If we can’t say for sure that time isn’t infinite, that things haven’t always been, in whatever capacity, then doesn’t the principle argument against the existence of God crumble? If it’s said that God must have come from somewhere, why would that be an issue. If time has always been there, then couldn’t God just always have been?
So if time is finite… where did it come from? Substance can’t have come from nothing, energy doesn’t work that way. It fluctuates, expanding and contracting. It never goes away, it just moves. It must always have been.
So although the infinity-explaining-creator theory is at least plausible on that single isolated point, so therefore is the likelihood that at some point in… infinity – biological life came about, or the conditions were just right to allow life. As theists say, it could have been so many different ways, the balance of carbon might have been just off, the amount of organic compounds in the universe might not have been correct, the amino acids combination might have been irregular. So many things contribute to the fact we’re here. Yet, given enough time, in an infinite time frame, the criteria would be at some point be met.
But the question of life remains. In the face of so many uncertainties presented by the idea of a Creator, I err to the side of evidence. But evidence does not cover, or seem to cover the reasons. It covers the functions and the connections between the sciences, between the chemistry and the biology, especially as our scientific understanding increases. It does not say why. Why does a collection of inert chemicals brought together form a biological entity that needs and fights to survive?
As an example: why does magnetism act the way it does? I guess that we know almost without question how magnetism works, and yet we also know that in order for us to be here magnetism couldn’t work any other way.
Of course magnetism is part of a large number of codependent laws that function in symbiosis in order to allow life to thrive. A slight change and we wouldn’t be here.
So are we to say that over the period of time, one physical constant after another slipped into place, functioning in conjunction with each other, in just the right way to allow biological substances? But whats more, to allow the existence of a combination of chemicals to act above and beyond the functions of any other chemical composition in the entire known universe? To want to survive? To develop instinct?
Did the universe evolve similar to how life evolves? Clearly not. We are obviously here, musing over this particular problem because all the necessary laws did indeed come to be in a particular order to allow life. But that fact does not not strengthen the odds to our existence, those are still perilously thin, as any scientist will tell you. Move a carbon atom to the left and we wouldn’t have been. Change how light waves are reflected and life would never have been tolerated existence by the physical status quo.
I guess I do not feel that our existence is reason enough to accept that things could not have been any other way, this point being emphasized by the aforementioned precariousness of our situation.
…and if no-one responds to this… I don’t know.
Fourteen Twenty 
I think agnosticism is where it’s at. I’ve always liked the saying, “I don’t know, and you don’t know either.”
We seem to be wired to make meaning. How anyone orients to that, what terms they come up with, that’s cool, so long as they don’t try to coerce or manipulate others (that leaves insitutionalized religion out). Life’s a journey. All we really need is freedom.
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I don’t know either.
Sometimes being in a ‘don’t know’ state is nice and fine, sometimes it’s not; uncertainty doesn’t sit well in this brain of mine; perhaps it doesn’t sit well in ANY brain!
The brain, it’s a prediction machine, taking and recording outside life then using it in order to predict what may happen next. It just doesn’t like uncertainty; makes it feel vulnerable, perhaps at the individual level that’s the motive behind belief, faith, being part of a group, a sect, a movement; fact is anything that makes us feel like we belong and through which the future seems safe and secure i.e. predictable, known, is extremely appealing to this brain, to our thought process generally.
In my view, vulnerability and that state of uncertainty is the only state from which there may arise truth. . . but there are no guarantees; Thats the point you see :0)
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I totally agree Ray… as long as you don’t cushion the vulnerability with too much comforting faith, you’re brain is still ready for truth. That state is painful, but I think worth it. It’s the age-old oblivion vs enlightenment argument… which might actually be the same thing… hmmm
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