But, here’s the kicker, if we don’t know anything about this other plane of existence, then how can we know that our universe couldn’t spontaneously arise from it without the intent of a creator? That’s the crux of the question: We have a mystery about the origin of our existence, and “solving” the mystery by saying, “God did it,” is just sweeping the mystery under the rug and pretending it’s not there. What OP was able to see at 7 or 8 years old was that the mystery was still there, but with an unexplained extra step added.
Comment on Jesus hates American "Christians"
Bigfishbest@lemmy.world 3 days agoThe answer that any person who has thought about it and not rejected the idea is: If a being that has created and shaped our universe exists, it exists (at least partly) outside of our universe. Like a programmer doesn’t have to follow in his life the limitations of his code in programming, such an entity’s existence would be so far outside our modes of thinking that “who created him?” would simply fall flat as a question.
To begin to answer such a question one would have to have some knowledge of the plane of existence where the divine resides, and as that is outside the realm of what we can understand through physics and the natural world we live in, the question becomes unanswerable.
The question then becomes, can something exist on another plane of existence? The answer is of course, we can’t examine anything outside our universe, so, the answer must be, we don’t or can’t know.
I suppose then, the next question becomes, do you want to believe that there is something /someone outside the natural universe that gives meaning to our existence?
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 2 days ago
squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The question itself doesn’t really make sense, because it just boils down to “Why don’t we know everything?”.
The same question would lead to the same answer (“We don’t know”) if we ask it about e.g. the Big Bang. “If everything was created by the big bang, what created the big bang?”
It also applies literally in every field where we don’t know something yet (“What’s beyond the stars/beyond the universe?”, “What are quarks made of?”, “What’s past infinity?”). We don’t even know what’s in the dark at the edge of the solar system. Judging by orbits and gravitational patterns, there’s likely an entire large planet that we don’t know of because it’s too far from the sun and thus too dark.
It would be idiotic to summarily dismiss every field where there are things we don’t know, and where there are edges to our knowledge that are so far away that we cannot know or understand them.
Bigfishbest@lemmy.world 2 days ago
My point is not that we don’t know yet, my point is that we can’t know. All our knowledge is based on studying the natural universe, if something is beyond it, then by definition it would not be knowable by studying our universe. Perhaps at some stage we could reach a way of examining and understanding the supernatural, but for our intents and purposes it’s outside the box, while we are inside, and our only way to relate to it is to choose whether we believe in there being something outside the box or not.
snooggums@piefed.world 2 days ago
If we can examine and understand the 'supernatural' then it just becomes knowledge and natural, or at least our perspective of it does.
The easiest example is natural phenomenon like flooding, volcanoes, storms, fire, and tons of other things were or are seen as supernatural and had beliefs and religions built around them. Some were considered supernatural, or to have supernatural causes.
Did our understanding of them make them not supernatural or were they natural the entire time and we just didn't understand them yet?
'Supernatural' is not a real thing. It is human speculation about why and how natural things happen. There are no gods as described by any belief system, just things we don't know or understand yet.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I don’t really agree with that. A program could break out of the sandbox and get to know the things around it. In fact, there are many programs that interact with the real world, gathering information about it and acting on it.
If there was something like an actually sentient program, it would be totally conceivable that said program could use cameras, microphones and other sensors to get to know its programmer.
The difference between the science and things considered supernatural is that one is something we have a solid understanding of and the other is speculation.
If there’s an unexplained phenomenon and we find a solid explanation for it, it becomes science. Weather and other natural phenomena used to be in the realm of the supernatural, same as dragon bones, mermaid bones and the kraken. Until we found out what they really were and how they worked.
If magic were to exist in reality, it wouldn’t be magic but instead just a branch of science.
A lot of things we can do nowadays would be called magic a few centuries ago. I mean, we can literally make frogs float in thin air. We can make incredible amounts of power from some magic rocks (nuclear power). We can even inscribe magic patterns into sand to make it think and talk (computers).
So coming back to the beginning: If we talk about something like a Simulation Hypothesis scenario (which is de facto identical to a scenario where God exists outside of our plane of existence, however that is defined), it’s totally in the realm of possibility of that scenario that the simulated could break out of the simulation.
Or in case of the Big Bang Theory, it would be theoretically possible to peek before the big bang.
I’m not saying that it is actually possible, but I’m saying that we can’t summarily dismiss the possibility.