IAP Political Forum

What do you think?

No. We are along for a ride. Passangers of a Deterministic, Natural Universe. There is no goal, there is no final solution, or predetermined finish line, except as predicted by material mechanisms.
The average human lives about 1000 months. Enjoy it while you can. ;)

pretty deep thread JPN.
Yes, I think the universe has a purpose designed by a grand architect.

I think there is an easier question that stems from you question, "what is the purpose of man?"  IMO its to procreate.

As far as narrowing what the purpose of the universe as a whole is, well thats.....my brain just exploded
(http://www.dac-editions.com/artes%201/vaielusiv1.jpg)

I use to swing between feeling it's a bugger and feeling it's a gorgeous joke.

So, has the universe a purpose? Who cares. If it had, we wouldn't know; if we knew, we would be wrong; if we where right, it would suck; if it didn't sucked, we wouldn't be a part of it; and if we were a part of it, it couldn't be anything else but a joke...

As my new signature goes: Don't take life too seriously; nobody lives to tell... :)

To transcend and include for that which is old and new.

No purpose.

Does it need one? Is "purpose" some kind of precursor to "existence"? Does your ring finger have a purpose? What about your second toe?

Why can't something "occur" simply out of randomness?

Why can't something occur out of randomness? Well random causation is a possibility but it is totally incompatiable with the orderly and structured operation of our world. If things were random, their would be no order, no reason, just things occuring and not occuring, an inconstruable uninterpretable ridiculous paradox.

Does the universe have an overriding purpose? Oh most definitely, but it is most likely self defined.

Just because the creation is "random" does not make its function "random". If the universe's creation was random does not mean everything occuring inside it would be too. I don't see why a things function is a result of it's creation.

I was born from a very controlled set of perameters but I have choice to be as controlled or uncontrolled as I want.

Of course, this now begs the question whether the universe itself makes "choice". But that is going off topic.

Creation does not define function. That's the point I'm trying to make.


How so?

Here's a link to some deep thinkers who took a swing at the question:

http://www.templeton.org/questions/purpose/ (http://www.templeton.org/questions/purpose/)

I think I like Neil deGrasse Tyson's answer the best. Then Major Zee Lee's  :)

Too early in the world to tell. Get over it: you weren't born during a time where things like this can been explained. It sucks, I know.

Neil De Grasse's answer is good, yes. I like it too. I'm just a bit more cynical about mankind.

How so?


So? I know you don't like it but it could still be true.

I for once have to actually agree with daedalus

The universe is definately not random. It obeys very exact laws. Where life is concerned, the products of the evolutionary process are random. However, evolution itself is guided by natural selection, which is not a random process at all.

The only thing that may have been random was it's creation. Everything else follows a strict set of laws.

That's what I was referring to.

Perhaps the creation of the universe was the quinicential moment of entropy...

If the universe had a purpose then it would be nessicary for someone to create it for that purpoese. So if you believe in some Deity or designer then the answer is yes, if not, then most likley no.

That doesn't mean you can't give you'r own life purpose. You have consciousness, so far we don't think the universe does.

I had a rather mystical thought. Since we are part of the universe, and we have purposes (self-defined as they are), and other living beings are part of the Universe (and have THEIR self-defined purposes), we could look at the Universe as have a purpose if we could somehow take the sum total of the purposes of everything living and come to a result (perhaps 42? :-))

That is, the purpose of the Universe is made up of whatever is part of the universe that has a purpose, like our appendix doesn't have a purpose, but it is part of us and so it's purpose is to be a sub-set of our purpose.

Our Special Purpose.  ;D

Tyler Durden would disagree.

I was thinking more along the lines of Steve Martin as the "The Jerk".... ;D

 :D  :D

Maybe thats the purpose of the Universe, to find all of our special purpose.

WOW, thats a ridiculously good answer!



The purpose of the universe, is just to exist!  It is just there, nothing more, nothing less.  I'm sure according to some ancient philosopher, who probably noted that there is a natural disorder to the universe (entropy) and it takes work to put things in order.  In the case of the universe: time is doing all the work, and as time goes on, it is becoming more orderly. But one of the contra-effects is that the sun or suns at which many things orbit, give life,  force order by gravity and restrict time to days, is actually limited to a life span.  Therefore it is not progressing nor regressing it is a simple existence at which time falls upon itself.   

I think that what happens within the universe is not random, evolution would have taken much longer if it were completely random, but everything seems to have a purpose. A good recent example brought to my attention would be:
http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Sickest-Medical-Maverick-Discovers/dp/customer-reviews/0060889659

I would say, the virus somehow knows what to do to get to the sheep, but maybe it was just random.

As far as the ultimate purpose of the universe, I think all of the life and the tangible universe is just to balance the intangible that we will experience when we die. So I suppose I believe it is balance, if that is a 'purpose'. Otherwise, I don't think there is one, and if there is a creator, I don't think he/she can necessarily know every minute detail of what occurs within the universe.

 :o  Whoa. I feel enlightened.

I havn't had this feeling since I saw this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P4oAHPqeKSM&mode=related&search=

Applaud.

 

 The very phraseology of this question implies a positive response is required.
 If given a completely random set of events most people will find a pattern to explain not only a purpose but a cause and likely outcome. This is what humans do. We look for sense in senselessness ,we look for patterns in randomness, we look for the finite in infinity. It is how we are hard wired. It is largely why we are as successful as we are as a species. Just as people will find "faces" in a burled table top or animals in cloud formations we look for purpose in the disorder of the universe we can know.
 Given our intrinsic need for purpose and our creative imaginations we will no doubt find it anytime or anywhere we look. The result of this kind of inquirey will always bring a reason to be. The thought of not finding a purpose for our existence is far to disturbing for most to bear. 
 The answer, to this question, lies more in how we are than in why we are.
 

I assume that when whoever it was said does the universe have a purpose it meant some kind of objective, external, ulterior purpose not the sum total of our petty dreams of success. What you said there is the nice way of saying the universe has no purpose.

I don't know how to put this any more politely, sorry, but I couldn't disagree with you more.

Third Law Thermodynamics simply states that entropy increases.  the universe DOESN'T get more orderly it gets more disordered.  It it this increasing entropy that gives us the unidirectional nature of time - eggs smash, they don't unsmash; suns explode, they don't unexplode; temporarily ordered matter becomes disordered - people die and decompose.   The universe doesn't have a 'purpose' to exist - its initial conditions will either ensure its continued existence ad infinitum or its eventual collapse - but 'it' doesn't 'know' what will happen any more than a falling stone 'knows' whether it will hit a solid or fluid end.  And you can't have purpose without intent and you can't have intent without belief/desire.

Somebody reckoned the instant after its creation saw the universe at maximum entropy - maybe, we have no good theories there.  But Inflationary Cosmology proposes that after its great expansion - say one Planck duration after gravity became a repellent force - the new spacetime fabric was at its greatest ORDERED state - i.e. its LEAST entropic.

I recall thinking to myself, that we human have a tendency to see a purpose (an intent) in whatever flows agaisnt the stream of entropy. We just don't use enough the ability to see the bigger picture of things going to hell that provide the means so a few things, for a while, go against the stream. Us included.

No purpose in reversal of entropy. Even a broken watch will be right twice a day. Provided the hell of cataclisms needed to produce everything around us (our planet, our blood, the iron in them, caused the extremely violent death of a massive star millions of years before our own sun was born), it is quite clear that going up the stream of entropy is unusual but can be expected by mere chance jsut as a de-construction of de-construction itself, to speak so.

Sometimes entropy destroys itself -for a while...

The Universe has always had ORDER amongst it.  Because of the new definition of time, we have come to believe that at instances of infinite probabilities, amongst this order is chaos.  However, this distinction that our universe is in complete chaos, yet has this behavior of order is what boggles us all.  We say it's god.  We say it's just random probability.  I say it's cosmic evolution. 

The point: We don't know and until we prove why electrons zip in and out of existence then we will never know.

What I do know: I can prove that it isn't God.  I can prove that it isn't random probability. (I am going to get huge flack for this, bring on the smiter's)

It is the evolution of the Kosmos.  That the universe's overall purpose is to transcend and include for that which is old and new.

^^Taken from the teachings of Ken Wilbur^^

Again, I do not have the pleasure of understanding you. I believe I have a good grasp of english (even american english!) and also a pretty good academic record in matters like this - but "the universe's overall purpose is to transcend and include for that which is old and new" is meaningless nonsense.

The posters who suggest that human mental structure projects order onto the universe are probably close to right - but we need to realise that the duration of humanity is an infinitisimally small.  Take a well-known analogy for entropy:

War and Peace has (lets say) 1,000 pages.  There is only one perfect ordering for those pages, shuffle them once and there will still be great chunks which are ordered, but the disorder will have increased.  Shuffle another twenty times and the disorder is much more. But there may still be sections of pages in the right order.  Shuffle a million times...  it is even possible that a few pages that were disordered return to 'order'.  The fact that we can discern order in out tiny scope and vague focus is no proof that order exists or that entropy is decreasing.  (I discussed this with my Dad, who immediately took on his location as 'a counter-entropic eddy in spacetime':  at any point in spacetime local order can increase or decrease, but overall the direction is one-way).

I note that your messiah has put up a good self-promotion on wiki.  You are of course entitled to your view on this shambolic rubbish - as am I.

Ok.  Your right.  I should not write statements that would have no meaning to anyone else but me.  However, please do not call it rubbish when we all are in the same boat of trying to discover what exactly makes the universe work.   

It terms of defining its purpose you are saying that there is no purpose because out of the inordinate amount of chaos in our universe, our perception of what is happening during this chaos has given us the inclination to perceive with our mind that there is some sort of order.  I agree with you.

Looking at the universe from a grand perspective definitely warrants the idea for one to believe that we are just a blip in the existence of everything else.  I agree.

You have made me think critically about why I am accustomed to Wilbur's teachings, what he has to say about the Universe and what it means on the more grandiose scale that you have illustrated in your post.  Wilbur's usual discussion is really on humanity's role in its own existence but when defining the universe's purpose he simply says that there is more than just probability at work here. The formation of our universe has a driving force to evolve.  A need to transcend its former counter part. 

I do not deny the things that science and meta-science has given to us in discussing such things as the purpose of the universe.  However, we can become very bogged down in trying to determine just exactly what it is and miss the opportunity of trying to understand something new.  I hope I have written something that is close to being understood, considered English and that we can continue a discussion on the Universe, and maybe find some distinctions as to why there is such a difference between the idea of probability and fate.

Hopefully then we can transcend what we already know, and then understand something we did not.

Its purpose is the creation of intelligent beeings (man or other species).

We can argue that it's random and no purpose but the fact that we exists think and feel makes that the universe has forcibly this purpose.
Just look: Without the universe we wouldn't have planets on which to live. So from my very humble point of view, this is already a fairely valid purpose.

The Universe is there so that we can exist. I don't see any other reason or even a "null" reason.
If we ceased to exist and if no intelligent life existed the Universe would make no sens.

The second question is did someone create the universe so that we can exists?
In a purely philosophical way, you can answer yes or no wether you believe in God or not or wether you need an answer to ths question or not.
From a physical perspective it's unlikely. But it doesn't contradict the philosophical one.

HTH

Could be. Sure is an inefficient process. What did it take, 13.7 billion years to finally create intelligence in our star system (as far as we know)?

I'll let you know when the ride is over.........

"If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno" -Mark Twain

Houm, yes, 13,700,000,000 years & 100,000,000 galaxies each one with an average 100,000,000,000 stars, so a bunch of monkeys riding a lump of iron and silicate around a ordinary star claim they're the purpose of it all...

Arrogance comes expensive, yes it does... (http://66.98.134.222/forums/images/smilies/smilie_laugh4.gif)


Some people are like...


But others are more like...

Sure the universe has a purpose...

To bring glory to God.
 :D




Let the smiting begin.

I applauded your bravery :) .

. 

:D

MZL, you hit the nail right on the head with this one. 

I wanna know but I also don't want to know.  The quintessential basis for why we suffer.

When some smartass asked "Does the Universe have a purpose?" its obvious that the greatness of Mankind suddenly went downhill.

Houm... and why should God care about glory? He is God... ???

He cares because He is good.  Giving glory to anything else would be misplaced and unhealthy :D

Sorry no, this is just arrogance/hubris/conceit.

What is 13.7 billion years for a God who is immortal(by definition)? For him it's just like, say, 7 days for us...

But I thought you sid it was inneficient because of our absolute lack of intelligence. ;)

---

Zee,

When was the last time you observed a layer of paint capable of counciouseness and of philosophical consideration like this one?  :P Last time I took my stetoscope and tried to communicate with the paint on the fence of my garden, I didn't hear much replies.  ???

Maybe a better analogy would be that the purpose of the Eifel tower was to show the glory of their creator at the Universal Exhibition (in this case French would be God, which is near what they realy think indeed).

Or maybe an even better one: Its purpose would be the diffusion of radio waves to millions of poeple. This analogy is very interresting because, like intelligent life didn't exist during the creation of the Universe, no one (Except God, but no one if you don't believe in him) could have known of this purpose since radio technology didn't exist when the construction of the Eifel Tower started.
So the Universe would have been built "for itself" with no real purpose except a display of beauty and grandeur to those, imaginery aliens, who would be able to see it. Then as soon as a form of life philosophicaly concious appears, the ultimate porpose of the Universe is revealed (or changed).

I don't think it's arrogance because this theory doesn't exclude an intelligent form superior to us.
But the very fact that I'm here is, alone, a pretty good reason for the Universe to exist. :D (I'm afraid some on this forum will disagree... )

Dualism. I love it.

Am I the only one who thinks this is really sad? God built the universe so we could "Give glory to him".


Of course he is good (if he exists) - good is relative to him. Hence, when he orders people to kill each other that's good.

But then... why you deem consciousness and philosophy, or the lack of them, as something relevant to the universe? ;)

All your point revolves around this hidden assumption: "we are the reason of the universe because we can claim it".

But then, the ability to claim that you're the reason of the universe does not mean that you're the reason. It means that either you can't imagine another reason, or that your assumption is that there must be a reason... but then, the reason of the universe is not a need of the universe, but a need of us.

We need that the universe haves a reason (and eventually we may claim we are the reason) but, why should the universe have a reason? It's WE who need reasons... not the matter and energy and laws of nature out there. They're quite the same without a reason. ;)

Exactly, we may see conciousness etc. are important but why would the universe 'think' that?

I love to see people writing about God and referring to God as "him."

You really think something as grand as God has a gender?

I find that religion routinely cheapens and diminishes the very idea of "God".

Just curious, if it's conscious and haves no gender, then what it is? A he, a she, or a it?

(In Spanish there's no such problem... masculine means either male or neutral according to context as there's no equivalent to "it". Didn't used to be a problem until feminists began tangling with language with a moronic disdain about how in Spanish even objects and abstractions got a gramatical gender... table and war are feminine, sofa and fear are masculine... gramatically)

You'll have to ask Him why He chose to do it that way.

/shrug

:D

The reason why god is refered to as he is is for the insemination role that he played with the world. God did not birth creation, in the sense that this messy imperfect world came from him. rather he inseminated emptiness with his being and the result was the knocked up ether that manifested all of what you see here, including the new IAP forum.

I always thought it was because Pagans worshipped "Mother Earth" and to call God "She" would create issues with the transition to Catholicism.

Catholicism hated women and Pagans back then... so it only stands to reason they would refer to God as "He".

We've been asking, but he ain't talkin'. ;)

If man was created at the image of God, God is likely to have masculine features like beard, body hair, manly voice, a beer belly etc...
So christians assumed he/she is from the male gender.

Zee
Because the Univers doesn't "think" and because there is nobody else to think than us and the still undiscovered intelligents beings on other planets, there can be a reason only if there is someone to estimate that reason.

Therefore the Universe would be without reason or sens in absence of  intelligent life.
With intelligent life, the Universe has a reason.
And this reason can be only the formation of intelligent life since without it and if this was not the reason, this reason would disapear.
So it can be said that intelligent life brings sens to the creation of the Universe.

I didn't expect such an academic response to my question about God's gender, but since it's been couched in these terms, I have a suggestion.

Generally, I have read that there are three basic conceptions of God in the world's religions.
One: a masculine, warrior god. This conception tends to be embraced by hunter-gatherer societies that tend toward violent conflict with other tribes as they move into other tribes' territory. (This is the tradition which we of the West inherited via the Hebrews, and thus why we refer to God as "him").   
Two: a feminine god. This conception was popular in agrarian societies that tended to venerate the fecund Earth.
Three: a god so mysterious and not-of-this-world that assigning a gender or even a name to it would mock its awesomeness.

I find the latter conception to be the most rational.

dingue by name but not by nature.  I do however disagree with this.  Reasons are subjective.  Any reference to 'the universe' can only be objective (unless one is a total idealist).  I happen to think that the O includes the S (but could be wrong): however, just because the Objective universe includes reasons, there is no entailment that is performs/does 'reasoning'.   

Sure, "intelligent life brings sens to the creation of the Universe" but only from its own point of view - the universe itself doesn't have one.

What you are saying here smacks of circular reasoning: "Without intelligence there can be no reason there for the reason for the universe was to bring about intelligence so there can be a reason th the universe..."

Why does the universe need a purpose?

What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?

It's wrong because it would mean that your life has no sens.


And from who else point of view you would like this reason to be?

The real question (if it's realy a question) is does the Universe has a reason for its creator?
If we assume that there is a thinking entity behind the creation of the Universe, there is forcibly a reason (which can be not us) otherwise he/she wouldn't have created the Universe. Because if it created the Universe without reason, then it wouldn't be a thinking entity (unless it was drunk or something).

This is circular reasoning. "It's wrong because it's wrong."

Or, to put it another way:

Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: What is wrong with the universe being "without reason or sense"?
You: Because it would be without reason or sense.
Me: Fuck this, I've better things to do.


Surely you can agree that our point of view is not objective. Hence the objective reason for the universe (if there is one) is not our point of view.


That's a pretty massive assumption.

I think part of the confusion is a bit of Category Error.

What is the purpose of a hurricane?  There are actions created by the hurricane, but, unless you are Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, you can't say there is any purpose to a hurricane.  It just is.

You can attribute "purpose" to, say, a cup, because it was designed for a purpose. We know it was designed for a purpose: to drink from.

Your existence has no purpose, but your life does: you create your life (Life, in this way, defined as the story of your existence - not in the biological sense.)  You "design" the reason you get a job, get married or have kids.  You create your own purpose.

You can even CLAIM that some other person has a purpose to YOUR life.  That is, you can say when someone does something to you, that "the reason for that was for me to learn a lesson", but really it was just an action that you are processing in light of your perspective and your "narrative"; your Life.

You can even try to claim that the Universe has a purpose, but that would mean you designed that purpose into the Universe - which is absurd.

The universe wasn't designed to rape and murder some poor college student - likewise, it wasn't designed for someone to "find Allah" and save some child from being abused, or the Universe wasn't designed to massacre thousands of children - or, likewise, it wasn't designed for some aid workers to get food to starvinf children in Darfur, or to have Mozart compose some music, or for the Mets to implode, or some guy become a Mid to Lower class wood worker, or for some guy to divorce his wife for a gay lover, etc...

These are things that happen within the Universe and we only ascribe meaning to it from our own perspective.  When flooding in England happened one nutty Preist declares it an act of retribution from God because of Blair's gay policies, another person declares it a sign from God that He exists, another declares it a sign that he must make a new start, another person finds other meaning in it.

We are pattern seeking animals.  We try to find patterns in random events to try to make sense of our surroundings. (This has been scientifically proven, btw.)

To say "the Universe has a purpose" is to assign a pattern to it. To assign a narrative from your perspective that means something to your Life.

The purpose of the Universe?  For me to write this, and nothing more. ;)



Seriously, to ascribe a purpose to the universe is a Category Error. It is something that is not designed, and therefore cannot "hold" the quality of having a purpose any more than a hurricane has a purpose.

The universe itself doesn't need to have a purpose for your life to have one.  Purposes, like lives are within the universe.   For the universe to have a purpose, there must be a point of view outside the universe - as you suggest.  However, you make a good point that such an 'outside' thing must conform to rules of rationality that exist for us within 'our' universe for us to understand it from our point of view.  But there is no indication that such a conformity exists.  Perhaps we can start to call the start point the Drunken Bang (never a pleasant experience I am told).

Oh yeah? What would you call a Supernatural being, who is invisible, all-powerful and has a huge penis?

... I assume that's a rhetorical question?

;)

Are you saying my revelation isn't worthy of comment? ;D