Hi, All,
I'm someone in transition and leaning heavily toward atheism.
One thing that continually bothers me is the order of the universe and the question of how matter came to be. I can understand evolution and natural selection, but I can't understand how there's such order and development within the universe. For example, it seems extremely unlikely that I'll be sitting here in a recliner, typing on a computer using hands that evolved and are controlled by electronic impulses in my brain. When I start thinking of all of the things that have had had to occur to lead up to this moment, I just can't understand it.
My atheist boyfriend has said, "In an infinite universe, everything that can happen will happen."
I get stuck on this thought and start creating scenarios like: So a monkey wearing glasses and riding a tricycle with a polkadot scarf around his neck and two yellow birds mating on the top of his head while he rides is possible, so it will happen?
And what about if the universe isn't infinite? Does that change everything?
I hope you can help me understand all of this. Thanks!
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The technical answer, which probably isn't want you are looking for, is called reheating.
/e This might be a little better, but longer.
Thanks for sharing! I've visited these sites a few times and have bookmarked them.
Hi and welcome. How unlikely an event seems to us is of course a matter of subjective perception. Since its a fact we exist and a fact the material physical universe exists, we must be careful not to try and fill gaps in our understanding with unevidenced assumption. Especially superstitious beliefs for which no objective evidence can be demonstrated.
The origins of life is something we don't yet fully understand but we must keep an open mind and follow only objective evidence.
I'm sorry if this doesn't satisfy your question, but we should be very weary of people confidently offering the promise of esoteric knowledge. While ignoring the fact that they can demonstrate no objective evidence for their claims.
Lastly go to the talkorigins site and research your question there. It's got a huge database of scientific evidence and an equally large database of creationist pseudoscience it debunks in great scientific detail.
I guess I just learned what the God of the gaps fallacy is. :)
"We must keep an open mind and follow only objective evidence." So supernatural *never* exists? We have never documented anything supernatural?
Thanks so much for the mention of the talkorigins site. It is new to me and such a great resource.
Supernatural exists when there is evidence for it. "Open Mind." Until then the rational position is not to believe it until it is shown to be true. Imagine what life would be like if we went about believing every single assertion some idiot made. Follow the facts.
Someone once said, " Keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out."
Dragonfly: For example, it seems extremely unlikely.....
Yes. The universe, the world, and life are all extremely unlikely. The only thing I think of that's even more unlikely is an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, invisible sky-fairy who magicked it all into existence.
I hope you'll keep leaning toward atheism. If you do, you'll eventually find yourself standing upright on your own two feet face to face with the universe. And that's far grander than any myth.
"Yes. The universe, the world, and life are all extremely unlikely. The only thing I think of that's even more unlikely is an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, invisible sky-fairy who magicked it all into existence."
Very true, but far more edifying for me is the fact that we have objective evidence the universe and life exist, but no objective evidence for any deity or anything supernatural.
Occam's razor would seem to apply here again. Also Hitchens's razor of course in regard to all unevidenced assertion and beliefs about how it happened.
Stupid question time: When someone says the universe, world and life are extremely unlikely, what does that mean? How are we here if it's so unlikely?
And what about my example of a monkey riding a tricycle wearing a polkadot scarf, etc.? Since that's possible, does that mean that it *will* happen sometime?
@Dragonfly: How are we here if it's so unlikely?
Turn it around. If we weren't here, who would be asking that question? We're here because conditions in the universe make it possible for us to be here. If things were different, we wouldn't exist. End of story.
Theists claim that conditions in the universe were purposely organized for our existence by their gods. That sounds extremely conceited. And if it that were true, why is such a small part of the universe, and indeed a small part of this planet, suitable for our survival?
monkey riding a tricycle wearing a polkadot scarf
I saw one of those at Chipperfields Circus in England around 1959. Though it could have been a chimp or a bonobo.
"
Stupid question time: When someone says the universe, world and life are extremely unlikely, what does that mean? How are we here if it's so unlikely?"
It's not a stupid question at all, it is actually very edifying. Since we have only one universe we can examine and test, talking about probabilities with a test group of 1 is irrational. Usually theists leap on scientific statements about the universe (the only one we see) not being able to produce life or even exist if some of the physical constants are varied by even a tiny amount.
To me the argument seems moot since the odds against it become irrelevant if it has already happened. However a bigger problem for me is that these arguments take facts, the existence of the universe and life, and add things they can demonstrate no objective evidence for, based on argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies, or arguments from incredulity. Most first cause arguments for a deity also use their beliefs about the deity such as it's characteristics in the argument, thus it is also a begging the question fallacy.
Dan has devoted 6 pages to exactly such unevidenced claims. The point is they posit something is very unlikely to have happen without the cause they believe exists, then define that cause to match what they are arguing is necessary for the universe to exist, and you could of course posit any cause you want and define it in such a way that the argument is no less valid. You could literally believe whatever you want caused or created the universe, and all religions deists and theists used modified first cause arguments. The modification is usually the broad assumption at the end that the cause is their chosen deity.
It is of course a textbook "god of the gaps" argument. They seem to have forgotten that theists have always made claims for supernatural causation when they didn't understand what causes something, they always turn out to be wrong and the cause always turns out to be natural, from tsunamis and earthquakes to lightning and of course evolution of human consciousness. Creationists still try to deny human consciousness could evolve. They mean without a deity of course, and ignore the fact that this belief has no explanatory powers whatsoever. They also seem fine cherry picking scientific facts based on a prior religious beliefs. Follow a few of Breezy's threads and you'll see what I mean.
Monkeys are good at shit. I think if you made the request your dream would come true,.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwexQZdrFmM
Unlikely does not mean impossible. The chance of life appearing on a planet may be one in a billion, billion billion. And here it is. And if we can find life on another planet it will be two in a billion billion billion. The chance for life on planets is much greater. I think we have over 100 planets located in the "goldilocks zones" now. Where water will be liquid. At the same time not all life needs water to survive. This might open up some new possibilities.
"he standard definition of a “habitable world” is a world with liquid water at its surface; the “habitable zone” around a star is defined as that Goldilocks region – not too hot, not too cold – where a watery planet or moon can exist.
And then there’s Titan. Saturn’s giant moon Titan lies about as far from the standard definition of habitable as one can get. The temperature at its surface hovers around 94 degrees Kelvin (minus 179 C, or minus 290 F). At that temperature, water is a rock as hard as granite.
And yet many scientists now believe life may have found a way to take hold on Titan."
https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/life-without-water/
@ If it's possible, it will happen sometime. We know there are monkeys./ We know monkeys can ride bikes. It is possible so it can happen some time. We know there is a planet with life on it in the universe. We know it happens. We know it has happened one time.
We don't know it there is a god. We know many gods have been asserted and all have been proved to be fallacious. We know there is no evidence for God or gods that can stand up to critical inquiry. We know that the God hypothesis has never been proved and we have known this for thousands of years. So can a God happen... No one knows.
YOU CAN NOT IMAGINE A GOD INTO EXISTENCE.
@Dragonfly
"Stupid question time: When someone says the universe, world and life are extremely unlikely, what does that mean? How are we here if it's so unlikely? "
There are no dumb questions, the only stupid question is the one not asked.
I will give you an example. Over sixty years ago my parents had sex, and when my father ejaculated, he released approximately a billion sperm. But just one sperm won the race to fertilize the egg. Everything that happened with my conception and birth is understood, thousands of people are born each day.
So the simple fact that one in a billion sperm became "me" is both extremely unlikely (1 in a billion) but it still happened and it was not outside of the "normal" processes on this planet.
This is how you need to treat your understanding this universe. If there is something you do not understand or confuses you, take your time to learn and understand what is really going on. Take it on in easily digestible bits, don't try to swallow too much too quickly. You do not need to know everything NOW, but understand that eventually you will learn and understand.
Might I suggest the book, 'The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, And Rare Events Happen Every Day' by David J. Hand. I think you'll find it interesting.
Now, let me tell you something, the universe as you perceive it is only an illusion, your brain receives information from your 5 senses, and uses those to create a simulation, a simulation of the universe.
What you experience as matter, isn't the actual real physical matter it is only how your brain chooses to perceive matter, it doesn't choose what is real as a reference , it chooses what benefits it's chances of reproduction , this also applies to the perception of time and color . colors are only electromagnetic waves , and the actual color we perceive is only an illusion ( = created by our brain , doesn't mean FAKE ) , so there is not physical red for example .
In modern quantum physics , scientists are discovering that 99% of matter is vacuum ( emptiness ) , yet when you touch an apple you feel it solide and hard , you don't feel its emptiness , yet that apple is 99% vacuum .
So matter that you question is not real anyways , where did physical matter come from ? I invite you to take a look at 'library of babel' , write that in YouTube search bar and watch the vsauce video about it , the answer is , it's there because all possibilities are there ( when you have all possible forms of data , then you have no actual information , then what you have doesn't actually hold anything , so it requires no Creation ) , I think we are living in a library of babel , this is not another crazy idea\theory , you will see that even if we don't live in one we can mathematical be considered in one , and as you will see , the library of babel , logically , requires no creation and no beginning !
"your brain receives information from your sensors,"
Sensors?
But we are manipulating this illusion to an unfathomable degree. I look at the matter all around me, and I see bricks and coffee tables and mirrors and lamps, and I just don't understand how such a series of unlikely events could happen in even several billion years. I'll be the first to admit that math is not my forte, however.
Thanks for the recommendation on the video. I will watch it. Coming from a religious background, learning about science and quantum physics is fascinating. I can't seem to get enough.
I notice someone disagreed with your post. I wish people would say why they disagree when they do.
@ Dragonfly
"But we are manipulating this illusion to an unfathomable degree. I look at the matter all around me, and I see bricks and coffee tables and mirrors and lamps, and I just don't understand how such a series of unlikely events could happen in even several billion years."
There are "rules" that drive the creation of objects, even life. Such a rule as gravity was instrumental in creating stars. A few million years after the rapid expansion there was just basically hydrogen and helium floating around. But eventually gravity brought enough mass together where it became a sun.
For everything we witness, they exist because of these driving and directing "rules". They are not mysteries, we are not dealing with "unlikely events" but rather "possible and/or probable events".
@Dragonfly: But we are manipulating this illusion to an unfathomable degree.
I don't think it's an illusion. The forces are certainly real enough, as you will discover if you try to walk through a wall. Sure quantum reality differs from what we perceive, but for all intents and purposes the world is what we see and feel. Newton's laws still work.
A series of unlikely events becomes less strange if you consider that each event makes the next one more likely. Once there are atoms, stars are more likely to form. Once there are stars you're more likely to get planets. And once there are planets you're going to get complex chemistry that will sometimes lead to life.
I think one of the problems for us is that human beings simply can't conceive the vast amounts of time involved. We can picture a year, a century, and perhaps a millennium, but a million or a billion years just becomes an abstract number.
@ for example . In modern quantum physics , scientists are discovering that 99% of matter is vacuum ( emptiness ) ,
THIS IS JUST NO LONGER TRUE. Emptiness is not what we once thought it was. There is no "Nothing"
The view that an atom mostly consist of empty space stems from the old times when Bohr's atomic model (as a miniature planetary system in which electrons surround the nucleus) was the best picture of what an atom is like. But there are no electron particles moving around an atom."
There is no empty space around a nucleus, as in Bohr's superseded model. The electrons make up a tiny proportion of the mass of an atom, while the nucleus makes up the rest. The nucleus makes up a tiny proportion of the space occupied by an atom, while the electrons make up the rest. "
https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/topics/touch.html
"
@Dragonfly: How did matter come to be?
WOW! A reasonable question: Fact is, we do not know.
Lawrence Krause asserts that "Nothing" is not what we think it is." The Higgs Field is like a giant puddle of mud. When energy enters the Higgs Field, it slows down and becomes a solid object for a moment before dissipating. (Not being a physicist, that is my current understanding.)
@ " I can't understand how there's such order and development within the universe."
There is order and development because you are cherry picking your facts. The universe is 99.999% lethal to life as we know it. You look at the small area of the universe that we occupy and shout MIRACLE. The fact is more obvious, the universe was not made for us. We developed in this little section of the universe just like extremophiles came to life in nuclear reactors, volcano vents under the sea, surfer pools in Yellowstone park and more. We came from the earth and the universe around us and that is why we fit it so nicely. We were not created and then put into it.
The Douglas Adams puddle analogy would be a good thing for you to look up on youtube.
@ What you experience as matter, isn't the actual real physical matter it is only how your brain chooses to perceive matter,
And what difference does that make? None at all. Start pretending that the matter is not there and you are going to be dead much sooner than you want to be. You can not ignore the matter you see without severe consequences. The brains we have are the brains we have and the way we perceive is the way we perceive. It happens to be different than other animals.... so what? We invent new ways to see the world around us and we come up with new ideas about that world. You have said nothing at all with this statement,.
@ NO IT IS NOT VACUUM: You need to read something a bit more modern than the 1960's. "hydrogen atom orbital
This mathematical plot shows the density wave distribution pattern for a single excited electron bound in a hydrogen atom. Lighter colors represent regions with higher density. Note that a single electron fills the entire atom. There are no regions that are completely empty (even the dark regions have some non-zero density). Public Domain Image, source: Christopher S. Baird.
Atoms are not mostly empty space because there is no such thing as purely empty space. Rather, space is filled with a wide variety of particles and fields. Sucking all the particles and fields out of a certain volume won't make the space completely empty because new particles will still flash into existence due to vacuum energy. "
http://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/01/12/why-dont-atoms-collapse-if-they-a...
You are making one equivalence fallacy after another. @ "So matter that you question is not real anyways" If you acted on this belief you would be dead. There is a huge difference between "We don't know," and "It doesn't matter."
The Higgs Field is new to me. When I start hearing of all of these things, I wonder how someone who isn't left brained and never was good at math or science can understand it, or is it out of reach to most people? I can't study it if I don't understand it, and if I don't understand it and am relying on it, it seems like I'm just placing my faith in something else rather than knowing it for a fact. I'm familiar with the puddle analogy (it's great).
"There is order and development because you are cherry picking your facts. The universe is 99.999% lethal to life as we know it. You look at the small area of the universe that we occupy and shout MIRACLE. The fact is more obvious, the universe was not made for us. We developed in this little section of the universe just like extremophiles came to life in nuclear reactors, volcano vents under the sea, surfer pools in Yellowstone park and more. We came from the earth and the universe around us and that is why we fit it so nicely. We were not created and then put into it."
This is pretty significant. "Extremophiles"--had to look that one up. It is so bizarre that we exist and can manipulate matter and propel our bodies through space and time, though, isn't it?
Regarding your comment further down where you said there is no such thing as purely empty space, I just watched a fascinating Amazon Prime video that talked about this. NOVA: The Fabric of the Cosmos. https://amzn.to/2q3O5Vq
Thanks for the link. Keep watching this stuff and being amazed by it. Inventing an imaginary God is not nearly as interesting as the exploration of the universe around us./
I don't know if matter did come to be (as opposed to always existing).
Why there is something rather than nothing is a slightly different question, which I also don't know the answer to. It may not be a meaningful question. If there was nothing, I would not be able to ask the question. If I did not exist as I do, I would not be able to consider if there is a special significance to my existence. I can only say that everything happens exactly as you would expect with the laws of nature being what they are, which is of course a truism that doesn't really say anything.
"Why there is something rather than nothing"
It always strikes me as a begging the question fallacy, perhaps I am slightly jaded after too many religious apologists aggressively insisting an answer must be given or their chosen deity inserted into the gap.
Which is a shame, as from both a philosophical and scientific viewpoint it is an interesting question to pose for an evolved primate that has evolved a brain capable of consciousness.
Is nothing even possible, and how one earth would be test it?
I think for me that it's mostly a lack of understanding of math and physics. It's mind-bending to me to consider that the universe is infinite and that anything that's possible will happen eventually or has already happened.
Yes, I'm guilty of the God of the Gaps fallacy. It's good to be reminded that I tend to revert to that because of all of the conditioning I've received.
"Is nothing even possible, and how on earth would we test it?" I don't think nothing is possible according to that NOVA special I saw stating that even nothing itself is something and that if you took away stars, particles, etc. in the universe, there would still be something in all of the nothingness. Hard to put into words.
Sheldon , sorry , I was using Google's voice recognition for typing on android , and obviously something went wrong hh
Thank fuck for that, I thought I'd had sensors all this time, and didn't even know. ;-)
Where did we come from, where will we go when we die? Those are the two biggest questions anyone will face in their lifetime. Religion offers just one explanation, "god', and it's not really an explanation for anything.
Science is a process, for just one purpose, to discover truth, to explain our world.
IMO the world we live in is a result of trial and error on a grand scale. This universe is absolutely huge, and has been around for billions of years. The end result (us) is a long chain of events, some lucky, some probable. Science does offer a valid explanation on how we are here.
True. I'm struggling psychologically with atheism. God was a warm and comfy explanation, and science feels factual and cold. A guy in the skeptics group I go to said, "If you want comfort, choose religion. If you want truth, choose atheism." That comment got in my head and made me think. The truth is I want both, but I'm leaning toward truth.
The truth is really devastating to me. It's remarkable to me that so many people who quit believing in God feel liberated. Since I started losing my faith, I've felt depressed and that I've lost something that gave me a great amount of meaning, comfort and hope. I don't know how to overcome this feeling of loss.
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