Re: How do you explain existence of anything. The expanding universe, the radiation echo, and the second Law of thermodynamics all point to the universe having a beginning....
Just a little niggle: I believe that existence is a semantic property, not a physical one. I mean, keeping in mind my pet cosmology --ie the Sense/Nonsense clash-- we can posit that only the Absolute Sense could exist, if any.... And yet, it's continually challenged by its metaphysical antithesis, the Absolute Nonsense. Hence, you're naively mistaking the universe's mere presence for the universe's existence.
Indeed, the galaxies, the stars, time, space, the earth, the wildlife, and, ultimately, you and me, are merely present. The whole universe scenery is merely on display.... So far, all we can assume about our physical world is that it's present, only the certainty of a prevailing Absolute Sense would confer existence to the Universe. For, as you rightfully noted, our Big-Banged universe popped out of nothing --a quantum fluctuation in a Dirac ocean... Or, as Christians put it, creation ex nihilo. But think of it, Greg: if our whole universe, full of galaxies, planets, black holes, life forms, etc. originated from nothingness then basic logic tells us that the universe itself is nothing! Indeed, if the whole universe proceeds from a vacuous principle then all its successive blossoms, all its physico-chemical twists and turns will not budge its inner, original nature. And ultimately, all the universe's developmental stages would flatly turn out to be bathetic avatars of the same, fundamental, vacuous non-being.... And all you're gazing at --the flowers, the children, the seagulls, the skyline, the moon,....-- just don't exist. They merely are cognitive phenomena --they're on display. To give them existence you need the only Existence that can possibly be, that is, the Absolute Sense. In my opinion, only the evidence of such a semantic transcendence could provide existence for subservient, contingent beings. For existence is everlasting, existence is not some transitory property --it's a semantic property and, just as meaningness is eternal so is an existing being. Insofar as we're somehow pervaded by the Absolute Sense, we might be more than present beings. If there's a semantic Absolute who's perennially struggling against and prevailing over the Nonsensical Absolute then beyond material phenomena, and above the whimsical nature of human history, lies "eternal life", that is, genuine existence.
Gus. |
