What Religion are You?

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Space-time is rather a huge something I think... just as black holes are quite a lot of something too. So your 'proof' that something can be derived from nothing is to point out that something small can come from something huge and something very big? Doesn't seem to be all that convincing.

Maybe you think that empty space-time is "nothing"? It's not.

And you claim to easily invent a mysterious intelligence from nowhere to whip up everything from nothing. Any technical process controls the natural forces available to create what it creates out of stuff in the environment. Your mysterious intelligence evidently does not have natural forces to manipulate to produce whatever it produces. Your easy acceptance of it to arrive from nothing and produce everything from nothing seems to contradict your concept of nothing comes from nothing. I am very curious about your easy acceptance of that.

No, I say that it's only logical that there must have been something not nothing beyond this universe.

Please note that I did not "invent" anything, I just followed a logical reasoning from available evidence. That there has to have been a creative intelligence also follows from the observable facts.
What do you mean with "natural forces"? If this universe is created it's all artificial. Maybe you mean natural in some other sense? Natural in the sense that it's not made by us, we are accustomed to them and one can use/apply them in a predictable way?
It's the only natural force that exists, in the full and proper meaning of the term natural. Everything else is created and therefor artificial.

I did not make this claim. I rejected the idea that nothing exists. It all must start with something, which is everything in some sense, causing this universe. Absolute nothing does not exist, nothing is always the absence of only somethings, but never the absence of everything.

From the functionally modular design of life I infer that the designer must have an intelligence similar to us. The only known source of functional modular design is a human intelligence. This intelligence is either the original someone/something that caused the universe or someone that was created by this original someone. By both paths I come to the simple conclusion that this original something must have had a creative intelligence.

Your rather individual redefinitions of "natural" and "artificial" of course invalidates both terms. Logic is a means of inferring from previous knowledge what should occur. Since there is no previous knowledge of what existed before the universe it is obvious and a few other guys throughout history and you invented out of whole cloth this magician who pulled the universe of his hat. How does logic come out of that?

It's not so much that I have redefined the words, as that I applied them properly conform their modern connotations. The word "natural", as used in for example "natural selection" means "without causation by an intelligent agent"; But maybe you have a better definition? We could use the definition commonly used until about the 18th century whereby "natural" means "created by the creator-god", but this would also conflict with modern usage. When the meaning of natural has changed, then the meaning of artificial ("not natural") must also change.
In many ways even the "before the universe" is undefined, time is assumed to begin when this universe began.
The alternative is even more unreasonable.

As I noted at the start of this interchange you have a rather strange concept of reason.

Depending on what you specifically mean with "strange" this statement can have many, even conflicting, meanings.

If you mean "uncommon, original" then I will take it as an compliment.

Do you think that "logic" and "reason" are dependant or independent upon the internal structure of the conceptional space one is reasoning within?

I ask because I think we're both in different conceptional spaces.

Hardly original. This super spook has been credited with shazaming he universe for thousands of years. It took quite a while for people to finally indicate it was baloney.

Very strange indeed that people tend to indicate that, they don't really have an alternative hypotheses to explain the existence of the universe or life. There isn't any evidence that something other then an intelligence can cause a functionally modular system to come in to existence.

Evidently you suffer from that common disability that people have suffered from ever since they developed wild imaginations. It is impossible for them to admit they don't know.

Not impossible. Just difficult. That is why science, as we know it, is only about five hundred years old. The current species (and the only surviving species) of the genus homo has being around for something like a quarter of a million years. With science came a certain moderation in the claims to what is known. Scientists like it when there are more questions, than answers. It is guaranteed employment.

ruveyn

A much more acceptable viewpoint.

I was raised by a non fundamentalist mother in a Protestant Christian tradition. Church was mandatory until age 13 after that I've only stepped foot in a church for weddings and funerals. My father was Agnostic. I think it is important to specify whether a belief in God is that of a personal God or something more along the lines of V.A.L.I.S. like Philip K. Dick wrote about or a Buddhist perspective. I don't know if I believe in a personal God. It's easier to say what I don't believe in. I don't believe in one true religion. I don't believe in "nothingness" (as I understand it the Buddhist concept of nothingness doesn't mean emptiness, it means potentiality- a problem with translation). Also if there is something out there I don't believe you need anything to access it but your own mind and will. I'm interested in how Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics find some common ground. But at the end of it all I am still someone more interested in the questions than I am in the answers.

btw the self satisfied smugness of mainstream Christianity really pisses me off.

I'm thinking of leaning more toward spirituality. Doesn' t mean I'm going to become religious or a man or entity in the sky. I'm just sick and tired of feeling empty and watching people around me die off like cattle.

Whatever emptiness a constructed super entity might fill, People will still die off like cattle. Unfortunately they have no appeal for McDonalds as a useful product.