Why is there anything? (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 04, 2012, 13:24 (4617 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: And thus, in the form of eternal energy, that which was, that which is, and that which will be, eternally organized from time indefinite to time indefinite, can express with complete and utter assurance that "There is nothing new, under the sun." It knows all things and witnesses all things because it is all things, and in and of it everything exists; in and of it everything can be expressed; in and of it everything can be created. If that's not God with a big ole capital G I don't know what is; omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence....-We seem to have agreed that the history of the universe is one of eternal energy constantly transmuting itself into different forms of matter. Tony's post is a great piece of writing, but Matt has hit on the possible flaw: "I don't make any claims about sentience." Does the universe know anything, let alone all things? The fact that we ourselves are sentient does not endow the rest of the universe with sentience, whether one argues rationally or empirically. And sentience or consciousness is the fundamental difference between the theist and the atheist view of the universe.-Purely for clarification, then, and since at present there are no atheists taking part in this debate, let me counter Tony's great post with the atheist argument. For ever and ever eternal energy has randomly produced, is randomly producing and will go on randomly producing different forms of matter. The only forms we know of are some of those that make up the universe as it is now. In the course of eternity, with an infinite potential of material combinations at its disposal, it is well within the bounds of possibility that sooner or later the eternal energy will randomly produce a combination that gives rise to life and the mechanisms for evolution. We are the products of just such a random combination. And for all we know, there may have been countless others that have come and gone, or there may even be others in existence now. -The history of the universe ... of ever changing matter ... is precisely the same, whether you believe in God or not. The theist believes that the eternal energy is conscious, the atheist believes that it is not. The theist points to what seems to be intelligent organization and design, the atheist says that the processes occur naturally and without intelligent guidance. There is, I fear, no way round this dichotomy, no matter how colourfully each party paints its side of the agnostic fence.