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Existence

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05:00 / 18.10.03

I've looked through the archives and haven't really found much on the broad question of existance and the meaning behind it so I ask:
What is your personal belief on why humans/earth/animals/life/anything exists...? Could use some original ideas or thoughts about it...in order to help me form my own.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:05 / 18.10.03

I exist because someone's been fucking.

Naw, I dunno. Every now and then I can create elaborate flights of fancy, the only difference between me and Moses are facial hair and the knowledge that I accept I've just made it up. The majority of the time I just accept that matter congregated in such a way as to create creatures that could both acknowledge that they existed and create intricate belief systems to justify denying that right to others.

00:55 / 19.10.03

If I was created by God and He created me for some purpose, then I suppose that my reason for being is in service to that purpose, but, then, what is the purpose of that purpose? What is the reason for the existence of God? I can probably satisfy myself that I cannot continue asking these questions indefinitely, and that I have not yet been able to fully understand and believe any argument that presents an ultimate reason that needs no reason itself to be purposeful.

If, on the other hand, God did not create me, I can equally satisfy myself by saying that my reason for existence is the work I do for the people around me. To ask what their purpose is seems little different than to ask what God's purpose is.

Furthermore, if God did create me for to serve Him, then service to God very likely includes helping people around me, so I feel comfortable operating with this as my reason for existence.

This may be a bit off from what you were asking. You might want to check out Leibniz for a particularly beautiful (and terribly difficult to believe) description of the universe that all operates on the principle that everything has a "sufficient reason." I'm no Leibniz expert. Does anyone have any links or references that would be useful here?

07:27 / 19.10.03

I think this is religious question. a religious yearning. why should there be some grand moral reason or an ultimate cause, a great bearded sky-ward origin? why not just a spectacular accident!

17:45 / 19.10.03

It can be a question arising out of a yearning, but I think that there can be other motivations for asking it and even expecting an answer can be found. When we ask scientists to tell us why, for instance, the earth goes about the sun, they won't tell us the cause (in time) of it, but they will give us something that sounds like a reason explaining it with gravitational fields & c. And you can apply the question Why? to anything. Why does mathematics explain anything about the world? Why, for instance, can great geniuses make predictions about phenomena that are really quite different from any we have ever experienced. Why is there something rather than nothing? I don't think a spectacular accident is something I'm willing to believe, whether or not there is a God. I mean, even if there is no great planner or infinite being, the notion of a specatacular accident is not plausible in itself.

I should say something about this, so that I'm not misunderstood. The theory of evolution is not an example of chalking things up to a spectacular accident. It relies on a principle (the survival of the fittest) that seems to explain. It's beautiful because it doesn't rely on a creator, and because all this life can spring up as a consequence of natural laws, but still, it addresses the problem Why? and How? by appealing to natural laws.

For the question, Why is there something instead of nothing? And specifically, how is it that minds like ours are even possible, one might appeal to the anthropic principle, defined in Webster as

either of two principles in cosmology: a : conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist -- called also weak anthropic principle b : the universe must have properties that make inevitable the existence of intelligent life -- called also strong anthropic principle

Webster pretty much covers the extent of my knowledge of this principle.

No star here laces

06:36 / 20.10.03

Well, I do have one sort of flight of fancy on this one. Pseudo-science to the core, but that's the way we like it here on Barbebollocks ltd.

So we all know about entropy, right? Entropy is increasing steadily throughout the universe, tending towards either a bunch of massive black holes or a uniform soup of matter at a constant temperature depending on who you read.

We also have the hubble constant which determines whether the universe carries on expanding forever, or whether the gravitational force will eventually cause it to collapse in on itself.

And then there's the big bang, and the endlessly problematic "what was there before the big bang" issue.

But, what if information has entropy? I mean the brain, consciousness whatever organises sensory information into structures which vary from simple observations "it gets cold when the sun goes down" to huge complex structures like mathematics, science and philosophy. And these structures are created by minds and appear to be counter-entropic in that they represent some sort of order emerging from nothingness.

So supposing the universe is going to die horribly in the entropic sense. Unless we, the consciousnesses, can somehow construct the informational structures necessary to prevent this. It's like a big arcade game! If we sort our shit out, maybe we get to re-engineer the next big bang... And maybe this has happened lots of times before.

And then, right, it gets even trickier. Because just supposing its millions of years in the future and some big-foreheaded person has worked out how to do it, but it means instantly destroying everyone and everything in the universe in order to replace it with a brand-new one. Would you do it? I mean, if you don't, no more existence for anyone! But if you do do it, your self, your friends and your genetic code all perish forever.

Darn.

Also, if it is a game, who is watching? And do they have a bet placed?

Morlock - groupie for hire

14:50 / 20.10.03

I tend to break it down something like this:
If I don't have free will, or the semblance of same (chaos theory etc), my destiny and purpose are set and immutable, regardless of my understanding of them. Also, knowing my future and its inevitability is too mind-crushingly disheartening I'd rather be ignorant.

If my actions are unpredictable, either through free will or complexity or whatever, any simple purpose to my existence cannot extend beyond my next choice. Unless some powerful being is willing to micromanage to a quite preposterous degree the shape of my existence cannot be guaranteed, which in turn affects everyone I meet in small ways, pebbles and avalanches.

So, I find the world is a sunnier place if I simply try to find my own purpose. Everyone needs a hobby, even if it's just sitting on the fence.

I am, so you don't have to.

14:10 / 23.10.03

Why do we exist? To make sense of it all, to investigate meaning, to live and think and fall in love etc.
The question presumes that existence is something you can ask 'Why?' about, that we exist for some purpose, like a tool or a method or an experiment- a means to an end, we live to do...something.
I think we are that end, I think us being alive is the point of it all. Sort of a medium-strength anthropic principle.

Philosophically speaking, I don't believe existence is something we do, and doubt the validity of it as an idea at all.

06:28 / 25.10.03

Jefe's righter than he knows. Existence is God's way of transforming into an idea.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:48 / 29.10.03

Sorry, I don't understand. You mean the physical universe is God's act of becoming? Or unbecoming?

04:19 / 30.10.03

Scientists have deduced that the known physical universe has existed for approx 12 billion years since the Big Bang. I have no idea how they know this, but My Lord Kenny Wilbur is a reliable source. Scientists have also deduced that the random chances that a single enzyme molecule could have formed in that time are a million times six to one. But here we are

Physical space is experiencing entropy at the same time as it continues to increase in complexity. And there is NOTHING more complex than the mysteries of consciousness. Quantum physics included. So in accordance with Organic Time™, God is riding along the complexities of the universe, waiting for our minds to give birth to it.

"Time is what we grow in."

"If God did not exist, we would have to create him."

09:12 / 30.10.03

Scientists have also deduced that the random chances that a single enzyme molecule could have formed in that time are a million times six to one. But here we are.
Amazing. I assume they've taken a baby universe and watched it for twelve billion years, then repeated that experiment a million times six times.
Probability statistics are notoriously dodgy for this sort of thing (cf. the chance of intelligent ET life) so I wouldn't trust those figures too much.

Physical space is experiencing entropy at the same time as it continues to increase in complexity.
The increase in entropy may be a result of the increase in complexity, like gravity is a result of mass. But fair enough.

And there is NOTHING more complex than the mysteries of consciousness. Quantum physics included.
I'd tend to agree, although it's a subjective opinion.

So in accordance with Organic Time™, God is riding along the complexities of the universe, waiting for our minds to give birth to it.
Sorry, I don't understand this part. Is organic time non-linear? Cyclic? Recursively fractal?
God is riding complexity? Please elaborate, and 'waiting for our minds to give birth' to what? The universe?

14:00 / 30.10.03

experiencing entropy at the same time as it continues to increase in complexity.

I think that when you really look at the equations that show how entropy always increases from a thermodynamics, its only slightly more exciting than realizing that the age of the universe is always growing.

17:33 / 11.03.04

If God made earth and universe from nothing, and placed it in nothing, what was, or what does nothing mean? Was there dark (dark is something), or light (it is something), or was there a vacuum (it is something, too), or ...

So, my what does NOTHING mean?

18:30 / 11.03.04

Well, I had a girlfriend in college who, on one smashed evening, looked at me and said "I seriously think I made you up." Wasn't quite sure of how to take that at the time... but it definitely wasn't a compliment.

I've more or less settled into quiet agnosticism as to there being any particular cause for my existence, or indeed existence in general. I exist for the same reason that an atom exists - just at a different level of complexity, and I'm not even certain of that.

I suspect that the universe is deterministic and based upon a set of first principles that are probably not comprehensible to any sort of being that is bound to causality. I also suspect that this suspicion is incorrect, because the whole idea of determinism (and entropy, uncertainty, etc) is based upon observation of events in a causal framework. What this boils down to is that I think it's necessairly (in the logic sense) impossible for me to understand what's going on, so I might as well have a good time and just see what happens.

Within the context that observable things may be comprehensible, I think it's all about having kids. Honestly. I'm so astonishingly happy just to be alive, I can't imagine not passing that amazing gift along to someone else.

01:41 / 12.03.04

So, my what does NOTHING mean?

It doesn't. There is no it to nothing. Try to imagine before time, without using time to imagine it. The white hot room within the omnisecond singularity.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

08:40 / 12.03.04

I find it impossible to reach any satisfying knowledge on the whole question without first tripping over other Really Big Questions...so the whole determinism/free will issue, which in turn leads to Does Time Exist In The Way We Experience It? (blatantly not), and so onto If My Past Is Indelibly etched into Spacetime, Is my Future There already also? and so on...

Of course, if you were in the room and asked the question, I'd just break a large stick over your head.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

08:44 / 12.03.04

Re the 'NOTHING' issue - maybe Everything is what Nothing looks like from the Inside - Out.

Maybe actual Nothing is a highly unstable state from which Everything regularly emerges with, I like to think, a satisfying 'Plop' sound, and lots of pretty colours.

I'm sure it's Stephen Hawking who has demonstrated that the vacuum in a light bulb contains enough ebergy to destroy an entire galaxy, possibly the entire Universe. It's just getting to it that's difficult.

Which is vastly off-topic, so TTFN.

09:39 / 12.03.04

If you find a watch in the desert, you presuppose the existence of a watchmaker, as someone else once said. Though as to it's purpose, God only knows...

10:23 / 12.03.04

What is your personal belief on why humans/earth/animals/life/anything exists...?

shit happens

Jack The Bodiless

11:45 / 12.03.04

If you find a watch in the desert, you presuppose the existence of a watchmaker, as someone else once said.

Yeah, but he was horribly biased. Why else would he cite an analogy about existence that uses as its basis the supposition that the universe was created? It's circular. Like bloody "I think, therefore I am." Well, of course you'd say that, Rene - you're a thinker. I'm a drunk. I drink therefore I am? Bollocks...

19:50 / 12.03.04

I believe Descartes explicitly addressed this very objection. "I walk therefore I am" or "I drink therefore I am" does not work because, supposing the evil demon hypothesis, I cannot know that I am walking or drinking. I can think that I am not walking without thinking a contradiction, but I cannot think that I am not thinking without thinking a contradiction.

If you find a watch in the desert, you presuppose the existence of a watchmaker, as someone else once said. Though as to it's purpose, God only knows..

I was going to respond to this, but then I noticed you said, "watch in the desert," and not, "watch in the dessert."

22:58 / 12.03.04

If God made us in his own image, then that would mean we are all gods, And reality is what ever we make of it

20:46 / 15.03.04

but I cannot think that I am not thinking without thinking a contradiction

This, of course, presupposes that free will exists. You're not really thinking - you're merely experiencing the preset sequence of neural stimuli that makes you just think you're thinking.

"I think, therefore something is." might be a more resilient statement of the principle.

01:42 / 16.03.04

This, of course, presupposes that free will exists.

It does? Why?

[By the way, it doesn't make any difference to me, but is a long discussion of the cogito appropriate to the question Why we exist? It might be worth another thread]

beelzebub jones

21:07 / 29.03.04

we exist to persieve the universe. each from our own unique vantage point. the universe is comprised of two things; nothing and something. and something can only exist by knowing it is not nothing. without that perception, there is nothing.

beelzebub jones

21:49 / 29.03.04

it is impossible to conceeive your non-existance. descartes through the back door.

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:58 / 30.03.04

I believe Descartes explicitly addressed this very objection. "I walk therefore I am" or "I drink therefore I am" does not work because, supposing the evil demon hypothesis, I cannot know that I am walking or drinking. I can think that I am not walking without thinking a contradiction, but I cannot think that I am not thinking without thinking a contradiction.

Very quickly, this was addressed shortly after the publication of the Meditations. The disproof is in essence that the experience of thinkign may be nothing more than a physical side-effect of the same motions that physical law demands of the body. There is certainly a *thinking*, but to make that the sole result of the action (thinking) of a thinking being is not in itself safe.

03:16 / 31.03.04

" It is impossible to conceive of your non-existence. "

I don't know man, I find that very easy. Moving away from the argument that every time one leaves a room, the people still in there cease to exist, because what seems like reality is just a figment of one's imagination, perhaps a hell or a heaven, but your own thing either way - As arguments go it's impossible to disprove, seeing as Descartes, Jesus, or whoever one's quoting would be part of the illusion... the gits...

But I really don't think, though I do think it's funny, that it's really the case.

I just don't see how this could have happened by accident, life in general, this incredibly complicated system it seems well past the ability of anyone walking the face of the earth to even vaguely get to grips with, plus there's nothing else like it as far as anyone knows - if there botched other versions lying around, I'd be much more inclined to think it might just be chaos, but it's not at all like that. Realistically, there's us guys, and there's nothing, there are cold, dead planets, and then there's the Earth, which for all it might seem a bit much of a Monday morning, still very much looks like a plan or whatever, as opposed to say Pluto.

This beautiful arrangement - Simply because we was a people seem to be pretty hell-bent on going the way of the dinosaurs doesn't I don't think mean it all counts for nothing.

Species-wise really, all we have to basically do is pull ourselves together, and it's very much do-able, and if we don't, then it's all going to be such a terrible waste.

Y'know, Shakespeare, Piccasso, or whoever you like - Does even the most hardcore atheist seriously, honestly, think this material is stuff that should fade off into the void ? That it doesn't quite speak to what for want of a better word might be described as a soul ?

I mean otherwise really, it's all about what you buy. The human spirit, as far as anyone knows the most conscious thing to hang around in the universe, is going to end up destroying itself, if it persists in this dark, and cold view of it's own motivations.

And that'd seem a real shame.

10:01 / 31.03.04

To answer the question why do I exist... The only thing that I can be sure of is that, after Descartes, I am thinking and therfore I am existing (but for what period or whether continuoulsy I cannot be sure.)Proofs of the existence of God are unconvincing and so, consequenlty, are the teachings of theistic religions regarding ultimate purposes. Scientists change their views from time to aboout the naure of the universe and time acording to new evidence or reinterpretation of old eivdence. In any case why should I give any weight to these sceintific and religious entities who may be no more than an extension of my own consciousness? And so the only authority that I can turn to for an answer to the question "Why do I exist" that is likley to satisfy me, is myself. Perhaps I could answer that I exist "To enjoy myslef" or "To help others" or whatever. But if I were to ask myself a differnt question "Why does the universe exist" as opposed to "Why do I exist?" I would have to answer that I have no idea. Helpful or a load of rubbish?

13:54 / 31.03.04

There is no 'why' and 'how' is meaningless. Belief is just settling in on a level of ignorance that you feel comfortable with, those that never settle live a life in restless boredom, waiting for Godot.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:06 / 31.03.04

Y'know, Shakespeare, Piccasso, or whoever you like - Does even the most hardcore atheist seriously, honestly, think this material is stuff that should fade off into the void ? That it doesn't quite speak to what for want of a better word might be described as a soul ?

Have you met any atheists? I don't think many of them are likely to say that Shakespeare, Picasso or whoever you like should float off into the void - some might believe that they will cease to be once they cease to be remembered, or that their immortality is limited by the lifespan of humanity and its ability to remember their work, but that's not the same thing, is it?

I think the idea that these people speak to some part of human beings that for want of a better word might be described as a soul is necessarily anathema either. An atheist might describe Marvin Gaye, for example, as having tremendous soul. They might identify the capacity for ratiocination, consciousness, aesthetic response, unselfish emotion, or any combination thereof as something describable as "soul", without demanding that that soul must as a corrolary be immortal... you're arguing from some very odd principles, and you seem to be hung up on the idea that the idea that life is not designed means that life is meaningless. I don't see why this should be the case. Nor do I understand why the possibility that the human race might not destroy itself is proof of some divine agency.

sdv (non-human)

20:44 / 31.03.04

hardly original but: we are what we appear to the scientific and philosophical thinkers of our own time - purposeless, cosmis accidents engendered by the freaks and hazards of nature, and there is nothing divine, nor anything planned about it.

unheimlich manoeuvre

22:24 / 31.03.04

ever since we ate the apple in the garden of eden, we have had the fires of technology. the internet is one among many symptoms. the enlightenmment project has been undertaken and is on the brink of [insert theory here].

22:34 / 31.03.04

Haus. Well that made much more sense when I originally posted it... Stupid beer...

Anyway, to clarify, I was probably on about two seperate issues.

The first one being, I've never really understood the atheist position, insofar as it seems as much a matter of faith as any religion you'd like - to say there's definitely no god seems about the same thing as saying there definitely is, when surely the atheist is a sceptic before anything else ?

Second point being, and it's a bit more contentious, does it actually matter what anyone does, if this is basically it ? If you're just going to die and there you go, well it's over, why on earth would you worry about anything you do/did ? You could be Ed Gein or whoever, if that's what you wanted, you could live your whole life out like Patrick Bateman, or that guy who's in charge of The Daily Star, and it would mean nothing whatsoever, according to say the Stephen Hawking view of the world.

Deep down though, and I stand to be accused of being a romantic or something, I just get the feeling it matters a bit more

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