All this god stuff is nonsense. It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster that created the universe! How more obvious could it be?
Originally posted by: Sahakiel
The best answer may be found while studying General Relativity and applying some philosophical thinking.
With General Relativity, you learn the great importance of the observer. You learn that depending on which observer you choose, the outcome of a single scenario seems to change. In reality, the outcome doesn't change. All that changes is what you see.
So, how does this apply to the laws of physics? Well, if I remember correctly, someone once said something along these lines: Every time man makes a revolutionary discovery, the universe changes. What he meant wasn't that the formalization of the Bohr model suddenly created an immeasurable number of tiny little balls with positive, negative, and neutral charges. He meant that as we create more accurate models of the universe, we begin to see more of it.
The significance of the statement permeates every aspect of science. No matter what area of science you study, you use tools to observe, be they rulers, telescopes, or that thermometer you shoved up where the sun don't shine. However, no matter what tool you use, you always end up using one of your five senses to observe the results. That's the most important point.
If you are blind, you cannot see whether the sky is blue. Yes, you can have someone who can see tell you, but how do you know he's telling the truth? How do you know he's not just saying it's blue so you'll shut up and go away so he can continue messing around with your sister? In fact, how do you know he's there in the first place? You reach out a hand and feel a body, but how do you know it's a body you feel and not a complex doll? If you were blind from birth, imagine if every time you reached out for your mother, you felt a balloon. Uh, oh, I just felt something rubbery, cold, and full of air. Must be a woman.
So, what's my point, other than be careful of blind men with blow-up dolls? The point is the observer always sets the rules. The observer chooses the tools used to observe and chooses the interpretation of what the tools tell him. Slap a magnet next to a compass, and all of a sudden, the sun rises in the South.
The laws of physics were created by men to explain the world as seen by men. You could come up with your own set of rules, but good luck creating a set as accurate that encompasses so many situations.
So, in conclusion, the laws of physics don't govern the universe. The way we observe the universe governs the laws of physics. Everything is a black box with which we can only observe inputs and outputs. We don't care if inside it is a strange wooden contraption, a mouse on a wheel, or the remnants of alien civilization, as long as something takes numbers and operators and inputs and outputs the right numbers, we call it a calculator.
As a side note, how do you know the laws of physics are true? Have you ever seen an atom split? How do you know they weren't created years ago as a way of governing the behavior of the general populace? How do you know your memories are real? How do you know you're not stuck in some virtual reality game where you live as a strange creature in a strange world with random laws of physics? Are you actually reading this text or is it input straight into your brain? Do you even have a brain?
There is obviously no answer to the OPs question, since any answer just be questioned with yet another "Why". Science, btw, is not even about finding out why. It's about finding out "how" through building mathematical models that are provable, as simple as possible, without contradiction, can account for all known facts, etc... So science doesn't even belong in this thread.
The quoted post is the closest thing to an answer that I think you'll ever get. If you decide that god made the universe, then maybe he did. That being said, there's obviously still not an absolute answer to the question.
I'd like to contribute some relevant quotes from Alpha Centauri, which by the way is my favorite ever videogame, largely because it does incorporate quotes like this.
Bioenhancement Center
FAC30
We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled.
But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any
particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in
a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events
of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose
meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?
-- Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7
Activity Recorded M.Y. 2302.22467
TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED
Unified Field Theory
TECH20
Beware, you who seek first and final principles, for you are
trampling the garden of an angry God and he awaits you just
beyond the last theorem.
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson,
"But for the Grace of God"
Controlled Singularity
TECH27
Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled
with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum:
why would a perfect God create a universe at all?
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson,
"But for the Grace of God"
Planetary Networks
TECH32
If our society seems more nihilistic than that of previous eras, perhaps
this is simply a sign of our maturity as a sentient species. As our
collective consciousness expands beyond a crucial point, we are
at last ready to accept life's fundamental truth: that life's only
purpose is life itself.
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
"Looking God in the Eye"
Self-Aware Machines
TECH34
Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without
understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content
are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
-- Immanuel Kant,
"Critique of Pure Reason", Datalinks
I swear sometimes they're watching me.
-- Bozon Pete, Shift Foreman,
Metagenics Biomachinery Division
Intellectual Integrity
TECH37
Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true
rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has
always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save
us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of
evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest
of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore
he must exist.
-- Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"
Secrets of the Human Brain
TECH48
There are only two ways in which we can account for a necessary
agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects: either
experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make
experience possible.
-- Immanuel Kant,
"Critique of Pure Reason", Datalinks
Matter Transmission
TECH57
The first living thing to go through the device was a small white
rat. I still have him, in fact. As you can see, the damage was
not so great as they say.
-- Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
"See How They Run"
Secrets of Creation
TECH65
And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality,
when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or
ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you
is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every
individual in these millions and millions about only one thing:
whether you have lived in despair or not.
-- Soren Kierkegaard,
"The Sickness Unto Death", Datalinks
Homo Superior
TECH67
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and
believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write
new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and
fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the
harvest.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche,
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra", Datalinks
Quantum Machinery
TECH69
Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation,
and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always
they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than
they thought.
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson,
"We Must Dissent"
String Resonance
TECH86
To understand a thing is to know the manner by which it might be destroyed. A fundamental
understanding of the basic building-blocks of the Universe is essential, then, to the total
destruction of everything.
-- Foreman Domai
"One Tool, One Thought"
Transcendent Thought
TECH88
Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind.
Have you drunk your fill?
-- Lady Deirdre Skye,
"Conversations with Planet", Epilogue
The Planetary Datalinks
PROJECT11
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century,
free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.
The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on
information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but
the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse
has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would
deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself
your master.
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal,
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
The Cyborg Factory
PROJECT17
A handsome young Cyborg named Ace,
Wooed women at every base,
But once ladies glanced at
His special enhancement
They vanished with nary a trace.
-- Barracks Graffiti,
Sparta Command