It isn't all about us. Humans aren't special.

We have no option but to use our human ways of knowing to understand the universe. However, this doesn't mean that us Homo sapiens possess the capability of accurately answering all the questions about the cosmos that come to mind. 

Or even being sure that we're able to ask the proper questions. 

More and more, I'm embracing the conclusion that human consciousness likely isn't capable of grasping the Great Big Questions (notably including why the universe exists at all), much less the answers to them.

Here's a letter from the June 2017 issue of Scientific American on this subject. I've also included the "Imagine No Universe" piece referred to in Dave Bolton's letter.

THINKING OF NOTHING

In “Imagine No Universe” [Skeptic], Michael Shermer explores attempts to answer the question of why there is “something rather than nothing” in the universe and the difficulty in defining “nothing.”

Why do we assume we have the potential brainpower to ever explain such mysteries? Could there not be aspects of the universe our human intelligence is unable to reach at the present time? Consider this: A dog travels in your car. Can it ever understand motor mechanics or geography? Your cat watches television. Has it any knowledge of electronic communications?

Why do we, just one of the species in existence, assume our brains are capable of knowing why we exist and what there is beyond infinity? This should not inhibit us in striving to understand the purpose of life, and so on. But we should accept that it may take a millennium of human development to know everything. Perhaps then we will become gods!

DAVE BOLTON
Essex, England

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Why Humans Prefer to Be the Center of the Universe

Michael Shermer

Imagine nothing. Go ahead. What do you see? I picture dark empty space devoid of galaxies, stars and planets. But not only would there be no matter, there would be no space or time either. Not even darkness. And no sentient life to observe the nothingness. Just ... nothing. Picture that. You can't.

Here we face the ultimate question: Why is there something rather than nothing? I have compiled several responses from a number of sources, including a 2013 book by John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn entitled The Mystery of Existence (Wiley-Blackwell) and Lawrence M. Krauss's 2017 book The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far (Atria Books).

Nothing is nonsensical. It is impossible to conceptualize nothing—not only no space, time, matter, energy, light, darkness or conscious beings to perceive the nothingness but not even nothingness. In this sense, the question is literally inconceivable.

Nothing is something. It is a logical fallacy to talk about “nothing” as if it were a “something” that ceases to exist. Here we bump up against the problem of defining what we mean by “nothing” and the restrictions that language imposes on the problem. The very acting of talking about “nothing” makes it a “something.” Otherwise, what are we talking about?

Nothing would include God's nonexistence. In Leslie and Kuhn's taxonomy of “nothings,” they list what categories of things might be included in “something” that would be negated by “nothing”: physical, mental, platonic, spiritual and God. If by “nothing” is meant no physical objects or matter of any kind, for example, there can still be energy from which matter may arise by natural forces guided by the laws of nature. Physicists, for example, talk about empty space as seething with virtual particles, from which particle-antiparticle pairs come into existence as a consequence of the uncertainty principle of quantum physics. From this “nothingness,” universes may “pop” into existence.

Nothing excludes creation ex nihilo. If by “nothing” is meant that there is no physical, mental, platonic or nonphysical entity of any kind, then there can be no God or gods, which means that there cannot be anything outside of nothing from which to create something. This negates the Christian theologian argument that God created the universe ex nihilo, or “out of nothing,” based on the English translation of Genesis 1:1 that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is misleading. Recent scholarship has suggested that the Hebrew word for “creation” in Genesis 1:1 is bara (ברא)—a verb that more accurately translated means to “separate” or “divide.” Genesis 1:1 should read, “In the beginning God separated the heavens and the earth.” Separated from what is not indicated.

Nothing is unstable; something is stable. Asking why there is something rather than nothing presumes “nothing” is the natural state of things out of which “something” needs an explanation. Maybe “something” is the natural state of things, and “nothing” would be the mystery to be solved. In his sweeping narrative, The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far, a sequel to his 2012 book A Universe from Nothing, Krauss notes that “Einstein was one of the first physicists to demonstrate that the classical notion of causation begins to break down at the quantum realm.” Although many physicists objected to the idea of something coming from nothing, he observes that “this is precisely what happens with the light you are using to read this page. Electrons in hot atoms emit photons—photons that didn't exist before they were emitted—which are emitted spontaneously and without specific cause. Why is it that we have grown at least somewhat comfortable with the idea that photons can be created from nothing without cause, but not whole universes?”

One answer has to do with our discomfort with the Copernican principle, which holds that we are not special. We prefer religious and anthropic explanations that the universe was created and fine-tuned for us because they put humans right back in the center of the cosmos anthropocentrically—it is all about us. But 500 years of scientific discoveries have revealed that it isn't about us. From this fact, we may gain purchase on a perspective that engages both the religious and scientific impulse toward a sense of awe one gains from contemplating nothing.

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian:

You wrote:
based on the English translation of Genesis 1:1 that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is misleading. Recent scholarship has suggested that the Hebrew word for “creation” in Genesis 1:1 is bara (ברא)—a verb that more accurately translated means to “separate” or “divide.” Genesis 1:1 should read, “In the beginning God separated the heavens and the earth.” Separated from what is not indicated.

Actually, Brian that is right there in the book of Genesis already:
"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

There were always the waters, even before a formed earth. Before anything was actually created, there were "the waters".

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

The water "above" the vault is separated from that below the vault by the "sky".
Waters above the sky?

Note also not "heavan and earth" but "heavens"...multiple.

It's a mystical reference, Brian, not a physical description as far as this single place is concerned.

[777]

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Solopism or Solipsism
much more logic
than E=Mc2

Essay for the low IQs under us ( it is to offensive for to much IQ c q EGO entities )
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These days we have no difficulty to understand that the primal energy
is choosing to exist "temporarily" as something we call Brian

By tera#-quantum manipulation, She lets appear this phenomenon a zillionth of a nanosecond
per millisecond: so the resulting Brian -seeing the outside and without references - thinks he is existing

Brian wasn't always in his deplorable situ without memories of truths but has possibilities to advance or decrease.
Further check RSSB teaching which are for a very good reason in paragraphical form

At ALL stages of his illusional existence Brian was the doer and only cause of what actually "exists" , so . .
Brain can only complaint @Brians

Why did Brian long ago start this procedure possessing all that is including power and imagination and Love
To generate more Love

So many Brians around and as already stated here in this group a thousand times:
One brian needs a second, another a whole life, . . many starting to use untold mysterious transmigrations of all kinds on this planet ( chaurasi ) included being a BRAHM for some time, being a planet, a Galaxy, an angry or nicer lovingly supernova - big bangs, an indifferent proctor named Kal somewhere needed for bookkeeping
or an extraterrestrial desperately searching for Crown Chakra structures to adapt for himself but cannot . . .

So, . . what to do if another Brian Guy comes around who knows everything
about how to exit in a sweet delicious way this Gordian Not without painfully cutting

Yes, . . you can

777

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