Some Loser

I had originally said:
Thus, I did not say that something must be perceived in order to exist. It only needs to have an affect on you. We know that everything in the universe is connected in at least one way - gravity. All matter affects all other matter simultaneously through gravity. Thus, all matter exists (to me) because it affects me. So in the camera example, the man was already being affected by the room long before he took the picture. The photograph was merely visual confirmation of its existence.

Plump-DJ

Perhaps this is why I consider Atheism to be ultimately nhilistic; because all hope is in the end seemingly destroyed. We live from day to day and then we die. And for the rest of eternity when we're lying in our graves we won't really care about how we lived, or what happened to anyone else that we loved, or what love was, or wether we knew the truth or anything for that matter. It will be like we never even existed.

Frankly I just hope to God it's about *something* even if my feeble brain cannot comprehend it. Then I store such thoughts in the back of my mind and hope they won't crop up again.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

If you buy the winning lottery ticket, the 'odds' of you winning were one in one. The odds of 'anyone' winning were much smaller, but they didn't win.

You did.

The odds of the universe existing are also one in one; the universe exists. There is no evidence of 'failed attempts' at existence, nor any evidence as to how many previous attempts may have failed.

Thus, to suggest that existence has a 'one-in-a-million' chance of being, is irrational: offered without evidence.

The universe (existence) is all that exists. There is nothing else, nothing 'outside' of existence, with which to compare existence, to determine if things 'might have been'--or could have been--different.

This is it--

--and this is.

Keith.

Ensign Steve

I didn't say that existence has a 'one-in-a-million' change of being. I said "Let's say the odds of the universe existing exactly as it is are a million to one (obviously they are much higher than that, but this is just an example)." - emphasis added. True, I did not offer evidence. I was refering to chaos theory, and that stupid butterfly in the Amazon, and the fact that there have been countless chances for things to have gone differently, and for this universe to exist in some way other than "exactly as it is." But that was just an example, leading up to my actual point, which was that the odds of existence itself are 1:1.

Just so I am not misunderstood. Thank you.

Jen

99Percent

JenniferD, I think your lottery analogy is very good. Let consider yet a third possibility. Lets say that there are million lottery tickets, but that there are also a million people drawing a number. Drawing a particular number is a million to one odds. So anyone would say "Wow! I just happen to draw 932,113" what are the odds of drawing that particular number? But as you say, someone had to draw that number, and everyone had to draw a number.

Likewise with existence, all things that exist must have a place and time of existence, or else they wouldn't exist.

Philosoft

Well, nihilism has nothing to do with hope.

I don't think your common fears of death and non-existence are any indication of the emotional undesirability of atheism. In fact, I think such eternal thinking devalues the 80 or so years we spend in this universe, as if this life is some ho-hum testing ground on the way to eternal bliss and we're just going through the motions.
What could it possibly be "about"? What does a divine being need exept apparently, according to Christian doctrine, to be "freely" loved? If this is your idea of *something*, I'll pass.

99Percent

But we do, we have a choice. Thats why we can contemplate non-existence itself and why we are moral beings. We can distinguish between what is true and what is false, between what exists and what does not exist, between what is life and what is death.

I_C_THE_LITE

Well, existence may seem nonsensical, but our lives make sense as much as we make them so. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we choose to do right vs wrong? Why, if we believe, do we marry? Doing these things make sense, because of the systems in which we live. We can only make sense of tangibles or things with scientific merit. Theists, however, make sense out of the senseless. Why - meaninglessness equals hopelessness which leads to a loss of faith. But, we know better.

Captain_Proton

Perhaps, it is because existence is not a fact, it is presupposition. All our explanations of natural phenomena ultimately rely the presumption that things exist. Therefore, we can conclude that existence is the universal precursor to all reasons/explanations. A reason for existence is meaningless, because reason itself a consequence of existence.
The difference between facts and this presupposition of existence is that facts are the consequence of reason. For example, it is a fact that the leaf on a particular tree is green. The reason for this is that the molecules in the leaf cells reflects green visible light. This reason must be true in order for the fact to be true. In other words, the reason preludes the fact. However, if existence of the leaf is questioned, the reason becomes useless. It is meaningless to explain why the leaf is green, if you don't think the leaf exists at all. In this way, existence is exempted from reason.
To clarify my point, I will use a mathematical example. There are many tenets of Euclidean geometry. One is that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line through the points; with it, we can prove that it is only possible to construct a triangle, where the sum of the lengths of the two smaller sides is greater the length of the third side. Another tenet is that a line is composed of an infinite number of points, this is why two lines always intersect at a point. With all these basic premises, we can syllogistically derive myriad simple and extravagrant geometrical conclusions. However, what if we were asked to prove one of the tenets, say, I asked you to prove that the shortest distance between two points is straight line, using Euclidean geometry. The task would be impossible, because you cannot prove one of the basic tenets of the system with the system itself. It is for this same reason that we cannot find a "reason" for existence, because reason itself is part of this system of existence.

Bah... sorry, if that didn't make any sense.

Philosoft

Can we really "contemplate non-existence"? Are we actually thinking about anything when we say "non-existence"? Can you and I have a conversation solely about "non-existence"? We can talk about non-existent things that once existed, as if they still do. We can talk about abstract things that don't exist, as if they did. But, I wonder if there is actually a state-of-affairs, "non-existence" that is a thinkable proposition.