We only have one ice cream truck that I know of, and I am sure they make good money.

There is no evidence the meta-universe ever had a beginning. All we can see of the universe suggests we may locally have had a beginning, but that debate is fraught with peril, because it also comes down to definitions, and we are dealing with concepts that are beyond our knowledge at this time. (Such as time.)

When you accept things at evidence, that would not be accepted in a scientific trial, with rigor and rules, I “believe” you are choosing to interpret nature in a way that suits your worldview. Of course your worldview may be correct, but you cannot convince me to agree with it. Taking something as literal or fact, when we cannot have complete knowledge is a “leap of faith”. I cannot go there.

1. Time appears to be an artifact and there is no evidence that it exists beyond what we call the observable universe. Many theories posit that the universe is eternal.

2. Matter is created (electron, positron pairs) out of nothing all the time. Nature abhors a vacuum. Nothingness is not a stable configuration.

3. You are biased to the cause and effect world that you are used to. We can show that sometimes effect comes before cause, in relativity. This is not a theory, it can be shown in laboratory experiments.

4. Why could this “something” not be a lab technician at an advanced accelerator in an alternative universe? Why must there be a personal/divine creator? If everything must have come from something larger, you end up with an untenable solution, and an ever complex series of nested Russian dolls. What created the creator? This is a pointless debate, since you want a certain outcome, and i will not choose a philosophy based on an unanswered question. I do not feel we need to fill in all the gaps and answer all the mysteries of the universe. You see gaps and have a desire to fill them with a story that is satisfying, and the only explanation in a complicated universe that addresses every gap is a magical being, because we don’t have enough knowledge now to resolve all these inconsistencies and settle the confusion with a tested and true scientific explanation. Yet, every day we close more and more gaps, and so I am not worried that we don’t have all the answers. I choose not to look for a God of the gaps.

To each his own. As long as people don’t try to change my lifestyle to fit their beliefs, let them believe what they want. I do not think they are being logical or unbiased, but that’s my opinion.

I’m convinced that God exists. Can I be convinced with NO evidence? Of course not…NOBODY is ever convinced of ANYTHING without evidence of any kind. I know that skeptics of religion like to say it, but it’s not true. I ask questions and I look around and what I see (evidence) convinces me.

You’re convinced there is no God. You can’t be convinced with NO evidence either. You ask questions and you look around and what you see (evidence) convinces you.

The differences in our beliefs is not, and could never be, that YOU have evidence and I don’t…it’s that we see the SAME evidence differently. The universe exists (as far as we can tell) and that tells you one thing, and it tells me another. My belief in God comes from my view of the evidence, not from my ability to believe in a vacuum.

Here’s what’s happened: you’ve put religious beliefs in a different category than other beliefs. Because you have, you see the PROCESS of believing in religious ideas as somehow different from the PROCESS of believing in “regular” ideas. That doesn’t make sense. Being a religious thinker, a lifelong philosophy student, and a born skeptic, I can tell you that I almost certainly ask the same questions that you ask…and I have standards for believing and not believing, as you do. Because we view the evidence differently, we come to different conclusions.

——————————–

>> “reasonable” people who don’t take the bible literally, and enjoy the philosophy…

This is clearly where you don’t understand the issues you argue. There are TWO kinds of “literal” that are applied to reading ANY document:

1. The woodenly literal reading of many Christian fundamentalists, and

2. The reasonable literal reading of the rest of the Christian world.

NOBODY is completely #1. Jesus said, for example, that He is “the door”. Nobody actually believes that Jesus is a door. It’s clearly a metaphor, and EVERYBODY agrees on that point.

EVERYBODY is at least partially #2. The difference is in what PARTS of the Bible we take in a wooden, literal sense. More reasonable people read metaphors AS metaphors…but that doesn’t mean that they simply enjoy the Bible “as philosophy”. That’s the other end of the spectrum from woodenly literal.

In other words, you’re guilty of ignorance on both counts. You’ve created a false dichotomy for both:

Evidence vs No Evidence
Literal Bible vs Being Reasonable

Your false dichotomies are also straw men.

——————————————–

You asked for some evidence. Here’s a little. Philosophical Materialism and modern science are opposed.

PM says that matter is all there is…that the universe and NOTHING ELSE exists, and that everything is physical in nature. It’s the basis for Darwinism (even the parts that I like).

Unfortunately for PM’s, the second law of thermodynamics proves them wrong. Here:

1. The universe had a beginning.
2. Nothing can create itself.
3. Something caused the universe to exist.
4. Something outside the universe created it.

What say you?

How do you like Vegas? I’m in Toronto this week for a work trip.

Listening to this Last Lecture again…

A mature reader would understand that my POINT was that there are many greenhouse gasses, other than CO2. This was not sensationalism, and I was not saying that NF3 should be banned or anything like it. I think your overreaction shows that you do not comprehend English articles very well, and should not be so quick to criticize.

Did you read any of the links I posted?? A great deal of information was given there, to explain both what exists today and the reason for future concerns.