Is "Dublin" a real place?

Mark Tapley wrote: »

You have obviously been assimilated.

FYP

I don't understand the logic you're putting forward, OP. You're implying if there's no afterlife then life is not worth living? That sounds like a huge paradox to me. Why should life be measured and based upon what potentially comes next after we die?

Just because finality is most likely certain for me doesn't mean I shouldn't enjoy life. I don't believe in God, or a God. I don't believe in an afterlife. When I die, I die. This doesn't affect my day to day decisions or my quality of life. It's just a fact that I can't change and have to accept as a self aware, yet biological organism. It doesn't stop me from being happy, it doesn't stop me from being a good person.

Being alive is a pretty damn good thing. While life isn't perfect, and bad things happen, being given a chance to have a life and experience it is amazing. We shouldn't have to gauge our enjoyment of this gift of life upon whether we will go to heaven or not. We should measure it upon itself; the people we influence, the things we do, the things we experience, the choices we make.

I hope this answers your question OP.

umop apisdn wrote: »

It's from Battlestar Galactica. What self respecting atheist doesn't know science fiction ?

All of it?

Or just the bits you're familiar with?

Pherekydes wrote: »

All of it?

All of it.

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

Well think of it this way. Everything has to have a beginning. But before the universe, there was nothing.

Well, no.

Firstly, it's not appropriate to say "before the universe". Time begins at the big bang so there's no meaning in the phrase "before the universe". It's like saying that something is north of the north pole.

Secondly, there's no suggestion that there was nothing before the big bang. There was no matter at the point of the big bang certainly but we've known for quite a while that matter is really just a condensed form of energy.

Finally, right now the furthest back in time we can look at is Planck time (~10^-43s) after the big bang. This is the point at which gravity becomes distinct from the other fundamental forces. We don't know what happened before this point so we can't say with any certainty what was there. So not nothing.

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

Why does anything have to exist?

That is the burning question. However, given our current limited understanding of the universe, solving "how" is much more important than "why".

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

Our universe is expanding. There was nothing before the explosion that created the universe so what's outside the universe? Just thinking about an endless open space of nothing makes me go berserk. How did that come into existence?

Couple of points here.

Firstly, as I've already pointed out, there wasn't nothing before the big bang, just a singularity, a hot dense energy state of zero size.

Secondly, explosion is a bad way to view it. The inflationary period which actually comes some time after the big bang isn't really an explosion.

Think of it this way. Take a tablespoon of flour and a desk fan. Turn on the desk fan to its highest setting and give it a minute for the air currents to kick in. Drop the flour in front of the fan. The air currents create a massive cloud of flour particles (hopefully). This cloud of flour is analagous to the universe. Each particle of flour in the cloud is rapidly moving away from each other particle just as each planet, galaxy etc. in our universe is doing the same. The overall size of the cloud is dictated by the distance between its furthest particles.
Our universe isn't expanding into anything. There's no substrate of the universe which is expanding. The expansion of the universe is simply a function of the items within the universe moving away from each other. So to answer your question what's outside our universe, well there's a couple of ways to look at it. From a purely physical perspective (i.e. if you were to set off in a really fast spacecraft) then there's just a whole lotta nothing. If you kept travelling then all you would see is everything else getting further and further away. Forever.
There is however the multiverse approach wherein our universe exists as one of an infinite series of universes. From this point of view, asking the question "what's outside out universe" is nobody knows.


"How did the universe come into existence?"
Well the honest answer is nobody knows. Unfortunately religion is rarely interested in honest answers and prefers to fill the gaps in our knowledge with God did it. Our universe could have began naturalistically as a quantum fluctuation in the initial singularity. It could have been started by the Christian God or Zeus or Quetzlcoatl or any of the other thousands of gods humans have invented. But since we lack the means to identify a cause, the only answer remains I don't know.

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

It's hard to explain but if there definitely wasn't any God or supreme thing in charge of the universe then this world wouldn't matter.
The extremely annoying thing is the fact that everything has to have a beginning and that includes the emptiness of space and the particles that caused the "big bang".

Why would this world not matter? I mean in the real everyday world (I'm assuming) you've got family, friends, a job etc. You, as a person, has a life on this planet. Doesnt' that matter?

Now, back to this everything has to have a beginning idea. Well, yes everything began in the big bang. What caused the big bang? No-one knows.

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

For some reason I'm convinced that my consciousness would have had to have existed before the universe was created. To me the universe is a game and I'm trapped inside that game.
Basically what I'm saying is that trying to imagine that nothing existed then all of a sudden sticks and stones and everything just existed gives my brain that pain you get when you make both of your eyes look at your nose. It makes me crazy. I might have exaggerated what I'd do if I thought for a second that there was no God but I still know I'd go crazy.

Might I suggest a book to help you with your problems. It seems that some of your problem at least stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of cosmology and the big bang. Any of these titles might help to answer some of these misconceptions:

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking
Big Bang - Simon Singh
The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan (not strictly about the big bang but helps with critical thinking)

Notavirus.exe wrote: »

If I had 100% definitive proof that there was no God, I'd turn into a depressed psycho murderer. That's if I didn't kill myself in a depression fulled rage.

The only thing stopping you killing people is fear of punishment?
You better hope there's no god buddy, cos if there is you're going to burn!

OP, I think you're overthinking things, why do we need a purpose? Why do anything if we're eventually going to die anyway?

I'd rather live my life in a way I can enjoy it than to live in fear of whether or not I get in to a theoretical and totally unproven exclusive club.

And in relation to having lost loved ones, why not just cherish the memories you have of them than cling to some hope that you'll meet them again?

Just relax, take it all in and enjoy the time you have. It's too short to be worrying about such trivial things.

Here we go again... :rolleyes: