The Ultimate Cosmological Question

[DallasDad]

No, everyone knows the most reasonable answer is "42," which leads to an infinite regress of "Why 42?"

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

No, everyone knows the most reasonable answer is "42," which leads to an infinite regress of "Why 42?"

Bonus points for quoting Douglas Adams but surely the true answer is "Because"?

 

[TragicMonkey]

I have a problem with the 'God is outside of all that' argument. Much the same problem as I have with ghosts: What part of something outside physical reality interacts with physical reality? If there is no influence between it and any kind of natural particle or force such that it could be detected and measured, then what traction could it have on anything real?

Maybe it's a cycle: the universe over time evolves and merges into a unity which attains consciousness and becomes a god...and in that act the universe (and time, which is part of it) ceases and only this demiurge godthing exists. And because the demiurge godthing is therefore bored, being the only thing existing, it explodes itself into its tiniest parts which then become a new universe, or the same one again on infinite repeat. That explanation should satisfy everyone: yes, there is a creator god, but no, it cannot possibly interact with anything because it doesn't exist when the universe does and vice versa.

 

[arthwollipot]

Bonus points for quoting Douglas Adams but surely the true answer is "Because"?

Well, that's why a new, even bigger computer was built - a computer which could calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself formed part of its operational matrix.

And it determined that the Question was "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?".

There may have been a cock-up in the programme.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Well, that's why a new, even bigger computer was built - a computer which could calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself formed part of its operational matrix.

And it determined that the Question was "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?".

There may have been a cock-up in the programme.

As an ex-programmer I can assure you that it was a hardware error!

 

[acbytesla]

The way I usually see it framed is:
"Everything that comes to exist has a cause.
The Universe began at a point in time and space, therefore it had a cause.
We are now calling that cause "God" and because infinite regression is apparently absurd, we are forced to conclude that "God" has no cause; "He" is eternal."

To which the usual skeptic response is something like: "If you can say that "God" doesn't need a cause, then I can say the same thing about "The Universe" and save myself an extra step. Occam's Razor and all that..."

Reckon we'll sort it out this time?

This is the Kalam argument and everything about it is not logically sound. Tha statement that an infinite regress is absurd is not any more provable than matter/energy or some being/creator is eternal. We don't know if everything or nothing is eternal.

That said, we can be 100% certain that matter and energy has existed as far back as we can tell. And while we cannot say with 100% certainty there isn't this creator being, we have no reason to believe in its existence.

To posit an intelligent creator being we must engage in fallacious reasoning. Specifically special pleading. In contrast, to say that matter/energy is not eternal we must say that the well accepted scientific law that neither energy or matter can be neither created or destroyed does not apply at the Universe level.

 

[acbytesla]

The elephant in the room is, "Everything has to have a cause". Why?

Does a Mobius Strip have an end?

Nope.

The everything has to have a cause premise is simply unprovable. Even if we could say that everything we know had a cause, (which we can't) we still can't extend it to what we don't know without committing a fallacy.

Even if we accept the Kalam argument, we still cannot say anything other than the Universe had a cause. Individuals like William Lane Craig are patently dishonest as they smuggle God into an argument that doesn't have God in either the premise or the conclusion.

This is a non-sequitor. Another fallacy.

 

[HansMustermann]

OK, let's talk "singularities" and why that's the domain of BS-ers who have 0% clue what they're talking about. I could talk about any 3 of the proposed ones, but I'm gonna write a wall of text anyway, so let's just focus on one: human language.

Well, communication is a thing that evolved since day zero. The first multi-cellular organisms needed cells to chemically communicate signals to each other before they could even function as a group. And it went on from there. Even as early and primitive as insects, bees for example are famous for being able to communicate coordinates of food sources from each other, and so do ants.

Where do you draw a singularity line? Cats for example IIRC have about 100 "words" that they can communicate, including vocal (e.g., "meew"=where are you mommy?, "mreh"=here I am, "mrkh"=food is available, "meer"=I'm hungry, etc) and non-vocal (e.g., the slow blink.) The most primitive homo sapiens tribes have 300 or less.

And it's not like there was a sudden jump. The larynx of Homo Ergaster was IIRC already on par with the H Sapiens one, but presumably they had even less words. (Not that larynx alone is everything. Cats can't pronounce stuff we can, but by being able to multiplex an R on top of anything else, can pronounce stuff we can't.)

And "human language" continuously evolved even in historically documented times. E.g., Shakespeare invented the ability to use a noun as a verb in English (e.g., to elbow someone), something which many other languages still lack. And before him, Cicero invented a huge chunk of Latin. Stuff like labiofricatives continued evolving just in the past 1-2 thousand years.

But it goes further than that. Basic stuff like having a plural form is STILL lacking in some languages, e.g., Japanese.

So, anyway, to cut this wall of text short: where in the name of the fifth flying flip is the singularity line. Because all I can see is a continuous evolution of communication for the last 3 billion years straight.

 

[Olmstead]

OK, let's talk "singularities" and why that's the domain of BS-ers who have 0% clue what they're talking about. I could talk about any 3 of the proposed ones, but I'm gonna write a wall of text anyway, so let's just focus on one: human language.

Well, communication is a thing that evolved since day zero. The first multi-cellular organisms needed cells to chemically communicate signals to each other before they could even function as a group. And it went on from there. Even as early and primitive as insects, bees for example are famous for being able to communicate coordinates of food sources from each other, and so do ants.

Where do you draw a singularity line? Cats for example IIRC have about 100 "words" that they can communicate, including vocal (e.g., "meew"=where are you mommy?, "mreh"=here I am, "mrkh"=food is available, "meer"=I'm hungry, etc) and non-vocal (e.g., the slow blink.) The most primitive homo sapiens tribes have 300 or less.

And it's not like there was a sudden jump. The larynx of Homo Ergaster was IIRC already on par with the H Sapiens one, but presumably they had even less words. (Not that larynx alone is everything. Cats can't pronounce stuff we can, but by being able to multiplex an R on top of anything else, can pronounce stuff we can't.)

And "human language" continuously evolved even in historically documented times. E.g., Shakespeare invented the ability to use a noun as a verb in English (e.g., to elbow someone), something which many other languages still lack. And before him, Cicero invented a huge chunk of Latin. Stuff like labiofricatives continued evolving just in the past 1-2 thousand years.

But it goes further than that. Basic stuff like having a plural form is STILL lacking in some languages, e.g., Japanese.

So, anyway, to cut this wall of text short: where in the name of the fifth flying flip is the singularity line. Because all I can see is a continuous evolution of communication for the last 3 billion years straight.

The first part makes sense, but the last few paragraphs are a bit odd. Languages don't "lack" anything, and very frequently the evolution of a language isn't about adding more "stuff", but rather about removing what isn't needed. Japanese doesn't lack plural forms any more than English lacks the dual.

I also think the idea of famous writers "inventing" language is something of an elitist myth. Shakespeare might well have coined certain phrases, but it's far more likely that he was simply the first one to put into writing what was already a common expression (or grammatical structure).

 

[acbytesla]

OK, let's talk "singularities" and why that's the domain of BS-ers who have 0% clue what they're talking about. I could talk about any 3 of the proposed ones, but I'm gonna write a wall of text anyway, so let's just focus on one: human language.

Well, communication is a thing that evolved since day zero. The first multi-cellular organisms needed cells to chemically communicate signals to each other before they could even function as a group. And it went on from there. Even as early and primitive as insects, bees for example are famous for being able to communicate coordinates of food sources from each other, and so do ants.

Where do you draw a singularity line? Cats for example IIRC have about 100 "words" that they can communicate, including vocal (e.g., "meew"=where are you mommy?, "mreh"=here I am, "mrkh"=food is available, "meer"=I'm hungry, etc) and non-vocal (e.g., the slow blink.) The most primitive homo sapiens tribes have 300 or less.

And it's not like there was a sudden jump. The larynx of Homo Ergaster was IIRC already on par with the H Sapiens one, but presumably they had even less words. (Not that larynx alone is everything. Cats can't pronounce stuff we can, but by being able to multiplex an R on top of anything else, can pronounce stuff we can't.)

And "human language" continuously evolved even in historically documented times. E.g., Shakespeare invented the ability to use a noun as a verb in English (e.g., to elbow someone), something which many other languages still lack. And before him, Cicero invented a huge chunk of Latin. Stuff like labiofricatives continued evolving just in the past 1-2 thousand years.

But it goes further than that. Basic stuff like having a plural form is STILL lacking in some languages, e.g., Japanese.

So, anyway, to cut this wall of text short: where in the name of the fifth flying flip is the singularity line. Because all I can see is a continuous evolution of communication for the last 3 billion years straight.

I'm confused. How does any of this relate to the cosmological argument? Now, I'm not a fuddy duddy. I've been known to go off on the occasional tangent myself. But this isn't even tangentially related to it.

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm confused. How does any of this relate to the cosmological argument? Now, I'm not a fuddy duddy. I've been known to go off on the occasional tangent myself. But this isn't even tangentially related to it.

Hmm... I could have sworn this was the "singularities" thread. But then I'm drunk. If any mod wants to move it wherever the "singularities" went, I'm not opposed, to say the least.

 

[HansMustermann]

The first part makes sense, but the last few paragraphs are a bit odd. Languages don't "lack" anything, and very frequently the evolution of a language isn't about adding more "stuff", but rather about removing what isn't needed. Japanese doesn't lack plural forms any more than English lacks the dual.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. It seems to me like objectively some languages evolved features that other languages don't. Sure, some can express the same idea -- although even then, good luck expressing relativity in the language of the M'butu tribe -- but the very existence of neologisms and borrowed words indicates that some things couldn't be expressed before or not concisely.

I also think the idea of famous writers "inventing" language is something of an elitist myth. Shakespeare might well have coined certain phrases, but it's far more likely that he was simply the first one to put into writing what was already a common expression (or grammatical structure).

Oh flippin' please... We're not talking about one document in the middle of some dark ages, but VERY literate ages from which we have literal tens or hundreds of thousands of documents.

Seriously... When we have thousands of manuscripts from the same years, including other plays, novels, newspapers (by the time of Shakespeare) and all the way down to police records, judicial records, laws, tax records, inheritance records, and literal cases of authors Y and Z complaining about author X's use of language, yet nobody before X uses idioms A, B and C... and a century later everyone does... yeah, no, wanting to believe that those idioms were normal language but somehow nobody, none of the tens of thousands of other literate people, used it in writing... Yeah, no, that's CT material already.

I hope I can be excused if I'm not swayed by someone thinking I'm elitist if I don't believe that unsupportable idiocy