Is Thought the Actual Force Behind Creation

In fact there is a free journal called PLoS (actually they have several sub-journals) that you can access online. Go to Public Library of Science, pick an article about evolution, and show me where in the text they make "declarations in the face of great mysteries", as opposed to just sticking to their findings.

Uh... that's one hell of a finding.

Oh for the love of god. That was an editorial commentary about a survey of people's acceptance of evolution. Try again. Read a STUDY.

Pretty disappointing, Arjuna. :nonooo:

As Prothero pointed out, the professor in that article was initiating young college students to the study of evolution with some really sloppy thinking. He wasn't doing his topic any service. And that he would stand as a representative of science to those students is a shame. Shameful stuff happens.

Something cannot come from nothing. However does that not also mean that something must have come from something?

The only difference between you and I is that you suppose that it has simply always been here, and I just simply refuse to suppose anything other than that we know it is here and are lost to explain it.

What is your thought on the time space evaluation that comes into play here Noon?

For isnatnce, if one takes a flashlight and shines it into the sky; lets assume that it does not become misdirected or dissolved by any barriers. That light would continue to travel in a straight line until it was impeded.

So if some extraterrestrial out there in its path sees that light some 500 years from now, they could begin to follow it back to its source. But given the time span, that flashlight battery gave out a long time ago and when they arrived at the flashlight it would be dead.

Now my questions here are twofold. Having followed the light back to its source have they travelled back in time?

And having found the source of the light have they not found its origin?

This is the teaching behind the light given off from some stars. It is said that most of the stars in the sky are so far away that by the time the light given off from then reaches our eyes, it has traveled through time and space for so many thousands of years that the actual origin , the star itself is not even any longer there and all we are seeing is the remnant light from a long ago vanished star.

So what we see really is remnant evidence of something that once existed, and were we to follow that light backwards, would we be going back in time to reach it? NO! We would ultimately still be heading into a future where by the time we got to the origin of the light there would be nothing there.

My question to you Noon, is how does one get to nothing? In other words if we follow that light back to a source that no longer exists, than what do we find when we get there? How can you follow something to a point of non existence? if the ray of light given off does not dissipate and leads right back to its origin , but nothing is there to give it off anymore, we reach a point of illogic again.

That is how I perceive the origin. if one was able to follow creation back to its origin one would be met with an illogical situation of space time displacement, where what used to be there no longer exists. At some point the ray of light stops at the place it began but nothing is there.

I tend to agree that brainlike functions may be carried out by different types of matter constructed in very different ways. However I am not sure if we should call these processes "thinking." For example, it is probable that a computer will be able to process the information from a large number of sentences simultaneously, perhaps million or more. This is something which human brains do not do very well. In fact people who try to process too many sentences at the same time tend to be considered psychologically impaired. I do not know what thinking-like processes the computer of the future will be going through, but I suspect it will be so far from what humans consider thinking and that we will need different words to describe it.

For the moment, I think we should leave the definition of thinking as a unique function of animal brains.

It's illogical to say that the universe began from some primal force, as that primal force then has to have an origin, and that origin has to have an origin, and so on ad infinitum. If the universe had a beginning, we simply have to say that nothing generated something, and we have no underatanding whatsoever of such a process, we've never witnessed such a process, and we can't possibly imagine such a process. So why would we assume that such a thing happened? If all we have ever known is something, and we've never known nothing, and certainly never seen nothing give rise to something, why wouldn't we start with something, rather than nothing? It seems to me that the only logical explanation for the present existence of the universe is that the universe has always existed, albeit in various forms.

I don't agree that it is impossible to think that there may have been an event (in time) before the big bang. Nor is it impossible to imagine, or even logically reason out a process that accounts for the existence of our universe. It is a profoundly difficult question: "How did the universe come into being?" But I am not one of those who think that just becaue it's a profoundly difficult question, that it can't be given an answer, and a rational, well thought out answer at that. I'll post my own answer to this question when I get the time to type out my 'Causal Argument for the Existence of a Supreme Being.' The argument necessitates an Absolute Mind as the creator of our universe, but this conclusion comes out of the argument and the premise that it begins with, which is: The state of an absolute void, or nothing, at the ultimate beginning of all things, amounts to an absolute state, and this concept of an absolute state (bondless, indivisible, eternal or constant, and unconditional) provides itself as the first cause to an effect, this being a dynamic, expanding, mobile force of mind. I won't go any further than this here. This argument consists of four a priori principles (coincidentally falling in line with Kant's critical demands for a science of metaphysics). But It's getting late now, close to midnight, and I'll try my best to make some time in which I can present the whole argument as soon as I can get around to it. It'll be up to those who enjoy this forum to offer their critical comments afterwards. I'll lable the thread "Causal Argument" for short, for those interested in following up on it. And 'thought' is the force behind all of creation --this is the most important conclusion that follows from the premise of the causal argument.

Why must something have come from anything at all? We agree that it's illogical to suggest that something came from nothing. Your solution then is to say that something came from something else, whatever that might be. I say in response, where did that older somthing come from? It seems to me that, if you assume that something cannot just have been forever, i.e. that something must always come from something else, and on these grounds you claim that the world must have come from something else, then by the same logic, you must also assume that 'something else' (from which came the world) must not simply have been eternally; it too must have come from yet another 'something else.'
......If, on the other hand, you say that something must have arisen from something esle, then, by that same logic, each successive 'something else' you discover as the origin of another something, must itself have an origin, and so on, ad infinitum. Usually, this kind of thinking leads to the positing of some extra-logical agent as the final cause, such as God, which is another way of saying 'I don't know.'
.......It is irritating at first (I tussled with the same paradox once), but now I'm as confortable with the idea that the world always has been, is, and always will be, as you are with the idea that it must have come from something. It might be a matter more of personal preference than anything more substantive....
I probably know less about physics than you do, so maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see a problem here at all. If I were to follow the path of the light cylinder which had been travelling through space for centuries, what I would see when I arrived is...whatever happens to be at that location then. I certainly didn't travel back in time. Again, maybe I'm missing something; could you explain what exactly is the problem again?

To be walking hrough a forest and suddenly coming upon a scorched section and telling yourself that this scorched section must have always been here just because you do not know the origin of the fire, is a mind that simply doesn't want to bother to follow the burn to its point of origin. But logically, you know the fire began somewhere.

To apply your common-sense 'causal' logic to the beginning of all is completely nonsensical.

To take the position that 'there is no beginning' is not at all the same as what you've described above. What it is is a recognition of the Flux, that all things inherently contain their opposite and that therefore any beginning also must in itself contain the end. Existence is the motion that this opposition purports to describe.

What if Allah(God) is literally everything--both sensed and not sensed? What if Allah WAS the nothingness and then just evolved into consciousness? Then, if this is true, she could imagine the galaxies, the universes, the multi-universes, etc., and her imagination could be so real we sense it, because that's what I believe the OP was stating as a school of thought. I could be wrong. One thing I'd like to point out is that if we do literally create our realities with our mind, then I assume we're truly alike to Gods, deities of great strength, and this would have value as evidence to the existence of an ultimate creator building us in its image. However, because she's imagining reality, too, it is structured to her imagination and not ours. I've thought a lot about this. If Jesus could work miracles, how did he do it?

One thing I'd like to point out is that if we do literally create our realities with our mind, then I assume we're truly alike to Gods, deities of great strength, and this would have value as evidence to the existence of an ultimate creator building us in its image.

There are many objections to this proposition, such as, why does my mind have any priority over yours, or anyone elses, in the 'creation of reality'? If I imagine that New York City no longer exists, then why does it continue to exist even after I have imagined it not existing? Do you mean reality is simply the output of an individual's imagination, or something else?

I think another avenue of approach might be to suggest some historical models for the 'mind-first' understanding of reality and to illustrate some practical implications of this understanding (i.e. if this is true, then it means ...)