@Setanta,
Quote:Was "god" created out of nothing? If the god botherers say that "god" is eternal, you can just eliminate the middleman and say that the cosmos is eternal
I understand (I think) the premise. the understanding I currently adopt on the universe is that it is finite, however I do consider alternatives
Energy Depletion is a good point of consideration on this one, As energy only ever recycles into less usable forms of energy when used, an infinite universe would need a self sustaining energy source in order to keep the universe from "running" or "having run out of juice". At the moment we have yet to detect such a source, or create a plausible working model of how such an energy source might work, so any model of understanding would need to interject something we may currently deem "unscientific" or unexplainable. You know what the god botherers would plug into that socket.
By our current understandings the universe is not infinite, it is probable that it had a beginning. The power required to cause the beginning of the universe is immense, As with all finite things, they have a beginning, and thus must have a cause (assumption based on causality), meaning the cause of the beginning of the universe would have to be infinite (or the cause of the cause...ad infinitum).
My personal consideration in support for the argument for intelligence in the cause of the universe is that in an infinite existence, everything reaches equilibrium (theoretically) so you would need to disturb that equilibrium in order for anything new to have genesis. Something that could disturb an infinite loop would have to have the ability to vary its state or action in spite of a repetitive or eternal prompt. Would that not make it intelligent by definition?
There are alternate theories that I have considered, for instance you could theorise that the cause of our universe is churning out an infinite number of universes on a conveyor belt of eternally repeating prompts, creating an infinite number of universes that grow expand and pop like bubbles from a bubble machine. As the conditions will have been equal in each genesis, every universe in this scenario would be identical, thus, this suggestion would have been written read debunked and vindicated an infinite number of times.
While I have run many theories through my mind, do not be fooled by the perspicacious appearance of my babbling, I'm no scientist, and I am quite simple minded, so I am happy to consider and indeed welcome any corrections or challenges to the scenarios I discuss, I accept that all philosophical discussions are full of assumptions, premises and biases of which I am not short.
