I believe All Things are eternal and necessary. God is neither.

[PinesRCW]

God without Everything Else has no use, no meaning, worthless.

An Eternal Everything without God is Everything.

So if you can imagine something eternal, imagine it's the stuff that's demonstrably here now. No need to imagine how God created everything from nothing. No need to worry about the fact that we have no experience with creation 'ex nihilo'.

Go ahead, sleep in on Sunday morning or the special morning of your choice.

 

[Rhea]

Agree. A god character is utterly unnecessary to describe or enjoy all that we see and know.

 

[Angry Floof]

God without Everything Else has no use, no meaning, worthless.

An Eternal Everything without God is Everything.

So if you can imagine something eternal, imagine it's the stuff that's demonstrably here now. No need to imagine how God created everything from nothing. No need to worry about the fact that we have no experience with creation 'ex nihilo'.

Go ahead, sleep in on Sunday morning or the special morning of your choice.

I agree. And all this eternal stuff is constantly changing, not ending or beginning. OR everything is constantly beginning and ending. Either way, it's all still eternal and it's safe to sleep in on a Sunday.

 

[bilby]

Mass/Energy is constant in a closed system. It cannot be created, nor destroyed.

- First Law of Thermodynamics.

 

[PinesRCW]

It bugs me when cause/effect is equated to creation. The word 'creation' is tossed about as though it was an everyday experience that we have all witnessed. In fact, creation from nothing which is supposedly what happened when "God Did It", isn't even coherent idea.

 

[arnoldo]

Mortimer J Adler has a cosmological argument which argues that the universe is eternal and uncaused.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I feel strongly that the origin of the universe is so terribly indeterminate, the hopes of solving it are well beyond us. Of course, I think the idea of a personal creator is outlandish, unsupported, and cliche. And I side with no fundamental creator in general. However, I think the idea that all is here that has ever been seems overly simplistic. While there is no evidence otherwise, I think it silly to suggest we have evidence that is to the contrary of some level of creation. There simply is no evidence of anything.

Mortimer J Adler has a cosmological argument which argues that the universe is eternal and uncaused.

Honestly, I think people who think language used to create 'tricks of the light' hold any meaning to the reality are simply deluded. "Logical arguments" have virtually no viable value to science. It is computer code for Grammar.

 

[Atheos]

Modal logic / greatest necessary being falls right in that hole. Necessarily.

 

[bilby]

I see no particular reason to assume that the first law of thermodynamics is not applicable under some circumstances - certainly we have never observed any circumstances where it fails to hold.

Perhaps I am being incurious, but for me that implies that the mass/energy of the universe is constant, always has been, and always will be. It would take a lot more than mere speculation about singularities to persuade me that this physical law might not have applied at some juncture prior to the Planck Epoch.

Therefore I conclude that the best hypothesis is that the universe is eternal, but passed through a very hot dense phase of very low entropy, before which we cannot make any sensible predictions of its behaviour. Nothing before the Planck Epoch is known, but it seems unparsimonious to assume that at some earlier time, the total mass/energy of the universe was increasing from a starting point of zero.

Of course, in the above I use 'universe' in the broadest possible sense, to mean 'everything that exists' - it includes any hypothetical 'extra dimensions' or 'other universes' which might render our 'local universe' an open system either now, or at some time in the past, or more reasonably, both or neither.

Of course, time is also a consideration; If the entropy of the universe prior to the Planck Epoch was sufficiently low, it may not be sensible to even discuss 'time' below that level of entropy, any more than it is sensible to discuss what is north of the north pole.

 

[DBT]

A one off shot seems improbable. An eternity of nothing then something, just one Bang of something/matter/energy before heat death, then nothing for eternity.

 

[Politesse]

A one off shot seems improbable. An eternity of nothing then something, just one Bang of something/matter/energy before heat death, then nothing for eternity.

Is it improbable or just unsettling?

 

[Keith&Co.]

An eternity of nothing then something,

But....if you have to have something in order to have time, could there BE an eternity of nothing? Or just a no-when of nothing, then something, then the heat death, then another nothing of no-when.

 

[DBT]

A one off shot seems improbable. An eternity of nothing then something, just one Bang of something/matter/energy before heat death, then nothing for eternity.

Is it improbable or just unsettling?

Perhaps both...but in what way would it be unsettling? There are many way to be unsettled.

 

[DBT]

An eternity of nothing then something,

But....if you have to have something in order to have time, could there BE an eternity of nothing? Or just a no-when of nothing, then something, then the heat death, then another nothing of no-when.

That could be another way of putting it....something not doing anything for eternity, absolutely inert, then it does something, it blows up in a one off shot.

 

[Politesse]

A one off shot seems improbable. An eternity of nothing then something, just one Bang of something/matter/energy before heat death, then nothing for eternity.

Is it improbable or just unsettling?

Perhaps both...but in what way would it be unsettling? There are many way to be unsettled.

Perhaps I should be clearer. On what basis would one assign the probability of a universe existing?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Perhaps both...but in what way would it be unsettling? There are many way to be unsettled.

Perhaps I should be clearer. On what basis would one assign the probability of a universe existing?

1:1

 

[Politesse]

Perhaps both...but in what way would it be unsettling? There are many way to be unsettled.

Perhaps I should be clearer. On what basis would one assign the probability of a universe existing?

1:1

So it would seem to me. So what makes the existence of a universe "probable" or "improbable". Neither of those terms mean anything when one's data set has just one entry.

 

[Keith&Co.]

1:1

So it would seem to me. So what makes the existence of a universe "probable" or "improbable".

The existence was not what he deemed [im]probable, but the suggested mechanism leading to that existence.

 

[skepticalbip]

Seems to me there is only two possibilities.

1.. There wasn't then there is.
2.. There was and there is.

Either is damned interesting. Just a personal gut feeling is that 2 is more probable.

 

[DBT]

Perhaps both...but in what way would it be unsettling? There are many way to be unsettled.

Perhaps I should be clearer. On what basis would one assign the probability of a universe existing?

It's not so much that it exists, which seems improbable but can't be calculated, rather it is the idea that it exists only once in eternity that appears improbable.