Bob Enyart wrote:
"Atheists are impotent to explain anything at all, and are especially unable to explain how the universe can begin with matter alone and develop to where knowledge is possible"
Now please, Mr Bob Enyart.
Have you REALY been talking to a REAL atheist in your life? Where did you get that stupid idea then of a "begin of the universe?"
Your statement does not make sense, since you assume something that needs explaining. You assume that the universe had a begin.
So let us assume this. The universe - eveyrthing that we KNOW that exists and in theory CAN exist - once did not exist.
What was there?
Nothing.
What happpened?
Nothing.
So, how can that explain the fact that THERE IS a universe, there is a world and there iis us?
It can't.
You realy have to dig some more into that issue.
The simple fact of reality is:
A nothing is not a begin of something. Nothing is only nothing.
Since we know there is a world and a nothing can not explain that there is a universe, we are left with the only alternative:
Everything that exists must have been already there in some or other form. We may not know anything about the state of the world in the indefinite past or indefinite future, but we DO know that there has always been and will always been a world.
Now let us look at some formal and abstract logic and proofs.
Can abstract logic and formal proof, provide us any argument why there would have to be a world in the first place, and not not a world?
No. No formal proof can exist that can proof that there is a world in the first place. Formal and abstract reasoning does not provide a proof that there is or has to be a world. A formal proof that there has to be a world, instead of not a world, does not exist and can not exist.
Unless of course one already assumes that there is a world, instead of not a world. But then no proof is necessary, since all we have to conclude is what we already assumed.
So, we materialist, do take a very "big leap in faith", we ask everyone to assume the following:
The world in total exists. It exists independend, outside and apart from our consciousness, and it is reflected directly and indirectly into our mind.
Ok. Granted. Since we already distinguished between the entity ME - the thinking and observing being - and not-ME - the world which I assume to exist - we could also have stated something OTHER then the previous assumption.
That would be the following then:
The entity ME which is a thinking being and observes the world, has existed always and created the world.
What would that have meant for ME?
It would have meant that I would have had to exist at a "time" in which in fact there was NOT a world. I would be desperately alone, and the unique being in the world.
It would have meant that I would not be able to have an object, since besides me, nothing would exist. And because no object would exist, neither I would be an object to anything that would exist outside of me. Since I am the ony entity.
it would have meant therefore that I would not exist objectively.
That is:
I would not exist at al
And to state this more precisely, please read the following text:
"A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective.
A non-objective being is a non-being.
Suppose a being which is neither an object itself, nor has an object. Such a being, in the first place, would be the unique being: there would exist no being outside it — it would exist solitary and alone. For as soon as there are objects outside me, as soon as I am not alone, I am another — another reality than the object outside me. For this third object I am thus a different reality than itself; that is, I am its object. Thus, to suppose a being which is not the object of another being is to presuppose that no objective being exists. As soon as I have an object, this object has me for an object. But a non-objective being is an unreal, non-sensuous thing — a product of mere thought (i.e., of mere imagination) — an abstraction. To be sensuous, that is, to be really existing, means to be an object of sense, to be a sensuous object, to have sensuous objects outside oneself — objects of one’s sensuousness. To be sensuous is to suffer.
Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being — and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object."
K. Marx in Critique of Hegel's Philosophy
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THAT is a realy very big "leap in faith", and of course this fact has been discussed over and over again in history, since it does not conform to any abstract knowledge we might have and is not a reasonable conclusion from any formal proof.
We confess here: to conclude something about the reality of the world, it might be necessary to not only use abstract thinking and formal reasoning, but sometimes you need to actually OBSERVE the world.
The formalists, mathematicians and those performing abstract reasoning might not like our assumption, but since there is a world there is nothing other we can state or assume to begin with then that there is a world.
And not only there is a world, it also can not have started from nothing or end in nothing, which means it must have been there for eternity and will be there for eternity.
What more do we need to assume, besides the existence of the world and all it contains?
Are we missing on something?
Besides the world itself and everything it contains, is there a need for something other that needs to be assumed?
What?
