Anthropic principle

[Promethium147]

I read the posts, but I return to the initial question.

You clearly don't realize what "chance", aka Random, means. Don't feel bad - few do. For instance - the Laws of Chance are actually quite precise.

"Random" merely means - if there is a pattern here, I can't see it - yet.

On the other hand - if God created the Universe according to some plan, and I don't know why He/She/It did it just when they did, then by golly - looks Random to me, as does every other part of the plan I don't know about. If I assume the plan in toto is consistent and coherent, I am forced to admit that failure to know every single detail of it makes what I DO know of it appear - Random. There's no way out, Dude.

As an experienced cryptologist, I can encode data such that it is not only difficult to decode, it is a demonstrable mathematical impossibility; thus it is quite impossible for anyone to show the data is less than random - unless they have my crypto key; THEN she pops right open, no sweat. To find the key randomly (a brute force attack) could be done - unfortunately, the very protons in the storage media will decay long, long before you have a snowball's chance in hell of doing so. One may assume the data loses any relevance first.

You say you cannot conceive of a Universe created from nothing, without a God to do it; but this of course implies that this God who predates the Universe is a nothing - and here we agree.

I would assume he is Eternal for sake of argument - but I truly don't know what Eternal means, neither do you, and neither does anyone else.

Eternal "means" an Infinity of Time - but again we are stuck. What are these?

Time is not what we think at all, and this was definitively demonstrated in 1919, during a solar eclipse observed from Africa.

Infinity is quite the deal; it turns out that Infinity = Zero, a very trivial mathematical conclusion of Cantorian Set Theory.

Nothing cannot be known, because - it is an idea written upon a physical medium - the mind is quite physical, my friend. The model of NoThing in the mind is, itself, a Thing - the antithesis of NoThing - and cannot be expected to behave as NoThing when manipulated - after all, how does one manipulate NoThing? If there is a Thing to manipulate NoThing, then have we not lost NoThingness by having it?

I note also that when Zero was introduced in the western world, widespread rioting erupted - from Christians, who thought it Satanic.

Bear that in mind next time you balance your checkbook - if any.