Just why is there a there a universe? Why am I in it? Where is the universe? it cannot just be in nothing, can it?
Why not?
Enjoy the mystery!
Hi Light. I love it. That is really original. You buck mankind's trend to unsatiable curiosity. I really am tickled pink by your reply. But you do not convert me. I am just too usual. I want to know. Just like a little child. "Mummy, why is the sky blue, why can't it be pink? Why do you cook potatoes? Why Daddy do you shave? Why, why, why, and I am still asking why? "
Enjoy your mystery, Light. Perhaps the answer is even more mysterious. Let us see how this discussion runs.
It all biols down to faith George and faith cannot be so if it is reasoned beyond doubt
The answer(s) can be found on the internet. Maybe you could start to study cosmology which will give you plenty of information.
Thanks Peter. Unwrapping that statement into the underlying propositions as I understand ithem:
1. It is not possible to prove how the universe came into being let alone why.
2. The most we can do is to believe in how it came into being.
I stick to the Biblical explanation although I was brought up in a Calvinist Baptist church and the Calvinist state that God and science can co-exist as one. You may find some answers on John Calvins wikipedia site.
Thanks Jaguar, but isn't Peter correct in saying it all boils down to faith. How can science establish where the potential for the let us say the Big Bang came from. How can such a theory be capable of falsification and thius proveable by science? So cosmology is a busted flush in this respect.
If then science cannot get at the how, then science cannot get at the why? Peter's faith can get at both the how and the why.
Also science is not too strong on answering why. Why is the sky blue? Because white light is scattered in the upper atmosphere giving an appearance of blue when viewed from the surface of the earth.
OK. why should it be blue and not some other colour? Drive such questions as far as you like there is ultimately at point when science has no further answer.
There was a TV series on Yesterday all about the big bang theory and in closing the last episode the scientists were actually stumped. Ok they came up with maybe's and botomless propersistions but they could not answer the big question asked by all.
Thanks Peter. I agree. If there is a tussle between the Bible and Science I go with the Bible. In the beginning only God was there. Only he knows how things happened. The rest follows that model.
I agree with Light....enjoy the mystery.
Many years ago a very young man said to me as I was dealing with "stuff" that was getting to me:
Life is a Mystery to be Lived, not a Problem to be Solved....
He said this to me over 45 yrs ago.....I've never forgotten it....
Not into Blind Faith anymore, here...... J
Yes, Joy. I remember that quote. It must come from the same source.
If we're constantly picking away there trying to figure out all the whys and the wherefores, we miss the moment in which those things occur.
Take love, for example. Why do we love?
Who cares why we love! Just love and enjoy! Too much wondering why takes all the love away.
There's another one about D H Lawrence. He was walking in the woods with a little boy and the boy asked him: "Why are the trees green?"
Everyone knows the leaves of the trees are green because they contain chlorophyll and chlorophyll is green. But the reductum ad absurdum is like George's Why is the sky blue?
So when the boy asked Lawrence, Why are the trees green? Lawrence answered simply: Because they're green.
I guess Lawrence understood that many of the great mysteries of life are best kept as mysteries.
All that remains after that is for the questioning mind to stop questioning do nothing but wonder at the marvel of it all.
That's just his opinion, which he and everyone else is entitled to. What we do know is that the universe is billions of years old and is still growing. Perhaps many people who want to know more should take an opportunity to gaze at the night sky through one of the newer telescopes. Science is constantly breaching new horizons. There is still much to discover and to learn but as the landing (bumpy) on that asteroid shows science is moving forward.
It is poor comment to regard cosmology as 'a busted flush' in any respect. Just because we have yet to learn what happened before big bang does not negate what we do know. For example, we have yet to learn precisely how the human brain works but we already know so much that is both fascinating and helping the doctors to perform minor miracles for those with certain medical problems. Then take CTscans; when we can see our own bodies in slices so fine that the whole of our insides can be examined in detail we understand the marvellous leaps forward in medical science over, say, the last 50 years.
So when you read the Book of Genesis it is clear that the writers could not have the knowledge we have today and they made what they could out of their imaginations. We can find similar disparities in the Koran. Yet we know that mankind has been on this planet for at least 100,000 years which rather puts all of that into perspective.
Blind faith is rather foolish. Faith in the Creator of the Universe is not blind. George
Good points Light and there are times I wonder and do not question. Yet there are other times when I learn some detail and am absolutely amazed that such a thing should be. Take DNA for instance. Each DNA molecule contains all the information needed to build a cabbage, a lion, a woman..Each cell in a creature's body contains a copy of the DNA. It is very wonderful. Perhaps we just stop and wonder at different points and are not really so very different at all - just human. George
Good points, Jaguar. these days science covers two distinctly different types of knowledge. There is the kind where theories are established and a proof proposed. To be valid that proof must be both repeatable and capable of being falsified. The other type is by observation and deduction.The observations and deductions can be repeated but cannot be falsified. Strictly, only the first type is science.
In this case I do not think you have made a valid point. You have to deal first with your assumption that there is no Creator of the universe who told the writer of the Book of Geneis how he created the universe and, closer to home, the world. What you have proposed is a belief system which very possibly you hold to be a self evident 'truth'.
You have some odd ideas that fly in the face of reason. Perhaps you can pojnt us to how and where there are just two 'distinctly different types of knowledge'.
There is no truth in a myth.