[monero-xmr]

It’s obvious to me that the universe was intelligently designed. For exactly the reasons the author states, it’s simply too perfect and conducive to life.

If you have 10 minutes watch this video of a cardiac surgeon whose patient had a near death experience:

https://youtu.be/JL1oDuvQR08

The most arrogant thing I could possibly imagine thinking, is that I know all of the mysteries of the universe and what happens when we die.

[eatsyourtacos]

>it’s simply too perfect and conducive to life

Conducive to life as we know it. Every 'version' of the universe and every little difference would lead to a different kind of life. And in all of those scenarios you would say the same thing. "Look how much it's conducive to us!".

The smaller context is people saying that earth is the perfect difference to support our life, therefore it must be god that put it there! If the earth was much closer like mercury, there would be no life to say that "well, we weren't placed in the right place- no god".

>and what happens when we die

It's more arrogant to think that you are more than a biological machine. Stab someone in the head with an icepick and they will be brain damaged and possibly even have a different personality, memory loss etc. So when that person "dies" you think what.. their conscious magically lives on? Which one, the one before being stabbed or the damaged one?

Does every other living being on this earth move on to something else? Humans aren't special. We are animals no different than anything else on this planet.

[catlover76]

> Does every other living being on this earth move on to something else?

Maybe, yeah.

> It's more arrogant to think that you are more than a biological machine.

I think you have a point there, but it's also the case that the only thing we know is our consciousness, which is a thing for which we in fact have no material explanation.

> The smaller context is people saying that earth is the perfect difference to support our life, therefore it must be god that put it there! If the earth was much closer like mercury, there would be no life to say that "well, we weren't placed in the right place- no god".

This is true, to a large degree, but I think misses quite how obtuse it is to (reductively stated) look at the kind of system nature is and figure it must have come about purely by chance. I think it's one of the weaker arguments made by religious people and one of the weaker put-downs by religion-haters, and people don't seem to go deep into what it is about nature they are talking about in this context.

> Stab someone in the head with an icepick and they will be brain damaged and possibly even have a different personality, memory loss etc. So when that person "dies" you think what.. their conscious magically lives on? Which one, the one before being stabbed or the damaged one?

I think there are a lot of cases of people getting injured in their brain and being fine, or people being basically brain-dead and then coming back reporting various types of near-death experience (i.e. they were conscious while brain-dead).

[lo_zamoyski]

I hold that both of your positions lack basic metaphysical sophistication. I also submit that one source of potential error is a shared, but discredited metaphysical stance. However, if you have a sincere and humble interest in this subject matter, one open to correction, I would recommend "The Last Superstition"[0] as a starting point. There is no point in running in circles, because you can examine your presuppositions to discover the sources of your errors. And once you do so, you will see the intuitions you have absorbed through various cultural sources contain very serious errors.

[0] https://a.co/d/2qTcFlw

[FredPret]

The only conclusion we can draw from your observation of a really-nice-to-live-in universe (and almost all of it isn’t) is that we can create a simulated, even nicer-to-live-in universe in our havitable corner of it and run some AIs in it.

If there’s a creator, then this creator fellow must live in an even bigger, nicer universe within which ours exists. Now, where does that come from?

[monero-xmr]

When you travel at the speed of light, time stops, and because of length contraction, the universe is no longer vast. To a proton - light - everything is instantaneous, time does not exist, and distance means nothing.

I don't know what the creator's purpose is. I just know we are part of something far larger and far greater. When we die, we go to another place.

[wk_end]

Given that the universe is unfathomably vast and almost all of it is extraordinarily hostile to - and so far as we know, entirely devoid of - life, I can't say I agree.