Why are we here?

@Thomas,

What Herald is offering here is pretty much the standard young earth creationist objection to cosmic origins and evolutionary biology. It certainly doesn't hurt to debunk stuff like this. It's too bead you didn't see his original post about "Big Bang" as he likes to call Him (his usage, not mine). I think you'd have done well with his claims that it was not possible and that the evidence is not there.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

What makes you assume the energy would have to come from anywhere?

Because you take it (out of nothing) and intorduce it into your 'explanation' of the things.
Let me ask you something: if you can take the gravitational continuum (out of nothing) ... & without any problems, why don't you just take out the DNA (out of the DNA continuum database or s.th.) ... and end up with the explanation?
Do you think for example that time-space continuum makes any physical sense? What is its dimension - [cu.m X sec.] (O.K.)
What is its 'speed' - [cu.m x sec /sec] = [cu.m]
What it its 'density' - [cu.m. x sec / cu.m] = [sec]
Do you think this is plausible?
If you can convince two physicists (out of any three taken at random) that anything in physics might have speed measured in [cu.m], and density measured in [sec], then your assumption might have any physical sence. Otherwise it is simply s.th. unplausible as a concept and cannot be used in any theory or blog or whatsoever for any purpose.

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

Quote:
What makes you assume the energy would have to come from anywhere?

Because you take it (out of nothing) and intorduce it into your 'explanation' of the things.

At the beginning of the universe's existence, the total amount of energy in it had to be something. What's wrong with the large positive value that it appears to have started out with? How did you come to assume that it must default to zero?

Herald wrote:

Let me ask you something: if you can take the gravitational continuum (out of nothing) ... & without any problems, why don't you just take out the DNA (out of the DNA continuum database or s.th.) ... and end up with the explanation?

I have no idea what that means.

Herald wrote:

Do you think for example that time-space continuum makes any physical sense? What is its dimension - [cu.m X sec.] (O.K.)
What is its 'speed' - [cu.m x sec /sec] = [cu.m]
What it its 'density' - [cu.m. x sec / cu.m] = [sec]
Do you think this is plausible?

Nothing you say is even making sense to me. Perhaps it would make more sense if you spelled out your abbreviations.

1 Reply

Seen this, which supports my take:

Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/science/fossil-teeth-put-humans-in-europe-earlier-than-thought.html

[...] Not only does the jawbone indicate “the wide and rapid dispersal of the earliest moderns across Europe” during the last ice age, more than 40,000 years ago, Dr. Higham’s team wrote, it was also found in cave layers associated with a technology that archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture. The scientists said this “fills a key gap” between the earliest human skeletal remains and the earliest dated stone and bone Aurignacian tools and weapons.

Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis and an author of the Higham paper, said the artifacts associated with the Kents Cavern fossil confirm “what researchers have long suspected, that the human newcomers spread the Aurignacian culture.”

In a statement issued by Oxford, Dr. Higham also pointed out that the earlier dates for these fossils meant “that early humans must have coexisted with Neanderthals in this part of the world, something which a number of researchers have doubted.”

The confirmed early appearance of modern humans in Europe gave them more time for contacts with Neanderthals before the latter’s extinction about 30,000 years ago. Although recent genetic research shows some evidence of interbreeding between the species, there was uncertainty as to how much contact the two had in Europe, as opposed to earlier interactions in western Asia. It is still not clear how widespread was the Neanderthal population in their final millenniums; after a steady decline, the last of them seemed to disappear in their cul-de-sac of a refuge in southern Iberia.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

What's wrong with the large positive value that it appears to have started out with? How did you come to assume that it must default to zero?

If the big bang has ever had the energy to create the whole universe, this energy should be E = M.c^2, where M is the mass of the universe
If the speed of light is increasing (towards the 'edge' of the universe - red shift); and if the mass of the particles, and hence all the mass in the universe) is increasing, observed as a blue shift, E is not constant
There is a continuous energy source supplying the big bang ... to maintain its operation performances.
There is more. If the big bang has disposed with all that energy before it had launched its activities, and having in mind that energy and matter are actually one and the same thing, what exactly has the big bang 'created' (it simply has converted the energy that it disposed with, into matter, and nothing else).

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@Herald,

You evidently know not what you're talking about... If you want to discuss religion, by all means let's do that, but leave the Big Bang to astrophysicists. You will never be able to prove God's existence based on an equation.

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@Olivier5,

Could we be here in order to give the universe a meaning?

God would not be content to have created it only to find there was nobody to appreciate it.

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@spendius,

If that was the case, wouldn't we be geared / designed to watch and marvel at the world? Not that we never do that but most of the time we bitch and suffer and worry about it instead... We seem to be designed to worry about the world, at least as much as enjoy it.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

The world is something to worry about. Enjoyment might be only to have temporary respites from the worry. And then only for the lucky few.

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@spendius,

In darwinian terms, survival of the fittest and all - happiness is complacency and death. Only the paranoid survive.

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@spendius,

Spendius asks "Could we be here in order to give the universe a meaning?"
Spendius, I think you've hit on something there. It seems to me that since "meaning" as we understand the term is a product of human culture; it's what culture is mainly about. For that reason I suspect that if the "universe" (a human meaning) has a meaning (a human construction) it is because we are here to create it.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Spendius asks "Could we be here in order to give the universe a meaning?"
Spendius, I think you've hit on something there. It seems to me that since "meaning" as we understand the term is a product of human culture; it's what culture is mainly about. For that reason I suspect that if the "universe" (a human meaning) has a meaning (a human construction) it is because we are here to create it.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

You evidently know not what you're talking about ...

I know, but so and so nobody takes the meaning of our existence for serious, I just wend down with the flow river adventure quotes ... sorry, but I could not resist.

Olivier5 wrote:

... leave the Big Bang to astrophysicists.

You are talking as if anyone of them has any idea of what is there on the 'other side' of the black holes, what we have on the 'other side' of the Big Bang ... & what is there in the hyperspace (if exists).
I may claim that the hyperspace is actually the Mind of God (in the capacity of being inexhaustible source of energy ... and intelligent design).

Olivier5 wrote:

You will never be able to prove God's existence based on an equation.

... and to prove its absolute abscence there is a long way to go.

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

... it is because we are here to create it (the meaning, maybe).

... we haven't created too much meaning, if this is the 'it'.
As far as for the universe in concerned, we haven't created too much of the universe as well (notwithstanding that we are the only ILF that we know of, for sure) ... except for the international space station & the TV & the radio broadcasts that are travelling in space and time ... & that may be interpreted as the next big bang by the ILF after us (if we suceed at all to pass the torch).
The ony thing that was proven actually so far is that we are able to destroy the environment in which we are living ... without any problems.

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@JLNobody,

Quote:

For that reason I suspect that if the "universe" (a human meaning) has a meaning (a human construction) it is because we are here to create it.

Which means that you suspect that those who say the universe is meaningless, as materialists have no choice but to do, are not strictly human.

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@Herald,

Quote:

You are talking as if anyone of them has any idea of what is there on the 'other side' of the black holes, what we have on the 'other side' of the Big Bang ... & what is there in the hyperspace (if exists).
I may claim that the hyperspace is actually the Mind of God (in the capacity of being inexhaustible source of energy ... and intelligent design).

Astrophysicists may not know what's on "the other side of a black hole" but unlike you, they know the limits of their own knowledge, including that nobody knows if there is another side...

Quote:

... and to prove its absolute abscence there is a long way to go.

Equally unprovable. Science is not in the business of mythology or theology. The exact number of gods (1? 0? thousands?) will forever remain a mystery.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Astrophysicists may not know what's on "the other side of a black hole" but unlike you, they know the limits of their own knowledge, including that nobody knows if there is another side

... an the astrophysics does not have the tools to 'observe' whatever within the black hole, let alone on the 'other side' and into the 'hyperspace'.
How did you come to know that it is exactly the astrophysics (and not the math logic or another science based on logical reasoning - like philosophy or even theology) would be able to deal alone?! with the issue?
The only things that may be done beyond the observations are making suggestions, assumptions, hypothesis and in the general case speculation ... and their verification in terms of validity, plausibility, feasibility, possibility, etc. The physicists call this the Math.
BTW the statement that our purpose in life is to find the purpose in life is circular reasoning. One can speculate about everything in this way:
For example:
- Our purpose to study is to study the purpose of knowledge acquisition
- The purpose of death is to prove that death has no purpose
- Our purpose to ask questions is to ask the question that will maintain the process of asking further.
This may be interesting (as a su-do-ku), but it is not serious as a rationale of anything.

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@Herald,

And I call what you write bad sci fi. You're way beyond your depth.

My answer to the titular question is: we're here because there's enough information around to make information-crunching (a human specialty) a working Darwinian strategy. Survival of the smartest.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Survival of the smartest.

Whether we will succeed to survive or not - this is still to be seen.
RE: 'the smartest'
This is also very questionable. We are here from 1 MN years.
If 'survival of the smartest' means longest history record of survival ... well, the dinosaurs succeeded to survive here (on this very planet) for 160 MN years. We are also far behind the turtles (220 MN ... and still non-extinct) and the crocodiles (225 MN and still non-extinct), and Varan de Komodo (contemporary of the dinosaurs).
Maybe we will need to survive at least 150 MN to qualify at all for the 'history record of survival' on planet Earth (we are not talking about the Solar System, the Galaxy, and any other part of the universe, etc. yet).
If our planet is organised and arranged by some intelignece (no matter whether God or another ILF), everything on the Earth is part of a message ... for those who can read it.
The astrophysicists have never dealt with any intelligence in space. They will not recognise the intelligence even if they stumble against it. Anyway.

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

If the big bang has ever had the energy to create the whole universe, this energy should be E = M.c^2, where M is the mass of the universe

Says who? Based on what evidence or theory?

Herald wrote:

If the speed of light is increasing (towards the 'edge' of the universe - red shift);

The red shift in the spectrum of the stars is proportional to the expansion of the universe. The speed of light has nothing to do with it. For details, search the web for the term "Hubble's Law". Wikipedia, while not always reliable, provides a good starting point in this case.

Quote:

and if the mass of the particles, and hence all the mass in the universe) is increasing, observed as a blue shift, , E is not constant

Who says this has anything to do with on another, and what evidence or theory do they offer for it?

Herald wrote:

There is a continuous energy source supplying the big bang ... to maintain its operation performances.

Says who, based on what evidence or theory?

Quote:

There is more.

I'm sure there is, but is there any evidence or theory that would give us reason to believe it?

1 Reply

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