Straggler writes:
Is there really nothing out there.
Since you address us atheists, I assume that by "is there nothing out there" you mean "is there no god out there". If so, then my answer is that I don't know, but that it seems unlikely, not only in the face of our claimed - and decried - absence of evidence, but also in the face of positive evidence in favour of alternatives.
“There is no evidence” I hear you cry. You smug self-righteous bastards.
What's wrong with noting that there is no evidence? I am an atheist in the same way as I am an apinkunicornist. Yes, I say there is no evidence, but I say so quite composedly. If that's smug then so be it.
Did everything really come from nothing?
Calculating back from current insights, everything seems to come from a singularity some twelve to fourteen billion years ago. We can only make an educated guess where the singularity itself came from, if such a notion is at all comprehensible. But I wouldn't go so far as to make up gods to fill the gaps in our knowledge, for that would be to make
uneducated guesses.
No . . consciousness?
As far as I can see, consciousness is something that evolved, so I don't think it had anything to do with the start of the universe, when evolution was still far in the future.
And doesn’t quantum theory and it’s ”role of the conscious observer’ implications pose some fairly awkward questions?
Of course they do. But since when does reality have to conform to human understanding? If our understanding of things leads to some very odd questions, then what do you suppose should change? Reality?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.
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