More between heaven and earth

Originally Posted by Nico

"Coincidences", for lack of a better word.

What I mean is that everything in nature is so perfectly molded. The interaction and dependence between all organisms and elements.. It just feels too coincidental for it to fit this perfectly without something being involved. Hence why I'm not ruling out the possibility of a higher, supernatural force.

Lots of things are involved. I'm not sure what you mean by "dependence between all organisms and elements". Are you suggesting that the fact that life fares well on earth is evidence of a god character?

Originally Posted by Richard Dawkins, eulogizing Douglas Adams

... imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be all right, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

The "coincidences" allowing life to exist can be easily explained as the life adapting to preexisting conditions, not the other way around.

Originally Posted by Roger Penrose

The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the sun. At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question — so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!

Originally Posted by Lazer_Falcon

Anyone who has studied ecology knows exactly how perfectly-molded and interdependent nature is on itself - that can't be randomness.

I'd hardly claim that nature is "perfectly-molded", as numerous "imperfections" exist.

But that's beside the point. We know that certain aspects of the development of nature into what it is today were almost fated to happen (e.g. Natural Selection, which random chance plays a relatively small part in). But what does that have to do with the existence/nonexistence of a higher power and a "Heaven"?

EDIT: Ninja'd multiple times. See Vulpes' post above.

Nature is highly interdependent because physics is built around cause and effect relationships. Things don't randomly occur. They react.

Originally Posted by 8bit

Lots of things are involved. I'm not sure what you mean by "dependence between all organisms and elements". Are you suggesting that the fact that life fares well on earth is evidence of a god character?

Not necessarily, no.

I guess what Flash Man and Vulpes is saying makes much sense. The reasonings for my beliefs might be because I fear the thought of being non-existent forever after death. It makes me want to believe there is something more to it, even if all the evidence points the other way.

Originally Posted by Aenglaan

So are you trying to question how the laws of the universe operate so well?

LMAO! Who created these laws? Aren't scientists the logical ones? So many "theories", yet no proof for how infinities can exist nor how everything can come from nothing.

Maybe we just cant comprehend eternities just how we cant comprehend extra dimensions. Case in point: ehttp://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/xdimgod.html

Originally Posted by Disembodied Loaf

LMAO! Who created these laws? Aren't scientists the logical ones?

Actually, I think it may be more accurate to say no one "created" these laws; they are simply a natural state of order that is observed by humans. Scientists merely study and analyze such laws; they did not actually make them, nor do the existence of laws depend on the existence of scientists to sustain. Otherwise, we'd all get rid of scientists, thereby destroying the laws of gravity, permitting us to fly aroun- *shot* XD

Originally Posted by Disembodied Loaf

So many "theories", yet no proof for how infinities can exist nor how everything can come from nothing.

I think you'll be soon receiving a lecture from someone on these forums about how misused the term "theory" is in scientific literature... ^_^;

Originally Posted by Nico

Not necessarily, no.

I guess what Flash Man and Vulpes is saying makes much sense. The reasonings for my beliefs might be because I fear the thought of being non-existent forever after death. It makes me want to believe there is something more to it, even if all the evidence points the other way.

This is reasonable, and a natural human response, but one must remember that what is is, not what we want it to be.

Fortunately, there is a lot of work being done in technologies which may someday lead to indefinite lifespans. You may well end up living for trillions of years.

Originally Posted by Disembodied Loaf

LMAO! Who created these laws? Aren't scientists the logical ones?

There aren't any actual 'laws'. We simply use 'laws' to describe what is.

So many "theories"

Theories are as close to proof as we get in science, as science is the philosophy of observation, and it is impossible to observe an event an infinite number of times.

yet no proof for how infinities can exist

Cantor’s Theorem:

For any set X, the power set of X is cardinally larger than X.

how everything can come from nothing.

I think our existence is due to mere probability, sheer chance. The universe is bigger than we imagine, we are only an egg.

Originally Posted by Ysionris

Actually, I think it may be more accurate to say no one "created" these laws; they are simply a natural state of order that is observed by humans. Scientists merely study and analyze such laws; they did not actually make them, nor do the existence of laws depend on the existence of scientists to sustain. Otherwise, we'd all get rid of scientists, thereby destroying the laws of gravity, permitting us to fly aroun- *shot* XD



I think you'll be soon receiving a lecture from someone on these forums about how misused the term "theory" is in scientific literature... ^_^;

I understand what you're saying, but it's kind of like what the OP said. All this stuff in the universe has such structure. How do these laws work so perfectly by chance?

By misuse of "theory", are you talking about how people throw around that word like it means hypothesis?

Originally Posted by Disembodied Loaf

I understand what you're saying, but it's kind of like what the OP said. All this stuff in the universe has such structure. How do these laws work so perfectly by chance?

Any system which exists is going to have some structure. Otherwise, it doesn't exist.

I think how our physics work so perfectly is again, because of probability. If life exists in another planet, I'm sure a musical chord won't always make the same sound and beings won't possess the same proportions. They would probably have primitive technology too. And perhaps, due to chance, there's a race out there more beautiful and perfect than we are....

When looking at all the uncertainties of the universe, quantum physics, and our present state of life, I like to think of this quote by Albert Einstein:

The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

No matter how one person here says that we are existing at just the right moment in life, what is to say that other organisms out in the vast universe came before us and died out long ago? Science is based off of observation after all and while we are pretty pat down on understanding the major things such as gravity, physics, and ecology, there is still some debate on certain aspects such as subatomic particles. Sure we may know that a proton and a neutron are made of quarks, but what makes up those quarks? We can learn and learn as much as we can and indeed, we are learning much, but we will never know the whole truth for we are human after all.

To put it in a mathematical equation, our understanding of how everything works can be summed up by the equation lim x>postive infinity (1/x) where as x>0. Go ahead and graph it on a graphing calculator and see the curve it makes . . . it may seem like its touching the x-axis and y-axis, but its not. Its always getting closer but never touching both. Now think of those 2 axis like the ultimate Truth and you have a good understanding that our understanding of the universe, however vast and infinite it may be we will never truly understand it. Its best to go along and theorize out of curiosity, after all I am of the firm belief that the truth will be revealed in the afterlife.

After all, things in this universe don't happen out of sheer random chance, sure you may have random variables, but those do cause effects and in fact, there could be a reason behind such a random variable in the first place.

Originally Posted by Disembodied Loaf

LMAO! Who created these laws?

That's an equivocation, at best. "Laws" of nature are not the same thing as national laws. They weren't written by a government and aren't enforced by cosmic police officers. It's simply a handy term for the way things act.

Aren't scientists the logical ones?

The good ones, yes. See, scientists as a whole are a diverse group. Doubtless there exist illogical scientists, they just never actually find any evidence for anything, and probably drop out of the field pretty quick.

Now, Science (note the capital) as a discipline is innately logical, yes.

So many "theories",

Why the scare quotes?

yet no proof for how infinities can exist

What infinities would these be?

nor how everything can come from nothing.

Religion doesn't really have any advantage there. At some point a deity came from nothing or was infinite, without any explanation.

Maybe we just cant comprehend eternities

What do you mean by "comprehend" and "eternities"?

I mean, on a very abstract level I can comprehend various infinities. But is that the sort of comprehension you mean? And since there are so many kinds of infinities, which ones am I supposed to be comprehending?

just how we cant comprehend extra dimensions. Case in point: ehttp://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/xdimgod.html

Again, define "comprehend". I can, again in a very abstract way, grasp 4D objects. It's not easy, nor intuitive, but I can look at a tesseract or Klein bottle and understand what I'm seeing, even if I don't know what it'd look like displayed in 4 dimensions.

Originally Posted by Disembodied Loaf

LMAO! Who created these laws?

Interesting question: why does it have to be a who?