A letter to a friend

quantum_wave

quantum_wave

Contemplating the "as yet" unknown
Valued Senior Member
Since dinner Saturday night I've been wanting to readdress the question you asked me; do I believe in Intelligent Design. I replied somewhat abruptly, No, I believe in Eternal Intent. I'm sure I went on to explain why I said that and what I meant by it, but I didn't come away with a good feeling about how I expressed myself on the subject.

It is a religious issue, and I think that when people see that my ideas don't fit into any organized religion they are uncomfortable with me because the implication is that I don't believe in what they might consider the foundational values that they aspire to live by. That is a misconception.

Here is what I believe, staring with an old poem:

If at first there was nothing, not even God, then nothing could ever be. But just look around at the many fine things, as far as the eye can see. I say with certainty one of two things, it seems to make sense to proclaim; God or the universe has always been here, and maybe they're one and the same.

That is a little poem that I wrote in the 60's, believe it or not. And I have always found time in my life over the years to contemplate the concept of a unity of all things, nature and God, without making a distinction between them but uniting them into "one and the same".

I am very happy that there are organized religions and they are good in so many ways that I don't need to recite. I have no desire to refute the view of God as Love and Good. However, I oppose the view of "my God is better than your God", and "my religion teaches our children that our version of God is the only true path in life and death", and I do desire to refute religious versions of God in those respects. Not all organized religions can be right, and my view is that Eternal Intent is the best common ground among all religions that convey a God concept. Eternal Intent can be right in spite of all the other views because no religious person, in fact no person is excluded from the realm of Eternal Intent.

So what is Eternal Intent? Let me explain it in contrast to Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design has an eternal God that contemplated creating a universe fit for human beings, and that would give us everything we need to survive and prosper. It would gave us freewill combined with a conscience, and would give us the ability to contemplate God and to worship God to the degree we individually see fit. I add that perhaps the contemplations of God included the hope or the nudge toward faith without the demand for faith, and included the inevitable encounters with evil and the bad side of living and surviving in a less than perfect world, intentionally. So we live in an intended universe that started when God created it, according to my interpretation of Intelligent Design.

Eternal Intent, at least an overview of it, is based on the idea that the universe has always existed and is infinite. The principle is called the Perfect Cosmological Principle. It says that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on a grand scale across space and time. That is a bit of scientific jargon that means that the universe looks about the same everywhere, and always has, at least on a scale large enough to encompass everything that we can see in the Hubble telescope and far beyond, to encompass our entire big bang expanding arena and even beyond that. And the beyond, in my view of cosmology, is an infinite landscape filled with similar big bang arenas where life is certain to be generated and evolve to intelligent, contemplative, conscience bearing life forms of which Humanity is just one version. In my universe life abounds, it is intended to abound, and it has always existed, and is always intended. Life is not an accident left to chance. So we live in an intended universe that had no beginning, and the proof of God in my universe is the Eternal Intent of the universe which each of us can see for ourselves, and by which we can invoke the power of acknowledgements from beyond the boundary of known scientific laws, and into the realm of the as yet unknown associated with consciousness and thought and Eternal Intent. Seeking acknowledgements from beyond the boundary is the equivalent of prayers to God invoked by most organized religions.

My philosophy includes the fine points of how to optimize the ability to seek and receive acknowledgements, and that is where the values and principles that I try to live by take shape.

I hope that is not "too much information" as they say these days, lol.

With best regards,
 
Sure, though I haven't found a good description of "nothingness" from which a virtual particle could escape. "Nothingness" is philosophical in my estimation and never was an actual physical state or circumstance.
 
RE: "nothingness"

As I veer tangentially off-topic here (QW: I apologize!) . . . I'm working on some discussion/agreement in terms usage about "things" - below is my starting point . . . . I plan to sometime start another Thread on this . . . but please give it some thought in the interim.

BTW: Feel free to suggest some other words that have the suffix "thing", that would apros pos . . . perhaps best to send via PM, so we (I) don't further clutter this otherwise worthy Thread.

Definitions: Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com

Thing: (noun)
1. An entity, an idea, or a quality perceived, known, or thought to have its own existence; 2. An individual object: The real or concrete substance of an entity; An entity existing in space and time.

Nothing: (pron./noun))
1. No thing; not anything; 2. No part; no portion; 3. Something that has no existence; 3.Something that has no quantitative value; zero.

Something: (pron./noun)
1. An undetermined or unspecified thing; 2. An unspecified or undetermined amount or extent

Anything: ( pron.)
1. Any object, occurrence, or matter whatever; 2. To any degree or extent; at all; 3. Something or someone of importance

Everything: (pron).
1. All things or all of a group of things; 2. All relevant matters; 3 The most important fact or consideration:
 
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Lol, thanks wlminex, and don't worry about going off topic on my thread. Nothing is not off topic, and that is not a double negative; oh wait, or is it :shucks:.
 
quantum_wave said:
Sure, though I haven't found a good description of "nothingness" from which a virtual particle could escape. "Nothingness" is philosophical in my estimation and never was an actual physical state or circumstance.
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Virtual particles "escape" something? Since when? No connection to phenomena such as virtual particles, quantum fluctuations, etc. implie any physical existence. We find these things prevalent when we attempt to attain the absence of everything possible. Some may mistakenly attribute their existence to spacetime, but spacetime is not itself a physical material.
 
Syne said:
Virtual particles "escape" something? Since when?
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I guess you didn't get it. Its almost not worth explaining because it was just a quip, but somehow we got to talking about virtual particles, and in the context that they came up, I supposed you were implying that they could be said to come from nothingness. The quip would then be that if they appear in some sense that we can detect, then they are escaping from "nothingness".
 
Quite frankly, if a quip is all you have against something from nothing, your first assumption hardly seems well examined.
 
Syne said:
Quite frankly, if a quip is all you have against something from nothing, your first assumption hardly seems well examined.
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Have it your way. I am still open to examining any peer reviewed paper that establishes something from nothing, so if you have one and can give me a link to it I will have something to examine. But do you have something you want to say about the content of the letter besides the lack of my examination of "something from nothing"?
 
quantum_wave said:
Have it your way. I am still open to examining any peer reviewed paper that establishes something from nothing, so if you have one and can give me a link to it I will have something to examine. But do you have something you want to say about the content of the letter besides the lack of my examination of "something from nothing"?
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I get a real kick out of the "Something from Nothing" claim. The fundies like to pull this crap out of their backside when talking evolution.

The problem is that the claim is a lie.

It never was "Something from nothing." It's a misleading statement used as an absurdity.
 
Maybe, but I didn't intend it to be and could not tell from anything syne said that he was proselytizing. Some fundamentalists can be annoying I suppose, but I am not a frequent participant in religious forums so I don't know the players or the synes ;).

Eternal Intent does not falsify religions; it finds the common ground of all religions and allows the focus to be on the unity of nature and God. If that is too religious for some, then they will not miss prayer or acknowledgement from beyond the boundary of known science since they don't invoke it as a normal part of their lives. If they are members of religions that invoke prayer, then Eternal Intent promotes that same aspect of their religions without the religious conflicts. If they have spiritual tendencies but are not affiliated with an established religion, then they may welcome Eternal Intent because it does promote personal communication in a mysterious realm beyond known science, but that is still in accord with natural laws that we just don't yet understand.

The premise is that anything that seems Supernatural has natural causes that we don't yet understand. The logic is that seeking and receiving acknowledgements from beyond the boundary may be based on the natural laws surrounding consciousness and thought. There may be equations that are activated by our individual values, self images, and personal rules for action and interaction. Eternal Intent suggests that self reflection on our spheres of action and reaction may be determinants of the degree to which we have success at applying Eternal Intent in our own lives.
 
quantum_wave said:
Have it your way. I am still open to examining any peer reviewed paper that establishes something from nothing, so if you have one and can give me a link to it I will have something to examine. But do you have something you want to say about the content of the letter besides the lack of my examination of "something from nothing"?
Click to expand...

See the references on the wiki for zero-energy universe. Krauss, Guth, Hawking, etc., including a link to a paper. Even multiverse theories do not necessitate an eternal universe. All of our known physics can only lend credence to ex nihilo, without a god, but feel free to provide any peer reviewed paper that supports an eternal universe. Eternal universe schemes are usually nothing more that infinite regressions, where any initial cause is only avoided rather than explained away.

Everything else rests on the veracity of your initial assumption. If that is erroneous, so is everything which follows.

Neverfly said:
I get a real kick out of the "Something from Nothing" claim. The fundies like to pull this crap out of their backside when talking evolution.

The problem is that the claim is a lie.

It never was "Something from nothing." It's a misleading statement used as an absurdity.
Click to expand...

Then you cannot be familiar with much of the science on the matter. Ex nihilo, without a god, is not a religious idea, and especially not a "fundie" idea. Between some eternal existence (potentially being argued to include some eternal creator as cause) and a true something from nothing (which is contrary to the existence of anything eternal, other than nothing) we only have evidence for the latter.
 
Syne said:
Then you cannot be familiar with much of the science on the matter. Ex nihilo, without a god, is not a religious idea, and especially not a "fundie" idea. Between some eternal existence (potentially being argued to include some eternal creator as cause) and a true something from nothing (which is contrary to the existence of anything eternal, other than nothing) we only have evidence for the latter.
Click to expand...
Yes, I must be totally unfamiliar to disagree with what you said.
Wait... Hold that thought... No, that's not a requirement, is it?

Are you claiming that BBT states that 'Something came from Nothing?'
If you are, then I will claim that it is you that is unfamiliar with much of the science on the matter.
 
Neverfly said:
Yes, I must be totally unfamiliar to disagree with what you said.
Wait... Hold that thought... No, that's not a requirement, is it?

Are you claiming that BBT states that 'Something came from Nothing?'
If you are, then I will claim that it is you that is unfamiliar with much of the science on the matter.
Click to expand...

Did I say anything about the BBT? No. The standard BBT itself has nothing to say on the matter, so it does call into question your familiarity if you are assuming it has anything to say about initial cause (whether something, nothing, eternal, or not) earlier than the Planck epoch. Quite aside from the standard BBT being within the framework of general relativity and phenomena like virtual particles, vacuum fluctuations, etc. requiring QM.
 
Syne said:
Did I say anything about the BBT? No. The standard BBT itself has nothing to say on the matter, so it does call into question your familiarity if you are assuming it has anything to say about initial cause (whether something, nothing, eternal, or not) earlier than the Planck epoch. Quite aside from the standard BBT being within the framework of general relativity and phenomena like virtual particles, vacuum fluctuations, etc. requiring QM.
Click to expand...

Yeah, ok. Whatever all that jibber jabber was, I gathered you are not saying that BBT shows "Something from Nothing." In which case, all your commentary to me is essentially your attitude out of control- got it.
 
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