Re: WTHOT: For John P, But About Books


Bud wrote:
Jane wrote:
How come ANYTHING exists, not just us--how come there are rocks? How
come there are any subatomic particles at all, of any kind? How come
there isn't just nothing? How come there is anything at all?

And if we were not here to ponder?

The question would remain, we just wouldn't be here to ask it.
The universe, however, exists objectively outside ourselves and
independently of ourselves, and it's here.

The question of why there is something instead of nothing would
remain valid, whether there was anybody to ask it or not.


Scientests of all disciplines work on the
_how come_ just because we are curious beings, because we are here.

Actually, scientists DON'T ask this "how come." Science starts
by assuming that existence exists. What I pointed out as the
fundamental question was "how come existence exists."


There is
a "but" though, what happens when we are not here? I mean our species,
humankind. Does the Universe cease? I doubt it.

So do I.


I'm simply talking about what should be obvious--that the question
"why (how come) there is something rather than nothing" is a perfectly
valid question to ask.

Sure, but it has no everlasting meaning.

But I wasn't asking for "meaning." I wasn't talking about
"meaning." I haven't mentioned "meaning."

The question was whether or not assuming that something called
God (definition open--anything from the Christian God to the Deist
watchmaker to the Buddhist void) does not exist is INHERENTLY more
rational than assuming H/she/it does.

And I was simply pointing out that the two positions are equally
rational, and equally irrational. Each makes an entirely unsupported
assumption about the most fundamental question--why does existence
exist.


We know the simple but not the
whole, there is that quest that is inborn to us to know fully and that is an
impossibility. Once one accepts that he is free to think freely and
speculate freely. There are enough theoretical mathematicians working on the
how and why and just as many theories.


You know, I find this entire series of posts fascinating.

A hundred years ago, literally dozens of intelligent men and
women, mostly scientists and philosophers, broke with religion because
religion said "God did it and our limited minds can't understand it, so
we might as well not try."

A century later, a bunch of secularists who do not believe in
religion are trying to defend their secularism by saying...pretty much
the same thing.

Like I said to John--this is anti-science.

Jane Haddam
http://www.janehaddam.com

.

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