Something Instead of Nothing

Why Does the Universe Exist?
By Derek Parfit

That’s the distinction I make as well. Okay, you come up with an explanation as to why and how something must exist rather than nothing. But how does that resolution explain why it’s this existence and not another one altogether? And, even here, assuming that this is applicable to our universe in a way that is applicable to all of the other ones in the much conjectured multiverse.

Really, how can you exist as a self-conscious entity able to ask yourself things like this, and think the questions are idle?..make no sense? What makes no sense to me are those who just shrug off questions of this sort as just “philosophical stuff”. “Metaphysical foolery” as my ex-wife once put it. Something, she insisted, that has no relevance at all to the lives that we live.

Unless of course I find myself, from time to time, more or less thinking my own rendition of the same thing. Why waste your time dwelling on something that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever figuring out. On the other hand, grappling myself with questions like this takes my mind to places that are so unimaginably ineffable, that it allows me a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe something beyond the grave is included in it.

What would make no sense [to me] are extant self-conscious entities who did not ask themselves questions like this. Ever and always assuming that the evolution of self-conscious matter that we become acquainted with as “I” includes some measure of actual autonomy.

Which take some to God and religion. After all, the universe that does exist includes us. And since we are able to think up God and concoct all sorts of arguments as to why He must exist, that in and of itself seems to suggest that God and this particular somethingness are inextricably bound. If, so far, only in the minds of those among us who believe it.

God here too. The Goldilocks Universe. So many things have to be precisely as they are – newhumanist.org.uk/articles/415 … aul-davies – that a Creator is clearly one possibility.

But that then begs the question as to whether God Himself created the laws of nature or the laws of nature themselves are such that God really didn’t have a choice. The existence of existence simply was, is and always will be in accordance with its only possibly explanation. God, like all the rest of us, just being along for the ride.

Ive answered this as follows: the universe exists because it is precisely this universe; i.e. the one made out of valuing.

Valuing is the only way something trumps nothing.

(Leave it to Fixed Cross to bring heaven to earth, you’re welcome soldier)

Puzzling indeed. The Logic that ties together existence is a puzzle involving ones own heart. (That is, it actually involves actual existence. :astonished: ) ; which includes the existence of the thinker!
Philosophers before Moi havent been able to crack it, nor have scientists, because they did not have undivided hearts.

You know, coming from someone who believes in astrology.

Though, okay, sure, nothing is really completely out of the question. :-k

I dont “believe” in astrology. Unlike you Ive done the decades of research, being a man raised by scientists. You’re the believer here, my dude. If you would have a shred of scientific instinct in you you’d have accepted my challenges. The same goes for anyone who presumes to question things but doesn’t present the available data for experimenting.

People who think astrology has no bearing on reality think that it doesn’t matter if one is born in summer or winter, by day or by night, by full or new moon, even though both scientific evidence and common sense tell us that these things heavily determine the nature of the person.
The believer wants to think that he is a blank slate, to be filled only by…erm, his own, erm, blank slate…

The general consensus of scientists is that astrology is a pseudo-science, because it lacks the methodology of proper induction and verifiability. And these guys didn’t just wake up one morning and decide this. It is a conclusion reached after examining the nature of astrology very carefully.

Show me these scientific studies.

Its not true man, you and I know you are just making that up or read it in magazines.

There is falsification and this is what Ive been doing for ever and challenging you all to partake in.

Listen for a second. What I do is ask a person I know somewhat to give me several sets of date-hour-place, and from these I will pick the one at which he was born. This is scientific falsification. It can go absolutely wrong. So if it does not go wrong ever, this is proof. Ive been doing it with people I know only online and for a few weeks, and I still got them all correct so far.

The fact that people don’t even understand that this is proper falsification, and thus when it works, proper proof - and that these ignoramuses pretend to claim to know what science even is - is annoying as fuck.
You have no idea how disciplined I need to remain to address such obscenely blatant ignorance in a dignified way.

Naturally Ive not been the only one doing the proving. Many proofs have been given. Here’s another one speaking to the objective influence of Sun-Moon aspects.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1444800/

Son-Moon aspects are among the first things an astrologer looks at. I focus mostly on aspect-astrology myself.

vocaroo.com/miLkIHEYNRO

The Moon rules the animal passions. All cultures have known this. It rules menstruation. Only our own culture doesn’t know any of this. Or wants to not know it for some reason, because scientists do know it.
Moons gravity on Earth is different when it is between Sun and Earth than it is when Earth is between it and the Sun. In the former case there is a pull from two directions, both moving at different angles and velocities - this destabilizes and thus unleashes excesses.

Astrology is based on such basic physical things, and in time it has proven to be the case that there is no end to the depth of these influences; no matter how subtle, the influence is consistency there.

Dude. Read my posts please.

Imagine the positions reversed.
I haven’t ever build a porch. Imagine me telling you how I know exactly that what you’re doing when you’re building one is completely wrong.
how stupid is that?
Now imagine the majority of people who have never worn a tool belt telling you precisely how your methods do absolutely not work, and are just products of projection.

That’s the horriblest analogy I ever heard.

I’ll take this discussion to my astrology thread. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=195495

The reason astrology is quite as valid and exactly objective as physics, is that there is no part of the universe which is isolated. Over billions of years a superfine balance has been established, the nuances of which come in forces the size of quark and leptons, even smaller possibly, gluons might be affecting gluons in other quarks as well - the interconnectivity is at least as deep as we can perceive.

In this order, it is inconceivable that the rigid clockwork of the solar system does not work its way into the far less rigid orders of nervous systems.

Because its so accurate, and your attitude to astrology has been so ignorant that it horrifies.

You cant even be bothered to make a single logical inference, which means you must really be dead-set on me not having a reason that is valid enough for you to consider. It is psychologically evident like the smell of old cheese is physically evident. You do not want astrology to be true — why? Are you afraid of its powers to reveal what is perhaps best left unknown?

vocaroo.com/dkpRxwUicKt

I get that you get too agitated by being called out on your bullshit to be able to write. But Im not gonna listen to another one of your Forrest Gump emulations.

Forrest Gump was a goddamn hero you sonofabitch. Don’t you forget it.

Forrest Gump aside, let’s get this started: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=195495&start=25