How did existence become?

[Syrinx]

I'm a borderline-atheist myself.

But if there is no God, how did existence begin? Yet, if God does exist, who created him (or her, or it)?

I know everyone has thought about this. Anybody got an answer to this riddle?

[Lucian]

1. If I had an answer to this, I'd be God.

I'm a Secular Humanist/Freethinker, btw.

[Chulanowa]

2. Who says it did?

Rather self-centered aren't you, presuming that reality is real because you think it is.

"Nope" is a pretty good answer to a lot of esoteric riddles, when you stop to not think about it.

[Hissyspit]

3. It's turtles all the way down.

[Syrinx]

4. I don't understand that...

But I'm sure it's funny. :hi:

[Hissyspit]

5. It is funny:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

The most widely known version appears in Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which starts:

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"”

It is possible that the lady's comment came after Russell's 1927 lecture Why I Am Not a Christian. In it, while discounting the First Cause argument intended to be a proof of God's existence, Russell comments:

“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject."”

The origins of this story are uncertain. In J. R. (Haj) Ross's 1967 linguistics dissertation, Constraints on Variables in Syntax, the scientist is identified as the Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James. Of the story's provenance, Ross writes:

“I have been unable to find any published reference to it, so it may be that I have attributed it to the wrong man, or that it is apocryphal. Be that as it may, because of its bull's-eye relevance to the study of syntax, I have retold it here.”

Additionally, Stephen Fry, in an episode of the BBC's comedy-quiz show QI (Series 1, episode 2), attributes the turtles anecdote to an exchange between an elderly lady and William James. Also, David Sloan Wilson does the same in his book Evolution for Everyone (Delacorte, 2007): 133.

Philosophical allusion to the story goes back at least as far as John Locke. In his 1690 tract An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke compares one who would say that properties inhere in "substance" to the Indian who said the world was on an elephant which was on a tortoise "but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied — something, he knew not what."

Henry David Thoreau, in his journal entry of 4 May 1852, writes:

“Men are making speeches… all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.”

This quote also appears in Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising; he attributes the story to William James:

“William James, father of American psychology, tells of meeting an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle. "But, my dear lady," Professor James asked, as politely as possible, "what holds up the turtle?" "Ah," she said, "that's easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle." "Oh, I see," said Professor James, still being polite. "But would you be so good as to tell me what holds up the second turtle?" "It's no use, Professor," said the old lady, realizing he was trying to lead her into a logical trap. "It's turtles-turtles-turtles, all the way!"

:hi:

[H2O Man]

11. That turtle story

sounds like a variation of the story about a Euro-American talking to an Iroquois Elder about the creation.

[BB1]

10. First there are the elephants.

At least, here on Discworld where I live.
Thén it's the turtle, and it swims. So there you have it.

[Richard Steele]

6. I could tell you, but what would be the point? No one ever believes me.

It's become tiresome, and I really need to get on with my own life.

There is a G*D, and we are just all too small and stupid
to understand G*D.

Nothing else adds up.

[Joe the Liberal]

7. I haven't a clue..........

although I have wondered that before, I don't know, nobody knows and I doubt anybody ever will.

[elleng]

8. Nature,

naturally.

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. This is sorta what came first, the chicken or the egg sorta thing - --

.
.
.

Actually - none of us are really here

We're just all sharing the same bad dream

something to ponder . .

[ThomWV]

12. Riddles about Superstitions - how much more ridiculous can you get

How many 4-legged creatures did Noah have on the ark? Answer: None, there was no ark.

How many angels dance on the head of a pin? Answer: None, there are no angels.

How many universes did God create? Answer: None, there is no such thing as a god and no one in their right mind believes in one.

[tekisui]

13. It is beyond our ability to see, measure or understand.

So, any answer is baseless fairy tale.

[watrwefitinfor]

14. Just because we don't understand it

does't mean we have to make shit up.

Wat

[eridani]

15. What was your face before your parents were born? n/t

[ThomWV]

16. It was the same face it will be the next time they are born

[Ivan Sputnik]

17. It started with a "vacuum fluctuation"

whatever that is. I think that is the official answer from theoretical physicists. It has something to do with quantum mechanics, and it caused the "big bang" explosion. It is beyond my ability to comprehend, though.

I like the idea that this is all just God day-dreaming.

"Nothing will come of nothing." -- King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1

[aikoaiko]

18. Off to the religion forum..... and away.....

[Silent3]

19. Not just the answer, but the right question could well be out of reach for us

Bundled up in our idea of "existence" is existing through a flow of time. Time and existence are not separate things. Asking when something began, or what happened before, how something came to be, are all time-based questions, therefore they are existence-based questions.

The questions we need to dig into the why and how of existence have to be outside of our concept of time. To ask when existence began is to postulate some sort of pre-existence, some kind of stage or setting or backdrop for the universe that could have been, at some moment, devoid of this so-called existence, then at some later moment contain what we call existence. Trying to imagine these kind of scenarios gets you nowhere -- all of those conditions and moments would be simply be aspects of existence.

You'd have to know the rules of non-existence to ask the rights questions, but anything that can have rules of any sort probably has to be considered a form of existence too.

Taking this confusing mess and concluding "And therefore God did it" doesn't seem like a very sound conclusion to me.

[Kip Humphrey]

20. Why do you think the human perspective of time as undirectionally linear is an accurate

depiction of reality? Do you think that because we have 5 senses, those senses capture and derive all there is of reality and there can be no more? If so, then you may be suffering from an ailmentmore common than the common cold: human arrogance.

Consider the great recent discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, discoveries that reassigned all that we think we understand or know to somewhat less than 4% of reality. We actually know nothing of dark matter & dark energy other than the necessity for their existence to satisfy our current best understanding of observed interactions. In fact, one might well re-term dark matter & energy as god, soul, or chi.

Consider multiple dimensions greater than those of space-time observed from our human perspectives. Required to explain everything from the earth orbiting the sun to quantum physics, if multiple dimensions beyond 3-D/4-D space-time are accurate depictions of reality, then, right now, we each are existing within multiples of the dimensions we can't perceive with our 5-sense, conceptually constrained human perspectives.

Consider human conceptualization, logic and mathematics - constrained by our brain's "this is like that" and the lack thereof functioning - which ascribe order, rules, qualifiability and predictability to our perspectives of reality. Our models of reality, continually held as defensible and often infallible, say more about the human perspective and the manner in which the brain functions than accurately depicting reality.

...

[seabeyond]

21. i tell my kids that there are things i do not know. and i dont have to have answers to all things

like, why am i on this planet????

it works well for me.

[bridgit]

22. Your 1st Q is too vauge...

:(

Your 2nd Q presumes that because you are "borderline-atheist" that there is no god :shrug:

Your 3rd Q presumes that god is a personage named God, or Allah, or Rama, etc, and that if "he/she" is "he/she" was created by some other "it" :spray:

Your 4th Q, however, just might have an answer Meher Baba Interview 1932 Newsreel (religion, spirituality) and when you study his signings in response to a Q to him as to how existence came into being, you become clued upon life as a collection of process; maybe like rain drops on a plane one then two till a puddle them flowing rivulets, etc, all the way up through what had no form to the stones & rocks of the earth, and the higher forms where there is no conflict between evolution and what is loosely referred to as: creationism :thumbsup:

[spanone]

23. e v o l u t i o n

[TahitiNut]

24. Since time itself is an inherent part of 'existence' ... "when" did it begin?

:evilgrin:

[ThomWV]

25. At the moment of the Great Ping

Its the old in and out without the human frailty of there ever having had to be a first or a last. Let this be our mantra: Zero, growth, contraction, zero, growth, contraction, zero, ... And then there it is, even the mathematics of a child gives a net of zero; so much for the need of energy or matter. And now Hawking tells us information persists despite all. We are in an endless cycle of on the way back to what we were on the way out and repeat. And how many dimensions and how many alternative universes is of no great importance, they have all gone and come back, they all will again with our full and repeated participation. And again.

Who comes the closest to what science tells us, the Hindus or the Buddhists? Depends on which sect you look at but you always have to leave out the part where's there's any way off the train. No nirvana, no heaven; you play once you play forever. One thing for sure. If I was looking for a spiritual guide for understanding all the cosmos and my place in it I'd watch the movie "Hitch-hiker's Guide To the Universe" with a lot more attention paid.

[mandyky]

26. Check out Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts

Interesting non-religious theories on a variety of such topics..

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. When they booted up the universe simulation in which we live. n/t

[Ghost in the Machine]

28. Ok, I admit it... *I* did it... I'm responsible for existence..

I'm not very proud of it right this moment, but at least I can own up to my mistakes...

You are, because I am....


Peace,

Ghost

[suston96]

29. Maybe there is no beginning, Daddy........

My nine year old daughter told me that years ago when I was questioning her mother about infinity. I was saying that I could not understand where or how the universe ended.

My daughter - 9 years old - said: Well, Daddy, maybe it has no beginning.

A few weeks ago I watched a two hour Stephen Hawking "Search for the Theory of Everything" and guess how that ended - Hawking saying that maybe the universe has no beginning. It just has always been there.

A terrific concept that may be impossible for us finite beings and our finite thinking to absorb.

[Control-Z]

31. Now, that is cool! n/t

[RedCappedBandit]

30. If there were a God, its existence sure as hell wouldn't be an answer. nt

[alfredo]

32. Fed EX