how can we best explain our existence ?

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Heartsong

[color=RoyalBlue]Good question. Some would say - do good for goodness' sake.



But we are so much more than dust only.

Now.......what did I do to have you single me out????

[TheLuckoftheDraw]

Originally Posted by ElOl888

2. The universe had a beginning, with the Big Bang, but without a cause.

3. The universe had a beginning, and therefore a cause.

(2) and (3) are not different. In (2), you're saying that it had a beginning, then you're naming the beginning. In (3), you're saying that it had a beginning, but just refraining from naming the beginning. In both cases there's a beginning. If the beginning is "therefore a cause", then that's the case for (2), too--that beginning, the Big Bang, is therefore a cause.

Another idea is whether the beginning was caused . . . but if it was, then the other thing (whatever you had otherwise named as the beginning) wasn't really the beginning--it came afterwards. Whatever would be the initial cause would be the beginning then.

There are really only two options. Either something has existed extending infinitely back in time, or it hasn't, and there was an uncaused beginning to everything, including time.

[urbancharlotte]

Personally, I think the concept of "time" is a reality created within the universe. In other words, things within the universe are subject to the effects of time. The universe itself is not. Therefore, the universe has always been in existence; for it (the universe) is not subject to a "past", "present", nor "future". I hope this makes sense.

[Asheville Native]

Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Asheville Native

Is 15,000,000,000 years long enough?

Yeah, that sounds about right!

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by Salt & Light

Number 3 without a doubt.

Physics disproves number 1 and logic discredits option 2.

Originally Posted by Asheville Native

Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once

Nicely summed up, Asheville! I like it!

Suffice to say, S&L, that you'd be laughed out of a formal, open adjudicated debate with "thinking" like this. It's entirely self-serving, obtuse and illogical. Assumptions of Pure Convenience to be sure.

Just because we of obvious limited intellect cannot "suss" it all out just yet hardly means there's no logical answer. (Even within human intellect, we know there's a range: Einstein/Hawking/Rifleman on down...). You blithely assume "The Sheeplistic Stupidity of the Godly", those who must have an all-encompassing answer, ("and right now damn it!"). So what if it's totally illogical, implausible or downright contradictory, eh?

The suggestion has been made, with good reason, and by those with far more open-minded critical thinking skills than you chose to utilize, that our universe may be expanding and then contracting sort of like a breathing organism, achieving some major size but then collapsing upon itself again.

We'll actually have proof of this theory in some distant time when/if it reverses it's currently measured expansion, and starts collapsing back towards it's point of origins. That will answer the question once and for all, wouldn't you agree? We'll be able to see and thus foretell our own eventual demise, secure in the knowlege that we've finally figured it out.

No god(z) required. Just a perpetual motion machine, no longer cluttered up by the detritus of Godz and Goddesses flitting about with no purpose but to encourage tithing and fear!

Yee-Hah!