Afterlife: Pinker's skeptical thought (Endings)

by dhw, Friday, May 29, 2020, 10:50 (1637 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I must disagree with your comment (2). Our universe definitely had a start. Therefore it is finite and definitely without a past. You can't avoid First Cause.

dhw: I have never avoided first cause. If the Big Bang happened (please remember that it is a theory, not a fact), of course it had a cause, and it is no more rational to say that the cause was a conscious mind that had always existed and was never created than to say that the cause was unconscious energy and matter that had always existed and was never created.

DAVID: Note I didn't say 'Big Bang"! This iteration had a start, even with a Big Bounce scenario. Is it on solo drive or does it have a driver? And something from nothing is not possible, especially when the something is very complex in its organization (fine tuning).

It makes no difference what theory you adhere to in relation to the beginning of this universe – you are still confronted with the same choice: an eternal conscious mind without a source, or eternal energy and matter without a source. Are the 100-200 thousand million galaxies of the present universe and was the potentially infinite number of galaxies in possible past universes all fine tuned by your God, or did our galaxy just happen to strike lucky as a one-off in eternity? I don’t know. Do you?