What or who created the universe?

[springrite]

And where does the "there" come from?

I think We'd all be better served if we all go look for the answers in the music we listen to rather than "discussing" it here. I think it is in opening notes of Langgaard's Music of the Spheres.

I could be wrong, you know.

(There is no discussion if "I could be wrong" is NOT an option.)

[Kullervo]

And where does the "there" come from?

[drogulus]

Where did the big bang come from, and before that..how became nothing something, and where did the nothing come from, just asking.....

     You can see creation doesn't work. The only things we are aware of are transitions, not creations. Everything that exists develops out of something else, with the Big Bang as a far pole but not a boundary. The problem I see is that we don't yet have a sufficient understanding of time, seeing it as a medium through which everything flows. This can't be right.

     Once Einstein was asked by a reporter to explain his views on the universe and replied that we used to think if we removed matter and energy space and time would still be there, and now we see that space and time would go too. That's the difference, I think. The question "why is there something rather than nothing?" has a buried assumption that there's a blank canvas upon which a "something", once created, could be placed. You could call it a Void. Now the answer is more like "nothing doesn't exist". No void, no nothing.

     I'm not the least bit unhappy that nothing doesn't exist. What was it good for? Nothing, that's what! 

[Andante]

Why look for a creator, it may just have happened, and to seek understanding is what sets us apart from other earthly Animals, I think!
I would suggest that our brains are not wired to understand these things just as a Worm cannot understand physics etc. enjoy life while you can. 

[Bu]

I was watching an episode of 'The Universe' done by the History channel the other night about parallel universes and multverses. The whole thing seemed so hard to believe at times(eg, it mentioned cosmic bubbles--each containing a universe--colliding and as a result creating our universe), but it all seems so fascinating, regardless.

[Andante]

I was watching an episode of 'The Universe' done by the History channel the other night about parallel universes and multverses. The whole thing seemed so hard to believe at times(eg, it mentioned cosmic bubbles--each containing a universe--colliding and as a result creating our universe), but it all seems so fascinating, regardless.

Yes Multiverses are a good way of explaining why it may all be a matter of "luck or chance" i.e., there could be untold numbers of universes and our UV is one that makes life possible, but we are only aware of it in 3 spatial dimensions + Time, yet our UV could have 13 dimensions or a whole heap more that we just cannot conceive. the mind truly boggles.

[Serenity Now!]

What or who created the materials and conditions that produced the Big Bang?
Why does the universe exist?
What is the purpose of existence of the living and non-living entities?
Is there a major force or god that created the universe?

What or who does not matter.
The universe exists because you acknowledge it; the reason "why" does not matter. If you acknowledge it, then perceive it and appreciate it for whatever it is worth to you.
You are the purpose of their existence.
Yes, that "major force" is also within you, waiting for you.

[drogulus]

    If someone wants to know it doesn't matter that it doesn't matter. It's a reasonable question.

    If you answer a knowledge question with a wisdom answer you're just telling people not to ask questions.

    Here's how I see "it doesn't matter":

    I read something about a football coach who breaks up a fight at a team practice, saying "fellas, in a hundred years none of this will matter", and one of his players replies "why should it matter to us what matters to people a hundred years from now?". 

   

[DavidW]

Yes Multiverses are a good way of explaining why it may all be a matter of "luck or chance" i.e., there could be untold numbers of universes and our UV is one that makes life possible, but we are only aware of it in 3 spatial dimensions + Time, yet our UV could have 13 dimensions or a whole heap more that we just cannot conceive. the mind truly boggles.

Speculation and science should never be confused.

[Andante]

Speculation and science should never be confused.

Confused???  Are theories confused?? surly all theories are just speculation [but not idle] by those with the required knowledge.

[Ten thumbs]

Confused???  Are theories confused?? surly all theories are just speculation [but not idle] by those with the required knowledge.

The word is hypotheses.

[DavidW]

Confused???  Are theories confused?? surly all theories are just speculation [but not idle] by those with the required knowledge.

No scientific theories are not speculation.

[Andante]

No scientific theories are not speculation.

Fair enough, so what is the difference between an unproved theory and an educated, informed speculation 

[Opus106]

Fair enough, so what is the difference between an unproved theory and an educated, informed speculation 

Theory: (Since we're speaking of the supposed beginning of the Universe and related matters, and therefore some aspect of physics) A set of set of self-consistent mathematical statements also consistent with the observations and experiments of the past which provide testable predictions. Having said that, I must add that no theory can ever be proved in the absolute sense. It can only be verified to the accuracy the experiment will allow you.

Informed speculation: Half-but well-baked ideas.

[Andante]

Hi opus67, you come here as well   Can I just ask how would you describe the idea of 2 dimensions of time,
And the possibility of 6 or 7 dimensions, what I mean is :  is this a half baked idea ??  How would you describe it?

[jlaurson]

«What or who created the universe?»

Are we sure it wasn't karlhenning?

[Bu]

Are we sure it wasn't karlhenning?

No, he invented the internets.

[drogulus]

     

Why look for a creator,

it may just have happened,

and to seek understanding is what sets us apart from other earthly Animals,

I think!

I would suggest that our brains are not wired to understand these things just as a Worm cannot understand physics etc.

enjoy life while you can. 

      You asked a good question, and then you answered it. But then you compare us to worms, which contradicts what you said before.

      The same desire to understand that seeks out a creator is used to find what's there. Sometimes what you look for is not what you find, but what you find is even better because it's real. The fiction of the feeble, wormlike mind is self-undermining. Only a great intelligence can see limits to itself, even false ones. Worms don't think they miss anything.

      I don't know how the universe came about, and I don't believe anyone does. I start with considering 2 points, that (1) "coming into existence" must have an explanation consistent with science about how everything behaves, or (2) if that can't be done then there's something wrong with the idea. I'm betting there's something wrong with the idea, because even the strange world of quantum mechanics with it's seeming paradoxes isn't really a contradiction of our macro-understanding. In fact I think that the breakdown of causality at the micro-level is a kind of clue (maybe not strictly a scientific clue, but a philosophical one ).

      Maybe causality has an upper limit as well. What provides a framework for comprehending the relation of parts can't tell you about a whole which isn't a part of anything. If there was evidence that something "outside" the Universe was affecting it in some way we'd have to account for it causally by incorporation if we wanted everything to make sense. Something can't be both everything and not everything. The Universe must expand to contain everything we find or it stops being the Universe. That how we've dealt with the problem through successive scientific revolutions, and I can't even imagine how an extensible concept like this could ever be abandoned.

[Andante]

drogulus     You make good points however I did not think I contradicted my self I may not have been very clear,  [if you mean comparing ourselves to worms]  I was trying to explain why we may never be able to understand these things in that our thinking is limited to what we experience as is a worms. but some can try.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Here is the clearest and most concise argument for the existence of a supreme being that I've read on this forum. Well, I at least find it very convincing.

It was written by Al Moritz:

Something must be the ultimate explanation that is the basis for everything else. In the case of the theist it is God, in the case of the atheist it has to be eternal matter (that a naturalistic "creation out of nothing" is absurd I have explained elsewhere). The problem with eternal matter is that, in order to be not just eternal but also eternally functional, it has to have miraculous properties that we know ordinary matter does not possess (e.g. not obeying the second law of thermodynamics). So if the atheist proclaims that his views (in fact, beliefs) are more "scientific" than the theist position, I have to laugh my ass off. Whatever way you twist and turn things, the atheist has to assume new, unobserved and unobservable properties of matter, which makes his position anything but scientific, rather, a modern fairy tale. That this fairy tale is materialistic, and dressed up in (pseudo-) scientific language, does not in any way help to make it "scientific".