I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious.
Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science.
It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc.
And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that?
While If I were any denominational god, I'd have created the rule set and frameworks for the entire system and then boot it up.
Why can't "god" have created the big bang, evolution, the physics ruleset and just let it play out?
Of course we'll never get the answer to any of that before (or not) the inevitable event horizon of death, but I don't get the antagonism within the evangelical movement... other than the obvious loss of power to secularity and science/agnosticism.
There are multiple creationist theories. The one you described is close to sanctioned Roman Catholic view, for example.
Since _Humani Generis_ by Pope Pius XII, the accepted view is that evolution, indeed, goes as it does, under divine supervision, and then when bodies reached a form fitting the pinnacle of creation (human), another act of creation occurred - that of human soul. And that miracle of creation keeps happening daily for every human born (or conceived?).
So, definitely not a Darwinian materialist view, but certainly evolution-friendly.
Generally, largest blocker to marrying salvation religions and materialist worldview is with a human. Salvation only concerns humans, and that implies that humans are very special in the Universe. Paganism wasn’t that arrogant, so might be more compatible with scientific method, funnily enough.
I’m an atheist, so this, naturally, this is my interpretation of other interpretations I’ve read and heard here and there.
> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang?
The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying on a mindset that gives equal consideration to everything is a surefire way for science to be simply drowned out.
In this specific case, I'd also like to point out that the big bang model does not claim to yield, or is required to yield, information on what came "before". There are multiple hypotheses around for what could have happened, a fundamental part of which is usually a proper definition of what "before" means in this context. Again, none of these are doctrinal claims, they're just a process of finding out more about the universe. Religious claims on the other hand are a method of asserting you already know something.
> While If I were any denominational god, I'd have created the rule set and frameworks for the entire system and then boot it up.
Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that. You are being very charitable towards religious claims by allowing them to retreat into this generic fold.
On a scientific level, your hypothesis is not immediately contradicted by observation. But it's also not clear how an unsupervised universe would be different from a curated one. If it doesn't really matter to the outcome whether the universe was created intentionally or not, a good bet is to assume the simpler model.
Any such god would themselves have to exist in order to create a universe. They would presumably also have to have had a creator themselves, or have come into existence by natural means. This pushes the problem of the origin of the universe up the chain without necessarily resolving anything. It's not impossible that the universe is such a stack of simulations, and I'd argue it's worth looking into that, but it's not a solution to the question what the root of existence itself is.
> It's not impossible that the universe is such a stack of simulations, and I'd argue it's worth looking into that, but it's not a solution to the question what the root of existence itself is.
I agree with rest of your comment except the above quoted line. I'd argue its a casual display of hubris that the universe can be hypothesized as a simulation rather than perhaps acknowledging we are reaching the limits of what we can percieve.
To that end, we have very little insight into many things. We still dont know whether light is a wave or particle or both or neither. I find it a leap of logic to jump from there to the universe might be a simulation which in a sense, it already is since perception is a result of our brains turning those same photons we have questions about into informtion by electro-biochemical processes. Do you not think there would be hard limits to such a fragile system?
Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a simulation theory supporter, and my opinion is that if the universe is a simulation, it's probably NOT one of the two most commonly-supposed types: ancestor simulations and matrix-like virtual realities.
> its a casual display of hubris that the universe can be hypothesized as a simulation rather than perhaps acknowledging we are reaching the limits of what we can percieve
While I'm not completely sure why these two points belong together, I think it should be stressed that science already operates largely beyond the realm of human perception. Our tools, namely sensors and information processing, are exceeding our un-augmented biological capabilities by an almost comical margin.
> Do you not think there would be hard limits to such a fragile system?
Absolutely, there are always hard limits. They don't even have to exist by design. Again, not a simulation hypothesis fan, but it may well be fundamentally impossible to ever tell if we're in one, because we could never operate outside of the simulation's rules and gain any insight into anything outside of our dataset.
> I find it a leap of logic to jump from there to the universe might be a simulation which in a sense, it already is
I agree. I think where we diverge is the implication that knowledge is impossible unless everything about the universe is already perfectly known. For example, gaps in our understanding of photons do not necessarily mean that perception is a worthless concept. Likewise, I'm averse to the notion of hiding postulated supernatural concepts in corners where the light of understanding is still dim, although that's a personal decision everyone has to make for themselves.
In this context I'd consider a postulated simulation also sort-of supernatural, although it doesn't feel like it so much because the concept at least doesn't strongly imply a willful entity with a special interest in humans. But all things being equal, my feeling is that simulation hypotheses are just as superfluous as deities.
> The mistake here is to treat both of these equally.
Oh, I absolutely am not, or at least did not aim to. I'm well aware that I don't have to explain where an egg came from just because I'm stating a chicken came out of it.
> Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that.
Sorry, yes, I meant nondenominational.
I don't disagree with anything you wrote, and did not intend to convey anything contradicting to that.
I know, and actually that's how I assumed/read it.
I think we both agree that nondenominational deities are not religious material (by definition). They have a certain appeal because they don't immediately contradict observation, but they're currently just as impossible to prove as, say, any of the Christian god variants. I'd argue it's a mistake to postulate non-religious gods but allow religious claims to take shelter in them, on account of some perceived common property.
It's true that making a "god" more generic increases the likelihood of existence, on a statistical level. But our scientific models do fine without any supernatural consideration at all right now. I would argue to keep it that way until we actually see supernatural agency at work. Until then there is not really a reason or need for it.
You are probably right, but as someone who grew up episcopalian, and struggled a lot assembling a coherent world view, I do see (even if only psychological) the potential need for deity at the edges of the explained.
Someone might be able to explain the evolutionary benefits of existentialism, depression (or the benefits of the traits that when lacking lead to it, and how), philosophical meanderings when it would be more beneficial for me to work right now, and pre-bang existence, etc.
But even if not, I can't oppose your assertion that it serves no tangible purpose to award credit to some unnamed force. But it could at least be a comforting placeholder for when something more tangible comes along. Or a tea pot.
The concept of consciousness in a philosophical sense is not scientific to begin with, hence it's not really possible for science to offer an explanation that would satisfy you. Science has the tools to explain any physical process, such as how you receive and process information. It cannot offer a philosophical "why" or convey how your feeling that you're not a philosphical zombie is valid (in fact I argue that it's not valid).
Note that “before” and “after” are arguably illusions, stemming from your sublight velocity. From the perspective of a photon, no time has passed “since” the Big Bang.
Anyway, the Matrix counterpoint (as explained by the Agent to Morpheus) was that the original Matrix was a perfect world. No famine, no poverty, everything was perfect, but the captive humans minds couldn't cope with such perfection, there had to be disorder for the environment to self-regulate and the original Matrix collapsed.
If this were a simulation, it would be interesting if the operator can just freeze stuff and rewind, like a VM being restored to a snapshot, our brains would have no memory of having lived e.g. to the year 2022 and that we've been rewound to this point.
And imagine changing physics constants and booting a new instance just to try something out. It would be more interesting to freeze the system, change a constant and see how it would've propagated from boot to present, and to apply the patch (not that the operator would care about preserving their sims). I suppose in a different universe, a stronger gravity could've meant an ancestor hit the ground a bit harder when s/he fell off a roof and didn't survive, so I might not even be here.
Even humans have created systems that sort of create other shit on their own.
Like the patterns that form when viewing prime numbers in certain ways, the fundamental laws of the universe could be some emergent properties arising from mathematical truths, and require no "god"
The idea is that life starts on one planet and can spread from there to other planets (for example on rocks ejected through volcanic activity). We have found Martian rock on earth [1]
We don't really know. But if life started through some extremely lucky event like lightning repeatedly hitting just the right collection of particles in an early planet's ocean, then panspermia gives you a plausible mechanism how this happening just once in a galaxy could still lead to multiple planets having life (and maybe one of them developing into intelligent life that can ask itself how this happened). It opens up the number of possible timelines for the development of life because it allows our evolutionary heritage to be older than our planet alone allows for.
