[AndyTheBear]

You have already defined nature for me, when you insisted that existence consisted of matter and energy only. Thus we have a partition drawn by you. You categorize things outside of it as "miracles" and "magic". Thus again you have drawn the partition. You have asserted your belief that the "magic" thinking is unsupportable, thus you have abandoned, except by pretense, any validity to your Ocham's Razor type arguments.

But then again, my resulting question is why, if you have already conceded that something can be eternal and uncreated, why not the universe?

If universe means cosmos including the possibility of a super nature in it. Then certainly the eternal thing is in that super nature. If it does not have a super nature in it, then I look at the laws of physics, and to matter and energy, and shake my head and think about it.

Frankly we don't know about the physics of God, so he could be an exception to this law we see. However the stuff we can see does not appear to be eternal, even if we assume that the second law of thermodynamics is just wrong...a pretty fancy assumption for somebody lead by science.

But we can have fun with the idea that regular matter and energy are eternal, and see what ridiculous implications we can draw.

Imagine that the big bang has happened an infinite number of times. And that each time the results are non-deterministic (which appears to be the nature of matter and energy per current state of physics).

Well, then because of the non determinate infinite sequence, every possible event physically possible must have happened already an infinite number of times!

What fun! Certainly pink horses with horns in their forehead must have evolved on some iterations! It must have happened an infinite number of times! And thus there must be an infinite number of invisible pink unicorns.

And just think, on some iterations there must have been some little folks with pointed ears and elven wings...but with tails. In some cases marvelous tails with some remarkable traits...any that were possible on some iterations.

Thus on such a view, fairy tails must be real!

Not only do you have angels...in infinite number...you have all creatures possible both in and out of mythology.

Of coarse, I think it more sensible to think of the thing beyond the beginning of the big bang as not just more of the same into eternity...but then, I'm at least as smart as a 4 year old.

[EnderWiggins]

"You have already defined nature for me, when you insisted that existence consisted of matter and energy only."

And... what? Do you object to that definition or not? Why do you insist on never telling us what you think until you have to disagree with what you previously said? It's getting kinda tiresome.

"Thus we have a partition drawn by you."

Yes we do. But not an arbitrary one.

"You categorize things outside of it as "miracles" and "magic". Thus again you have drawn the partition."

Yes... I have. And how do feel about that? If you disagree with it, perhaps you might find the intestinal fortitude to actually take a stand on the issue?

"You have asserted your belief that the "magic" thinking is unsupportable, thus you have abandoned, except by pretense, any validity to your Ocham's Razor type arguments."

I have no idea what you are trying to say there.

"If universe means cosmos including the possibility of a super nature in it. Then certainly the eternal thing is in that super nature. If it does not have a super nature in it, then I look at the laws of physics, and to matter and energy, and shake my head and think about it.

Was that supposed to be an answer to my question? It was not that hard a question, so I'll try it again, and perhaps this time you will actually answer it. Here is is again:

If you have already conceded that something can be eternal and uncreated, why not the universe?

"Frankly we don't know about the physics of God, so he could be an exception to this law we see. However the stuff we can see does not appear to be eternal, even if we assume that the second law of thermodynamics is just wrong...a pretty fancy assumption for somebody lead by science."

Again, you have fallen back on misconceptions that I thought we had covered several posts ago. Nothing in the universe need be eternal for the universe to be eternal. We've already talked about that. You seem to be trying to embrace the logical fallacy of composition. Since it's a fallacy, I'm not sure why you would want to do that.

But I am intrigued in how you believe that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics helps you. Want to give is the short version on that?

"But we can have fun with the idea that regular matter and energy are eternal, and see what ridiculous implications we can draw.

[snip]

Not only do you have angels...in infinite number...you have all creatures possible both in and out of mythology."

Actually... you are both right and wrong at the same time. You are wrong in that your imagination seems quite impoverished. Limiting yourself to human invented "fairy tales" misses out on the simple fact that an eternal universe is likely to produce a far larger number of things you can't even imagine than those you can. Invisible pink unicorns? Heck, you're not even trying.

But where you are right is that in such a scenario, there must be universes just like this one... in fact an infinite number of them. You are not the only Andy that has argued with an Ender about this issue on an Internet.

And all with no requirement for divine intervention.

"Of coarse, I think it more sensible to think of the thing beyond the beginning of the big bang as not just more of the same into eternity...but then, I'm at least as smart as a 4 year old."

So... let me get this straight. Allow me to paraphrase with a point. Another way of saying this is:

You think it more sensible to think of the thing beyond the beginning of the big bang as something for which have no evidence than something for which you actually do have evidence.

Is that really your position?