Does the Big Bang Suggest a Creator God?

[Fomalhaut]

Formalhaut

**First, you cannot use the Bible as evidence. You can take it as a starting point, and compare observations to what it says. But assuming it is true and using it as evidence is circular reasoning. **

I did not use circular reasoning. I assumed what the Bible said to be true, and then science proved it to be true. How is that circular reasoning? Sounds like the opposite of circular reasoning to me.

You should be careful with your wording then:

There is evidence in Genesis that the universe originally contained a great blast of light. Science has confirmed this.

You make it sound like there is two confirmation of the theory: one from the Bible AND one from science. But there is a theory, which the Bible happened to partially cover, and ONE confirmation from science. But we’re getting into semantics.

**As for the multiverse, there is no evidence yet, but we have some ideas on how to observe it. Wait a few decades, that’s not the first time science predicts the existence of something before it is found. **

Your faith in science to prove anything it sets its mind to prove is most touching. Even a million years from now you could say, “Well, we haven’t got the evidence of another universe, but we’ll have it some day no doubt.”

How is that so different from the faith of those who believe in God without requiring scientific evidence?

Did I say “I know the multiverse is true, just you wait !” ? No. I said that no evidence today doesn’t mean it cannot exist and that it will never be discovered. The difference between a scientist telling me “we are likely to find this” without evidence and a priest telling me “God exist and turned into a human to forgive our sins” is that others of the scientist’s claims turned out to be verified experimentally numerous times before. And yet I don’t have “faith” in science: I remain open to anything. There’s a difference.

The multiverse is in principle unobservable, and thus can never be science. This is not about current limitations of science, but about principal limitations of science.

For a detailed discussion, see chapter 1.3.4. of my article:

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/…uments-god.htm

It is interesting, but your argument to reject the CMB potential observation doesn’t hold water for me.

The demonstration of the mere existence of a multiverse would not suffice. Scientifically adequate evidence would only be the demonstration of the existence of a multiverse fulfilling the requirements needed to explain the fine-tuning, i.e. sufficient random variation of the physical parameters between the different universes or universe domains.

If we have an observation, it definitely is science, not philosophy. You can never observe all you want, you have to do with what you have. As an astrophysicist I am painfully aware of that: observations are difficult. So the evidence of the existence of the multiverse will be a strong argument for the existence of this big multiverse theory. It won’t confirm it as certain because nothing is certain in science anyway.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Formalhaut

** It won’t confirm it as certain because nothing is certain in science anyway. **

Except that nothing is certain in science?

 

[Linux]

Where in the Bible does it say that, specifically, without additional interpretation?

Okay. The world was created in 7 days.

 

[atheistgirl]

Except that nothing is certain in science?

You said that like it was a bad thing



Sarah x

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Okay. The world was created in 7 days.

Are you certain that you exist ??? Descartes and Kant, it’s all in your head. Ha,ha,ha.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Okay. The world was created in 7 days.

That doesn’t answer my challenge.

What you said was that the Bible claimed the world is not older than 10, 000 years. This is what you said:

Genesis is not a science book. If it were, then i would have to say the bible is false since the world is older than 10,000 years old.

The world could, in fact, have been created in seven days but at a time much before 10, 000 years ago. The two claims are not incompatible, so clearly the creation story in Genesis does not entail what you say it does.

Given that time is a dimension of the space-time continuum and assuming that a stretching of the continuum and time has occurred since the initial Big Bang event, then we have no reason to think that duration today is essentially the same as it was 14.7 billion years ago.

This article might provide an interesting perspective.

geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Originally Posted by Linux
Okay. The world was created in 7 days

Actually, the Hebrew word for “day” also mean “period of time.” Certainly the universe was not created as we know it today in 7 24-hour days. In his book The Science of God physicist Gerald Schroeder translates the seven “days” of scripture into seven periods when the universe was created right up until today.Chapters 3 & 4 are especially relevant to this thread.

O.K. Peter! You got to Schroeder first!

 

[Al_Moritz]

So the evidence of the existence of the multiverse will be a strong argument for the existence of this big multiverse theory.

The existence of the ‘big multiverse’ with sufficient variation of physical parameters, as to explain ours as a statistical necessity, does not follow logically from some limited evidence of ‘some’ multiverse.

This is not scientific thinking, it is wishful thinking under the pretense of science.

It won’t confirm it as certain because nothing is certain in science anyway.

That is a poor argument in an effort to conceal flawed logic.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

youtube.com/watch?v=u0_Avz83VNU

This is an excellent interview with Catholic scientist Stephen Barr, all the more so as it puts the Big Bang into historical perspective as consistent with ancient religion rather than with ancient science.

 

[wittgenstein]

Response to post 8 and 9
There was no before the big bang. Time was created at the big bang. St. Augustine said something similar after contemplating on what God was doing before creation.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Response to post 8 and 9
There was no before the big bang. Time was created at the big bang. St. Augustine said something similar after contemplating on what God was doing before creation.

It really does not matter how we envision the universe. From a philosophical perspective there may be only one universe eternally existing or that came into existence or there may be an infinity of multi universes that came to be or come to be.

No matter how you envision the situation there is still a logical necessity for a Creative Cause which is Itself only One, Pure Act, Unchangeable and Unchanged, which either caused a created universe or multiverses to be or which eternally causes it or them to be. There is no situation imaginable for any material reality (or realities ) to cause their own existence. No matter how much one may desire it to be oterwise, it is a logical, even scientific necessity that such a Cause exists.

To speak of it as a scientific necessity is proven by the methods of science. It is able to exist and thrive only because every event has a cause which accompanies and brings into being another reality. So for science to assume that there is no ultimate reality as the initial cause would make all subsequent science impossible because there would be no causes now and so now nothing would exist. But science does work so there must be an ultimate cause for scientific fecundity. And that is an Ultimate Creative Cause existing outside of the realm of time and matter.

What I can’t for the life of me figure out is why some object to this logical/scientific/philosophical necessity. It seems to be based solely on the desire/wish that it is not so. There is no other reasonable answer.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

While you can prove logically that God exists and is the cause of physical reality in general, you cannot prove logically or scientifically that he is the direct cause of this particular universe or that this is the only universe that God created. Therefore I don’t see the big-bang as a-prior suggesting a creator in the direct sense of the word as opposed to an evolution of universes of which God is the ultimate cause. A beginning of this universe is not necessarily the beginning of physical reality itself.

It really does not matter how we envision the universe. From a philosophical perspective there may be only one universe eternally existing or that came into existence or there may be an infinity of multi universes that came to be or come to be.

No matter how you envision the situation there is still a logical necessity for a Creative Cause which is Itself only One, Pure Act, Unchangeable and Unchanged, which either caused a created universe or multiverses to be or which eternally causes it or them to be. There is no situation imaginable for any material reality (or realities ) to cause their own existence. No matter how much one may desire it to be ohterwise, it is a logical, even a scientific necessity that such a Cause exists.

To speak of it as a scientific necessity is proven by the methods of science. It is able to exist and thrive only because every event has a cause which accompanies and brings into being another reality. So for science to assume that there is no ultimate reality as the initial cause would make all subsequent science impossible because there would be no causes now and so now nothing would exist. But science does work, so there must be an ultimate cause for scientific fecundity. And that is an Ultimate Creative Cause existing outside of the realm of time and matter.

Now there can be only one such Being for all imaginable scenarios.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Response to post 8 and 9
There was no before the big bang. Time was created at the big bang. St. Augustine said something similar after contemplating on what God was doing before creation.

My response here was meant for Linux, Excuse me. Your response here is good.

 

[Fomalhaut]

It really does not matter how we envision the universe. From a philosophical perspective there may be only one universe eternally existing or that came into existence or there may be an infinity of multi universes that came to be or come to be.

No matter how you envision the situation there is still a logical necessity for a Creative Cause which is Itself only One, Pure Act, Unchangeable and Unchanged, which either caused a created universe or multiverses to be or which eternally causes it or them to be. There is no situation imaginable for any material reality (or realities ) to cause their own existence. No matter how much one may desire it to be ohterwise, it is a logical, even a scientific necessity that such a Cause exists.

To speak of it as a scientific necessity is proven by the methods of science. It is able to exist and thrive only because every event has a cause which accompanies and brings into being another reality. So for science to assume that there is no ultimate reality as the initial cause would make all subsequent science impossible because there would be no causes now and so now nothing would exist. But science does work, so there must be an ultimate cause for scientific fecundity. And that is an Ultimate Creative Cause existing outside of the realm of time and matter.

Now there can be only one such Being for all imaginable scenarios.

On a few threads on this forum, I encountered the answer: “paradoxes only exist in our mind, God can’t be understand with our tiny minds so what seems illogical actually isn’t”. Given the weirdness of the quantum world, the even worse weirdness coming with new theories, why is it impossible to imagine a way around the problem that doesn’t need an eternal intelligent being ? Maybe causes and effect only apply in our 3d world which could be the projection of a 11D world in which things happen that are completely out of reach of our mind ?

I want to make it clear, this is philosophy, not science. But what do you think of it ? Why appeal to God to solve a logic problem when Himself cause paradoxes ?

 

[Bradski]

O.K. Peter! You got to Schroeder first!

So Schroeder thinks that as space expands and time with it, then the days of Creation get relatively longer. The point he omits is the fact that if something changes relatively, then it has to change relative to something else.

So a day on earth will always be a day on earth but will seem to last a lot longer to someone else who is somewhere else moving away from us.

The someone else who is somewhere else cannot be God (obviously), so to whom do the days look longer? And where are they?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

**The someone else who is somewhere else cannot be God (obviously), so to whom do the days look longer? And where are they? **

I don’t know where they are, or even if they are. If they are, their days are longer or shorter depending on how many hours it takes the planet they live on to do a complete rotation on its axis.