- Edited
Hi BeigeBandicoot, thanks a lot for your benevolent comment!
As for the origins of the universe, I cannot exclude the possibility that maybe it has and will exist forever in one or the other form. So if true, there would be no big bang and time would be somewhat a fundamental thing. Surely one also could argue that within that eternally existing thing called universe / multiverse, there could be regions where time is somewhat distorted, different from other regions – for example if one defines the ground level of that universe as some kind of quantum fluctuating essence, or as some geometry that automatically gives rise to a time direction etc.
So even for a universe that has existed forever and will forever exist, one can “choose” (maybe until it is decided, if decidable, which of the possibilities is the true one) what its ultimate foundation should be: quantum fluctuations, a deterministic finite state automaton, a continuous geometry that automatically gives rise to a time direction etc. In any case, if it would be true that the universe existed forever, then this is clearly not the world that the bible describes in genesis (as far as i understood it).
Personally I don't think that the question whether the universe is eternal or not can be unambiguously decided, since that would demand strong proofs for several ingredients such a claim must use.
Concerning proofs, I think they are only realiable as far as our definitions of each of the ingredients of a proof are reliable ontologically. Here the problem occurs, since for proofing or disproofing a certain ontology, one at first had to know whether or not that ontology is real or not.
But that does not mean that one cannot come closer to truth, because when one assumes that the world is not an inconsistent conspiracy, one can at least expose certain explanation schemes to be inconsistent. For making them consistent again, it then would need a re-definition of certain ingredients of that explanation scheme. Then again, one could try to expose that scheme to be inconsistent.
Now, some people say that at a certain point, we must and should stop re-defining those ingredients and simply take some of them as given. I would say this makes sense, as long as we do not discover a certain new and surprising category that would enable to free us from terms like material, immaterial, deterministic, random, consistent, inconsistent, causal, non-causal.
My own guess is that such a surprising category must have something that would seem to us as being highly irrational. In my own world model, I adopted such an irrational element (irrational in relation to materialism) as very important for me, namely the belief in a Creator. You are right that my belief in God demands something moral from me – but something that I love to give, namely at least trying hard to obey the first two commandments. I love my belief in God very much and so I also love God and respect his creatures and try to treat them in the same way I wish to be treated.
Beyond that, there is another interesting and meaningful command in my opinion, namely to not facilitate a detailed picture of God. This makes sense to me, since otherwise I once again get forced to deduce / induce from one false / incomplete ontological property of that picture in a deterministical, “logical” chain to “all” properties of God, whereby that result then would be totally inadequate since I already started with a false / incomplete ontological property for God.
I simply think that God has a kind of spiritual ontology, one that is not understandable by human beings in the same sense that a computer program, even if partially conscious, cannot deduce on what kind of system it runs unless it is revealed to him from some external world that is more conscious than the program itself. If all of that is not true and is merely an incorrect model of reality in my mind, then at least that model is able to influence my acts in this world, although the model itself wouldn't have been developed because I would be somewhat clever or special, but unavoidably by a kind of deterministic process I cannot fully transcend and forces me to act the way I act.
Luckily, such a determinism mustn't be the case, independent of what a strictly deterministic world view says: I always can consider my consciousness and its contents as being merely parallel to what happens in my brain and assume an intricate psychokinetical feedback loop between me an my brain as the real ontological explanation for my will to act in certain ways.
Happy that you are about to rate my essay :-) !