When theists say that the universe exists because of God, they are saying that the universe exists, because of some agent they know: that make those theists vastly superior to us, simple miscreants, who do not happen to be acquainted with what, or who, created all and everything. Surely, those superior beings should lead us? So what sounds metaphysical, by asserting a “God” boils down to claiming a higher place in an all too human hierarchy.
“Universe” means literally, “turned into one”, whereas “multiverse” would be: “turned into many”. So the set of all multiverses is the universe. (So the alleged existence of “multiverse” is akin to Bertrand Russell’s famous paradox of the set whose elements are not elements of itself; Russell’s paradox brought down mathematical logic as it had been known prior; present day physicists have been repeating that mistake, from lack of basic culture in the matter of mathematical logic!)
If we were to claim, and, or, even worse, have the feeling, that we know why the universe exists, we would be claiming, or have the impression, that we were God. This is not the business of physics, only the business of those who want us to be guided by absolutism.
Alexander the Great, seeing his blood flow, asked himself that question: am I a God? His Greek and Macedonian companions laughed him off. Later, on the advice of his mom, Olympia, Alexander ordered the old, most senior generalissimo Antipater, a companion of Alexander’s father, from Greece to Babylon. Antipater refused to obey. Antipater’s youngest son was Alexander’s page. Alexander found himself ceasing to be, before he could even organize his affairs.
We are both everything and nothing relative to the universe. The key to wisdom, is to keep a balance.
Man, playing God, touches man, playing Adam. All very touching, self-obsessing, self-gratifying, self-glorifying mental, self-stimulation, and self-mutilation.
The universe is, what it is. Science can describe it, not explain how it came to be. That is the proper mood that wisdom should embrace. Embracing the humility of reality, so we can unleash the power of truth.
Let theologians, dinosaurian conservatives, the Politically Correct and the Perfect Cretins, among others, try to learn this: We have to embrace the way things are, before we can hope to change what needs to be changed. And there is plenty of the latter. So stop claiming some human beings know why there is all there is. They don’t. They, and, or, their supporters just want everything you could possibly imagine, and then more.
Patrice Aymé
Note 1: the comment above was an answer to: “Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing?
Posted on February 8, 2018 by Sean Carroll
A good question!
Or is it?”
In it, Sean points out notions which I have exposed in the past, but are worth repeating, as many physicists, let alone philosophers and theologians, don’t get them. First of all Sean basically points out that the universe just is (as I said above, by definition of this neuronal activity!). And secondly Sean Carroll, a famous Cal Tech cosmologist, points out that all too many professional physicists don’t even understand that physics, as presently understood, doesn’t explain the universe! In other words, as I have said for decades, all too many physicists take themselves for God! (That is in the same meta category as Niels Bohr’s famous retort to Albert Einstein:”Stop telling God what to do!“)
…“The right question to ask isn’t “Why did this happen?”, but “Could this have happened in accordance with the laws of physics?” As far as the universe and our current knowledge of the laws of physics is concerned, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” The demand for something more — a reason why the universe exists at all — is a relic piece of metaphysical baggage we would be better off to discard.
This perspective gets pushback from two different sides. On the one hand we have theists, who believe that they can answer why the universe exists, and the answer is God. As we all know, this raises the question of why God exists; but aha, say the theists, that’s different, because God necessarily exists, unlike the universe which could plausibly have not. The problem with that is that nothing exists necessarily, so the move is pretty obviously a cheat. I didn’t have a lot of room in the paper to discuss this in detail (in what after all was meant as a contribution to a volume on the philosophy of physics, not the philosophy of religion), but the basic idea is there. Whether or not you want to invoke God, you will be left with certain features of reality that have to be explained by “and that’s just the way it is.” (Theism could possibly offer a better account of the nature of reality than naturalism — that’s a different question — but it doesn’t let you wiggle out of positing some brute facts about what exists.)
The other side are those scientists who think that modern physics explains why the universe exists. It doesn’t! One purported answer — “because Nothing is unstable” — was never even supposed to explain why the universe exists; it was suggested by Frank Wilczek as a way of explaining why there is more matter than antimatter. But any such line of reasoning has to start by assuming a certain set of laws of physics in the first place. Why is there even a universe that obeys those laws? This, I argue, is not a question to which science is ever going to provide a snappy and convincing answer. The right response is “that’s just the way things are.” It’s up to us as a species to cultivate the intellectual maturity to accept that some questions don’t have the kinds of answers that are designed to make us feel satisfied.”
Note 2: Swiss citizen Tariq Ramadan, the world’s most famous Islamist propagandist, holder of two chairs (no less!) at Oxford University, and now in a French prison, was going around the world grievously beating and raping women. Why? Because, precisely, he wanted everything, and that included beating up handicapped women. Even now, as he sits in prison, he enjoys his power: immensely powerful organizations behind him, the sort who made him an Oxford Don, are threatening many more women, who also want to file complaints against Ramadan, but are afraid to do so. The human species is naturally metaphysical. Ramadan wanted to create a universe where he and his ilk could hurt and terrorize women at will. This is not any different from telling us that Muhammad flew to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, on a winged horse: it is outrageous, but it creates a universe, and its cause (and in this case Islamists are the cause of said universe!)
Tags: Existence, god, Sean Carroll, Tariq Ramadan, Universe
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
February 9, 2018 at 1:09 am |
Yeah all these physicists were doing metaphysics all along, talking all day long about the universe as if they created it themselves, and it is nice to see them berated for it
But wait, I thought Carroll was a big time multiverse guy, and now he got your point that the multiverse is part of the universe? What happened? How did he get enlightened?
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February 10, 2018 at 2:39 am |
If there is a process which produces one unit, logically it would produce other units, but does this mean the universe is a unit, or a process?
What is the difference between a unit and a process?
They go opposite directions of time. Units go from start to finish, being in the future to being in the past, while processes are moving onto new units and shedding old, past to future.
Individuals and species, for instance. As individuals go birth to death, while species are constantly creating new generations and shedding old.
Even Big Bang Theory, in assuming the universe as a unit, has it going from a beginning, to some possible end. Presumably the process moves onto new universes.
Yet what if space is simply infinite and absolute, in which mass is constantly coalescing out of radiation and emitting it back out. Then it would be populated by infinite numbers of these galaxies, which are both process and entity, like a cosmic storm.
Given that Big Bang Theory is no longer science, since it cannot be falsified, but only requires ever more enormous forces of nature to fill any gaps between theory and observation, it can be whatever it wants. Like God.
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February 10, 2018 at 9:53 pm |
It all starts from the human need to believe in causality. There is no prove, that causality exist in the real world, but without it, we human would be left with two alternative explanation as to the essence of the reality. The first one is God creator and all the fables that come with it, or a contingent world, we have no chance to explain its essence. Since scientific system founded on faith in causality prooved to be very successful to give to humanity technological tools to conquer the nature, it seems there is no reason to have doubt about it.
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February 11, 2018 at 12:45 am |
Good point Eugen. Actually I was writing an essay on causality. A physicist just insisted, or heavily insinuated, that there is NO causality in Quantum Physics. I sort of disagree. Let’s say Quantum Physics has not defeated causality. Instead causality has become NON LOCAL. What I suggest is to restore causality through what I call the (finite speed) QUANTUM INTERACTION.
That the present Quantum Mechanics has a severe problem with time, simultaneity is not well-known. May as I finally answer Brodix and Gmax about the cosmological redshift (not a Doppler effect! Contrary to what’s often said…), I can concoct something (it’s pure research big names like Feynman and Dirac have avoided,,, I supposed because as another famous physicist told me, it gives headaches…)
The point you made, that causality works, so why drop is, is excellent. However much of humanism in the last century became NON CAUSAL, thus ILLOGICAL (that brought us Sovietism, Nazism, etc. Now Chavism…) It showed even in biology, where a point was made to make biology ACAUSAL (selection of the fittest, or, more exactly selection of CHANCEST, so to speak…)
Faith in causality is the ethological religion of Homo.
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