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childhoodtimes

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God did not create the universe

Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction. A magical deity adds nothing to the known explanation.

God did not create the solar system or the Earth

Our sun was formed by the particle clouds left behind from previous stars, and our planet (as well as every other planet in the solar system) formed from an accretion disk surrounding our sun.

thanks for your time guys!!!

I saw this in this link:
[rationalresponders.com/](http://www.rationalresponders.com/)
 
childhoodtimes said:
God did not create the universe

Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction. A magical deity adds nothing to the known explanation.

God did not create the solar system or the Earth

Our sun was formed by the particle clouds left behind from previous stars, and our planet (as well as every other planet in the solar system) formed from an accretion disk surrounding our sun.

thanks for your time guys!!!

I saw this in this link:
Code: 
        [rationalresponders.com/](http://www.rationalresponders.com/)
Click to expand...
Welcome to CAF, Childhoodtimes.

I must say, at the outset, that your question is one we have been dealing with on almost every thread for the past four, or so, months. It’s to the point that I am getting hard-pressed for motivation to respond again. No dis-respect in any way towards you.

Now, to your question: If “a deity adds nothing to an explanation” of the beginning of everything, and everything started at the big Bang, then one must presuppose that there was nothing before the Big Bang. But, how is that possible? How did a finite, dependent (contingent), something magically appear out of nowhere, from nothing, where no physical laws existed, where no cause and effect existed, where there was no sufficient reason, where the odds against such an event was 1:infinity, and become everything?

The answer, “Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction . . .” is simply grossly insufficient. To simply ignore the essential contradiction that “out of nothing something came to be” is muddled thinking, at best, and outright dis-ingenuousness, at worst.

I am not yet saying what that first cause, or first principle of creation was (or is), I am merely pointing out that the answer they have given is woefully inadequate.

I looked at the website you presented and found it to be an amalgam of woefully inadequate, unsupported, categorical assertions - much like saying to you that, “You have never seen a movie that was even remotely bad.” Or, “Everything you believe about everything is completely wrong.” Hopefully, you would look at me as though I had completely lost my mind. That’s how you should look at the producers of that website.

If you stay with this forum for a while, you will read some great stuff, and some not so great stuff - from both sides of the question of the existence of God. There’s a great deal of intelligence herein - especially mine! 😃

Good reading!

jd
 
childhoodtimes said:
God did not create the universe

Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction. A magical deity adds nothing to the known explanation.

God did not create the solar system or the Earth

Our sun was formed by the particle clouds left behind from previous stars, and our planet (as well as every other planet in the solar system) formed from an accretion disk surrounding our sun.

thanks for your time guys!!!

I saw this in this link:
Code: 
        [rationalresponders.com/](http://www.rationalresponders.com/)
Click to expand...
You are touching on explanations of how things INSIDE the universe came to be, and indeed, we do have some developing explanations for how things formed according to law-based principles, some of them fairly robust and compelling.

But precisely NONE of what you’ve mentioned accounts for the provenance of the universe itself. The nature of physics and metaphysics is such that the answer to that question is opaque to us, inscrutable as a matter of investigation. Physical answers don’t add any more than “magical deities” do to our knowledge, because the origin of the universe ITSELF is a metaphysical question.

That’s a huge problem in terms of knowledge. We don’t know, and we won’t know because we can’t know, even in principle.

It’s because of this, though, that the theist conjecture, that God is the cause of the universe, is exactly as good as anyone else’s conjecture. The “God hypothesis” does add something to the equation, though, as it provides a logically possible account for some aspects of the universe we do observe, namely a rationale for the specific values of a handful of key cosmological parameters. It’s not the only explanation, but it is one that does explain both the reason where here, and why the universe has the “cosmic settings” it does. It’s not the only explanation, but like I said, all the explanations on this question are equals in terms of knowledge: *nobody knows.

*I’m an atheist, so it’s worthwhile for me to speak up and out when facile arguments get advanced in the name of skepticism or atheism. As you have framed it here, it’s not the least bit forceful as an argument. All of what you say about the “automaticness” of the formation of entities insider the universe may be true, but that doesn’t disprove the existence of God (although it may certainly make him much more superfluous than he is in some theistic interpretations of cosmology).

Welcome to the community, by the way!

-Touchstone
 
JDaniel said:
Welcome to CAF, Childhoodtimes.

I must say, at the outset, that your question is one we have been dealing with on almost every thread for the past four, or so, months. It’s to the point that I am getting hard-pressed for motivation to respond again. No dis-respect in any way towards you.

Now, to your question: If “a deity adds nothing to an explanation” of the beginning of everything, and everything started at the big Bang, then one must presuppose that there was nothing before the Big Bang. But, how is that possible? How did a finite, dependent (contingent), something magically appear out of nowhere, from nothing, where no physical laws existed, where no cause and effect existed, where there was no sufficient reason, where the odds against such an event was 1:infinity, and become everything?

The answer, “Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction . . .” is simply grossly insufficient. To simply ignore the essential contradiction that “out of nothing something came to be” is muddled thinking, at best, and outright dis-ingenuousness, at worst.

I am not yet saying what that first cause, or first principle of creation was (or is), I am merely pointing out that the answer they have given is woefully inadequate.

I looked at the website you presented and found it to be an amalgam of woefully inadequate, unsupported, categorical assertions - much like saying to you that, “You have never seen a movie that was even remotely bad.” Or, “Everything you believe about everything is completely wrong.” Hopefully, you would look at me as though I had completely lost my mind. That’s how you should look at the producers of that website.

If you stay with this forum for a while, you will read some great stuff, and some not so great stuff - from both sides of the question of the existence of God. There’s a great deal of intelligence herein - especially mine! 😃

Good reading!

jd
Click to expand...
Thgere is nothing “magical” about the idea of divine creation. It is simply an effort to answer the question: why is there something rather than nothing. It is not superstition; in fact it is an effort to get beyond superstition. I think religious people are less credulous than non-religious people, on balance at least. Religion is if nothing a critique of superstition. A theologian is as careful in his.her reasoning as any scientist in the lab. The difference is the questions.
 
Jermosh said:
The Big Bang theory was heavily penned by Lemaître
Notice his full name and collar.
Click to expand...
There is a scientific pre-supposition that needs to be noted from the time of Aristotle on down to today. The universe has a design to it otherwise all science is grasping at non-existant straws. Mankind’s ordering of something that some see as chaos would genuinely be vanity except for the idea of design which certainly does appear to be there. Phylus and species, mathmatics, physics and chemistry all pre-suppose a purpose which man tries to unlock. If not then 2+2 could equal something other than 4, two hydrogen atoms when combined with one of oxygen would make something other than water and a kangaroo could give birth to a wildebeast. To say anything other than this has design and is not mere chaos is truely absurd.
Enter St Thomas Aquinas,"if there is design in the universe then therefore there MUST be a Designer. If there is a cause then logically it must lead to a first cause which is (drum roll please) GOD. Even the likes of Charles Darwin had the good sense to call himself at least a deist.😃
 
Here is a pattern of what Aquinas offers:
  1. there exists a series of events
  2. the series of events exists as caused and not as uncaused (necessary)
  3. there must exist the necessary being that is the cause of all contingent being
  4. there must exist the necessary being that is the cause of the whole series of beings.
    more in article 3 objection 2.
-WillyJ
 
scottywolf777 said:
There is a scientific pre-supposition that needs to be noted from the time of Aristotle on down to today. The universe has a design to it otherwise all science is grasping at non-existant straws. Mankind’s ordering of something that some see as chaos would genuinely be vanity except for the idea of design which certainly does appear to be there. Phylus and species, mathmatics, physics and chemistry all pre-suppose a purpose which man tries to unlock. If not then 2+2 could equal something other than 4, two hydrogen atoms when combined with one of oxygen would make something other than water and a kangaroo could give birth to a wildebeast. To say anything other than this has design and is not mere chaos is truely absurd.
Enter St Thomas Aquinas,"if there is design in the universe then therefore there MUST be a Designer. If there is a cause then logically it must lead to a first cause which is (drum roll please) GOD. Even the likes of Charles Darwin had the good sense to call himself at least a deist.😃
Click to expand...
Most working scientists have no interest in philosophy. This has been the case since Comte. The modern university is a model of his approach, which is to compartmentalize
the sciences, so that the biologist has little knowledge of physics. he has faith that the “scientific method” if applied in his field will produce results, and that the physicist working in the lab next to him and applying this method will produce results also. Somehow, he thinks, all this is connected, but he can’t do it.
 
childhoodtimes said:
God did not create the universe

Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction. A magical deity adds nothing to the known explanation.

God did not create the solar system or the Earth

Our sun was formed by the particle clouds left behind from previous stars, and our planet (as well as every other planet in the solar system) formed from an accretion disk surrounding our sun.

thanks for your time guys!!!

I saw this in this link:

rationalresponders.com/
Click to expand...

No problem. It has the great merit of not treating God as an entity in the universe. And it avoids “objectifying” God - something that those who treat Genesis 1 as an account of what happened often fail to avoid. 😦​

Jane Austen (for example) is absent from her novels in a similar way - she cannot be found by reading them, because she is not a character in them. No analysis of the pages, bindings, ink, paper, plots, dialogue or any feature or features of them will reveal her presence - she is as truly “past finding out” from searching them as God is “past finding out” by His creatures. A devout Janeite, whether in one of her novels, or reading them., or analysing them by close scrutiny of their components, would never find her. Yet Jane Austen is not only not a figment of the imagination - she is more real than all the creations of her imagination. It’s just that the mode of her reality is not discoverable by her creations, nor from any analysis of her novels: her reality is not of those kinds. She might not be wholly unknowable - but only faith would make her reality accessible.

So with us, the universe, & God. The universe is, in a way, atheistic. The Saints are atheists in a different way - they do not believe in God, because they are beyond the need of faith - they see Him, “face to face”. “The heavens declare the Glory of God, & the firmament declares His handiwork” (Ps.19.1) - but not by being “obvious” about it. God is hidden, and this handiwork hides Him as much as it declares Him. This is not surprising - when God took on the nature of men, the manhood concealed the Deity, as much as it was the means by which the Deity became “God-with-us”. If God had created nothing instead, He would still be hidden. Since no mere creature is capable of revealing God, it is impossible for God to be known as He Is in Himself - God as it were “cannot help” exceeding all creation; because He is its Creator. To know God as fully as God is known, it is necessary to be God; only the Infinite can infinitely know the Infinite. And all creation is finite.

BTW - God is not “magical”.
 
The American philosopher Mortimer Adler in 1981 also wrote a short book How to think about God, which is aimed directly at unbelievers. It pounds a pretty good philosophical punch into one small book. It also introduced Adler’s concept of “exnihilation” - that the universe needs a cause for its continuing existence to prevent it from being annihilated - God. Adler also deals in the book with the possibility that one may not even have to concede a starting point for our universe in time, but it has been years since I read it, but if you can get your hands on a copy it’s worth the several hours of going through Adler’s arguments for the existence of God.
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

No problem. It has the great merit of not treating God as an entity in the universe. And it avoids “objectifying” God - something that those who treat Genesis 1 as an account of what happened often fail to avoid. 😦​

Jane Austen (for example) is absent from her novels in a similar way - she cannot be found by reading them, because she is not a character in them. No analysis of the pages, bindings, ink, paper, plots, dialogue or any feature or features of them will reveal her presence - she is as truly “past finding out” from searching them as God is “past finding out” by His creatures. A devout Janeite, whether in one of her novels, or reading them., or analysing them by close scrutiny of their components, would never find her. Yet Jane Austen is not only not a figment of the imagination - she is more real than all the creations of her imagination. It’s just that the mode of her reality is not discoverable by her creations, nor from any analysis of her novels: her reality is not of those kinds. She might not be wholly unknowable - but only faith would make her reality accessible.

So with us, the universe, & God. The universe is, in a way, atheistic. The Saints are atheists in a different way - they do not believe in God, because they are beyond the need of faith - they see Him, “face to face”. “The heavens declare the Glory of God, & the firmament declares His handiwork” (Ps.19.1) - but not by being “obvious” about it. God is hidden, and this handiwork hides Him as much as it declares Him. This is not surprising - when God took on the nature of men, the manhood concealed the Deity, as much as it was the means by which the Deity became “God-with-us”. If God had created nothing instead, He would still be hidden. Since no mere creature is capable of revealing God, it is impossible for God to be known as He Is in Himself - God as it were “cannot help” exceeding all creation; because He is its Creator. To know God as fully as God is known, it is necessary to be God; only the Infinite can infinitely know the Infinite. And all creation is finite.

BTW - God is not “magical”.
Click to expand...
Love the Austen anology, some wonderful insights.
 
Touchstone said:
You are touching on explanations of how things INSIDE the universe came to be, and indeed, we do have some developing explanations for how things formed according to law-based principles, some of them fairly robust and compelling.

But precisely NONE of what you’ve mentioned accounts for the provenance of the universe itself. The nature of physics and metaphysics is such that the answer to that question is opaque to us, inscrutable as a matter of investigation. Physical answers don’t add any more than “magical deities” do to our knowledge, because the origin of the universe ITSELF is a metaphysical question.

That’s a huge problem in terms of knowledge. We don’t know, and we won’t know because we can’t know, even in principle.

It’s because of this, though, that the theist conjecture, that God is the cause of the universe, is exactly as good as anyone else’s conjecture. The “God hypothesis” does add something to the equation, though, as it provides a logically possible account for some aspects of the universe we do observe, namely a rationale for the specific values of a handful of key cosmological parameters. It’s not the only explanation, but it is one that does explain both the reason where here, and why the universe has the “cosmic settings” it does. It’s not the only explanation, but like I said, all the explanations on this question are equals in terms of knowledge: *nobody knows.
  • If God is the cause of the universe and explains both why we are here and why the universe has its “cosmic settings” theism is not exactly as good as anyone else’s conjecture. It is not the only explanation but it is superior to others. 👍
Click to expand...
 
As Christians we know that God is “the Alpha and Omega.” He is transcendent and immanent in His creation at the same time, a mystery to be sure. Being the author of the universe, He SEEMS distant as the author, Jane Austen, is from her works. I might add the trilogy Lord of the Rings in which the entire landscape, action and characters appear devoid of any spiritual aspect whatever, but, throughout the fantasy with its revelation of character and plot, we discover a world straining between two forces: GOOD vs. EVIL. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

However, there is no scientific explanation for God, so it is impossible to argue with non-theist on these grounds. When we talk about “beginning” and “end” (purpose) to the universe, they say the universe is infinite into the future as a circle or sphere has no beginning or end. Or that it can be finite in one dimension and infinite in another. (Example: an infinitely long hose could have finite distance around). So the universe is spatially infinite, infinite into the future and finite into the past. Everything in life, then without a Deity, depends on chemical reactions. How can we make the leap from non-living to living organisms? The leap to humans from single-celled organisms? The answer for the atheist is always “chemical reactions.” Therefore, no GOOD or EVIL just our choices made in our consciousness which is also dependent on the interactions of electrons annihilating positrons producing photons, and so on. It’s hard to discuss origins at this point, much less contend that GOODNESS and EVIL have an origin otherworldly.
 
childhoodtimes said:
Our universe was formed via the expansion of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction. A magical deity adds nothing to the known explanation.]
Click to expand...
Yeah, it’s all random. Lucretius was right - just put enough atoms in the mix and shake 'em up for long enough, and boom, out pops a Mozart concerto.

Makes perfect sense to me.

/sarcasm off
 
Childhoodtimes: Who do you think created those hydrogen atoms? God created EVERYTHING, not just the universe as we know it. Ya gotta think bigger.
 
The Big Bang theory tells us that the universe was created by an explosion. I’ve seen the results of explosions first hand; they create chaos and disorder. An orderly universe created out of disorder is not a very credible scientific theory. The Bible (the infallible, inerrant word of God) tells us that the Earth was created before the Sun and stars, but the Big Bang theory gives the opposite view.
Instead of putting your faith in the ever changing “theories” of fallible men, why not trust the one who was there at the creation of time, space and matter?
 
The following quote regarding the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics is by Dr. Henry M. Morris:
Code: 
“…the Second Law proves, as certainly as science can prove anything whatever, that the universe had a beginning.  Similarly, the First Law shows that the universe could not have begun itself.  
The total quantity of energy in the universe is a constant, but the quantity of available energy is decreasing.  Therefore, as we go backward in time, the available energy would have been progressively greater until, finally, we would reach the beginning point, where available energy equaled total energy.  Time could go back no further then this.  At this point energy and time must have come into existence.  
Since energy could not create itself, the most scientific and logical conclusion to which we could possibly come to is that: ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
 
A.N. Wilson, a prominent English writer, while still a Christian, wrote a thoroughly revisionistic biography of Jesus Christ.

He now writes of his road reverting back to Christianity from atheism and it surely makes for some interesting reading:

Here’s the link to his article in the British NewStatesman:

newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/conversion-experience-atheism

It is called “Why I Believe Again” and deals with the whole Dawkins/Hitchens crowd. Read it if you can.
 
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