Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> Why should "nothing" be the default. Or to paraphase Quine, "Nothing is what doesn't exist. So what is there? Everything."
>
Everything that there is is there. But this is the ultimate in begging
the question. The question remains, why is everything (I see) there?
Why do I exist?
It's not that I don't believe in what I see, like the evidence for
evolution, but it doesn't answer the ultimate question.
Relative truth is ultimately useless when it comes to the end of my
life.
Tom
> >> i.e. the question of
> >> the origin of the form of the universe,
>
> "The reason that there is Something rather than Nothing is that
> Nothing is unstable."
> -- Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate Physics 2004.
>
>
> >>why does it "make sense"?
>
> Part of it makes sense to us because we evolved to make sense of it. Quantum mechanics doesn't really "make sense", it's just an inference from what does make sense.
>
> What
> >> is the basis for the nature of reality and beauty?
>
> Why does reality need a basis? Beauty is, famously, in the eye of the beholder.
>
> >> 2) Why is man the way he/she is? Why is man able to have language and
> >> do science, and make sense of the world? Why is man able to love and
> >> figure out what is right? What is the basis for meaning? What is the
> >> basis for mind? How can persons know one another?
>
> Evolution.
>
> "The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to
> him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find
> something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe
> something like reason to Chance and make a religion of
> surrendering to it."
> -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
>
>
> >> 3) Why is man able to know anything, and know that he knows what he
> >> knows?
>
> Because he evolved to make decisions, see William S. Cooper, "The Evolution of Reason".
>
>
> What is the basis for truth? What is truth?
>
> True (and false) are abstract values we assign to sentences for the purpose of making inferences. In application we usually try to assign "true" to those sentences that express facts supported by evidence - unless we are religious, in which case we may ignore evidence and go with revelation.
>
> Brent Meeker
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Received on Mon Dec 04 2006 - 02:21:07 PST