrt dimensionality: https://www.youtub…
Even if the creator exists outside their creation under different laws of physics (if any), who created the creator or how did the creator come to be? (I can’t watch the video right now.)
> did the creator come to be..
Time, and causuality, is a construct inside of our universe. Asking who created the creator is like asking which way is down when you are in outer space..
“We will never know” is such a contradictory statement. On the surface, it implies the limits of our knowledge while simultaneously indicating that the author possesses the omnipotence required to know what humans will learn throughout the entirety of our future. Add it to your list of things to never write.
This is just about the most shallow critique of the article you can make, and it's unfortunate it got so much attention.
“We will never know” is such a contradictory statement. On the surface, it implies the limits of our knowledge while simultaneously indicating that the author possesses the omnipotence required to know what humans will learn throughout the entirety of our future. Add it to your list of things to never write.
Perhaps, if there is a God, he does not desire us to learn about him by knowledge or by science, but by love for him and seeking him out.
For who is man to say, that man must only learn about God through objectively verifiable facts, because man said so? Perhaps this God wants seeking. If we were born without eyes, color would still exist, but we would never perceive it, and how would we believe it if someone said it did exist?
I am sure all pot smokers know the answer. The observable universe is in a much larger universe with many like itself. Sometimes universes collide and form a new universe. There is an infinite stack of these much larger and much smaller universes (more like a fractal tree actually); some are hot and some are cold but even cold universes can collide make a hot universe.
Soma drinkers, lotus eaters, born-again mushroom enthusiasts.. We know how the universe began, trillions of different ways. Creativity and imagination are as much part of fundamental physics as quarks and entropy.
You're straw manning when you say things like "cares about the sexual life of humans". I highly recommend you watch this to broaden your horizons: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM
There is a great deal of evidence, philosophically and rationally, for the existence of God. The Big Bang, first theorized by theoretical physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lamaitre, states the universe sprang into existence 13.7b years ago; it was not eternal as previously thought. And we know from observation that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. This suggests that the universe was…
This is just a big bag of bad logic. It's going from their may be other factors beyond our present understanding of physics to their must be a being with volition. It's like seeing the massive complexity of a hurricane and from that deducing that Zeus must exist and demands a goat on a certain Thursday every year to avoid him blowing your crops away.
There is every reason to believe our present theories are presently insufficient because this is a very hard topic and no reason to believe that the universe is caused by something immaterial or timeless much less something with volition and purpose. There are multiple theories that you could read about if you wish that require neither cause nor volition.
«they», «us», «we» ? no matter what your beliefs are, I urge you to figure out where it comes from, by who, and how your beliefs are shared.
I don't have a prevailing interest is how the universe was formed. The subject matter doesn't interest me. What does interest me is that the generally accepted position of all scientists who worked in this field said "Big Bang" was the de facto position. Until is suddenly isn't. That just throws the whole reputation of all those scientists into doubt with the average Joe.
The Big Bang theory is still very much the de facto theory. The JWST findings while interesting are just one data point and they'll be further investigated. But it's way too early to say that BBT is dead.
Scientists are constantly finding better theories for explaining things and I think the population in general understands and accepts that.
This just falls completely apart when you look at the history of physics. Einstein for example is usually considered to be one of the smarter people, and even he thought it would be impossible to ever measure gravitational waves directly. He simply could not foresee the future developments of quantum mechanics, like lasers or squeezed light states. And yet here we are. Even if the author was the best physicist in the…
Sure, but that's an example of measuring something that's happening now. It's not quite in the same category as measuring something that happened 13.7 billion years ago.
Well, first of all these gravitational wave-creating events happened billions of light years away and thus are already a way to view the universe billions of years ago. Going back and looking even further into the past is just an example of what seems impossible to us right now. But in the grand scheme of things, we have no clue what's possible as evidenced by the history of physics. On top of that, there are actually pathways towards understanding things like string theory or the big bang. Einstein by comparison was not disingenuous when he made that statement, since the theoretical and experimental work didn't even show a possible path to imagine the future. Of course that doesn't mean that these other things will pan out in the future (e.g. stuff like astronomically-sized colliders or mathematical bottom-up/top-down proof approaches), but saying that anything we do today definitely won't ever work out, no matter what, is either incredibly naive, misinformed or outright slanderous towards these areas of research.
What does having texts with some degree of interpretation have to do with whether those texts are true or not? Sounds like a genetic fallacy. > The existance of these monsters does not prove religions don't create issues. Or what's your claim? My claim is that without religion, we'd be in a far off worse place.
> What does having texts with some degree of interpretation have to do with whether those texts are true or not? Sounds like a genetic fallacy.
You are putting words in my mouth. I said texts that are vague and open to a lot of interpretation can cause a lot of issues. Especially when those interpretations are used to make life choices and doubly so when making choices about others.
> My claim is that without religion, we'd be in a far off worse place.
Please provide evidence for this. Clearly one can have ethics and morals without religion. Note: showing that some atheists did something wrong is not evidence of that. Oh and btw there is more than theism and atheism. I wouldn't describe myself as an atheist. Do I know that there is no such thing as a god? Nope. All I know is that I really can't subscribe to that believe personally but who am I to claim either way. I can still strive to be a good member of society.