Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command

Quote: Original post by AndreTheGiant
Philosophizing about why the universe exists is like philosophizing about why a round rock rolls down a steep hill.

Questions like "What is the purpose of the rock?" and "Why does the hill do that to the rock?" and "What is the rock feeling?" are stupid and pointless.

The short answer to "Why does the rock roll down the hill?" is: It just does, now stop worring about it and trying to make it more interesting than it really is. A slightly longer answer involves mathematics and physics: The rock is affected by gravity and friction and torque, etc.

Any answers that involve Creators, the rock's feelings, the hill's intentions or anything asinine like that is simply the result of someone who likes to hear themselves talk/type.

The big bang and the universe are a lot more complicated than the gravity operating on that rock. But that doesnt automatically make it something magical.

On this note, the philosophical question I have always wanted answered is this: why must there be a "why"?

Curiosity and fear. On one hand, we want to know things for the sake of knowing them. On the other, we fear things we don't understand. By understanding more we can eliminate that fear.

Edit: Oh, and why do you want to know why there must be a why? [grin]

To be or not to be...

I think it's far more difficult to imagine the universe as lacking intelligence or a creator. Why does a dice roll end up a 2 when I wanted a 6? Where's my get out of jail free card? The chance that the universe happened is 100%. The chance that it happened randomly? How could you know one way or the other?

Quote: Original post by Eelco
On the subject of philosophy: go read Hume. Everyone.

Is he really such a genius, or do i think so just because i agree with him so much? (on nearly everything, vs nearly nothing for any other 'philosopher')

And unlike other philosophers, instead of boring me to tears, he actually amuses me to tears. His subtle sarcasm is killing me.

Go read Hume. Now:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_hume.html

Hume was a genius. Now he's dead. We still have his writing.

Quote: Original post by Dmytry
edit: Krokhin: whose translation is that?

Google mostly.Of couse I could please my wife to translate it,but why? It was a post without adressee,and probability of repply here for me personally less than 5%(exepting you and LessBread).I have an English practice here,other has no sence.

Quote: Original post by jColton
Edit: Oh, and why do you want to know why there must be a why? [grin]

I see constantly asking "why" as a product of our thought-processes, and one that ideally should not be necessary.

As far as I can tell, we are used to thinking of things in terms of cause and effect, so when we see an effect we assume that there must be a cause. By asking "why" we are asking what the cause of an effect is. Of course, because of this asking "why" helps add to knowledge, especially in a scientific context which relies on just this principle, removing the filter that is our senses, biases, etc. and trying to determine empirically what mechanism is at work.

The point where this breaks down is when we try to look for an "original cause". As an analogy, consider a linked list: every node has a reference to the next node, and if it's a doublely-linked list it'll have a reference to the previous one, as well. Let's label a "node" an "event", say a man falling and landing on the ground beside you. That's an event.

Now, having seeing this, we look for a cause, assuming that the event is an effect of that cause. We reason that the man has fallen off the building beside us. Someone pushed him off, or he jumped off himself.

Say he jumped off; this would be a different event, one that leads to the next one, him dying on the pavement beside you. The two are in a casual relationship; the event of the man jumping has a "reference" to the next event, which is him falling and dying on the pavement beside you. Likewise, by our way of thinking, him dying on the pavement beside you has a "reference" to the previous (casual) event, which is him jumping. Devoid of these references, all we would have is a bunch of disconnected events, which is not appealing to our general way of thinking.

But, assuming we consider events as being nodes in a doubly-linked list like this (every event has a cause and every cause has an effect), while we can determine what the "first" event was (theoretically), we cannot determine what the cause of that effect was, because that "node"'s reference to the previous "node" is null or undefined. If you are iterating through a linked list in reverse and you try to access the "-1th element", your program will either throw an exception/generate an error, outright crash, or cause undefined behavior, correct?

So really, asking "why the universe is here" and other such questions is asking a question that we cannot answer and is in fact meaningless, because the item of data we're looking for doesn't really exist from our perspective. It's like using for a "universal signifier" in linguistics/structuralism. You're never going to find it, because as far as we can tell it doesn't exist.

So, my question (rhetorical, of course) is: why bother searching for something that we're never going to find?

Wow, that was longer than I thought and I think I rambled a bit, but I've been wanting to articulate that for a while and hopefully that should make my perspective clear. :)

edit: whoops, part of my post was in the wrong place. Apparently my nodes are scrambled. :P

[Edited by - Oberon_Command on March 9, 2009 3:10:41 PM]

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Hume was a genius. Now he's dead. We still have his writing.

Is that some sort of haiku?

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Hume was a genius. Now he's dead. We still have his writing.

Is that some sort of haiku?

Afaik no.
-----------
"It is spring raining,
and the children's ball
become yet on the roof" [smile]

Science doesnt answer 'why?', it only describes.

Infact, nobody and nothing can answer a why question. If someone pretends to be able to answer a why question for you, run like the wind.

As Hume concludes:

Quote: When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

>>What I mean by that is why does our universe exist? Does it exist for a reason? What boggles my mind even more is how extremely well thought out it is. The natural laws that govern how this universe works are perfectly calibrated. How can it be that our universe has organized itself so neatly all by itself into galaxies, suns and planets? What are the chances of this happening randomly? Who fine tuned the natural laws to make this happen? Why did it organize itself this way?<<

A/ the old idea is, if it didnt we would be around to ponder such thoughts, ego it has-to exist

>>In my mind, there must have been some form of intelligence behind this. I am not following any form of religion. (That's all I'll say about that, I don't want this thread turning nasty). I believe the universe is intelligently designed, but I don't call that entity God, but rather the Creator. In my mind, the Creator is the intelligence who thought out how the universe should assemble itself naturally as a product of the natural laws. I believe that the Creator is a single entity, and that we are all little amnesiac pieces of that Creator - experiencing itself subjectively.<<

or great chance (or just evolution, i.e. survival of the fittest) see #A answer

>>So why does the universe exist? My own opinion is that it does so because the Creator wants to gain new experiences. It splits itself into little pieces, experiences itself subjectively, and then re-merges itself and analyzes all the new experiences it has created for itself. It then uses those experiences to improve the next universe it creates.

I'm going to make an interesting statement and say that evolution is a product of intelligent design. The universe is intelligently programmed to allow evolution to manifest lifeforms naturally. That's the gist of it anyway. According to some mystical mysterious teachings I've read, evolution is run by a program which works on DNA in order to manifest lifeforms. This evolutionary program can be adjusted with templates and restraints, these templates and restraints can be modified on a per-planet basis. But other than that, nature takes care of the rest itself.

Some hundred thousands of years ago, some administrator in our solar system said,
"Time for Earth to advance to the next stage. Activate the human evolutionary program!"<<

ok now ask yourself instead of humans what happens if the creator was interested in sheep or roaches whatever .. welcome to ~500 years ago (actually ~2100 years ago they knew the earth was provably not flat) then we went through a ~1500 yr period of beliveing it was

Quote: Original post by polymorphed
Well, again, in my own words:
The highest truth is that there is one infinite Creator. This Creator is only capable of seeing itself as "I", there is no "you" or "me" to it, because it knows that it is all alone. In order to entertain itself, it creates (that's what the Creator does) a universe in which it is able to perceive itself subjectively. With the expression "perceiving itself subjectively", I mean that it is able to see parts of itself as not being parts of itself, which creates the possibility of "you" and "me". That's as good as I can explain it, I'll spare you from any more of this. [wink]

Is it me or that sounds a bit like the plot of the later Matrix movies? [headshake]

Present your proof or it didn't happen, it is really as simple as that.
I can as well posit that the universe was farted into existence by a monkey who himself lives in a universe farted by a bigger monkey, and that there are smaller universes created each time we fart ad infinitum, some have life in them some don't, my hypothesis is just as valid as yours as long as neither of us have any proof to back them up.

Also, I really, really think anyone who wants to discuss evolution theory seriously (which has nothing to do with the origin of the universe by the way), owes it to himself to read "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins.