I am possible, therefore I will be.

.

A load of fashionable bull@!$%#. If you buy this guy's unfounded crap, you may as well as believe in creationism.

More like, "I can't figure it out, therefore it just happened."

Rene Descartes walks into a bar. He asks the bartender for a beer and polishes it off.

The bartender asks Descartes if he'd like another beer, and Descartes says "I think not".

And 'poof', he disappears.

A physicist and a mathemetician watch a man walk into a phone booth. Five minutes later, two men walk out.

The physicist says, "there must be somethng wrong with our measurements."

The mathemetician says, "If one more person walks into that phone booth, it will be empty."

nothing is not something

nothing is nothing

therefore nothing can't be unstable... there is nothing there to be anything

his logic is severely flawed fron the get go

something outside The Box has to be the source of what's in The Box

nothing is not capable of spawning anything

I find it ironic that your username is "credible".

It has been extensively proven that quantum fluctuations occur in "nothing" and that the vacuum has energy (look up the Casimir effect).

Also, a completely empty box has particles appearing and disappearing inside of it all the time, with no external influence (look up virtual particles).

Your knowledge of physics is severely flawed from the get-go.

God did not create man

Man created god

to help him understand the things he knew not of

Ok now back to a REAL question, the Universe!

jarin udom

the argument is not from a physics angle, rather philosophical

if particles show up in The Box, then there is now Something

where did they come from?

Nothing cannot spawn anything

they came from somewhere else

that's where other things are... outside The Box

think... outside The Box

Oblig

Sumerians Look on in Confusion as God Creates the World

credible:

At least we agree on one thing:

"the argument is not from a physics angle, rather philosophical"

all scientific data is interpreted through the lens of a Philosophy

data is truth

philosophies are prone to flaws, errors and deceit

identify the philosophy and reveal the heart of the matter

You say man created god to explain what he didn't understand?Didn't man also create science to explain what we don't understand? There is no absolute truth except for the truth we desire. People go back and forth criticizing religion or scientific beliefs; fantasicm exists in either side. At the end of the day we are pieces of @!$%# to each other, instead of trying to figure out how to enjoy our lives. Both try to figure out how to prove anothers life wrong. So to me science, and religion are equals, and thefore equally good and bad.

Man did not create science, man used science as a tool to decipher the truths of the universe. Man created god to explain things he had not yet discovered through science.

So that would fly in the face of entropy as this universe's level of organization would then depend on disorganization in multiple other universes but by the same theory one could have the opposite with a massive number of organized universes with only a few disorganized. One could also argue that this could be the answer of how God came into existence or was always in existence.

You can argue any theory if it doesn't have the ability to be proven false, fasifiability (sp?). Anyway, I'd have to read more about it directly comment one way or the other. We are at such an infantile stage in our understanding that the theories we speculate today will likely be viewed 1000 years from now the same as we view the Earth being flat.

@AllofitisBS

In what universe is religion and science equals??

Science looks at results and tries to find an answer. Religion presumes the answer and proceeds to find the results to substantiate it's dogma.

Science it testable and demonstrable... religion is neither.

Religion requires the *absense* of logic, science is not science without it.

Actually science and religion are almost polar opposites.

He does have some flaws in his argument however, but that's what scientific peer review is for.

He presumes that there is or was a start. Other theories suggest the universe simply expands and contracts in infinity.

So who here really believes in "truths"? Because to me it seems whenever you get answers about the universe, it ends with more questions. If the universe is infinite, are the questions and answers infinite as well?. It would be dangerous to assume there is absolute truth. I feel the greatest thinkers of our past were truly the most intelligent beings because they always questioned so-called "truth". Don't forget that.

The equation for infinity is 0=0

LOL Or for my fellow biologist: Zero equals Zero.

biologists that is.... :D

here is my question on the big ban: Why does it look like a tube in stead of a ball?

If I were the hang and set off a cherry bomb in space it would expand in a 3D ball

Is it because we can only see this part of the expanding ball because the rest is moving away from us faster then the speed of light?

mj899,

The diagram is a representation of the expanding universe over time. Each band along the length is like a snapshot of how the universe looked. At the start it was relatively uniform and crowded into a very small space, over time the universe has expanded and the objects spread out.

AllofitisBS

So who here really believes in "truths"? Because to me it seems whenever you get answers about the universe, it ends with more questions. If the universe is infinite, are the questions and answers infinite as well?. It would be dangerous to assume there is absolute truth. I feel the greatest thinkers of our past were truly the most intelligent beings because they always questioned so-called "truth". Don't forget that.

I agree that's a good thing to always question. However, to say that absolute truth doesn't exist is to render inquiry pointless.

If there is no absolute truth then why is one belief any better than any other? What about the guy I read about a few years ago that believes that all of the US presidents are shape-shifting lizardmen? Is that REALLY just an opinion, as valid as any other?

If I say that 2+2 = 4, that's not a matter of opinion. It's a FACT. You either know the right answer or you don't. If I say that your heart pumps blood through your body, that's not a matter of opinion. That's a FACT.

For that matter, if you don't believe in absolute truth, then your belief that there is no absolute truth is no more valid than my belief that truth exists. That's the problem with intellectual relativism. It's self defeating.

In the words of Carl Sagan: "The well meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me to be not very different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit."

This debate is much to do about nothing. John Lennox, Oxford mathematician, has dealt with this pseudoscience in his recent book "God and Stephen Hawking". The jist of it all is that these atheists have come up with a slightly more sophisticated story for spontaneous generation, a concept that has been defeated time and again throughout history.

The fact that you state that there is energy in the form of "virtual particles" implyies that there is already something in existence. From a strictly scientific point of view, according to the first law of thermodynamics "energy can only change from one form to another. It can neither be created or destreoyed." Therfore these "virtual particals" are already energy in existance, and there is already "something" in the universe. The only explanation for the formation of our universe for completely nothing, not even energy, is a creator who chose bring it into existance according to his design. Lets face it there is sill alot about quantum mechanics that we don't completely unerstand. It is imposible for us to comprehend "nothingness" because we live in a universe of "existance". I am not saying your field of study is bad, but I want to take it back to the basics of the laws of physics and rule of logic, because you need to make sure you arguments make sense. This is something I was told over and over again from grade school to today in college. Keep up your work. I pray that someday you will come to believe that God created the universe devinly.

Both Religion and Science is dogma, as they both come from man. Everyone is affraid to say "I don't know." All of you spouting out answers to a problem who's question is already beyond your comprehension. In Man's arrogance they spout out answers insisting they have it all figured out, "They way I believe is the correct way."

The fact that whatever happened, happened many billions of years ago, and where ever it was, happened so far away, any scientist can really put forth whatever they want to say, and those who like it will believe in it, and those who don't like it, will scoff at it. The concept of Zero didn't even come up until "recently" relative to human existance and you throw around "What is nothing?" as if in the next thousand years everything you said won't be proved wrong?

How does someone who's only seen the universe through paper and pencils presume to just "know" how it all started?

Fools.

@junicon: Saying 2+2=4 is NOT fact without some sort of HUMAN definition. The universe doesn't care how we define things. There is no "2" floating around in space. "2" is a number we created. WE humans defined what "+" and "=" is through theorems and axioms based on a mathematical contruct WE HUMANS created to help us understand the universe.

+ and = are tools to HELP us understand, we didn't create the universe with + and =, we developed axioms that really only apply to the way we perceive the universe. Human PERCEPTION. The Universe doesn't give a crap what we think today, or tomorrow.

I think, therefore I am

I am, therefore it did

It did, therefore I am,

I am, therefore I think

Yes I know it is expanding over time. but the shape of the expansion not right.

was this a shape charge explosion of something more uniform?

Science is always under scrutiny and being appended and upgraded from prior proofs. Science is always open to scrutiny and, though sometimes hard-headed, the image of reality changes eventually with much arguing. Nobody dies over it though.

Religion is never open to scrutiny because it's adherents are terrified (for any number of reasons from innocent to malevolent) of learning that what they have always believed is a lie and, for the genuine believers, that their universe isn't controlled by their god. Rather, it's a wild west, shooting gallery with no "plan" what so ever! Very likely no kind of life after death either. Aaagh! That is terrifying!

People who follow spiritual faiths love to point to their holy books as some kind of proof for the reality of their god but no one today can perform any of the miracles spoken about in the stories in their holy books. Where is the prophet who goes from town to town visiting hospitols where patients get off of their beds, remove all of the hoses and tubes and walk out of the building?

Yea yea... Every now and then someone is examined the 1st time and there is a tumor and then the 2nd and the tumor is gone but that could be something about the person's own imune system or the tumor died...Tumors are not immortal either.

How about someone walks into a hosptial and heals 25 people right their on their beds?? How about 5?? Never happens. Jesus did it 2k years ago and he said that his followers would do even greater things in his name. Yea right. Only in the middle ages and earlier did this type of thing happen because people hardly knew their asses from holes in the ground. There was no medical science back then. Epileptics have been considered possessed by demons for millenia... Not anymore because science figured it out. I don't hear any religious people disputing they were wrong about that...!

I may not be able to "prove" that "god" does not exist but I can certainly prove that the holy book is full of one supersitious and disproven thing after another. I mean, isn't it ironic that none of the miracles that happened daily in the varioius holy books written thousands of years ago ever happen today? It's because the average 5 year old knows more about how nature does and does not operate than the poor, ignorant, superstitious people did who wrote those books...

Science is always under scrutiny and being appended and upgraded from prior proofs. Science is always open to scrutiny and, though sometimes hard-headed, the image of reality changes eventually with much arguing. Nobody dies over it though.

Religion is never open to scrutiny because it's adherents are terrified (for any number of reasons from innocent to malevolent) of learning that what they have always believed is a lie and, for the genuine believers, that their universe isn't controlled by their god. Rather, it's a wild west, shooting gallery with no "plan" what so ever! Very likely no kind of life after death either. Aaagh! That is terrifying!

People who follow spiritual faiths love to point to their holy books as some kind of proof for the reality of their god but no one today can perform any of the miracles spoken about in the stories in their holy books. Where is the prophet who goes from town to town visiting hospitals where patients get off of their beds, remove all of the hoses and tubes and walk out of the building?

Yea yea... Every now and then someone is examined the 1st time and there is a tumor and then the 2nd and the tumor is gone but that could be something about the person's own immune system or the tumor died...Tumors are not immortal either.

How about someone walks into a hospital and heals 25 people right their on their beds?? How about 5?? Never happens. Jesus did it 2k years ago and he said that his followers would do even greater things in his name. Yea right. Only in the middle ages and earlier did this type of thing happen because people hardly knew their asses from holes in the ground. There was no medical science back then. Epileptics had been considered possessed by demons for millennia... Not anymore because science figured it out. I don't hear any religious people disputing science was wrong about that...!

I may not be able to "prove" that "god" does not exist but I can certainly prove that the holy books are full of one superstitious and disproved thing after another. I mean, isn't it ironic that none of the miracles that happened daily in the various holy books written thousands of years ago ever happen today? It's because the average 5 year old knows more about how nature does and does not operate than the poor, ignorant, superstitious people did who wrote those books...

AllofitisBS, obviously this discussion is beyond your intelligence. Drop it.

I wish everyone would quit talking about "from nothing". "From nothing" is a good example of poetic license. Eintein showed that energy (which may be thought of as "nothing" in the sense of something solid) can be transformed into matter

(i.e. something).

How to get a universe from nothing? That's easy. Just make sh*t up. People have been doing that for thousands of years. Don't know what the hell happened? Make sh*t up. Then you make sh*t up to back up the sh*t you made up. It's called religion and science.

The real question you have to ask yourself is this. Does it really matter? Is it really going to make a difference in anything but the overblown egoes of the chumps who make up this garbage. The answer is easy. Hell no.

So just walk away from the useless garbage and go out and do something that will matter like feed a starving kid or convince some moron that 10 billion people is too much for the planet.

Junicon - Kofy is correct. That equation is only correct based upon the definition of which set it is applied to, say the reals or the integers. It is quite conceivable to construct a topological space in which the number 4 does not exist. Ex: T={{},{0,1,2,3,6,7,8,10,13}} in this case the equation of 2 + 2 would actually equal 6 and 2 + 5 = 10. It is only assumed that the number space is of the reals.

Two words:

God's Debris

I think, therefore I'm single.

I just have one thing to say about theoretical physics VS religion. I'm really just appalled at the traction that dark matter and dark energy are gaining as scientific fact, when they are nothing more than made up ideas to explain effects for which the physicists have no answer. God anyone?

"Gravitational effects are more than the detectable mass can account for. It must be some mysterious particle called dark matter!"

"The universe is expanding faster than we expected... and it's speeding up. What is this mysterious dark force pushing the universe apart?"

I'm sorry, but anyone who talks about dark energy and dark matter like they are real things has no moral ground to say to a religious person that their belief in God is just silly. They are nothing more than terms created to represent a miss-understanding of the way the universe works. There are studies going on to see if they are actually "things", and that's good. Continue to pursue that theory. But don't try and tell me God isn't because (anything to do with dark matter or dark energy). It's as ridiculous as saying Santa doesn't exist because the Easter Bunny proves he doesn't.

All I'm saying is let's see the kind of honest study of the "whys" of the universe that the scientific method demands, and drop this crazy junk science, like the incoherent arguments of an Atheist Evangelist.

Mitty - For dark matter, the concensus is that it it probably baryonic matter, but they need more definitive proof. So to say that it is just thoughts of fancy, justs shows your shortsighted view of this astrophysic theory. Dark energy is more difficult, but based on a theory called vanishing dimensions, it can be explained through a vibrating mesh of bosonic strings overlapping each other. Its not proven, but a very interesting concept. I would guess the idea of dark flow would be really pushing it? BTW - it is about galaxies in a small section of the universe seem to moving in the same direction. It was seen in the WMAP data. The kicker is, they think it could be proof of another universe close to ours. Enjoy!

mj899:

If you were to take a snapshot of the universe as it exists RIGHT NOW, it would be pretty much a sphere. It might actually be a slightly like a raisin or a prune if the distribution of mass in the universe were uneven enough that the rate of expansion were slower in some parts of the universe than others, but still it's pretty much a sphere. The diagrams that look like a "shaped charge" are really time diagrams. It's really difficult to draw a 4-dimensional object (Height, Width, Length, Time), so for the purposes of illustration we sometimes drop one of the physical dimensions (Length). What looks like a tube is really a stack of circles and each circle takes place at a slightly different time. Near the beginning at the big bang, the circles are all very small, but they gradually grow larger the later in time they get (as the universe expands).

TReed,

As to consensus on Dark Matter being baryonic in nature, I'm unaware of any such agreement. So far as I know, it is surmised to be undetectable by any means we currently know of, meaning that it supposedly does not absorb or emit energy in any way, and it does not interact with other matter or energy except via possibly surmised gravitational effects.

I hate to say it, but I'm with Mitty on this one, and although I get the sense that he or she (I'm sure which from the name) is on the side of Christian faith, and I'm firmly in the atheist camp, and have a fairly strong scientific background (although I'm certainly no professional astrophysicist), I cannot abide this claptrap nonsense regarding dark stuff of any kind, matter or energy. IMHO, there is too much that we are uncertain about (as yet) to go theoretically surmising the existence of new but undetectable kinds of stuff, which doesn't fit the current Standard Model, just to explain certain observations of far off galaxies.

There's way too much history of "scientific" mistakes such as phlogiston, the luminiferous aether, nebullium, the cosmological constant and on and on, for me to accept the existence of either dark matter or dark energy on just the say so of a few white robed scientific "priests". When someone can propose a falsifiable experiment to verify the existence of such dark matter and not just postulate it's existence because "we can't tell what else would would make those galaxies move that way", then I'll listen. Until then, I'm as skeptical about dark matter as Lemaitre was in his answer to Napoleon, "God? I have no need of that hypothesis."

Thanks Mikey. I had it backwards, should have non-baryonic, things like neutrinos and WIMPS. Of course the problem with these types of matter is that it doesn't absorb or emit light, it justs bends it, and that makes viewing difficult. They just can't prove yet which one is the primary source or what combination there might be. I am more skeptical about the dark energy than dark matter. They can measure the amount of matter from the gravitational lensing data and in the gravitational mapping models. But skepticism is good in scientific exploration, I just may be further along in accepting dark matter than you, which is ok. I don't mind being wrong sometimes, it means I'm learning something.

Folks, they found a larger number of red dwarf stars in a galaxy, a lot more than they thought would be there. It is very possible the the matter exists, we just haven't detected it all, or maybe just the estimates are incorrect.

Dark matter and dark energy, in my opinion, is just matter and energy we have not accounted for yet. Kind of like a placeholder, or maybe using Thor to explain thunder until thunderstorm dynamics are understood.

Thanks TReed and Righteeo, Tony! Based on the complex chain of assumptions that is used to calculate these things... Luminance, calibrated by distance, which is calculated due red shift, which is caused by both gravitational slowing and universal expansion, etc, etc,... I'm much more inclined to accept an accounting error than the existence of strange new mysterious kinds of stuff.

@Mitty You might as well say that you don't understand particle physics and since you cannot think of a single other thing or explanation, then god did it.

The god of gaps is not a viable argument and argument from ignorance not a logical vehicle.

Theoretical particle physics is just that, theoretical. Do you understand the difference between things like the law of gravity vs theory of gravity?

Laws are the observable "facts" if you will, theory is the attempt at explaining the observation and why it does what it does. These things are testable, demonstrable, and repeatable.

Further, there is one fact I can assert. Man creates religions to explain things. All sorts of religions, multiple gods, single gods, no gods. The one commonality is magical supernatural explanations for occurrences that are not understood at the time of the declaration.

This is why there are no miracles. I work in the medical field and people claim all the time that god helped some poor mangled patient (of course the skilled medical professionals with years of study had nothing to do with it) and god never, ever, gets the credit for being the one that mangled the patient in the first place. That's always random.

Medical miracles also always seem to happen with patients that do not have direct observable issues. For instance, has god ever cured an amputee and restored a limb? If he can cure others, then what does he have against amputees?

Knowing that man creates religions and that of the thousand or so "live" ones and the countless number of dead ones, what do you think the odds are that yours is simply another drop in the bucket of mankind's imagination?

Me, I would put the figure at 99.999?????% I left the float point at 3 places because I cannot say with absolute certainty that you are 100% wrong. However I bet you are willing to say that I am.

Thing is, there is probably no god at all. Just enjoy your life and don't worry about magical mystical beings. Marvel at the universe for what it is, not what you think created it.

@Ghost

My point in all of this is not to lend credence to the argument for the existence of God. I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy of using two theories, with 0 verifiable evidence to support them, as an argument against it. It's exactly the same as you just said. "Man created religion to explain what he doesn't understand." Theoretical Physicists "made up" dark matter and energy for the same reason.

And you really don't have to be so condescending. I understand the difference between theories, laws, how the scientific method works etc. Einstein's theory of relativity has had measurable, observable data to support it. Dark matter and energy have had absolutely none. I feel that many of the previous posters understand what I'm getting at. Go back and read their posts to help you understand my point here.

And just to clear it up, I'm a guy, and yes I choose to beleive in the existence on God. Using science to argue the absence of God is just pointless though. Faith, the cornerstone of religion, demands beleif in the absence of proof. Science demands proof for there to be beleif. I just agree to disagree.

@Mitty

I wonder if you noticed the irony in your statement.

I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy of using two theories, with 0 verifiable evidence to support them, as an argument against it.

And I pointed out the fallacious logic you used to make this statement. There is nothing observable to "theorize" on in religion. You have zero observation. Trying to make the two the same is fallacious at best and dishonest at worst.

Einsteins theory wasn't considered proven until 95 years after he published it. Much like this theory posted here, it was met with ridicule and skepticism.

I would never use science to argue the absence of god, it was you using the absence of explanation to insert god in that knowledge gap.

I'm not going to agree to disagree. Religion has gotten a free pass from ridicule for way too long and deserves as much as you are supplying to this article, if not more.

@Ghost

You do realize you are having a one sided argument here right? You're trying to argue with me about the validity of religion while I point out the hypocracy of Lawrence Krauss using theories, that have so far failed any attemp at validation, as fact. Him using dark matter and dark energy in his arguments is no different than using "God did it" as the basis of an argument. And since his argument is that God doesn't exist, it's pure hypocracy.

So you want to come back and say that comparing those two theories to religion makes my logic fallacious, or me dishonest. Does that make him any less dishonest for touting unproven theories as fact? Even worse, theories that have failed every attempt at validation. That's really just a childish "no, you're a stupid head" argument.

I also find it ironic that you would choose to say: "There is nothing observable to "theorize" on in religion. You have zero observation. Trying to make the two the same is fallacious at best and dishonest at worst." Well according to the theory of dark matter, it too is unobservable, so I actually find it very appropriate to compare the two, and in no way dishonest.

If dark matter is just a form of matter that we are not yet able to detect, then God is merely a being that we are not yet able to interact with on our plain of existence.

And as for this one: "I'm not going to agree to disagree. Religion has gotten a free pass from ridicule for way too long and deserves as much as you are supplying to this article, if not more."

So where does it stop? Going to start feeding the Christians to lions again? Second Holocaust? Treat anyone who espouses religious views as a second class citizen? I believe in and agree with the founding principles of this nation. I will fight for my (and your) right to believe whatever we choose. To practice (or not) our choice of religion without persecution. So yes, I agree to disagree.

kofybean

@junicon: Saying 2+2=4 is NOT fact without some sort of HUMAN definition.

O O

O O <------------ O O

O O O O

Mathematics does NOT depend upon human definitions. It does not depend upon language. It doesn't matter WHAT you call it. If you have two of something and get two more, then you have four of them. That's an objective FACT.

On the other hand, my believe that you are an idiot is merely an opinion (although it is an informed one).

Junicon - Actually there are specific definitions in mathematics that make the equation 2 + 2 = 4. By using topology, I can prove that 2 + 2 = 5 under specific sets.

Oh my, thank you for correcting me Alan. I blame it on Monday. I enjoy reading your articles a lot. Thanks.

Where did energy come from? The one that can change forms? Where do those particles come from?

EagleEye99, energy comes from potential energy. Dark matter is only the first phase of potential energy. For those struggling between religion and science think of it this way: Where ever you see light which by the way is everywhere, but that measureable essence even if detected on a geranium crystal buried underground, THAT is only the brush stroke of God's creativity. Or think of it this way, most people know these days about infrared but on the oppose end of the light spectrum are ultraviolet dimensions of light. Potential energy resides at and beyond the darkest level detectable. Infinity starts before it is detectable and phases through all of the spectrums, passing through infrared and so on through the brightest light you can imagine and still continues past this until it becomes the darkest level again. So, in math we would write equation 0=0, for biologists we would say zero = zero and for theologists we would say the Alpha and Omega. Now, that's Alpha and Omega in the Christian sense and not in the Jewish sense. Jews misinterrupted this to mean from perfection to flawed. That was incorrect. God begins before nothing and still remains after nothing passes away. God is the ultimate potential energy.

matter is nothing but energy in another state, you shift the energy and you get something else but the trick is finding out how to shift matter and energy into what you want. everything you see needed the use of energy to exist, since energy is technically infinite it can exist without reason but can be affected by outside forces, whether its a nearby observer or another universe within the required parameters to spark the creation, or its created to equalise(there was no balance but now there is). once said items have been created they can interact based on the source of their creation, we are proof of that.

it all was started by God

Prove it...

Which God?

exactly.

eagleeye99 that is the stupidest thing I have read so far

the question is what started it ALL so to say God started it makes NO sense ,you did not say what started God there for you dodged the question with bull s**t

come on its time for all you religious fanaticsto stop interfering with real science,go ahead and believe what you want about a God but don't let any one Else hear about it.

there's a place and a time for every thing and God dose not belong here

How silly. Of course HE created everything. We are nothing in comparison to his noodley appendages.

TFSM = Our Noodley Creator.

He? He????? And now gender appears from nothing?

An interesting thought... if energy is always conserved as is a law of thermodynamics, what then happens to all that energy that a human produces when they pass on? It isn't turned into mass because no mass is gained in death and in fact there are credible studies that show a loss in mass. If that energy is converted, what is it converted to and where does it escape to? If at the instant of death all cognition is lost and that very consciousness is measurable produced electrical energy, then why isn't that energy conserved? Is all that energy completely tranformed to potential energy or does it escape and take on another form? Physically speaking, and given the laws in question, I'd say there is proof of a human soul because of the fact that energy must be conserved and the human body is literally the most advanced nuclear reactor known to mankind producing incredible amounts of energy, until the moment of death. That energy doesn't stay with the body, so where does it go? If energy is everywhere, perhaps energy is what connects everything together. Perhaps energy is where memories are, where personality dwells, where all thoughts lie, and simply realizing this and learning how to connect in will offer us explanation of what happens after we die, or can allow us to communicate with one another better and understand each other and the world around us, or even allow us to reconnect with relatives and friends that have moved on because if there energy signiture didn't simply vanish then it is reasonable to assume that their personality didn't either. Just an interesting thought this topic caught me up thinking.

There are some interesting studies into M-theory and other Super String Theories that seem to point to the fact that gravity, the weakest of the four "primal energies" may not even be native to the Universe we live in, but seeps in from an adjacent Universe where it is much stronger, yet I saw nothing in this guy's quotes to indicate that research is even taken into account. Simply, he presumes that gravity exists and the hows and whys are irrelevant, yet this undercuts his theory. I also see nothing of Dark Energy, a possible 5th primal energy, nor Dark Matter. It is sort of like how Dr Hawking left out information needing to be preserved for the Universe to remain in existence when he first came up with Black Hole Theory, though to his credit at least he went back ad tried to correct his mistake. this guy, in fact, quite frankly states he is not interested in the why, only in the how, yet you need both answers to form a real theory. He also doesn't do himself any favors by referring his own theory to a scam. And tat my friends is what this book is - a scam. You don't need a Divine answer, but the one he attempts to concoct is no answer either. Far better, and more scientifically explained and tested, exist. Maybe if he read some of those rather than writing a book for the cash, he might have something noteworthy to say.

RMM1784

all energy is conserved upon death its most likely your conscious energy potential becomes a small amount of heat not to mention some of your autonomic responses fade away not just stop instantly as the "battery"or potential electrical charge is dissipated.

you seam to have missed one important fact our body's are part of the universe so what ever mass or energy we have is just part of the entire equation that inevitably = 0

Alan - Actually the law of thermodynamics is in effect under the current state of the universe 3 + 1 space time and four fundamental forces. If it turns out that the four fundamental forces were intertwined as one force, then the law of thermodynamics would not exist. Another aspect with the laws of thermodynamics is it is upon a closed system, and the truth is, we don't know what is happening at the boundary of the universe. Could it be Susskind's holographic view or something completely new? What about the effects of gravity from one universe onto another, as possibly found in the WMAP data?

RMM1784 - The energy of biochemistry and the energy behind cognition are not proof of the human soul. I have to guess at what is meant by the body loses mass at death and I would love to see a study of people getting lighter at the moment their supposed soul departs. The loss of mass at death is due to decay. Gases are given off and no new gases are incorporated into the body. The energy of cognition is not energy at all but simply action potentials created across cell membranes when the inside of the cell has more potassium than the outside. Potassium and other ionic molecules and atoms are pumped into and out of the cell through channels made of proteins. There is no mystery to this process. When the channels stop functioning the action potentials are no longer formed. Cognition stops. There is no mystical energy that dissipates. The channels stop functioning because they run out of ATP. The cell runs out of ATP because it runs out of sugars and/or oxygen. It's not magic.

Electrical currents are the flow of electrons. When a light is switched off, the energy is not gone, the electrons simply stop moving from one atom to another. If you cut a live circuit the electrons do not leak out or dissipate, they stop moving. At all times the number of electrons remains constant. The atoms in the brain responsible for nerve conduction, likewise do not disappear at death, they simply stop moving. This is not magic either.

The human body is not a nuclear reactor and it does not produce incredible amounts of energy.

Memories and personality are part of intricate circuits in the brain. They are not stored in mystical forms of energy. Despite these new-agey ideas, a great deal of actual knowledge is available on neurobiology.

Read some.

It is wrong to censor people that you disagree with. Why? Because if the universe is constructed because of the interaction of possibilities, then it is impossible to understand it without considering all of the possibilities, no matter how transient and improbable they first appear to us. The community collapsed several comments here. There was nothing offensive or ad hominum in their assertions, they merely appeared illogical or irrelevant to some of you. If these difficult subjects are to be understood by the masses, then we must not censor inquiry.

I am referring specifically to the censoring of EagleEye and KarenBracket. They took the time to participate in this discussion in a civil manner. We owe them kind consideration for that, not censorship. Censorship leads to vitriol and hatred.

wade-3708300

You see thats the tricky part. If conscious energy were converted to heat then it would lead any observer to notice a temperature rise, no matter how small. As it stands the body becomes cold as blood flow is slowed or stopped. It is as the bodies blood flow slows to a stop that the the rest of the system dies, but as each part of the system dies you should still see a conservation of energy in each part of the system whether that be a phase change or what have you. With the case of the human body you simply don't see that. Also, studies with consciousness and the human brain show that once the blood flow is severed, there is precious little time to return the flow before the brain shuts down and all those trillions of neurological electrical signals cease to exist altogether and all at once for the exception of autonomous tasks such as that on a cellular level, but those eletrical signals vanish in a poof.

Lastly, I didn't miss the point that our bodies are part of a much larger equation, I was actually pointing to that as an explanation for where the human energy dissapates to. I was proposing that all energy everywhere is all one and the same, that at the time of death the energy that powers the human consciousness returns to the cosmos and joins with the energy of all living things. I went further to say that the energy a human loses without explanation could in fact house our personalities, memories, feelings, our information, perhaps our soul. Were that our bodies are in fact part of the universe and our mass and energy are a part of the entire equation, then there has to be a counter balance that makes the equation 0. And if energy can't be created or destroyed as is law, you are left with little other theories to the abundance of life other than life iself being pure energy in essence outside the body it's stored within, especially when you factor in that all life needs, produces, and uses energy and/or converts it to be stored. If this energy contains the signiture of the body that once contained it, then why shouldn't we be able to access it? Maybe we do. Perhaps every living thing is connected to one another in this way and creation is all God and God is all the energy of the universe and when one thing dies then that energy it had returns to the universe to be stored in a different container. Maybe as living things produce energy, that energy is stored in that container and when the container is too weak all the new energy is released into the galaxy and new and more things can be formed thus pushing universal growth. Maybe I'm just a foolish flea trying to comprehend the fears of solar systems. I'm no religeous fanatic, just a curious scientific mind asking questions.

radagast

Google "Strange but True: The weight of a soul" to start than go from there. Can't exactly write web page addresses in this thing anymore. Also, in response to the neurobiological part, you failed on one part with your analogy. A severed connection in a circuit will indeed still have a current, but hat depends on where you sever the circuit. If you sever its power source then there is no longer a current.

That power source will still conserve energy as it did before but the conduction in the wire medium is what ceases. In a closed system such as the human body, the body itself is the power source. When the body dies those pathways aren't severed, well as long as you aren't sliced in half, so the circuit should still run regardless as long as power remains or is returned. If you reconnect the power in your analogy of a circuit, the circuit still works. In the human body it won't. Those pathways are forever gone, thus, energy is lost forever with no desernable reason it isn't conserved. But me saying this won't do a world of good. You don't know me to trust I wouldn't tell you fairy tales. Look for yourself and you will see. Oh and FYI for next time you try to sound condescending, please make sure you information is logical too. Phsically speaking all movement takes energy to accomplish so those nerve endings that stop moving and the circuitry in the brain ceasing to work are all movements CEASING thus they no longer move or produce/receive energy or have the ability to send messages. All the pathways of the brain are electrical signals (kinda why the use EKG's to measure thought patterns and imagry stimulus.). Not saying I'm right about my thoughts but wont say you are

RMM - For conservation of energy, the system has to be closed. The human body is not a closed system. While alive, we eat and everything is broken down into sugars and amino acids, and then metabolized by the cells. As the sugars are metabolized, in this case, ATP synthesis, energy is released in the form of heat or thermal energy. Food brings potential energy in. Upon death, these processes begin to shutdown as the toxicity in the body increases. With the loss of potential energy, then the human body's temperature becomes regulated by the outside air temperature and will come to equilibrium with outside air temperatures. The first thing that needs to be done is define pure energy. Which is it, electromagnetic, gravity, potential, kinetic, electroweak, strong nuclear force?

if your a willing volunteer we could put a thermostat in your brain and at the time of death pruve my point.

but seriously the potential energy is very small and what you describe should happen dose happen as for the "sole" having weight it is not so, just some ones miss interpretation of the facts.

for an example put a fly in a microwave watch close when it dies you can see its spirit leave its body ( or it could be steam) depends on your Faith

TReed

I was talking about cognitive energy and neurological electrical energy that is used to transfer information across the brain. Cognition is defined as the mental process of acquiring knowledge through reasoning, perception, or intuition. This information is stored and is readily availible through the folds in the brain, or so its thought yet not proven, and is transfered and accessed via electrical signal and sent throughout the body which interepets these signals. ATP sythesis is the process by which cells are fueled and convert energy. And of course the cells are the last to die in any living thing. The signals that are transfered around the brain and said to be "thought" or the "accessing of memories" are purely electrical, or, again, machines like an EKG that measures these electrical signals wouldn't work. Also, for all you nay sayers, the brain hasn't been mapped nearly as well as you'd like to believe. Sure we can see what regions light up and where, but no one has a clue as to why. That being said, there still is no good explanation as to why energy is lost when the body dies. Oh, and the definition of pure energy is just that, pure. Electromagnetic, potetial, kinetic, ect. are all states that energy can be in they don't define it. For example, a roller coaster on a hill has potential energy and rolling down a hill has kinetic, and were that rollercoaster to be magnetically pushed along a track then i would have electromagnetic energy as well.

wade

I don't need to be a willing volunteer :) those Nazi guys already did it for me, as did quite a few others. The result was... well it wasn't good for the volunteer... but a shining success that shows that there is no heat gained in death only lost. And yeah you could definitly be right that it could be a simple misinerpretation of the facts, but currently the facts point towards the body losing weight when it dies... actually at the perceived moment of death. This was tested in one case by placing dying patients on a bed that doubles as a scale. At the moment there was a weight change, and only a decrease, a lever would drop... not the patient thankfully but a bar that would signify a weight loss. The person was placed on the bed and at the time of death all fluids and feces stayed on the scale as well thus not affecting the scales weight reading of the persons total body weight. At the time of death the scale tipped.... actually it was pretty conclussive and did so without fail every time the test was repeated... well before it was stopped because of religeous piates it did anyway. It would be good to note that gas doesn't directly escape in death and its the reason a body bloats as well as causes rigamortis. There have been multiple studies done with similar results. Is it because I related this energy to the possible existance of a soul that there is uproar? I knew I never should of linked science and religeon so haphazardly.

the live body is in a constant weight flux do to breathing add to that any scale accurate enough to for so small a measure would be thrownoff buy the hart beating and no one can be that still even minor twitching is sufficient to upset the measurement

there wasn't a good control for the experiment and the test was all around bad science,the experimenter was trying to prove he was correct in his hypothesis , good scientists try to prove themself's wrong

RMM - As stated before, electric impulses in the nervous system is based on action potential with other neurons and the extracellular matrix. In fact, every cell has voltage potential. EKG is for measuring heartbeats, EEG is for monitoring brainwaves. But as you have said, there is much that is not known about the mammalian brain. There has been research that has shown the the glia cells, the structure that supports the neurons, may have some function when it comes to cognition. But cognitive energy doesn't mean anything. There is no specific energy associated with cognition. What about all of the effects of the neurotransmitters? What about the quantum effects within the neuron microtubules? Starting to sound a bit more complex?

Wade

In my opinion you are right about the test being bad science because of the fact that the scientists were trying to prove their hypothesis right, yet don't all scietists tend to want to prove their hypothesis correct? I mean no one is completely altruistic. I do have an answer about your weight question though. What the experimenter did was have the patient breath all the air they could out then calibrated the scale to what was regular in that state. The scale itself only measured a weight loss not a weight gain so from that point the only way to tip the scale would be to lose weight because those other variables were removed from the equation given the set-up. All in all though, nothing really can be said to be true unless independently verified repeatedly and in this our hands are tied... darn human rights... so we may never know for sure.

TReed

I don't understand why you would dismiss cognitive energy when that is all that sets us apart from a tree, cognition... well aside from the cellular differences between plants and animals and how energy is recieved and converted. Also, I have no doubt cognition is a complex process involving many layers of cells and nuerons and transmitters, but, when you summarize all of that, it comes down to electrical impulses just the same for how that information is transfered. The fact that every cell has voltage potential only solidifies and sharpens the point, this energy, even its potential, dissapears in death... even on a cellular level. When a cell dies, all its potential and kinetic energy ceases along with its electrical energy whether potential or otherwise. Energy still must be conserved, so where does it all go?

RMM, you think a soul is physical, and natural, and therefor measurable? That's like thinking that if you could just build a tower high enough, you could reach heaven! The problem all theologies have is that there is simply no way to put any amount of the the natural world together, in any manner whatsoever to prove anything at all about the supernatural (even whether it exists, or not). If it were possible, if "the heavens" (the universe) really did proclaim the glory of God, why would you need a bible? Or, confessions of the faithful? If the physical world could answer your questions about God, it would give the same answers to everyone. But, it can't, sorry. You guess there is a soul. I guess there is not. We are all just guessing!!!

RMM - There is no cognitive energy. And that is why I don't agree with your statements. They can take a small section of rat neocortex, put in a petri dish with medium and apply a 16 node sensor into the neuronal section, and train that small section of neurons to run a toy robot. Energy is coming from outside with the sensor and internally from the cells, it is nothing special. It is simply + and - charged ions moving in out of ion gates on the neuron. There is so much more complexity in the mechanics of a brain that Newsvine would be inappropiate to discuss.

big ed

Even Einstien, one of the smartest men of the past century, couldn't deny the possiblity of a God or some type of being that could of set the cosmos in motion. The difference between his ideologies and religeous doctrine is that Einstien let it stop there and didn't believe the influence went any further then the initial push. The issue I think you are having, and one I suffer from as well, is that religeons in general want to set rules and guidelines about life and the afterlife based on mythology passed down the generations that don't fit with the more educated view of the world around us. I'm am only open to the possiblity of a physical soul based on the present information I've observed. I don't think your argument holds ground against this thought because you forget many other things that we know exist and are physical that have yet to be measured and/or seen. For example; feelings, memories, thought in general. Even gravity itself is something we know to exist and have lots of pretty formulas to attempt to understand but still fall short as to the why or how. In respects to religeous doctrine and the effects worship has or doesn't have or even the proclamation of heavens glory, these are all aspects of religeon trying to center itself and make itself seem important and relavent in order to gain or reserve a large degree of control on the masses through fear of the unknown and misinformation. If you look at all religeons you'll see the common ground on that front. Religeon has long been used keep people in line and content with their lot in life regardless of how sour that lot might be. This in turn has the adverse effect on the educated to completely dismiss all religeous doctrine down to the very heart, or in this case soul.

TReed

How can you possibly say there is no cognitive energy and yet seem to know so much about human physiology? Cognition needs energy to be and can't exist without it. And just so we are clear on what cognition is, it is the ability to acquire knowledge through reasoning, intuition, or perception and it is used to learn, to grow, to adapt, and is the bar at which we measure intelligent life. Energy is needed to perform any of these tasks. Even in your rebuttal you say that enery is added to the petri dish to make things start ticking. You also say that these cells can be be "trained" to run a toy robot when in fact these cells aren't producing any sort of cognition, they are only becoming reactionary to an electric charge and in no way are producing the effects you talk about on there own without the outside influence of a control that guides the electric charge to the correct areas. Your right, that isn't anything more special than a positive and negative charged ions. Cognition is something different and something uncomparable to robotics tricks of switching a circuit board that transfers electrical signals with an organic circuit board that transfers signals to do the same tasks. Try teaching that petri dish how to think on its own like the rat could before it was scalped and I can promise you that you will fall far short of your goal. Continuing on this, there has never once been a successful experiment where the blood flow was completely cut off to the brain of any creature, or where the brain was removed and connected to electrical impulses while fed the required oxygen to work properly, in which the brain continued to fuction as it did before. In fact, this can actually be viewed in brain dead patients. The bodies of these people continue to live through outside stimulation, as was suggested is a feasable method to keep cells alive in your example, however, disconnect the wires and the body dies. In these patients there are no longer electrical signals traversing the brain and, because of this, the cells throughout the body no longer act right or continue to be able to produce/create/use energy unassisted. These signals are simulated onto the brain and heart to keep the body fuctioning. In cases such as these the doctor will almost always declare the patient deceased because the neurological pathways have all shut down and have no chance of repair. The "cognitive energy" or the energy needed to produce any form of thought has disiapated and gone and even when you add the energy needed from an outside source there is no possibility of reanimation or ability to function as an independent entity such as was the case prior, thus, energy is lost and not conserved. Would you lead me to believe you feel life itself is merely the firing of nuerons and has no meaning whatsoever. If that is the case then whats the point of procreation, of the feelings associated with pride, of the hunger for knowledge? Whats the reason for exploration or desire to be social or even for feelings themselves? Why should a grouping of cells hold memories that mostly mean nothing to anyone else but the individual in which these cells are stored, and how come you can't transplant memories if all they are is stored on or in cells. Why would these same cells also hold a persons personality and based on those parameters, along with how other stimulants are percieving the outside world, combine those signals and dictate actions according to that individual? In what way, aside from survival, does having cognition help a multicell organism? Why should any organism strive so hard for survival in the first place if all it comes down to is mechanics and electricity? Cognition itself is an energy because, although it may pull energy from other sources, it also has the ability to do work, even at a distance, which is the very definition of what energy is. When a person dies, this ability dies with them. That is a loss of energy whether you wish to admit it or not. I have no doubts about the complexity of the brain, but I think you are severly underestimating the complexity yourself as well as what its purpose is and what life's purpose is for this. There are no effects without cause.

RMM - In the context you have set forth when describing this cognitive energy, makes it sound like this some kind of special energy, that is what I disagree with. There are two energy sources in a neuron, the first is the action potential casued by an imbalance of charge from within the cell membrane and outside the cell memebrane.The discharge spike, if large enough, pushes information along the neurons. The second source is from the mitochondria in the neurons and is usually in the form of thermal energy, heat. This is where the cell metabolizes the proteins.

Proper decapitation and removal of the brain of the rat allows for an intact specimen, which can be placed in a media and kept alive for experimentation. Neural cells can been grown in media, start connecting to each other and start firing all on their own. These cells act the same way whether they are in vitro or in situ. Neurons find a way to function no matter where they are housed, as long as nutrients and oxygen is available.

Would you lead me to believe you feel life itself is merely the firing of nuerons and has no meaning whatsoever. If that is the case then whats the point of procreation, of the feelings associated with pride, of the hunger for knowledge? Whats the reason for exploration or desire to be social or even for feelings themselves? Why should a grouping of cells hold memories that mostly mean nothing to anyone else but the individual in which these cells are stored, and how come you can't transplant memories if all they are is stored on or in cells. Why would these same cells also hold a persons personality and based on those parameters, along with how other stimulants are percieving the outside world, combine those signals and dictate actions according to that individual? In what way, aside from survival, does having cognition help a multicell organism? Why should any organism strive so hard for survival in the first place if all it comes down to is mechanics and electricity?

To your questions. No, the firing of neurons does not define life. Single cell organisms and bacteria are alive and yet they have no nervous system. Intelligence does not define "life". Emotions are tightly coupled to the neurotransmitters. Problems with norepinephrine can cause symptoms of bipolarism and some schizophrenia, serotonin can cause depression or anxiety, dopamine affects the pleasure and reward system. The actions of person with an imbalance of these neurotransmitters can be completely different they were in balance. So, the neurotransmitters define who we are and how we act, though with training, some of these actions can be altered, which means your will has some control over the neurotransmitters. Transplantation of memories involves communicating from one medium to another. Nobody knows the neural coding and some recent papers indicate a possibility of quantum encoding within a neuron, which could mean an infinite possibilities of states within a neuron. That is very difficult and cannot be done yet. Personality is very complex. Not only does a neuron contain and pass information, but it is also configurable. Each neuron has receptors for all of the neurotransmitters and each neurotransmitter has multiple types of receptors and they each do different things. They are like a synthesizer and each turn of a knob changes the nature of the sound wave. Cognition reduces the energy output of the organism to search for food and water, which opens the brain for other functions. All organisms will strive to survive, every cell out there is looking for food, this is what they do. You asked about purpose. Now you introduce God, there has to be purpose. Just because we are the intelligent species doesn't mean that we are to have a purpose. But I would say our purpose is to live.

My question stands, what do you believe pushes these charges and firings to happen? Like I said before, you see the effect but ignore the cause. The cause is just as important. The effect is these cells pass the information onward, but what causes them to do it and why can they never do it again after the body dies? I agree that you can remove a brain and, if done correctly, get those nueral cells to function again, but disagree in the sense that, although they may function again, the cells retain no previous memory of what they were before or how they functioned as a whole and all nueral pathways that were, are no more, and the ones that are, are newly formed. You can't take the brain out of a rat, or anything for that matter, connect it up to a machine, even one anatomically identical to the animal it was taken from, and have the machine continue on with that animal's life such that it would know how to function in any way similar to how it could before nor would the animal retain any of the previous mental compacity.

To engage that second part, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine and other chemicals in the brain do not define who you are or give anything to personality directly, but indirectly affect our actions via how well they are transmitted and how much is produced, which in turn affects a persons outlook of the world and taints their memories. These memories feed personality traits and define the order of a individual traits' importance in the brains cue, thus causing a persons actions to be affected. Those memories also dictate supplies of these chemicals that the brain will produce at any time given how those memories were handled by the person. People aren't born with depression or anxiety or bipolar or schizophrenia, alhough they can develop over time. If a person has some tramatic experiences a situation becomes overly uncomfortable, then they could become depressed or bipolar or shizophrentic. These aflictions are the brains way of coping and it is life that dictates how this will turn out because everyone is different and deals with things in their own way. It's amazing how complex life can be and its all because of those electrical signals that you want to relegate to obscurity and make seem not such an incredible deal. Those signals that once stopped can never return to the same as they were (example; partial brain damage from stroke). This brings me to my last point, what is the true and sigular definition of life? You gave one, but would it surprise you to know there are over 300 definitions for what life is and it is something under heated debate? Also, my argument was for speicies and organisms that show the ability for cognition. A single celled organism or mitochondria does not have the ability to reason, intuate, or learn so they can not be grouped the same. If life's only purpose is simply to live, then why should nature go through all this trouble to make it multicellular and so unique that no creature in the entire known galaxy is the same, or such that everything feeds or feeds from the next in a giant circle of homiostasis all the way down to the cellular level?

My argument isn't for God. What it originated from was saying that since we can observe the interconnection of the world around us, and energy must be conserved, then perhaps all energy is connected with each body being a vessel for a time of this energy, and that energy is what theologists claim to be a soul. I didn't claim, but wondered if this could be a possibility given the parameters discussed about conservation of energy, and I believe your comment actually solidified this idea a little more when you said that the human body isn't a closed system. A circuit doesn't work if it isn't complete so that leads me to believe that the complete circuit involves all life on Earth and further confirms my idea that all energy is connected because in order to have life, you need energy. Without that energy, just as in the lab rat experiment, you have no life.

RMM - The fact still remains that neuron firing is due to the build up of ionic charges at the neuronal membrane, the energy potential is adjustable via the ion gates. This energy gradient is from the ionic concentrations and the system wants to come to an equilibrium.

Considering that I have a serotonin deficiency, I have first hand experience of the changes in moods and thought processes. As much as I would like to agree with you on the neurotransmitters, my life is counter to your statement. Another MSNBC article had the definition of life down to three words, "self-replicating with variation" and they did make note of the many other definitions, but the three word definition comes from condensing all of the other definitions.

then why should nature go through all this trouble to make it multicellular and so unique that no creature in the entire known galaxy is the same

If natural forces makes an organism struggle to find food, then alterations, including mulitcellular associations, will be done to give an organism an advantage. The last part of question is a generalization cannot be proven, we haven't explored the entire known galaxy yet.

An electric circuit is not the same as a mutlicellular organism, the mechanisms are nowhere close. The human body not a closed system comment is in reference to the laws of thermodynamic. As long as cells have access to nutrients and oxygen they will live. Body death is a failure of an organ system, individual cells die all of the time and doesn't cause the death of an organism. This is evident in trauma patients who are clinically brain dead but can be kept alive through artificial means for organ harvest, so by your definition this can't happen.

TReed

What causes the ionic charges to build up in such variations that thought can occur and why should they function so curiously such that a living creature could access this information and use it to their advantage? You can look at the outcome all you want, but simply knowing the answer offers no clue as to the question. If someone said "it equals 4" that doesn't show you the equation that led there which answers the "why?". I'm saying that the "why" for life in it's complexity could perhaps be the universes way of balancing the energy equation. The universe, for it to exist and all the laws humanity has observed to be true, must remain in balance. Couldn't it be a possibility that in the thousands of equations that might "... equal 4" the correct equation includes lifes energy being conserved?

I'm sorry about your deficiency. I've known quite a few people that have suffered from that. But your life isn't counter to my statement because of that. My statement said that people aren't born with these deficiences. Were you? It went on to say that these deficiencies don't directly affect personality, rather indirectly because of the way the deficiencies change how a person percieves the world which in turn taints or sours memories. The mood a person is in is tied to the memories they store. Memories are accessed constantly for comparison in order to compute the world around us and acknowledge known stimulents such as a wall, a keyboard, a website. Think for a second of where you were when you first used a keyboard or touched a wall and then think of all the other parts of that memory such as how you felt at that very moment. If your mood was happy at the time, then you would expect more serotonin to be produced at this time and less if it wasn't. When that memory is stored, so are all the different connections that lead there, including the amount of chemicals to produce because of that memory. This can be seen directly if you've ever been thinking and reminiscing and that memory made you smile or laugh. Both are common producers of serotonin and production was increased in order for you to feel that way at that moment. Now take this example and direct it in a negative way. For example the memory is stored when a person is unhappy. The chemicals that are created when that memory is stored are saved as well. All that being said, if a person stores more memories that have a positive serotonin production then they are likely to produce more serotonin as a whole, with the reverse, storing more negatively associated memories causing less production of serotonin being true as well. A person accesses their memories constantly to make sense of the world, and, as they do, they access the signiture of chemicals that were produced at the time the contacted memories were made as well. This affects how the new memory will be stored. If the brain more often accesses memories with a negative outlook then a positive, it will produce less and less of the chemicals required to make a person feel happy as the new memories are stored. This causes depression and other disorders because of the lowering levels of positive chemical production via negative connotative memories. This is why you can't be born with these deficiencies, and also why they say people who tend to be more optomistic are happier and less likely to suffer from mental disorders such as depression.

A electric circuit is modeled from an organism in how it works. You even explained it above in your statement. The relay of the signal may be done through a different medium and means but the overall picture and how the signal travels is very much the same. The difference is that artificially we are no where near as efficient or advanced with signal transer as organics are, nor are we anywhere close to being able to store as much information in a single area.

You are right. As long as a cell has nutrients it will live, but a cell does not process information. If you remove that ability from any living creature with the ability, that creature dies. You can prolong the time of death from outside means but the same outcome remains true, once you remove the outside influence the creature is dead. Without the brain, the body can not live. All cognition comes from the brain and is stored there. Everything you are and ever have the ability to be is there in your head. When you pass on, almost immediately all firing nuerons stop. The energy signals they were sending in the form of eletric impulses vanishes. It's gone. The pathways these impulses once traveled dissapear. A brain dead person is dead. There is no reason the energy that the brain, and ultimately body, produces and uses should just be gone. It doesn't fit the equation. This lost energy perhaps being life's essence (I noticed you were bothered with the word soul) could be part of the balancing act of the cosmos. Energy can not be created or destroyed and information is always perserved. That was an issue Stephen Hawking ran into with his black hole theory until he proposed Hawking radiation. If its true everywhere else, why not for life?

Everybody has problems with "origins". Math simply defines its postulates, and leaves it go at that. To me saying that, "to even ask what came before 'The Big Bang' is meaningless, because time itself started with TBB", sounds an awful lot like "God created himself".

OBTW, back when we used to think that the universe was infinitely old (and thus, had no beginning). In those days God had no beginning, either.

Something?

You see, the problem with all this is that the concept of equal sides of the equations means that there was always something somewhere and there was never a neutral existance. So it is a cop out to say there was no beginning and there is no end. So to say the pendulum is always swinging. Particles "pop" in and out only because of our limited ability to diagnose their state. Higgs-Boson for example is theorized to exist but not proven because we can not see it. It stabilizes into everything else too fast to be recognized as the theories go. Well, ok. But if this is the case then ultimately negative energy will cancel out positive energy and once equalized then there will be nothing again. So what exists to inject energy back into the equation to once again (or from the beginning) make something out of neutrality? Either the forces are so weak that they can't stay together (which as we see in smashing atoms is not the case) or the forces are so strong that destabilization once stabilzed would not happen. Thus again, the "ghosting" of particles in and out of our watch is because we can't watch close enough of fast enough to know where they go.

Believing in God is not a cop out. It is faith in something greater than ourselves. I welcome science to pursue greater knowledge but these sort of "sciencists" need to get over themselves. They can individually say, "I don't believe in a god" but to constantly fight what they don't beleive in is futile. If they truly were scientiest alone, then they would not emotionally charge against what they don't believe in and let their work speak for itself. Even Einstein believed in a higher being and was not a fool to fight against what he could not explain or disprove. Are these folks saying they are wiser or more intelligent than he? Well, to answer that question is only to prove one's pride and arrogance rather than as stated earlier, letting the science speak for itself.

Believer, Many scientists do believe in God and know that it has nothing to do with science. Believing in a "higher power" is fine, but the trouble comes when that belief is used to try to prove scientific questions. And no, Einstein did not really believe in a higher "being." He believed in a defining force or spirit he called God, but he made it very clear that he did not believe in a personal god, or any particular theology.

Good question. Similarly, what created God?

These questions are basically equivalent.

I'd like to share something on the topic that I heard in boot camp when asking a devout Christian about his love for all things scientific: He said, "Science can tell us when and where; but, God tells us who and why."

That really allowed me to separate the two halves of myself that were often at odds philosophically over who "wins" in an academic argument on the nature of everything -- God or science. From that point on, I realized that these two are not in competition not are they even playing with the same rules. Can I suggest "apples and oranges" as the topic here?

Finally, IMHO, what we should be doing with our faith/reason is pursuing (ALWAYS) a further understanding of our flavor of "world view" to grow beyond what we thought we knew yesterday.

"They can individually say, "I don't believe in a god" but to constantly fight what they don't beleive in is futile"

Believer - Tell that to Christians and Muslims everywhere. No, seriously, please do. They're far more guilty of it throughout history and to this day than non-religious scientists are. You claim that scientists are arrogant and prideful to believe in their own explanations for how we got here, but aren't religious people just as guilty of that same arrogance and pride in their own beliefs? Just because Einstein was smart doesn't mean he couldn't be wrong (and in fact, see jock's explanation about Einstein's beliefs - he is correct). The smartest man isn't always the one who finds the answer first, either.

On top of that, you never actually explain why you think religion isn't a cop out. You just say that it's faith in something greater than ourselves. Well, from where I sit, that is the cop out. Blindly believing in something and saying that it's responsible for everything we can't explain is akin to saying it's magic. It very much is a cop out. Scientists have cop outs, too, of course - I'm still not completely convinced dark matter actually exists, for example. The scenario for its conception sounds very much like the conception of ether in the late 1800s, the difference being that there is now some evidence for dark matter whereas the Michaelson-Morley experiment quickly disproved the ether. Do I have a better explanation for our observations? No. That doesn't mean I need one, though. That's the source of religion right there, actually - people who need an explanation for something that is unknown. They can't stand not knowing how we got here, so they make something up, and they believe in it so hard that they think no other explanation is possible. That, right there, is true arrogance.

Jarin Udom asked: What created God? Even if something created God or something created that something that created God, the ultimate implication is that there is a creator. As the poster "Credible" said: Nothing cannot spawn something. NEVER.

In his book, Richard Dawkins does not reject the God of Spinoza and Einstein “who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.” Instead Dawkins rejects, for himself and the vast majority of scientists, that there is any possibility that the Einsteinian God can be teleologically active in Creation. It is the Einsteinian God that provides a foundation on which a bridge can be constructed. The "Gap" we will attempt to bridge is "whether the "Einsteinian God" can be teleologically active? In other words, is there any possible scientific basis to believe that statistically improbable events (miracles) can occur?

As our speculative bridge, please consider the following:

In quantum mechanics, the initial quantum state of any system evolves over time into a probability distribution of all possible states consistent with the initial boundary condition. If an initial state is assumed in which all possible states and spacetime geometries are subsumed, a probability distribution of possible states, including all observable states, will necessarily arise. Applying time symmetry, this probability distribution will simultaneously appear as the set of all futures and the set all histories which can arise from and lead to this common point of origination. As this point of origination constitutes both the system’s beginning and ending boundary condition, all actualizations must occur within this contextuality.

If the big bang is then understood to have occurred as an actualization event within this preexistent contextuality, it would constitute the initial boundary condition for our universe and, inter alia, embody all of the laws of physics pursuant to which our universe could thereafter evolve. All subsequent actualizations would then be strongly bounded by this and the set of all immediately preceding actualizations; but would also be subtly influenced by a future unity toward which all of our possible futures would necessarily converge.

This model introduces a kind of “determinism” into the time-evolution of Creation. The beauty of the Model is that“determinism” comprised of contingency preserves “Free Will” within that contingency. In other words, human choice exists within a set of potentials consistent with the applicable boundary conditions. From the frame of reference of the scientist, it is an entirely “natural phenomena” and, from the frame of reference of the theologian, the centripetal convergence toward unity is “of God”.

There are two key assumptions that require further explanation.

The first assumption relates to the systems' initial state. For the purposes of this conjecture, I have assumed that the initial state is a superposition of all possible states, to include all possible space time geometries. As noted in Wikipedia, "Quantum superposition is the fundamental law of quantum mechanics. It defines the collection of all possible states that an object can have. The principle of superposition states that if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two....

Additionally, my assumption that the initial state is a superposition of all possible states is equivalent to that made by a promising quantum gravity theory called "Causal Dynamical Triangulation".

See: and

As you will note from the cited resources, Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT) also assumes an equivalent superposition of all possible spacetime geometries. You will also see that Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT) is the third leading quantum gravity theory behind string theory and loop quantum gravity. Although CDT is way too nascent for any predictions about its ultimate success to be made, CDT appears to be emergent, with both string and Loop Quantum Gravity theorists taking a harder look at it in the last few years.

The second critical assumption involves time symmetry. In this regard, please note that virtually all of the laws of physics are time symmetric. I wish the consideration of time symmetry in the context of a final boundary condition were entirely original to me. It is not. For example, Roger Penrose, in the article titled “The Big Bang and its thermodynamic legacy, wrote:

“Normally, one thinks in terms of systems evolving into the future, from data specified in the past, where the particular evolution takes place is determined by differential equations. … One does not, on the other hand, tend to think of evolving these same equations into the past, despite the fact that the dynamical equations of classical and quantum mechanics are symmetrical under a reversal of the direction of time! As far as the mathematics is concerned, one can just as well specify final conditions, at some remote future time, and evolve backward in time. Mathematically, final conditions are just as good as initial ones for determining the evolution of a system.” (Quoted from Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Universe, Chapter 27, “The Big Bang and its thermodynamic legacy”, p. 687)

Additionally, in a paper titled “New Insights on Time-Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics” (See: Jun 2007) Yakir Aharonov and Jeff Tollaksen have written as follows:

"Up until now we have limited ourselves to the possibility of 2 boundary conditions which obtain their assignment due to selections made before and after a measurement. It is feasible and even suggestive to consider an extension of QM to include both a wavefunction arriving from the past and a second “destiny” wavefunction coming from the future, which are determined by 2 boundary conditions, rather than a measurement and selection. This proposal could solve the issue of the “collapse” of the wavefunction in a new and more natural way: every time a measurement takes place and the possible measurement outcomes decohere, then the future boundary condition simply selects one out of many possible outcomes [35, 32]. It also implies a kind of “teleology” which might prove fruitful in addressing the anthropic and fine-tuning issues [77]. The possibility of a final boundary condition on the universe could be probed experimentally by searching for “quantum miracles” on a cosmological scale. While a “classical miracle” is a rare event that can be explained by a very unusual initial boundary-condition, “Quantum Miracles” are those events which cannot naturally be explained through any special initial boundary-condition, only through initial-and-final boundary-conditions."

Richard Dawkins, on page 14 of the “The God Delusion”, wrote that there are “no miracles - except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don't yet understand.” Dawkins is correct. Time symmetric convergence is an experimentally verifiable “natural phenomena” from which statistically improbable events may be understood to occur. It also provides a theoretical basis through which thoroughly revised concepts of creationism, evolution, and emergence may understood and be reconciled with each other.

Wow, this is better than the article!

Many good thoughts here. Here's another consideration: We look at time and distance (distance actually being a function of time) as objective phenomena. Perhaps it is an illusion to consider these as such. The billions of years that we consider the age of our universe may be the blinking of an eye in another universe. Also we must remember that science may postulate how something may work - philosophers and theologians get to explain why.

there's no such thing as nothing, we say nothing because its the only word to describe a space we cant observe. nothing is something, if it has a name or can be observed its something, whether or not its perceived as nothing.

This is bad science... Krauss is talking about a void; not 'Nothing'.

A void is the possibility of something; a void is innately unstable and will always give rise to something. So the classification of material and immaterial can be seen as Everything.

Nothing is infinitely non-existent; non-existence is ineffable. What is ineffable is Infinite. (you go where you want with that)

You cannot start with the supposition that nothing is something (or teaming with energy) because nothing (or a void) would then be something, not 'Nothing'.

It all comes down to s%^t happens. Go out and find me one grain of sand. The one you found is now more important than all the rest. But it was just random luck that you picked that one from all the rest. There are an infinite possibilities but now that sand grain is special just like you and me. What did god have to do with this? We can also make S$%t happen sometimes it is good and sometime it not so good depending on how it affects you,

expatdownunda, you are 100% right. All of these 'budding scientists' better study Karl Popper's law of falsibility.

Like an un-popped water balloon being wiggled around in your hands. One can assume the balloon's volume is steady and un-changing but the volume's shape and certain other characteristics are changing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90VyvOhPmA0 <--water balloon to the face in slow-mo

Why would one assume that the universe is like a water balloon in the first place?

Jeff, consider Level 4 of scientist Max Tegmark's MUH theory. It addresses your concern.

When you ask about "causes in time", you must remember that time, as we know it, is simply a local construct tied directly to space (hence space-time). And it is local to our universe, not the multiverse.

What you know as time began at the Big Bang (~13.5 billion years ago) and it simply a measure of the movement of all things in our universe. Consider, if nothing in the universe moved, how could you measure time?

But, outside our universe, the construct(s) of time changes or may even be non-existent.

Alan Boyle

There are three insurmountable problems with positing a steady-state oscillating universe:

1. The density of the universe is not great enough to halt the expansion and cause it to recontract again. Five different models have been ran and it was found that the density of the universe would have to be about 10x more dense than ours to allow this possibility.

2. There is no known Physics that would allow a big crunch to expand again.

3. The thermodynamic properties of an oscillating universe indicate an absolute beginning and a begining of a first cycle.

That is not true at all. The universe is more like Conway's Game of Life. Very simple rules result in complex and interesting behavior.

How does a Creator help? The Universe (and the creator) still had to come from somewhere. It is cheating to try to get around that by just saying "it can't be done, so we will imagine something that can do the impossible and call it God." It's meaningless.

Yes, great comment. Who created the creator? People just need to accept that we don't know how the universe came into being. Belief in a "first mover" is illogical. It assumes the first mover always existed. Why not stop just one before that and say that the universe was created/came into existence, but at this time we don't know how. I would rather say I dont know rather than create something silly like a god that I have no way of proving or disproving. Faith is belief without evidence. On the other hand, god cannot be disproven either. If he doesn't exist, one cannot disprove him.

Bottom line: we dont know how the universe came into existence. At least Krauss's thoughts are logical attempts at moving the ball forward toward understanding where the universe came from using the latest understanding of quantum mechanics and physics.

(Please dont say the article represents Krauss's "theory". It is not. Gravity is a theory. The article does an excellent job of encapsulating Krauss's thoughts. However, his thoughts have not been tested as to elevate them to scientific theory, as Krauss properly notes.)

Dr. Krauss still has a problem. Where did the negative energy and gravity come from. I think it takes a lot more faith to believe his theories than to believe in a Creator.

I would probably restate this as: "It takes a lot less mental effort to believe in a Creator than in his theories."

Personally I think it would be easier if E=MC2 was written as -E=MC2. The Higgs bosun ties gravity as a force to positive particles. On the other hand energy is associated with electrons which are attributed a negative sign. Electrons are theorised to have no matter. Science in its wisdom seems to have turned around the energy from electrons to a positive sign and the forces or energies attached to positive matter to a negative sign to make equations work. None of this does not mean that god can not or indeed absolutely exists. i.e the steady state theory or the big bang theory can exist with or without god. It does however seem that if god does exist we would need to gain a greater understanding of the link betwen spirituality and energy.

And elephants exist only because somewhere in the space-time continuum, there are negative elephants, or anti-elephants if you will.

This is a non-sequitur. "Why" is the realm of philosophy and not science, and is not necessary to explain the nature of the universe.

LMFAO @#9.1 thank you!!!

Wildbill, wrong! E - E = 0, NOT 0E. Big difference. Now +E = - E. It is simple arithmetic. The problem is we love such short lives, so be it, we can NOT even begin to fathom the timespan of it all. Physicists have a hard time with the dimensions of existence. It really aint easy!

So if something (a particle) has a net energy of 0, it is no longer a thing and may be referred to as 'nothing'? This seems like an inherent contradiction.

Oh no, it's not easy! Have a heart for the poor physicists!

Either it came from nothing or it has always been here, in one form or another. Take your pick. But that's true of either a materialist or creatinist hypothesis.

Those are far from the only two possible explanations.

The thought that the Universe must be 'infinite' in any dimension is only slightly imaginative than the thought that it doesn't exist at all.

Even nothing has its source and we can understand that question after we deal with the present questions of quantum theory. But to say god did it and assume the matter is settled is intellectually lazy. God did it how? Where did god come from? What is god? Why is god interested in my bedroom habits?

The latter being the most important question right after where does nothing come from?

commonsense.... Right. The "universe" formed out of nothing.

So much for "cause and effect".

You said that already. Much of science defies common sense - check out quantum theory. And "cause and effect" is not a scientific principle.

Ben, correct! Cause and effect is a philosophical construct, not a physics construct. BIG difference!

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

Had it/he/she had any common sense it would have stopped there! GOD = idiot!

Some form of what you are saying is very common in the physics literature (including the "mutli-vers" idea). I'm not sure if Hawking ever proposed something like that but he certainly would have been aware of it.

what is the basis for your numbers ? billions or trillions - one or two perhaps/why not? do numbers even make sense in such "places" what do we observe? that's all we are given the grace to comment upon. "that's no moe likely" - what does this phrase mean in regard to a different/separate/conjectured universe?

Hawking originally said that we could never know what preceded the big bang, therefore it was pointless to think about.

Later he changed his mind.

Some of the multiverse hypotheses seem reasonable, some are as silly as the big bag spontaneously popping up out of nothingness.

No Peter, you do! because you bother to believe what he "tells" you.....................

man, people are so desperate for any reason that explains our origin that leaves out a Creator. Willingly ignorant is the term. Common sense and logic screams a Creator

Wrong.................................delusional people scream creator!

Why must there be a creator? I have never heard an answer to this before. Just a lot of people saying that it's "common sense." Every single event has a cause. The wind blows because the sun warms it. The sun creates heat from the fusion of hydrogen. The fusion is driven by gravity. Hydrogen was produced by sub atomic particles interacting. Those were created by smaller particles interacting, etc, etc...it all goes backwards to the big bang. Why MUST an intelligence be behind this first step? And why should we not consider this intelligence (or other set of forces) to have been created by something prior?

Finally, why would this inter-dimensional, omniscient, omnipotent, ego of all things care one bit about the bedroom habits of humans who are arguably a trillion times less than 1x10^9999999999999999999999999th of creation? Do all of the intelligent creatures spawned by creation throughout the Universe even have sex?? Why god's preoccupation with human sex then?

Common sense (and a whole lot of psychology and history) would suggest we invented him, at least in part, to force our will on those around us.

"Why MUST an intelligence be behind this first step?"And why should we not consider this intelligence (or other set of forces) to have been created by something prior?"

because everything around us tells us otherwise. All the laws tell us otherwise. If you think evolution is a fact then you obviously have not looked into it. If you think the people who push this agenda don't have a bias then your again not using common sense

"because everything around us tells us otherwise."

So what you're saying is that...well, because? This is not an answer. Can you explain why/how everything around us tells us this? Can you delineate your reasoning? How does the existence of a tree, for instance, prove that there was nothing before god?

If you think evolution is not a fact you obviously have not looked into it. Evolution is why you keep getting the flu. Evolution is why Chinese people look different from European people, and it is why we have diseases like cancer.

I do not start my search for answers from the small idea that there must be a god and that my questioning "how" is going to upset him. I start with what I can see, feel, smell, taste, etc. I then ask questions. I then test those questions. If I find causality for the things I see, then that is what must exist and how they came to be. I do not seek to supplant god, I never had him there in the first place.

"God did it", is a cop out and a lazy attempt at intellectual curiosity that allows the believer feel fuzzy on the insides and concern themselves with easier questions.

I still need an answer for why god cares about my bedroom habits. You can't tell me that this is because humans have given god their own prejudices. That one fact alone erases god, or at least the god of the bible.

Nice example of a philosophical argument that doesn't make any sense in the context of a scientific discussion.

In case I forget to tell you Jarin, your my new best friend!

Keep arguing with blind believers..........

Jarin Udom, Jonnynuke: Please answer the question: Where did the particles come from? Where did the energy come from? Where did gravity come from?

Eagle, tell me where GOD (which is dog spelled backwards) came from??? You ask that question as if it comes flippantly to anyone who asks it. Yet Even if I would take the time to explain it, do you really think you would understand it??

Tomorrow, sit down with a 3 year old and explain quantum physics to them, let me know how it goes..............

JonnyNuke asked "Where does God come from"? I don't know. All I know is that something cannot come out of nothing. The fact that there is something simply means that someone created it - ummm - your energy, your gravity, your particles - or whatever you want to call it - where did it all come from? C'mmon wise guy .. tell me.

EagleEye99 is like a Seagull. Swoops into science sections, craps all over the place (makes religious bs comments) then leaves. He has no intention of learning anything from the article or discussions here.

If something can't come from nothing, and you invent a "god" to be a cause, then something had to create "god" as well. It can't come from nothing either. But that doesn't really answer anything, does it? An infinite regression of creators is no different in principle, and a whole lot more complicated in practice, then simply accepting that the zero point energy has always existed, and that natural quantum fluctuations can cause virtual particles to pop in or out of existence. This isn't speculation, we can observe the process in action even today.

Data is Truth. What we can observe, what we can measure, is as real, as true, as anything can ever get. What we can deduce, using the tools of science, about relationships between observations can provide useful answers to operational questions of how, and perhaps, occasionally why. But invoking the fantasy of religion offers no useful answers at all.

Don't bother waiting for an answer Abby. No one can answer that.

Eagle ,the answer from you? The you are correct. The idiocy is this...IT DID NOT COME FROM ANYWHERE! It was always there changing form................duh!

Jonny, if it was always there then that is not nothing ... that is SOMETHING ... so where did that something come from? Huh ?!?

Nobody said there was "nothing", just nothingness...............its different......................."nothing is a worthless concept.....................calculate 1 divided by infinity...................huh????

And "nothingness" is not a concept? So, in that "nothingness" that had particles that keep popping in and out of existence, where did those particles come from? Are those particles not something? Tell me Jonnyboy ...

"Where"questions imply "place." Theoretically, prior to the Big Bang (or the "Big Bag" - as someone above called it) there was no place and no time. Consequently, "where" questions are irrelevant to the discussion.

How about "what" questions. What are those particles made of? Those things that make up those particles, what are they made of? And so on and so forth ... eventually you have to ask where (does all come from) and when (did it all began) ... and ultimately you have to ask who (began it).

Science only needs to answer how they can be and perhaps what are they made of (energy packets?). Your "eventually" answers are purely philosophical/theological - not scientifically provable in the classic, mathematical sense.

My "eventually..." answers are logical implications. Is there or is there not? That is the question. If there is, then the logical next question is, where did it come from? What or who caused it to be? If there isn't, then why are the Atheists saying there is something? Isn't that illogical?

These are still philosophical issues, not scientific ones. Logic is argument-directive, science is proof-directive. You can still question and argue using logic without mathematical proofs but it is not pure science.

Ok Bill. Have science prove where those "particles" come from? Krauss seems to suggest that there indeed is a place and that is within the empty space of "nothingness". How did they get there in the very first place?

Great song by the call.............

Too bad thats all it is.........................

George, George, George................let me count the ways............It did not COME from anywhere it evolved just like it continued to do here............ When mars was warmer, wetter, more hospitable for life to start................mars died because it was too small and might have gotten hit real hard by another body................otherwise it would have continued there too.............We WILL end up the same way as soon as our core cools down, same ending for everybody on "earth".................done.

"Then who created God?" is not a credible argument. Here's why: Even if someone created God, or someone created that someone who created God, that ultimately still implies that there is a Creator. The point of the matter is: Nothing cannot come from Nothing.

it is NOT nothing, forget nothing, put nothing out of your head! Energy, mass, same thing, just changes form....................where did the gas go you put in your car????????????????????? Did it leak out and the car runs on magic?????????????????????

It changed form!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

O wise Jonnynuke ... where did that something (energy, mass, particles, etc. - whatever you want to call it) that keeps changing form .. come from ?!?

EagleEye - you miss the entire point - which is, where do you stop and say "this existed forever". The notion of some fantasmagorical GOD looks mighty stupid when you consider that He would have been completely aware of the suffering that would take place. No God in his right mind would have created humans.

Dispensing with the word "create" completely, removes a completely ridiculous notion that there is something divine about the existence of the homo sapiens ANIMAL. Take a good look in the mirror, if you can stand the truth, you will understand that the vast majority of your actions are dictated by instinct and that 'free will' is largely a myth. The suffering we inflict upon each other in the name of religion alone is beyond what a loving God would have balked at. Oh, I forgot, God's intent is a mystery beyond human comprehension. Or is it man's desperation creates a need for a non-understandable 'reason' for his suffering.

Sofdude

your quote: The notion of some fantasmagorical GOD looks mighty stupid when you consider that He would have been completely aware of the suffering that would take place. No God in his right mind would have created humans.

This is what is more commonly called the "problem of evil"

In your statement above you state that because there is evil and suffering in the world ... there is no god or worse ... a god who is evil.

Just because you or we cannot apprehend each of God's reasons does not rule out the possibility that God may have sufficient reasons for allowing the world to be like it is. If eternity with God is a reality then temporary horror/evil while we are here is not an eternal problem.

This may be the best possible way to the best possible world.

SO --- God has a REASON to kill children through slow tortuous death like malaria and AIDS but he INTERVENES in American Proffesional Sports because he is a Denver Broncos FAN????!!!!!

You religious nut jobs really take the cake!

JeffD

Why does it make more sense to assume that there is some beneign reason for everything then to assume there isn't. Both rely entirely on "faith" to accept because you or I will never know until its far too late to tell anyone. You can claim faith in religeon changed your life, but phychologically the change comes with a change in outlook. Religeous people overall tend to be more optomistic then non religeous folk and optomism generally breeds good outcomes. Some call this karma, some call this the clensing of aura, some call it the holy spirit filling a soul. Whatever the name, it still comes down to the same. Good and bad are direct results of how you as an individual percieve the world around you. What is good and what is bad is only determined by perception. An example, the bad guys of any war are always distinguished from the perspective of the victor. Do you really think American values and ideals are seen as "good" to a Communist nation? And had communism won, wouldn't democracy then be considered evil? The same can be said about the good and bads of the world. It's all about perspective. Where one person sees a loved one dying and think that's a bad thing, another sees it as natures version of population control so the world doesn't get overcrowded and can still support life which is good. Right? Perspective doesn't need a "god" to control it, but humanity needs the supernatural to define the perspective that they can believe is good. The animal kingdom has no parallel to this. It's foolish to look at a lion eating a baby antelope as evil, or the monkey stealing the mate through force when another monkey got there first, this is merely survival. Where has life, or even humanity for that matter, shown it required anything other then survival to work.

RMM

The fact of the existence of objective moral values cuts against your "moral judgements are just a matter of perspective" assertion. Some things are wrong irregardless of prespective. Torturing babies for fun is wrong in every culture. Our perception of what good and evil are ... is just preception of something that really exists.

Why does it make more sense to assume that there is some beneign reason for everything then to assume there isn't.

Because everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Do you really think American values and ideals are seen as "good" to a Communist nation? And had communism won, wouldn't democracy then be considered evil?

I think you are saying that right and wrong are established by force ... and i say that if the Nazi's had won WWII, their kiling innocent civilians in the gas chambers would still be wrong. They knew it was wrong too.

In one sense you are correct that perspective might influence how a person sees right and wrong ... but the fact is right and wrong exist independent and outside of our views of them.

Jeff D

... Torturing babies for fun is wrong in every culture ...

Apparently not in Syria. How soon we forget.

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” ... Socrates

Jeff

You missed the point. Some things aren't wrong irregardless of perspective. They are wrong regarding your own perspective, which is why I think you couldn't see this objectively. Ritual killing was all the rage back in the day and no one thought it was wrong. Even the bible is guilty of religeous killing on many accounts and of torture. Depending of the way you look at, it changes how you percieve it. Was it evil that God asked for sacifices? Even in Judaism God asked for the killing of things to appease him. That was considered the right thing to do and not a person thought it morally wrong. They thought it would help save them. Was it wrong that God flooded the world and killed everyone but a few people? Depends. Are you the flood victim or Noah. Noah thought it was ok, but the rest of those folk didn't feel the same. From their view they were slaughtered. The killing of Christians was considered good to Romans because those pesky Christians kept causing trouble, but those christians didn't think it was all that great because they were being killed. Again it all has to do with perspective. Good and Evil aren't set quantities or ideals. They shift according to society and individuals. Another fresh example would be jihadists. To them, killing themselves with a bunch of people is good because they feel they are defending their faith with their lives. To their families and friends they can be heroes this way. Our perception of the same thing is that it is evil and wrong and that these people will be judged in the afterlife and justice will be served. You get it? Perception begets good and bad. It is what gives both their force.

Not to mention ritual sacrifice of children to make it rain or snow or crops grow or whatever.

RMM

The objective moral values exist and do not change... our preception of them is thing that is changeable.

Please forgive me for the large cut and paste below:

William Lane Craig ... reasonablefaith.org

Can we be good without God?

Can we be good without God? At first the answer to this question may seem so
obvious that even to pose it arouses indignation. For while those of us who are
Christian theists undoubtedly find in God a source of moral strength and resolve
which enables us to live lives that are better than those we should live without
Him, nevertheless it would seem arrogant and ignorant to claim that those who do
not share a belief in God do not often live good moral lives—indeed,
embarrassingly, lives that sometimes put our own to shame.

But wait! It would, indeed, be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people
cannot be good without belief in God. But that was not the question. The
question was: can we be good without God? When we ask that question, we are
posing in a provocative way the meta-ethical question of the objectivity of
moral values. Are the values we hold dear and guide our lives by mere social
conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere
expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or
not? Or are they valid independently of our apprehension of them, and if so,
what is their foundation? Moreover, if morality is just a human convention,
then why should we act morally, especially when it conflicts with
self-interest? Or are we in some way held accountable for our moral decisions
and actions?

Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral
values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the
absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human
convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We
might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence
of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does
not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good
without God. On the other hand, if we do believe that moral values and duties
are objective, that provides moral grounds for believing in God.

Consider, then, the hypothesis that God exists. First, if God exists,
objective moral values exist. To say that there are objective moral values is
to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody
believes it to be so. It is to say, for example, that Nazi anti-Semitism was
morally wrong, even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that
it was good; and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II
and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with
them.

On the theistic view, objective moral values are rooted in God. God’s own
holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all
actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is what Plato called the
“Good.” He is the locus and source of moral value. He is by nature loving,
generous, just, faithful, kind, and so forth.

Moreover, God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of
divine commands which constitute our moral duties or obligations. Far from
being arbitrary, these commands flow necessarily from His moral nature. In the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, the whole moral duty of man can be summed up in the
two great commandments: First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your
strength and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind,
and, second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On this foundation we
can affirm the objective goodness and rightness of love, generosity,
self-sacrifice, and equality, and condemn as objectively evil and wrong
selfishness, hatred, abuse, discrimination, and oppression.

Finally, on the theistic hypothesis God holds all persons morally accountable
for their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be
vindicated. Good ultimately triumphs over evil, and we shall finally see that
we do live in a moral universe after all. Despite the inequities of this life,
in the end the scales of God’s justice will be balanced. Thus, the moral
choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance. We can
with consistency make moral choices which run contrary to our self-interest and
even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice, knowing that such decisions are
not empty and ultimately meaningless gestures. Rather our moral lives have a
paramount significance. So I think it is evident that theism provides a sound
foundation for morality.

Contrast this with the atheistic hypothesis. First, if atheism is true,
objective moral values do not exist. If God does not exist, then what is the
foundation for moral values? More particularly, what is the basis for the value
of human beings? If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason
to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively
true. Moreover, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything?
Who or what imposes any moral duties upon us? Michael Ruse, a philosopher of
science, writes,

The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans
have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological
worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and
teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an
objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says
‘Love they neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond
themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without
foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any
deeper meaning is illusory . . . .1

As a result of socio-biological pressures, there has evolved among homo
sapiens a sort of “herd morality” which functions well in the perpetuation
of our species in the struggle for survival. But there does not seem to be
anything about homo sapiens that makes this morality objectively
true.

Moreover, on the atheistic view there is no divine lawgiver. But then what
source is there for moral obligation? Richard Taylor, an eminent ethicist,
writes,

The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine
lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong,
not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions
of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well. Thus, even educated
persons sometimes declare that such things are war, or abortion, or the
violation of certain human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that
they have said something true and significant. Educated people do not need to
be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside
of religion.2

He concludes,

Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon
moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion,
are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying
that they discourse without meaning.3

Now it is important that we remain clear in understanding the issue before
us. The question is not: Must we believe in God in order to live
moral lives? There is no reason to think that atheists and theists alike may
not live what we normally characterize as good and decent lives. Similarly, the
question is not: Can we formulate a system of ethics without reference
to God? If the non-theist grants that human beings do have objective value,
then there is no reason to think that he cannot work out a system of ethics with
which the theist would also largely agree. Or again, the question is
not: Can we recognize the existence of objective moral values without
reference to God? The theist will typically maintain that a person need not
believe in God in order to recognize, say, that we should love our children.
Rather, as humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz puts it, “The central question about
moral and ethical principles concerns this ontological foundation. If they are
neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, are they
purely ephemeral?”4

If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved
by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After
all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental
by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal
speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are
doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some
action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in
the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic
view nothing really wrong about committing incest. If, as Kurtz
states, “The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and
custom, feeling and fashion,”5 then the non-conformist who chooses to
flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting
unfashionably.

The objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic world view is
underscored by two implications of that world view: materialism and
determinism. Naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists, who regard
man as a purely animal organism. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his
being (call it soul or mind or what have you), then he is not qualitatively
different from other animal species. For him to regard human morality as
objective is to fall into the trap of specie-ism. On a materialistic
anthropology there is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more
valuable than rats. Secondly, if there is no mind distinct from the brain, then
everything we think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our
genetic make-up. There is no personal agent who freely decides to do
something. But without freedom, none of our choices is morally significant.
They are like the jerks of a puppet’s limbs, controlled by the strings of
sensory input and physical constitution. And what moral value does a puppet or
its movements have?

Thus, if naturalism is true, it becomes impossible to condemn war,
oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, or love
as good. It does not matter what values you choose—for there is no right and
wrong; good and evil do not exist. That means that an atrocity like the
Holocaust was really morally indifferent. You may think that it was wrong, but
your opinion has no more validity than that of the Nazi war criminal who thought
it was good. In his book Morality after Auschwitz, Peter Haas asks how
an entire society could have willingly participated in a state-sponsored program
of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without any serious opposition.
He argues that

far from being contemptuous of ethics, the perpetrators acted
in strict conformity with an ethic which held that, however difficult and
unpleasant the task might have been, mass extermination of the Jews and Gypsies
was entirely justified. . . . the Holocaust as a sustained effort was possible
only because a new ethic was in place that did not define the arrest and
deportation of Jews as wrong and in fact defined it as ethically tolerable and
ever good.6

Moreover, Haas points out, because of its coherence and internal
consistency, the Nazi ethic could not be discredited from within. Only from a
transcendent vantage point which stands above relativistic, socio-cultural mores
could such a critique be launched. But in the absence of God, it is precisely
such a vantage point that we lack. One Rabbi who was imprisoned at Auschwitz
said that it was as though all the Ten Commandments had been reversed: thou
shalt kill, thou shalt lie, thou shalt steal. Mankind has never seen such a
hell. And yet, in a real sense, if naturalism is true, our world is
Auschwitz. There is no good and evil, no right and wrong. Objective moral
values do not exist.

Moreover, if atheism is true, there is no moral accountability for one’s
actions. Even if there were objective moral values and duties under naturalism,
they are irrelevant because there is no moral accountability. If life ends at
the grave, it makes no difference whether one lives as a Stalin or as a saint.
As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly said: “If there is no
immortality, then all things are permitted.”7

The state torturers in Soviet prisons understood this all too well. Richard
Wurmbrand reports,

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no
faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be
human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The
Communist torturers often said, ‘There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment
for evil. We can do what we wish.’ I have heard one torturer even say, ‘I
thank God, in whom I don’t believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can
express all the evil in my heart.’ He expressed it in unbelievable brutality
and torture inflected on prisoners.8

Given the finality of death, it really does not matter how you live. So what
do you say to someone who concludes that we may as well just live as we please,
out of pure self-interest? This presents a pretty grim picture for an atheistic
ethicist like Kai Nielsen of the University of Calgary. He writes,

We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral
point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual
egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I
have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . .
. Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take
you to morality.9

Somebody might say that it is in our best self-interest to adopt a moral
life-style. But clearly, that is not always true: we all know situations in
which self-interest runs smack in the face of morality. Moreover, if one is
sufficiently powerful, like a Ferdinand Marcos or a Papa Doc Duvalier or even a
Donald Trump, then one can pretty much ignore the dictates of conscience and
safely live in self-indulgence. Historian Stewart C. Easton sums it up well
when he writes, “There is no objective reason why man should be moral, unless
morality ‘pays off’ in his social life or makes him ‘feel good.’ There is no
objective reason why man should do anything save for the pleasure it affords
him.”10

Acts of self-sacrifice become particularly inept on a naturalistic world
view. Why should you sacrifice your self-interest and especially your life for
the sake of someone else? There can be no good reason for adopting such a
self-negating course of action on the naturalistic world view. Considered from
the socio-biological point of view, such altruistic behavior is merely the
result of evolutionary conditioning which helps to perpetuate the species. A
mother rushing into a burning house to rescue her children or a soldier throwing
his body over a hand grenade to save his comrades does nothing more significant
or praiseworthy, morally speaking, than a fighter ant which sacrifices itself
for the sake of the ant hill. Common sense dictates that we should resist, if
we can, the socio-biological pressures to such self-destructive activity and
choose instead to act in our best self-interest. The philosopher of religion
John Hick invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of
socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions. He writes:

Suppose him to be called upon to immolate himself for the sake
of the ant-hill. He feels the powerful pressure of instinct pushing him towards
this self-destruction. But he asks himself why he should voluntarily . . .
carry out the suicidal programme to which instinct prompts him? Why should he
regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to
him than his own continued existence? . . . Since all that he is and has or ever
can have is his own present existence, surely in so far as he is free from the
domination of the blind force of instinct he will opt for life—his own
life.11

Now why should we choose any differently? Life is too short to jeopardize it
by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person
is just stupid. Thus the absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of
naturalism makes an ethic of compassion and self-sacrifice a hollow
abstraction. R. Z. Friedman, a philosopher of the University of Toronto,
concludes, “Without religion the coherence of an ethic of compassion cannot be
established. The principle of respect for persons and the principle of the
survival of the fittest are mutually exclusive.”12

We thus come to radically different perspectives on morality depending upon
whether or not God exists. If God exists, there is a sound foundation for
morality. If God does not exist, then, as Nietzsche saw, we are ultimately
landed in nihilism.

But the choice between the two need not be arbitrarily made. On the
contrary, the very considerations we have been discussing can constitute moral
justification for the existence of God.

For example, if we do think that objective moral values exist, then we shall
be led logically to the conclusion that God exists. And could anything be more
obvious than that objective moral values do exist? There is no more
reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality
of the physical world. The reasoning of Ruse is at worst a text-book example of
the genetic fallacy and at best only proves that our subjective perception of
objective moral values has evolved. But if moral values are gradually
discovered, not invented, then such a gradual and fallible apprehension of the
moral realm no more undermines the objective reality of that realm than our
gradual, fallible perception of the physical world undermines the objectivity of
that realm. The fact is that we do apprehend objective values, and we all know
it. Actions like rape, torture, child abuse, and brutality are not just
socially unacceptable behavior—they are moral abominations. As Ruse himself
states, “The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children
is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5.”13 By the same token, love,
generosity, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. People who fail to
see this are just morally handicapped, and there is no reason to allow their
impaired vision to call into question what we see clearly. Thus, the existence
of objective moral values serves to demonstrate the existence of God.

Or consider the nature of moral obligation. What makes certain actions right
or wrong for us? What or who imposes moral duties upon us? Why is it that we
ought to do certain things and ought not to do other things? Where does this
‘ought’ come from? Traditionally, our moral obligations were thought to be laid
upon us by God’s moral commands. But if we deny God’s existence, then it is
difficult to make sense of moral duty or right and wrong, as Richard Taylor
explains,

A duty is something that is owed . . . . But something can be
owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as
duty in isolation . . . . The idea of political or legal obligation is clear
enough . . . . Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, and
referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to
some lawmaker higher . . . . than those of the state is understood. In other
words, our moral obligations can . . . be understood as those that are imposed
by God. This does give a clear sense to the claim that our moral obligations
are more binding upon us than our political obligations . . . . But what if this
higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of
a moral obligation . . . still make sense? . . . . the concept of moral
obligation [is] unintelligible apart form the idea of God. The words remain,
but their meaning is gone.14

It follows that moral obligations and right and wrong necessitate God’s
existence. And certainly we do have such obligations. Speaking recently on a
Canadian University campus, I noticed a poster put up by the Sexual Assault
& Information Center. It read: “Sexual Assault: No One Has the Right to
Abuse a Child, Woman, or Man.” Most of us recognize that that statement is
evidently true. But the atheist can make no sense of a person’s right not to be
sexually abused by another. The best answer to the question as to the source of
moral obligation is that moral rightness or wrongness consists in agreement or
disagreement with the will or commands of a holy, loving God.

Finally, take the problem of moral accountability. Here we find a powerful
practical argument for believing in God. According to William James, practical
arguments can only be used when theoretical arguments are insufficient to decide
a question of urgent and pragmatic importance. But it seems obvious that a
practical argument could also be used to back up or motivate
acceptance of the conclusion of a sound theoretical argument. To believe,
then, that God does not exist and that there is thus no moral accountability
would be quite literally de-moralizing, for then we should have to believe that
our moral choices are ultimately insignificant, since both our fate and that of
the universe will be the same regardless of what we do. By “de-moralization” I
mean a deterioration of moral motivation. It is hard to do the right thing when
that means sacrificing one’s own self-interest and to resist temptation to do
wrong when desire is strong, and the belief that ultimately it does not matter
what you choose or do is apt to sap one’s moral strength and so undermine one’s
moral life. As Robert Adams observes, “Having to regard it as very likely that
the history of the universe will not be good on the whole, no matter what one
does, seems apt to induce a cynical sense of futility about the moral life,
undermining one’s moral resolve and one’s interest in moral
considerations.”15 By contrast there is nothing so likely to
strengthen the moral life as the beliefs that one will be held accountable for
one’s actions and that one’s choices do make a difference in bringing about the
good. Theism is thus a morally advantageous belief, and this, in the absence of
any theoretical argument establishing atheism to be the case, provides practical
grounds to believe in God and motivation to accept the conclusions of the two
theoretical arguments I just gave above.

In summary, theological meta-ethical foundations do seem to be necessary for
morality. If God does not exist, then it is plausible to think that there are
no objective moral values, that we have no moral duties, and that there is no
moral accountability for how we live and act. The horror of such a morally
neutral world is obvious. If, on the other hand, we hold, as it seems rational
to do, that objective moral values and duties do exist, then we have good
grounds for believing in the existence of God. In addition, we have powerful
practical reasons for embracing theism in view of the morally bracing effects
which belief in moral accountability produces. We cannot, then, truly be good
without God; but if we can in some measure be good, then it follows that God
exists.

Jeff

An interesting read, but this literature doesn't disprove what I was saying. It uses the idea of morality in defense of God. It suggests that people may act the same morally in the absense of God, but, in this absense, the meaning behind morally good and morally bad loses itself. What you need to understand is there is more then just your belief in your God. This is the point I was making saying its all about perception. The entire article you posted could be just as true to a bhudist, to an islamic, to any of the other multitudes of religeons. If you were to impose the values of one religeon onto another, that can be considered bad to the one being imposed apon, but the one imposing the religeon is doing what they believe is right according to their faith. Simply because religeon tends to set standards for morality doesn't change the fact that morality and beliefs can shift with time and with geography. Here's an example of this. I'm assuming you were born with christian values, in an area where christianity was the prodominant religeon. It is safe to assume you assimilated the values and beliefs from this religeon and generally believe this is the correct Godly way to live. You will tend to believe in right and wrong according to that religeon. The question comes when you ask yourself, how have I researched and tested my faith? Do you simply believe because you always have, or have you done research to find the truth and decided this religeon must be true because of the knowledge you can compare it with? If you were born in China or the Middle East or Africa in an area that wasn't prodominately christian, would you still believe the same? Or would you be on here arguing their faiths and beliefs? Would you still have decided to be "saved" if you were born muslim who still believes in Jesus but doesn't think he was anything more then a prophet? Would your beliefs about good and bad, which according to religeon aren't the same universally, then change? You see what I mean yet? It is all about perception. Good and evil are only adjectives. They get their meaning by the way in which they are used and belief structure they follow. Your definition of good may very well be worlds different then your neighbors', but to each they are right. You may percieve going to a strip club as bad according to your faith, but someone of a different faith might believe it is a godly thing to do. You may see killing a man as wrong, but another looks at it as a sacrifice to their god so it is for good reasons. You may see lying as bad, but another may see it as honor to the norse god loki. These are all shifting ideas, morals, and/or values based entirely on perception. Perception from each individual dictates right and wrong, religeon re-enforces them.

Perceptions are often wrong. That's why we call some people psychopaths. There are some values that appear to be consistent in all cultures. Individual moral value judgements seem to be subjectively based.

People are phychopaths not because of their perceptions but because their "jiminy cricket" that lets them feel remoarse or empathy or generally like they did something wrong doesn't work. They hold the same values of good and bad as the society that they live in does but they lack the ability to care about the human response to their actions. There are phychopaths that are religeous too. Some notable ones include Stalin, Hitler, and King Henry 8 just to name a few. All of them commited what we consider atrocities for what they believed to be good. Had they succeeded in what they had planned, would these actions then be classified as good by the society that resulted? America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the "good" of saving lives and ending a war that, had it continued, promised to kill millions of Americans and our allies. Do you think Japan percieved these actions as good even though as an American, and despite the lives lost, you would considering it good because of the lives saved because of it? Good and bad are what we choose them to be. The reason is obvious. They both depend on the side of the fence you stand. What you call good very well could be another mans evil. There are certain things like murder that are generally universally bad, however, even in this, it depends on what the murder is for. Example; The Crusades, the salem witch trials, the wars still taking place for Jeruselum. Perception is everything. You can see that even in our talk. Both of us percieve ourselves correct. It doesn't matter who is, what matters is that these views are different and vary depending on how one percieves the situation. You look at it in a theological way and I see it in a philosophical way. Both of us are "right" and both of us are "wrong" depending on who you ask. The same is true with good and bad as has been exampled priorly. A man who sacrifices a dog once a month for his god may be good in his culture, but ask Michael Vick how our culture views the same thing.

RMM

Are you taking the moral relativist position... it appears so?

Jeff

Yes it seems that way. And you my friend are taking the consequentialist position.

You are probably not aware that moral relativism is a self defeating position. You can google it if you are interested.

Ultimately you are right if you assume the reltivisticality of the argument in absolutes. It is self defeating because to deny absolute right and wrong and say they are relativistic, you are saying that being relativistic is an absolute which means not everything is relativistic. My argument said that good and bad were dictated by how and what people percieve good and bad to be. It doesn't deny absolutes, it says those absolutes shift according to how society feels towards the subject matter at the time. The absolutes still can exist but they don't stay the same throughout history and haven't. There are many examples of this.

The absolutes still can exist but they don't stay the same throughout history and haven't. There are many examples of this.

Absolutes do not change.

Then I stand on the grounds that the only absolute in the realms of good and evil is that there aren't any absolutes. This isn't self defeating any longer because this statement still infers other absolutes can exist within other realms of thought or existance thus absolutes do exist, therefore both absolutes and non can coexist and define one another such that something can be absolute or absolutely not be absolute depending on what that something is and how it is defined in and of itself. Notice the part where it says "defined in and of itself". A synonym is perception. All things are defined and categorized by each individuals perception. An individual perception is different that a societal one. An individual can doesn't depend on society for how they percieve things but society depends on individuals. Society sets the rules that govern individuals by way of many idividuals deciding on ways of thought or existance to agree upon. This doesn't govern individual perception but, as humans are societal creatures, we tend to conform to societies rules and those values and beliefs are passed down. Your values and beliefs even as a follower of Christianity are worlds different then your ancestors were in what your perceive to be good and what you perceive bad. Heres a moral dilema for you that may help you see this a little better. Murder is universally considered an evil but it all depends on how you define the murder. Why is it if you murder for the right reasons others don't look at you as a bad person or a killer and you may not feel you are? In some circumstances you can very well be considered a hero for your murder. Is murder now considered good? Do you look at our veterans as murderers or as defenders of peace? You can say the act was what was evil or that it was for the combat against evil yet it still is not considered universally evil. It isn't absolute because it depends on how it's percieved both by the individual and the society that surrounds them. Even the Bible boasts usage of murder as somewhat good. A person can become a martyr, a saint, a born again savior. Were those attending or even doing the dirty work at the crusification all evil by proxy because they condoned murder? That was the penalty for being evil in the eyes of society at the time yet Christians today glorify it as the combat of sin, of evil. Whether you want to believe it or not, what Jesus was doing was very much against the law of the times and he even committed a cardinal sin against the Jewish church, who also wrote laws at the time, of claiming to be the son of God. Can an absolute be both good and evil? What Jesus' message was may have been all good and well intentioned, but according to society at the time he wasn't good. He wasn't more universally considered good for over a hundred years after he even was said to have lived. Not to mention all of his followers were considered worthless and worthy of death(11 apostles were matryred, one hung himself, almost all early speakers and followers for christianity were put to death). This changed with Emporer Constantine who, through his influence, changed the societal views to more of what they look like today concerning Christianity. The perception changed so what was once considered evil became good and what was once good became evil. There is historical proof for this trasformation. Absolutes do not change... right?

Though beside the point now RMM1784 and Jeff D.-546398, I must state that to fully explore all of these arguments, one would have to consider all other religious theologies, and all philosophies. You two are not up to that, are you?