Does the universe just want to destroy itself?

If it was God that created everything, which is pushing towards destruction, that doesn't sound like the nicest God... As for what we're doing, though, I'm not sure it's going to lead to any kind of direct destruction. I mean, we burn up the planet way more then any kind of plant or animal could... the only thing that burns it up more, is the planet itself. On that, if destruction is a positive thing, that means that the more we burn up, the better we'll do.. and it does go that way. I mean, lets say that some gigantic, world-wide destruction happens because of how much we burn and how much we use up everything around us... we still have the best chances of living on throughout it... the only thing that could really beat us is things like cockroaches and bacteria... but we burn up way more then either of those do. I think we're going to be ok... until everything is gone... and by then, we'll just move on to the next place we can find to burn things up.

hmm.. so in the future, it is better to be a cockroach or a germ? Such fortunate creatures. I don't like fire, it is hot. just making this very heavy discussion lighter. Cheer up no offense meant even to the cockroaches and germs around me. Such a scary future if that will happen.

The problem of evil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil) is applicable whenever fate/causality and the presence of God ever come up.

But in that cycle, the end result is always less mass and more energy... like the sun. You have hydrogen under such pressure that it bonds together and makes helium, but that process lets off loads of neutrons, converting the mass into energy. With this process happening so much across the universe, there ends up being more energy then mass, and with the extreme expansion of the universe, the left over neutrons have far less of a chance of bonding to make more matter. Of course, with so much mass, we're still at least billions of years away from there being no mass left, but it seems like that's what the universe wants...

..but now that I think about it.. I think entropy IS destruction, as you said.. the burning away of all imperfection.. I read just this morning in Deuteronomy 32, I think it was (in the "song of Moses") how God said He's "a kindling fire".. - He is purity and perfection, and for things to remain perfect, impurity has to be consumed away.. The way I read it, is endowing thinking ability (thus choice) was the opening of a real pandora's box.. But unavoidable unless there's never to be rational creatures of any sort, ever.. As opposed to robots, an ant farm, or sticking with flora and fauna (in its perfect state of course). "The lion will" (once again) "eat straw like the ox and the bear will graze with the cow.." Isaiah 11:7.

The beginning seems really interesting, because as far as we know, there was no entropy, it was more of an extremely fast creation of everything, formation from energy into matter... but after that happened, it's like a wave, and it's trying to go back to just being energy

I'm an atheist too, so it's good to see another one on here commenting on this piece... but I have to say, your direction doesn't sound very atheist... that there is an all-encompassing power through our consciousness that creates and destroys the universe for the sole purpose of sustaining life like us... that sounds more like a spiritual agnostic direction to me... If you look at evolution, it seems like it's development goes more towards what makes the best use of the environment to carry on, and therefore, turn more matter into energy. Humans are just a tiny speck of what has happened through evolution on earth, before it was everything growing bigger and bigger, and the bigger they are, the more energy they use. When the conditions changed, where the huge can no longer work, everything gets smarter, so they can figure out how to turn more matter into energy. If making more intelligent life was the goal, and it has to be done by constant evolution, why not make the conditions harsher? The more difficult it is to live, the more intelligence life has to gain. On earth, life was extremely easy to develop and adapt to for a billion years, which is why life was huge but not very smart, with tiny tiny brains. If even down to the bacteria, the ones who would do better had to make more decisions, and form together more, intelligent life would arise way faster. If the universe was just a lab to make life, then why not make it just for life? Why not make just one big planet that could create and sustain life. Even for life on earth, you wouldn't need anything more then just our sun and our planet to make life, so why make other stars? Why make other galaxies? In my atheist point of view, it really seems like life, let alone intelligent life, is just a microscopic speck on this massive amount of everything that's around us, and therefore, us being a principal outcome of the universe just doesn't make sense. It more has to be something that is massive, and happening everywhere... and something that seems to be the far most common, is matter turning into energy.

I see you're an interesting discussion partner. I'm always interested in such discussions (when there's time :-)). to be honest, I wasn't familiar with the expression ''agnostic''. Well, I took a look at the Wiki and I think I'm not really agnostic since I'm pretty much convinced there's no single entity called God (like the biblical God or the God of the muslims). But you're right that I consider something more all-encompassing as the driving force behind the physical universe. I usually call it ''genereal consciousness'', comparable to an ocean of souls (not just one soul/ spirit called a God) from which latter enter the physical world (I think I already talked to you about that in another discussion, so I won't go too much into detail here) and that ocean - before there was a universe - used all its ''imagination'' to create the big bang with all its physical laws that came into being right after it. But if you create something that big there are many variables (really many) which run like in a program and you don't really know the outcome (therefore - experiment). Yeah, why is it so big and the tiny space that allows life so small ? Good question here. But I think my ''theory'' also has an answer for that. Let's make a parable like good ol' Jesus used to do. Say you want to build a car (on your own). Now, the car itself is relatively small: perhaps a ton in weight, that's it. But to build it you need to make plans first. Then you need to get raw materials. Then you need tools and machines to assemble that car. Now how much time, how much paper, how much raw materials, how many tools did you need to just build that car? And how many places (mines) did you have to dig in to find the metals and other compounds you needed. And that is just some of the stuff you have to consider when you have to start from scratch. And there will be a LOT of waste and ''waste of time''. Now imagine something as complex as life. What do you need for that, i.e. what do you need to create our genome? You will sooner or later come to the conclusion that you will need an awful amount of time, raw material, physical, chemical, biological laws, space, time, energy (yeah, quite a lot of that), gravity etc etc etc. You'll probably end up with a whole universe if you don't want to ''think'' until eternity to make life as ''compressed'' or reduced to the absolute minimum as possible. Thus, if I was the creator of the universe, I probably also would have set the main parameters necessary for creating (hopefully) some sort of life and then I'd have put as much building material and space into that universe so that there are enough options available that somewhere, somehow, and some day life will develop. Of course not really knowing if it will actually work... you see, I really try to explain things here :-) and so we are not perfect and so this universe is so vaste and so there's so much things going on out there that we don't really understand or that we can't even reach. As you know first there was energy, then there was matter (condensed energy or E=mc²). Matter formed from energy. And one fundamental physical law states: no energy is created and no energy is lost. Just transformed. I believe the mere fact that we exist is proof enough that the universe is indeed eternal. If it wasn't then what was before and what will be afterwards? Unfortunately there's a little problem here. ''Time'' does only exist because the universe exists as the big bang created what we call space-time. Before that there was neither space nor time, at least not in the sense we would understand it.

Well, we don't know exactly what dark matter is, but we know it's there, because we can see it working, and it's going in the same direction as the matter that we see. Fortunately for us, this destruction won't be happening, even to our planet, for at least millions of years, probably billions of years. We don't have to worry too much about it.

Well, it can't be created or destroyed, but it can change from matter into energy... and if it goes so far that all the matter left over is so slim that it can't reattach to make bigger matter, then we'll mostly have just energy... it really seems like the universe doesn't like matter, and it's trying to change everything around, and we're doing the same.