Do we exist?

cogito ergo sum
i think therefore i am
René Descartes (1596–1650)

if you can't comprehend it then either you are an average human person or have trouble seeing the forest for the trees

the universe was either created by god or created by the big bang

depending on your beliefs...

god, being at least a fourth dimensianal being, trancends time and space and has no need for a beginning or an end because he is both the beginning AND the end

or

the big bang happened before the laws of physics as we understand them meant anything
most likely the big bang occured when a previous universe collapsed into a point singularity (black hole), then exploded back into existance
this could have happened an infinite number of times as the laws of physics break down inside black holes

either way you have to take it on faith what exactly happened

i choose to believe god did it because this view generally inspires and gives me hope that my actions may mean something to future generations where as the BB theory generally makes me feel cheated by knowing that everything i do will one day be crushed along with everything else in the universe into a singularity smaller than this period "." (or so the text books say)

to answer you with a question from a rather intreguing song,
"if god had a face, what would it look like, and would you want to see if seeing meant that you would have to believe?"

the bit about not being able to se the forest for the trees is my stance on the whole mess of it
we look around inside our forest at our trees yet fail to realize that ours is only one of many forests and that forests only cover a small percentage of the planet and ebyone our own planet there are other planets

comprehending the incomprehensable is something man has attempted for aeons
we still have almost as many answers as we did when it all began

as hard for me as it is to say, some things must be taken on faith for we will never know all the answers
the variables are just to numerous
in conclusion the ultimate answer to the meaning of life must be 42
an arbitrary answer to an arbirtary question

[edit on 8-10-2006 by wondernut]

The universe isn't, you aren't, this thread doesn't exist, and I didn't post this reply.

[edit on 10/8/2006 by dubiousone]

Originally posted by wondernut
the universe was either created by god or created by the big bang

Would someone explain to me why these two things were mutually exclusive.

I also doubt that before the Big Bang the laws of physics didn't apply.

It's clear that we have a very incomplete understanding of our universe, so much so that we need two different theories to account for the behavior of matter, acknowledge the existence of matter and energy we cannot perceive, and to reconcile the all that we can observe, we have string theories that have never even been put to even one empirical test.

They're working on it, but to date, nothing--mathematically exquisite, but otherwise, no data.

But, even with all of that, I feel that what ever matter has done since the big bang and even before, it has done according to laws that are observable today or would be observable if we had the means to measure what takes place in a black hole.

I don't think our brains are capable of fully comprehending the whole truth.

The way I think of it is, imagine the Universe being a circle; we exist within that circle, so how could we possibly be able to comprehend the knowledge from outside the circle. Only when you escape the circle, will all the workings of the circle will become completely clear to you.

A good book to read though is The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune, but be prepared to be baffled.

A theory I kinda like, someone could of thought of this before but I came to this conclusion myself (even though I dont really believe it, its just speculation).

Imagine ants, they are all normal size to themselves right!
So think our sun is a an atom or something, our planet and the other planets revolving around this atom, lets say their protons and electrons, you got gas ones, were on a water one also partially solid, mars is a solid and so on and so on,
We are the makings of a much larger object, but we all see each other as normal size like the ants but we are infact absolutely tiny, maybe unseeable by someone elses microscope, like we cant see atoms.

Anyway that the gist of it and it is a thoery it might not be reality but it could explain alot, like we are the particles in a puddle spreading across the floor somewere else (hense the universe expanding)

The only reason I thought of this is because you see the way atoms are depicted spinning round each other like the planets spinning round the sun, and we are moving at some intense speed (cant tell you the exact speed but its fast) and we dont even realise it.

Wow, so much responds, i''ll just try and work my way through them

Originally posted by TheBandit795
If this thread was in skunkworks or paranormal I would tell you exactly what I think we are..... But in this forum I won't.

Well, I must say I had a hard time finding a right place for this thread, I searched on this forum and found stuff about big-bang here, so that's where I posted it...

Originally posted by Redeemer
The question shouldn't be do we exist but rather , what exactly is existance. Is existance experiencing the world through your senses? If the answer to that question is yes then the answer to the first question would also be yes. I believe our experiences are real but the world in which they happen may not be. It's real to us but that's only because our brains tell us that it's real.

Sometimes I have my doubts about existance, if we are here or not, but the one thing that makes me kinda sure that I DO exist is emotion...
At moments when I laugh, cry, am in hurt or in love... I truly feel alive, those are the moments of wich you are most sure of yourself that you exist.

But you say i goto work everyday earn money, feel pain blah blah. Then reality is just our brains telling us what it is, Governments have been hiding it from the begining buy creating money to keep us occupied with material posessions, Tv to blank our creativity, Celebertys to make us care about "more important" peoples lives then our own. Think about it, What is life?

Well, ofcourse you don't have to do the things you just described. You don't have to do work and make money, I know people who don't work just because they want to live free from obligations like these.

There are also people who don't watch TV because they think it's nonsense, and out of my own experience I can tell you that there are people who don't give a darn about the lives of celebrities...

This could go on until the end of time

Good, that means more ats points for me nah just kidding, I know there won't be much answers, but still it's interesting to see how people opinions about this are completely divided.

the universe was either created by god or created by the big bang

Why are you so sure that one of these theories is the right one? Maybe in the future people will come up with other theories that seem to be more right than these. You can't just say that it's either the big bang of god, since we don't know enough about it (yet).

I just think maybe we could ask "how do we exist"? I think that there is enough evidence that we exist, but we do not really know HOW is it possible.

but what if there is a god, and god designed us so that we couldnt think and explain certain things, because he cant make things go on forever, therefore he prevents us from being able to think of certain thingsm which allows him to make things easier for himself.

but this doesnt explain anything....where did god come from? he didnt just appear one day, there must be more than one world.

That will always remain the question, but after you found out that god was created by something else, you start asking, but where did that thing come from? It's in our nature to think that everything but be created by someone or something else. It's almost impossible for us to think that something just appears out of the nothing...

Maybe one day our brains will be advanced enough to understand

I don't think that I can give you an idea of what was before the universe or how it started, because the post would be a few hundred pages long and my english is not yet good enough.
However I would recommend reading the book "the inflationary universe" by Alan Guth.

.....
Greetings from Germany

If you don't call us existing then I gues you can say that we don't exist when we die either but I consider not existing = to nothing and even if us and our reality is just an illlusion it's still something which is why this theory just doesn't work for me. Even if it is all an illusion are true selfs must exist somewhere but that's saying were in a matrix and I just don't want to believe that.

exactly, you're always searching for the one thing that created the other...

What came first, the EGG or the CHICKEN???that is the question

Originally posted by rocques22
What came first, the EGG or the CHICKEN???that is the question

Heh! Good point. I would say...

The Dinosaur that laid the chicken egg.

I know that it's wierd to try and get your head around the concept and creation of the universe. I'd like to point out one thing though. It's a very human trait to wonder what came before the Big Bang. We live very linear lives - we're born, we grow up, we grow old, we die. Therefore we tend to see things in similar terms - where are the parents of the universe? What was there before?
What we tend to forget is that time is a consequence of space. Without space there is no time. How can there have been a 'before' when the universe did not exist?
(By the way, I do not believe in the existence of God. One reason for this is - how can God have made the universe if there was no time for him to do it in?)
That's given me a headache thinking through. Barman! Mines a pint!

Originally posted by DJMessiah

Originally posted by rocques22
What came first, the EGG or the CHICKEN???that is the question

Heh! Good point. I would say...

The Dinosaur that laid the chicken egg.

it's obvious that the chicken would have to have come from an egg but a chicken has to have laid that egg...

what to do? what to think?

[edit on 17-10-2006 by rocques22]

Originally posted by darkbluesky
Some philosopher once posited that "Nothing is Real" maybe it was Kant....
Then again....maybe it was somebody from Star Trek.
Hope this clears everything up.

Next!

Nothing is not real. Nothing doesn't exist. Gosh, the world needs me to stand before them on a news Channel and enlighten them all. This whole Big Bang theory has thrown everyone's minds in the wrong direction. Now everyone believes in nothing, before, and after. *Sigh* I've explained it an endless amount of times now. Evidence for God under creationism conspiracy and also in Science and Technology. I'm tired, someone pick up this knowledge and start spreading it, please. For the sake of the World's sanity and unity.

[edit on 17-10-2006 by UbiquitousInfiniteReality]

The question and all the responses to it are a matter of semantic confusion. Asking the question answers it. Nothing more need be said.