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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
When I look at this universe....particularly at sentient life....I'm puzzled. From a purely random scientific point of view sentient life makes no sense yet here we are. It's as if the universe was created to support life but there's no reason for that to be. The end result of everything that has happened up to this moment is you and I are having this conversation. Why? Why would the universe lead us here?
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That's one of the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind. We don't like randomness. We want there to be a purpose for everything so that every action is but one small cog in a grand design. We're not content with accepting the idea that we're here simply because we got lucky; that we're not 'meant' to fulfill a purpose and the universe isn't all about us.
I certainly see no grand purpose for humanity; we're not building up to something. We're not in the "rising action" sequence of a novel with direction, leading up to some grand climax to be followed by falling action. Where do you see this being played out?
Thus, to even ask the question "Why?" presupposes there actually -is- a "why" to discover. This results in the same phenomenon of seeing faces in random arrangements of nacho particles, tree bark, water stains, and pizza toppings. We "see" purpose when there is none, but at least we're seeing what we want to see.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I can buy the physical aspects of this universe as random events (if I could get past the notion of everything poofing into existence from nothing with no cause which I can't) but life makes no sense in a random universe. Everything serves a purpose in a random universe. I can't find a purpose for life itself let alone sentient life.
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No one has ever said that the physical universe came into existence without a cause. Of course something caused it to happen. The debate is over what that cause happens to be. For people like myself, we simply cannot leap to gods and magic as a logical explanation - this idea is just a throwback to what our ancestors were very much prone to doing: attributing all unknowns to gods and the supernatural.
As for why you can't find a purpose to life - perhaps that is because there is no purpose. Far too many people, I think, would rather have a purpose assigned to them by some third party instead of having to decide for themselves what their individual purpose ought to be.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I choose B. I'll go with something outside of this universe that is not subject to the laws of this universe created this universe with a purpose in mind. I do not pretend to know that purpose but I suspect sentient life has something to do with that purpose. When I look around I see a universe that seems to have been created with life in mind.
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Except the universe is mostly hostile to life. Even our own planet is not all that conducive to life, and the more complex the life form, the more deadly the universe becomes.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I choose B because IMO that this is by design makes far more sense than that we won the super universal lotto without even buying a ticket. I think something bought a ticket for us and that someone knew the winning combination to get us here. I find that more plausible than this all just happened all by itself out of nothing with no cause.
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Magic and the supernatural are never plausible answers. Never, not once, has a magical explanation ever panned out to be true. Ever. To suggest that this one time magic suffices as a real possibility is like betting on a horse that hasn't won a race - ever - in the 100,000 or so years the horse has been racing.
I choose A, also, because of the horrific flaws found in the human body. Either the creator/designer is malicious or, at the very least, devious ... or ... the fact that we aren't better designed indicates an evolutionary process. That we simply haven't gotten there yet. Things like using the same passage to breathe as we do to eat and drink, or putting our reproductive organs right next to (and sometimes sharing the same function with) our waste disposal orifices are monumentally stupid ideas if an actual creator designed our bodies that way. As a matter of evolution, it makes far more sense given that evolution has to make a lot of "choices" and trade-offs to get biology to work.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
A single atom poofing into existence out of nothing with nothing causing it to poof into existence would be fantastically impossible but all of this? You and I? Occam's razor says you need go no further than the simplest explanation that will suffice.
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People rely way too much on Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation often is -not- the right one. After all, we can study complex theories of gravity, mass, and dark matter - or we could just fall back on Occam's Razor by saying angels prevent things from falling up and floating away. Using magic as an explanation is the ultimate in Occam's Razor since "magic" will always be a bare assertion. Does anyone know -how- this "God" created the universe? Of course not ... people simply assert that God did it, thus providing no more information than we had before. Magic will -always- be the simplest explanation because it does not need an explanation. It just is.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
IMO God (a being that exists outside of this universe who is not subject to the laws of this universe) creating this is a simpler explanation than billions upon billions upon billions of random events that happened to stuff that poofed into existence from nothing with no cause.
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How do you know that?
How can you possibly assess the complexity of God's actions when creating the universe? The mechanism by which God constructed all of this could have been infinitely more complex than the scientific explanation. Few people who believe in the "God" explanation ever bother to consider just -how- God created everything. It's just a "gimme" explanation. God did it. That's all. Nothing more. He just ... did.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
We are beings capable of discussing this and that is something that I just don't think would exist in a random universe. There's no purpose for it.
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Your stumbling block, it would appear, is this insatiable need for purpose. I simply fail to understand why you think a purpose is even necessary. You might want there to be a purpose. You might want one really really badly. But that doesn't mean there -must- be one.
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