Hindu Proof of God: Best Arguments

[Spirit_Warrior]

This is a repost from a thread of mine in the Hindu DIR thread. It has taken me a long time to accept that God exists, as I am an ex-atheist and still have strong atheistic tendencies. I have looked at all the main arguments for why God exists cosmological, design and ontological, but it is this argument that convinces me the most.

Argument: The laws of cause and effect require a maintainer that enforces it.

If a law exists, it does not necessarily mean that everybody will follow the law. If there is no maintainer/enforcer/supervisor to enforce that law, then some will deliberately not follow that law, some will forget to follow that law and if the laws are very complex, then may partly follow that law while breaking another law.

Objection: This is an invalid argument, because it makes the mistake of applying how humans laws work to natural laws

Reply: The above is only an analogy to illustrate that laws require a supervising intelligence. Consider how complex natural laws are, the laws of gravity, electricity, magnetism, light, sound, nuclear laws, mechanical laws and all these laws operate in tandem perfectly to maintain this universe. If the laws were just blind, why would they do that? Why would they continue to persist, why doesn't gravity just stop working the next moment and all planets fall out of their orbit? Why doesn't some random reaction take place in the sun and the sun explode? Why don't the spin of atoms change by a minuscule amount and all matter just collapses? Why are the physical laws so precisely fine tuned that the universe can exist and humans are around to see it(anthropic principle)

We know that at the quantum level of the uncertainty, how atoms just appear and disappear seemingly randomly every moment, and despite this material flux, still at the non-quantum or manifest level of reality everything coheres. This fact when discovered by Max Plank even compelled him to say in his Nobel prize speech that it can only be explained by a supervising cosmic intelligence

Scientists have now started to acknowledge that the universe is indeed a perfectly fined tuned system for life to exist:

"For more than 400 years, physicists treated the universe like a machine, taking it apart to see how it ticks. The surprise is it turns out to have remarkably few parts: just leptons and quarks and four fundamental forces to glue them together.​

But those few parts are exquisitely machined. If we tinker with their settings, even slightly, the universe as we know it would cease to exist. Science now faces the question of why the universe appears to have been “fine-tuned” to allow the appearance of complex life, a question that has some potentially uncomfortable answers.​

So now, I invite you to join me in imagining a universe, a universe slightly different to our own. Let’s just play with one number and see what happens: the mass of the down-quark. Currently, it is set to be slightly heavier than the up-quark.​

(snip)​

This situation is devastating for the possibility of complex life, as in a heavy down-quark universe, the simplest atoms will not join and form molecules. Such a universe is destined to be inert and sterile over its entire history. And how much would we need to increase the down-quark mass to realise such a catastrophe? More than 70 times heavier and there would be no life. While this may not seem too finely tuned, physics suggests that the down-quark could have been many trillions of times heavier. So we are actually left with the question: why does the down-quark appear so light?​

Examining the huge number of potential universes, each with their own unique laws of physics, leads to a startling conclusion: most of the universes that result from fiddling with the fundamental constants would lack physical properties needed to support complex life.​

Things get worse when we fiddle with forces. Make the strength of gravity stronger or weaker by a factor of 100 or so, and you get universes where stars refuse to shine, or they burn so fast they exhaust their nuclear fuel in a moment. Messing with the strong or weak forces delivers elements that fall apart in the blink of an eye, or are too robust to transmute through radioactive decay into other elements,​

Then there’s the finely tuned level of dark energy. We know very little about this mysterious substance that fills the universe. It may be related to the weird behaviour of the vacuum. Quantum mechanics predicts that the vacuum is not really empty. Particles continually pop in and out of existence producing a background energy that seems to influence cosmic expansion.​

And there is another structural issue to consider – our universe is flying apart. Two things affect the rate of expansion: the amount of matter which acts as a brake, and dark energy which acts as an accelerator. Dark energy is winning so our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.​

What this means is that in the early days of the universe, the rate of expansion was slower, slow enough to allow matter to condense into stars, planets and people. But if the universe had been born with only a touch less matter, it would have rapidly expanded, thinning out to less than one hydrogen atom per universe.​

On the other hand, if the universe had been born with only a touch more matter, that would have caused it to re-collapse before the first stars could form. In short, the early universe was on a knife-edge, poised between these possible outcomes. What emerged was the Goldilocks expansion rate: not too fast, not too slow.​

Then there’s the finely tuned level of dark energy. We know very little about this mysterious substance that fills the universe. It may be related to the weird behaviour of the vacuum. Quantum mechanics predicts that the vacuum is not really empty. Particles continually pop in and out of existence producing a background energy that seems to influence cosmic expansion.​

Symmetry

Next, we come to a consideration of the symmetry displayed in our universe. In everyday life the word symmetry describes how something stays the same when you change your viewpoint; think of the appearance of a perfect vase as you circumnavigate the table it’s sitting on. It demonstrates rotational symmetry.​

In physics, we find other types of symmetries hidden in mathematics. For instance, there is a symmetry that ensures the conservation of electric charge: in every experiment we perform, equal amounts of positive and negative charges are produced. Other symmetries dictate the conservation of momentum, and there are others for a whole host of quantum properties. Some symmetries are perfect, others contain slight imperfections. And we would not be here without them.​

In a perfectly symmetric universe, the hot fires of the Big Bang would have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. This means protons and antiprotons would have completely annihilated each other as the universe cooled leaving a universe empty of its atomic hydrogen building block.
Somewhere hidden in the physics of protons there must be a slight asymmetry that resulted in protons outnumbering antiprotons by one in a billion.​

But why does our universe possess a perfect symmetry with respect to charge but a slight asymmetry with respect to matter and antimatter? Nobody knows! If the situation was reversed and our universe was born with zero protons, but with a net excess of charge, the immense repulsive action of the electromagnetic force would prevent matter present from collapsing into anything resembling stars and galaxies.​

No matter which way we turn, the properties of our universe have finely tuned values that allow us to be here. Deviate ever so slightly from them and the universe would be sterile – or it may never have existed at all. What explanation can there be for this fine-tuning?​

A universe made for me? Physics, fine-tuning and life​

What is now known to science in the latest research from empirical facts we declared purely using reasoning more than a thousand years ago. We argue similarly, the laws of nature function because there is a supervising intelligence. In fact we can also provide you empirical proof of this. Take the body for example. As long as the intelligence that is regulating the body exists, the body functions and remains coherent, but as soon as that intelligence leaves, the body stop functioning and falls apart. Thus, extending this argument to the body of the universe, its functioning and coherence can only be possible if there is a supervising intelligence.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

The problem with the atheists/materialist approach is they are applying old obsolete 18th century reductionist thinking to the universe and to living things, this is the approach of taking things apart like a machine, and then putting it back together part by part. This way of thinking was applied to the universe, thinking of it to be a giant machine where parts somehow came together, built upon one another forming atoms, then nebulas, then planets, then molecules, then water, then amino acids, into blobs of life or cells, then single cell organisms, then, into multicelluar organisms, and multicellular organisms into fishes, plants, insects, reptiles, birds, mammals and humans etc.

This sort of thinking dominated the last 200-300 years of modern science. We can forgive our early modern scientists for thinking like this, but we cannot forgive our postmodern or latemodern scientists for thinking like this. That is, because we know that the universe and life does NOT work like that, we know appreciate that the universe and life is a system. We now appreciate that systems are embedded within systems. Like the atomic system, in a molecular system, in cellular system, in an ecosystem, in a planetary system, in a solar system in a galactic system, in a universal system. Here are some features of a systems

1. Systems are more than the sum of their parts. This means you cannot just break it down in its parts and then put them together one by one and form the system, because you destroy the system as soon as you do that. Rather, the system is the parts organised in such a manner that all the parts interconnect and intercommunicate and function as a single whole.​

2. Systems are dynamic, organic and self-organising. This means that systems are not static closed systems like machines nor are they fully open systems or like chaos, rather they tend towards and remain in dynamic equilibrium That means every every moment new information is being received by the system, but the systems processes it and organises it to maintain balance e.g. The human body is a perfect example of a system that tends towards equilibrium, if a foreign source such as a "germ" tries to enter the system of the body, the germ will bring in its new information in the body, and the body will instantly react to it to bring the body back to equilibrium.​

3. Systems are goal orientated. This means that systems have goals or purposes if you like, to achieve certain ends, irrespective of the limiting factors. In the old mechanistic way of thinking, it is assumed that certain things are "emergent" due to random aggregations of atoms. In systems there is no such thing as "emergence" whatever "emerges" is already intended by the system. This assumed a natural teleology that tends towards certain goals. Meaning, that life was suppose to emerge anyway from the moment of the big bang. The time it took from the big bang to the first emergence of life is is merely the unfolding process. There are now modern epigenetic studies add to evidence that this is the case, we find with very simple living organisms like cells that they have a preference towards reaching certain goals. Such that if we try to add foreign limiting factors to limit their behaviour, they will still find a way to reach the same goals​

4. Systems have no time. This means, that because every part in the system interconnects and intercommunicates, that if you affect one part in the system, instantly every other part of the system has to resolve because it has been affected. There is no delay of time. There is now evidence towards in quantum physics, which shows when you have a quantumly entangled system, such as two particles separated across a distance, if you affect one pair the other one is near instantly affected. Attempts to calculate the speed at which information travels comes to 20,000 times the speed of light. In principle it is isntant.​

5. Systems have no space. This means, that because part of of the system interconnect and intercommunicates and changes every moment, you cannot locate a single fixed position of any part. Again we have evidence from quantum physics which shows every moment a particle changes its position and therefore without having any fixed position of any particle in the universe, there cannot be any space. The only type of space that is permitted in quantum physics is an abstract Hilberts space.​

The systems approach is now starting to take over every field of science and new sciences are emerging with the prefix "quantum" quantum biology, quantum psychology, quantum physics etc This signals we have moved away from old 18th century reductionist approach. Unfortunately, many atheists and materialists remain stuck in the old paradigm.

We now are starting to appreciate the universe and life is an inseparable system and there is no such thing as emergence. The implications of this type of thinking is a dead-ringer for the Hindu "Brahman" The inseparability of consciousness and the universe leads to only one conclusion that the universe and consciousness are identical and one: Atman = Brahman. The universe exists, because I exist; I exist, because the universe exists.
The coherence of the universe is because of the coherence of 'I'

 

[Twilight Hue]

This is a repost from a thread of mine in the Hindu DIR thread. It has taken me a long to accept that God exists, as I am an ex-atheist and still have strong atheistic tendencies. I have looked at all the main arguments for why God exists cosmological, design and ontological, but it is this argument that convinces me the most.

Argument: The laws of cause and effect require a maintainer that enforces it.

If a law exists, it does not necessarily mean that everybody will follow the law. If there is no maintainer/enforcer/supervisor to enforce that law, then some will deliberately not follow that law, some will forget to follow that law and if the laws are very complex, then may partly follow that law while breaking another law.

Objection: This is an invalid argument, because it makes the mistake of applying how humans laws work to natural laws

Reply: The above is only an analogy to illustrate that laws require a supervising intelligence. Consider how complex natural laws are, the laws of gravity, electricity, magnetism, light, sound, nuclear laws, mechanical laws and all these laws operate in tandem perfectly to maintain this universe. If the laws were just blind, why would they do that? Why would they continue to persist, why doesn't gravity just stop working the next moment and all planets fall out of their orbit? Why doesn't some random reaction take place in the sun and the sun explode? Why don't the spin of atoms change by a minuscule amount and all matter just collapses? Why are the physical laws so precisely fine tuned that the universe can exist and humans are around to see it(anthropic principle)

We know that at the quantum level of the uncertainty, how atoms just appear and disappear seemingly randomly every moment, and despite this material flux, still at the non-quantum or manifest level of reality everything coheres. This fact when discovered by Max Plank even compelled him to say in his Nobel prize speech that it can only be explained by a supervising cosmic intelligence

Scientists have now started to acknowledge that the universe is indeed a perfectly fined tuned system for life to exist:

"For more than 400 years, physicists treated the universe like a machine, taking it apart to see how it ticks. The surprise is it turns out to have remarkably few parts: just leptons and quarks and four fundamental forces to glue them together.​

But those few parts are exquisitely machined. If we tinker with their settings, even slightly, the universe as we know it would cease to exist. Science now faces the question of why the universe appears to have been “fine-tuned” to allow the appearance of complex life, a question that has some potentially uncomfortable answers.​

So now, I invite you to join me in imagining a universe, a universe slightly different to our own. Let’s just play with one number and see what happens: the mass of the down-quark. Currently, it is set to be slightly heavier than the up-quark.​

(snip)​

This situation is devastating for the possibility of complex life, as in a heavy down-quark universe, the simplest atoms will not join and form molecules. Such a universe is destined to be inert and sterile over its entire history. And how much would we need to increase the down-quark mass to realise such a catastrophe? More than 70 times heavier and there would be no life. While this may not seem too finely tuned, physics suggests that the down-quark could have been many trillions of times heavier. So we are actually left with the question: why does the down-quark appear so light?​

Examining the huge number of potential universes, each with their own unique laws of physics, leads to a startling conclusion: most of the universes that result from fiddling with the fundamental constants would lack physical properties needed to support complex life.​

Things get worse when we fiddle with forces. Make the strength of gravity stronger or weaker by a factor of 100 or so, and you get universes where stars refuse to shine, or they burn so fast they exhaust their nuclear fuel in a moment. Messing with the strong or weak forces delivers elements that fall apart in the blink of an eye, or are too robust to transmute through radioactive decay into other elements,​

Then there’s the finely tuned level of dark energy. We know very little about this mysterious substance that fills the universe. It may be related to the weird behaviour of the vacuum. Quantum mechanics predicts that the vacuum is not really empty. Particles continually pop in and out of existence producing a background energy that seems to influence cosmic expansion.​

And there is another structural issue to consider – our universe is flying apart. Two things affect the rate of expansion: the amount of matter which acts as a brake, and dark energy which acts as an accelerator. Dark energy is winning so our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.​

What this means is that in the early days of the universe, the rate of expansion was slower, slow enough to allow matter to condense into stars, planets and people. But if the universe had been born with only a touch less matter, it would have rapidly expanded, thinning out to less than one hydrogen atom per universe.​

On the other hand, if the universe had been born with only a touch more matter, that would have caused it to re-collapse before the first stars could form. In short, the early universe was on a knife-edge, poised between these possible outcomes. What emerged was the Goldilocks expansion rate: not too fast, not too slow.​

Then there’s the finely tuned level of dark energy. We know very little about this mysterious substance that fills the universe. It may be related to the weird behaviour of the vacuum. Quantum mechanics predicts that the vacuum is not really empty. Particles continually pop in and out of existence producing a background energy that seems to influence cosmic expansion.​

Symmetry

Next, we come to a consideration of the symmetry displayed in our universe. In everyday life the word symmetry describes how something stays the same when you change your viewpoint; think of the appearance of a perfect vase as you circumnavigate the table it’s sitting on. It demonstrates rotational symmetry.​

In physics, we find other types of symmetries hidden in mathematics. For instance, there is a symmetry that ensures the conservation of electric charge: in every experiment we perform, equal amounts of positive and negative charges are produced. Other symmetries dictate the conservation of momentum, and there are others for a whole host of quantum properties. Some symmetries are perfect, others contain slight imperfections. And we would not be here without them.​

In a perfectly symmetric universe, the hot fires of the Big Bang would have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. This means protons and antiprotons would have completely annihilated each other as the universe cooled leaving a universe empty of its atomic hydrogen building block.
Somewhere hidden in the physics of protons there must be a slight asymmetry that resulted in protons outnumbering antiprotons by one in a billion.​

But why does our universe possess a perfect symmetry with respect to charge but a slight asymmetry with respect to matter and antimatter? Nobody knows! If the situation was reversed and our universe was born with zero protons, but with a net excess of charge, the immense repulsive action of the electromagnetic force would prevent matter present from collapsing into anything resembling stars and galaxies.​

No matter which way we turn, the properties of our universe have finely tuned values that allow us to be here. Deviate ever so slightly from them and the universe would be sterile – or it may never have existed at all. What explanation can there be for this fine-tuning?​

A universe made for me? Physics, fine-tuning and life​

What is now known to science in the latest research from empirical facts we declared purely using reasoning more than a thousand years ago. We argue similarly, the laws of nature function because there is a supervising intelligence. In fact we can also provide you empirical proof of this. Take the body for example. As long as the intelligence that is regulating the body exists, the body functions and remains coherent, but as soon as that intelligence leaves, the body stop functioning and falls apart. Thus, extending this argument to the body of the universe, its functioning and coherence can only be possible if there is a supervising intelligence.

Couple of contentions.

The universe remains fluid and dynamic. What appears to be symmantry and stability eventually transforms to chaos and disorganization. Think fractal Mathmatics that are put into play, an organized system with unpredictable unorganized randoms.

Molecular chemistry. How atoms interact to form molecules. Some work in the sense of complex organisms and structures during periods of stability, but what appears organized and designed now, won't be there givin the infinite amount of time processes come together and dissipate.

There's no central or guiding force that directs from any givin point in space and time.

 

[ratiocinator]

The systems approach is now starting to take over every field of science and new sciences are emerging with the prefix "quantum" quantum biology, quantum psychology, quantum physics etc

...quantum quackery.

Lots of words that, as far as I can see, are simply a rework of "the universe is hard to explain - therefore god". Completely neglecting that all the problems of explaining the universe aren't in any way answered, just bundled up into this 'guiding intelligence' that - as if by magic - somehow doesn't need any explanation.

The universe and a god or 'guiding intelligence' is no less mysterious than the universe alone.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Couple of contentions.

The universe remains fluid and dynamic. What appears to be symmantry and stability eventually transforms to chaos and disorganization. Think fractal Mathmatics that are put into play, an organized system with unpredictable unorganized randoms.

Molecular chemistry. How atoms interact to form molecules. Some work in the sense of complex organisms and structures during periods of stability, but what appears organized and designed now, won't be there givin the infinite amount of time processes come together and dissipate.

There's no central or guiding force that directs from any givin point in space and time.

Sure, I agree that the universe is fluid and dynamic and that the current stable universe will always not always remain stable, but we have a perfect answer for this in Hinduism and that is everything goes around in cycles, of which we have mentioned 6 stages pre-exists, manifest being, exists for a while, grows, decays and goes back into unmanifest. However, this entire process is not random at all, it is maintained by an organising power that creates, preserves and destroys. The fact remains that this cycle is adhered to all by all things from the tiniest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy. Everything follows the same principle e.g. Your face does just not fall off the next moment, but is maintained and gradually goes through all the stages of youth, wrinkling, stiffening etc. The fact is nothing ever happens randomly in the universe. It is extremely well coordinated, and everything within the universe is coordinated with everything else. Every process in the body is coordinated with every other process in the universe and every moment trillions and trillions of processes are going on which are kept in dynamic equilibrium.

What I am saying there is no other way to explain this other than posit an underlying intelligence to the universe.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

...quantum quackery.

Lots of words that, as far as I can see, are simply a rework of "the universe is hard to explain - therefore god". Completely neglecting that all the problems of explaining the universe aren't in any way answered, just bundled up into this 'guiding intelligence' that - as if by magic - somehow doesn't need any explanation.

The universe and a god or 'guiding intelligence' is no less mysterious than the universe alone.

This is a strawman of the original argument. Read again.

 

[ratiocinator]

This is a strawman of the original argument. Read again.

Can you explain the existence of this 'supervising intelligence', then? How come such a complex being just happens to exist?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

This is a repost from a thread of mine in the Hindu DIR thread. It has taken me a long to accept that God exists, as I am an ex-atheist and still have strong atheistic tendencies. I have looked at all the main arguments for why God exists cosmological, design and ontological, but it is this argument that convinces me the most.

Argument: The laws of cause and effect require a maintainer that enforces it.

If a law exists, it does not necessarily mean that everybody will follow the law. If there is no maintainer/enforcer/supervisor to enforce that law, then some will deliberately not follow that law, some will forget to follow that law and if the laws are very complex, then may partly follow that law while breaking another law.

Objection: This is an invalid argument, because it makes the mistake of applying how humans laws work to natural laws

Reply: The above is only an analogy to illustrate that laws require a supervising intelligence. Consider how complex natural laws are, the laws of gravity, electricity, magnetism, light, sound, nuclear laws, mechanical laws and all these laws operate in tandem perfectly to maintain this universe. If the laws were just blind, why would they do that? Why would they continue to persist, why doesn't gravity just stop working the next moment and all planets fall out of their orbit? Why doesn't some random reaction take place in the sun and the sun explode? Why don't the spin of atoms change by a minuscule amount and all matter just collapses? Why are the physical laws so precisely fine tuned that the universe can exist and humans are around to see it(anthropic principle)

We know that at the quantum level of the uncertainty, how atoms just appear and disappear seemingly randomly every moment, and despite this material flux, still at the non-quantum or manifest level of reality everything coheres. This fact when discovered by Max Plank even compelled him to say in his Nobel prize speech that it can only be explained by a supervising cosmic intelligence

Scientists have now started to acknowledge that the universe is indeed a perfectly fined tuned system for life to exist:

"For more than 400 years, physicists treated the universe like a machine, taking it apart to see how it ticks. The surprise is it turns out to have remarkably few parts: just leptons and quarks and four fundamental forces to glue them together.​

But those few parts are exquisitely machined. If we tinker with their settings, even slightly, the universe as we know it would cease to exist. Science now faces the question of why the universe appears to have been “fine-tuned” to allow the appearance of complex life, a question that has some potentially uncomfortable answers.​

So now, I invite you to join me in imagining a universe, a universe slightly different to our own. Let’s just play with one number and see what happens: the mass of the down-quark. Currently, it is set to be slightly heavier than the up-quark.​

(snip)​

This situation is devastating for the possibility of complex life, as in a heavy down-quark universe, the simplest atoms will not join and form molecules. Such a universe is destined to be inert and sterile over its entire history. And how much would we need to increase the down-quark mass to realise such a catastrophe? More than 70 times heavier and there would be no life. While this may not seem too finely tuned, physics suggests that the down-quark could have been many trillions of times heavier. So we are actually left with the question: why does the down-quark appear so light?​

Examining the huge number of potential universes, each with their own unique laws of physics, leads to a startling conclusion: most of the universes that result from fiddling with the fundamental constants would lack physical properties needed to support complex life.​

Things get worse when we fiddle with forces. Make the strength of gravity stronger or weaker by a factor of 100 or so, and you get universes where stars refuse to shine, or they burn so fast they exhaust their nuclear fuel in a moment. Messing with the strong or weak forces delivers elements that fall apart in the blink of an eye, or are too robust to transmute through radioactive decay into other elements,​

Then there’s the finely tuned level of dark energy. We know very little about this mysterious substance that fills the universe. It may be related to the weird behaviour of the vacuum. Quantum mechanics predicts that the vacuum is not really empty. Particles continually pop in and out of existence producing a background energy that seems to influence cosmic expansion.​

And there is another structural issue to consider – our universe is flying apart. Two things affect the rate of expansion: the amount of matter which acts as a brake, and dark energy which acts as an accelerator. Dark energy is winning so our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.​

What this means is that in the early days of the universe, the rate of expansion was slower, slow enough to allow matter to condense into stars, planets and people. But if the universe had been born with only a touch less matter, it would have rapidly expanded, thinning out to less than one hydrogen atom per universe.​

On the other hand, if the universe had been born with only a touch more matter, that would have caused it to re-collapse before the first stars could form. In short, the early universe was on a knife-edge, poised between these possible outcomes. What emerged was the Goldilocks expansion rate: not too fast, not too slow.​

Then there’s the finely tuned level of dark energy. We know very little about this mysterious substance that fills the universe. It may be related to the weird behaviour of the vacuum. Quantum mechanics predicts that the vacuum is not really empty. Particles continually pop in and out of existence producing a background energy that seems to influence cosmic expansion.​

Symmetry

Next, we come to a consideration of the symmetry displayed in our universe. In everyday life the word symmetry describes how something stays the same when you change your viewpoint; think of the appearance of a perfect vase as you circumnavigate the table it’s sitting on. It demonstrates rotational symmetry.​

In physics, we find other types of symmetries hidden in mathematics. For instance, there is a symmetry that ensures the conservation of electric charge: in every experiment we perform, equal amounts of positive and negative charges are produced. Other symmetries dictate the conservation of momentum, and there are others for a whole host of quantum properties. Some symmetries are perfect, others contain slight imperfections. And we would not be here without them.​

In a perfectly symmetric universe, the hot fires of the Big Bang would have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. This means protons and antiprotons would have completely annihilated each other as the universe cooled leaving a universe empty of its atomic hydrogen building block.
Somewhere hidden in the physics of protons there must be a slight asymmetry that resulted in protons outnumbering antiprotons by one in a billion.​

But why does our universe possess a perfect symmetry with respect to charge but a slight asymmetry with respect to matter and antimatter? Nobody knows! If the situation was reversed and our universe was born with zero protons, but with a net excess of charge, the immense repulsive action of the electromagnetic force would prevent matter present from collapsing into anything resembling stars and galaxies.​

No matter which way we turn, the properties of our universe have finely tuned values that allow us to be here. Deviate ever so slightly from them and the universe would be sterile – or it may never have existed at all. What explanation can there be for this fine-tuning?​

A universe made for me? Physics, fine-tuning and life​

What is now known to science in the latest research from empirical facts we declared purely using reasoning more than a thousand years ago. We argue similarly, the laws of nature function because there is a supervising intelligence. In fact we can also provide you empirical proof of this. Take the body for example. As long as the intelligence that is regulating the body exists, the body functions and remains coherent, but as soon as that intelligence leaves, the body stop functioning and falls apart. Thus, extending this argument to the body of the universe, its functioning and coherence can only be possible if there is a supervising intelligence.

Interesting arguments.

1. Cause and effect is embedded in nature and everything. Nothing "stands still". Everything is in constant formation. When an egg and sperm creates a child, the parents did not create the child because they didnt make the sperm and egg grow but it did on its own. They dont need to be involved for sperm and egg to create a child.

The weather doesnt need anyone to maintain it. It moves on heat and so forth as well and as they dance with each other, things happen. Whether we attribute the movement as a supernatural force is up to the person but our beliefs do not change weather has no creator outside of our belief. Its just there. It forms. It distroys. It brightens. It...

If anything, its better that life as no creator. We appreciate life on life's terms. We become responsible for our causes and experience the karma from the effects based on our actions.

Like is harder when we see it without a creator. Most people I know christian and muslim say they cant live or even function without a belief in a creator-an origin.

It develops dependency.

2. Symmetry doesnt explain a creator. It just means we see patterns. Psychologically, thats how our minds put things together such as language and even someones love is based on pattern. The world is not dependant on us. If here were one creator then people would know the basics of the creator regardless of what perspective they see it from. They dont.

Our universe and life in general is random. We dont know when we will die why would we think the universe is excluded from this mystery? If anything, we need to be comfortable with surprise. What would you do if there was no god? What wouls happen if you found out life is random.

It doesnt have to do with science just basic observation, experience, and just pattern )) of how religious minds work. Sacred scripture is the same with people no different than believers today who wrote their views based on what they interpret as reality in their time period. Think of twenty to thirty years ago. No one had cell phones. Come on. In 1990s they finally started treating depression as a Real illness and thereafter insurances decided to believe the doctors. People still think I can swallow my tongue during a seizure and willing to put textbooks in my mouth to prevent me from biting my tongue.

We evolve. We form. We born. We suffer. We get ill. We die. We continue on through our family.

That isnt proof of a creator but if one needs to believe in an "origin" thats fine just know that looking at a tree doesnt mean someone created it. It grows on its own.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Well, you have your views, others have theirs. North is North, and South is South, the two never meet. They are in opposite directions.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Sure, I agree that the universe is fluid and dynamic and that the current stable universe will always not always remain stable, but we have a perfect answer for this in Hinduism and that is everything goes around in cycles, of which we have mentioned 6 stages pre-exists, manifest being, exists for a while, grows, decays and goes back into unmanifest. However, this entire process is not random at all, it is maintained by an organising power that creates, preserves and destroys. The fact remains that this cycle is adhered to all by all things from the tiniest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy. Everything follows the same principle e.g. Your face does just not fall off the next moment, but is maintained and gradually goes through all the stages of youth, wrinkling, stiffening etc. The fact is nothing ever happens randomly in the universe. It is extremely well coordinated, and everything within the universe is coordinated with everything else. Every process in the body is coordinated with every other process in the universe and every moment trillions and trillions of processes are going on which are kept in dynamic equilibrium.

What I am saying there is no other way to explain this other than posit an underlying intelligence to the universe.

There's no way you could possibly know that. We are too short lived and our mind and thoughts remain privy to degradation as much as it obtains and retains knowledge and understanding. Its impossible to reach any lasting certianity of any central designer. That said, there are references to original face of which makes our composition and ideology an arguably rising and falling phenomenon with each form which manifests and thinks in a reflective style that we presently share as individuals.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Can you explain the existence of this 'supervising intelligence', then? How come such a complex being just happens to exist?

There doesn't have to be a cause for something which is eternal. What is eternal is uncaused.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

There's no way you could possibly know that. We are too short lived and our mind and thoughts remain privy to degradation as much as it obtains and retains knowledge and understanding. Its impossible to reach any lasting certianity of any central designer. That said, there are references to original face of which makes our composition and ideology an arguably rising and falling phenomenon with each form which manifests and thinks in a reflective style that we presently share as individuals.

I agree we are short shorted and I agree we have limited mind with limited intelligence. However, with this limited mind with limited intelligence we can still make inferences based on observation. Now, based on my observation I can clearly see coherent and functional things do not exist without a supervising intelligence, because if they are functional who is the functionary that they are functioning for? The fact remains that every factor in the universe is fine-tuned, and this is based on hard empirical evidence not just speculations, that life can exist to look back at it. The universe does not operate like a machine, but a system. No matter what level you look at from the galactic to the sub-atomic everything is a finely tuned system.

We cannot just say "Well, that's just the way it is" because that is tacitly admitting that the universe is made for life.

 

[ratiocinator]

There doesn't have to be a cause for something which is eternal. What is eternal is uncaused.

Firstly, I didn't ask what caused it - I asked how come it just happened to exist (eternally, if you say so) - I was asking for an explanation of its existence.

Secondly, how do you know that the universe isn't 'eternal'?

The point is that you are telling us lots of stuff about the universe (not all of it accurate) and then asserting that only an intelligence can explain it. Yet you seem to think that this intelligence, that is capable of containing in its mind all that is needed to make and maintain such a universe, somehow doesn't need any explanation at all.

It's incredible doublethink.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Firstly, I didn't ask what caused it - I asked how come it just happened to exist (eternally, if you say so) - I was asking for an explanation of its existence.

If it is eternal, it just exists and what exists requires no explanation why it exists, it just does.

Secondly, how do you know that the universe isn't 'eternal'?

When did I say it wasn't?

 

[ratiocinator]

If it is eternal, it just exists and what exists requires no explanation why it exists, it just does.

As if by magic!

When did I say it wasn't?

Well, if it is, then, according to you "it just exists and what exists requires no explanation why it exists, it just does" so, for example, all the stuff about 'fine tuning' was pointless - a 'fine tuned' universe just exists, so needs no explanation.

Seriously, you really don't get that you are applying double standards?

 

[Aupmanyav]

As if by magic!

Well, if it is, then, according to you "it just exists and what exists requires no explanation why it exists, it just does" so, for example, all the stuff about 'fine tuning' was pointless - a 'fine tuned' universe just exists, so needs no explanation.

That is where we are at the present moment. It exists as if by magic. The next question is was it existing all the time or it began at any one point of time - the basic question in 'creatio ex nihilo'. Does Space/energy arise out of 'absolute nothing'? We are not yet there.
RigVeda: "Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent."
Rig Veda: Rig-Veda, Book 10: HYMN CXXIX. Creation. (Nasadiya Sukta, generally known as the Hindu Creation hymn)

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

As if by magic!

Why would it be magic to say that something just exists? In that case if you hold say an alternative position that 50 or so elementary particles just happen to exist, then that would be magic too. In that case if I say anything that just exists is the same as saying it is "magic"

Well, if it is, then, according to you "it just exists and what exists requires no explanation why it exists, it just does" so, for example, all the stuff about 'fine tuning' was pointless - a 'fine tuned' universe just exists, so needs no explanation.

Seriously, you really don't get that you are applying double standards?

There is a massive difference here. Here the fine-tuning is with respect to life existing. It is fined-tuned for life to exist. Hence, if you admit it is fine-tuned, you admit that it is fine tuned for life. In that case you are tacitly admitting that there is an underlying intelligence that maintains this universe so that life can exist and thrive in it.

If you asked me "Why is fire hot" I could just say "Because it is" but if you ask me why does a watch have intricate designed mechanism. I cannot just say "Because it is" because I know intricately designed systems presuppose a designer. Similarly, a fine-tuned universe presupposes a supervising intelligence.

You are not responding to my actual argument in the OP.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

There doesn't have to be a cause for something which is eternal. What is eternal is uncaused.

This is inadequate, and you know it. Your entire post is setup to deny that there is any fundamental level at which "things just are the way they are." Your entire argument hinges on there needing to be an explanation for everything - and yet you automatically grant your "supervising intelligence" exemption status from that very idea. It's classic... or, better put... old, tired and worn out.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Your entire argument hinges on there needing to be an explanation for everything

No it doesn't. I never made that argument. If I have, please cite me where I said "Everything needs to be explained" You are basically strawmaning a more sophisticated argument presented in the OP.

 

[ratiocinator]

Why would it be magic to say that something just exists? In that case if you hold say an alternative position that 50 or so elementary particles just happen to exist, then that would be magic too. In that case if I say anything that just exists is the same as saying it is "magic"

You might be getting the idea. The point is that 'the universe just exists' is every bit as valid or invalid as saying 'an eternal intelligence just exists' - but the former has the advantage that we have plenty of evidence that the universe does exist.

There is a massive difference here. Here the fine-tuning is with respect to life existing. It is fined-tuned for life to exist. Hence, if you admit it is fine-tuned, you admit that it is fine tuned for life. In that case you are tacitly admitting that there is an underlying intelligence that maintains this universe so that life can exist and thrive in it.

So, you are saying that a universe suited to giving rise to intelligence needs an intelligence to create it but an intelligence all by itself doesn't need explaining at all.

Back to the doublethink...