Is The Big Bang Really Proof Of Gods Existence?

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Geremia said:
Yes, I know, but there are some who subscribe to his philosophy and yet still call themselves Thomists… nomenclature…
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There are varieties of off-beat neo-Thomists. The Kantian Thomists, for instance, take what Thomas says clearly and admix it with what Kant says confusedly. Kant can teach one how to think but not what to think. Thomas, on the other hand, can teach one how to think and what to think. Reliable guides to modern Thomistic thought include Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain.

In fact, you might be interested in Maritain’s Introduction to Philosophy.
 
Do overs! Link fixed below…

There are varieties of off-beat neo-Thomists. The Kantian Thomists, for instance, take what Thomas says clearly and admix it with what Kant says confusedly. Kant can teach one how to think but not what to think. Thomas, on the other hand, can teach one how to think and what to think. Reliable guides to modern Thomistic thought include Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain.

In fact, you might be interested in Maritain’s Introduction to Philosophy
 
mathematician said:
Are you trying to convince me that God exists? If so you can save your breath, because I don’t need any convincing of that.
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Not at all. I do however present my views for all the unbelievers. Also I wanted to demonstrate that physics can prove the existence of God. Physics emphasizes the order of relationships of the element to one another. There is the proof of an intelligence that ordered creation. Mathamatics, the hieroglyph of the ages is another example of order. Mathamatics is sound, symphony and the dance of the constellations. All the sciences proclaim the existence of God despite all the arguments to the contrary.
 
JOHNONEVI said:
Not at all. I do however present my views for all the unbelievers. Also I wanted to demonstrate that physics can prove the existence of God. Physics emphasizes the order of relationships of the element to one another. There is the proof of an intelligence that ordered creation. Mathamatics, the hieroglyph of the ages is another example of order. Mathamatics is sound, symphony and the dance of the constellations. All the sciences proclaim the existence of God despite all the arguments to the contrary.
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You have not demonstrated that physics proves the existence of God.
You stated:
(A) “Physics emphasizes the order of relationships of the element to one another.”
Then you state,
(B) “There is the proof of an intelligence that ordered creation.”

You left out the entire process of reasoning that gets one from A to B. Hence you have not demonstrated anything at all other than some very bad logic.

I don’t need physics or any science to tell me there is order in nature. I know there is order, and I know this prior to any scientific knowledge. The possibility of scientific knowledge, such as physics, presupposes order in nature. Since science presupposes and assumes order, it cannot then prove what it assumes. That is the crucial point.

Reflection on order in nature, as well as the ultimate cause of that order, a creative intelligence, is not, in any sense, a scientific reflection; no strictly natural science engages in that kind of reflection. Sorry to say, but I suspect you don’t know anything about physics or math, or any of natural sciences, and how they differ from metaphysics and philosophical thinking in general.

You have your homework cut out for you.
 
JOHNONEVI said:
Not at all. I do however present my views for all the unbelievers. Also I wanted to demonstrate that physics can prove the existence of God.
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Discoveries made over the last sixty years or so strongly suggest the existence of God. Nothing more.
 
Charles_Darwin said:
That is a matter of opinion, and most top scientists do not agree with yours.
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Yes it is my personal opinion, but it seems to be the case that physicists are more open to the idea of God than are (say) biologists. This is not an exact quotation, but one renowned physicist, who also happens to be a priest, remarked (more or less):

“Many of my colleagues in science are both wistful and wary of religion. They are wistful because they can see that science doesn’t have all the answers to life’s questions, and they would like a fuller picture. But they are wary because they know that religion is based upon faith, and their idea of faith is that you have to close your eyes, grit your teeth, and believe half a dozen impossible things before breakfast, because some unquestionable authority tells you that you have to.”

Which of course isn’t John Polkinghorne’s understanding of faith.

And then there is this astro-physicist, who died jusst a few yesrs back:
Would you not say to yourself, ‘Some super- calculating intellect must have designed
the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through
the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.’ Of course you would . . … A common
sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics,
as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking
about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to
put this conclusion almost beyond question.
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That well known theist(!) Fred Hoyle, in case you are wondering.
 
itinerant1 said:
You have not demonstrated that physics proves the existence of God.
You stated:
(A) “Physics emphasizes the order of relationships of the element to one another.”
Then you state,
(B) “There is the proof of an intelligence that ordered creation.”

You left out the entire process of reasoning that gets one from A to B. Hence you have not demonstrated anything at all other than some very bad logic.

I don’t need physics or any science to tell me there is order in nature. I know there is order, and I know this prior to any scientific knowledge. The possibility of scientific knowledge, such as physics, presupposes order in nature. Since science presupposes and assumes order, it cannot then prove what it assumes. That is the crucial point.

Reflection on order in nature, as well as the ultimate cause of that order, a creative intelligence, is not, in any sense, a scientific reflection; no strictly natural science engages in that kind of reflection. Sorry to say, but I suspect you don’t know anything about physics or math, or any of natural sciences, and how they differ from metaphysics and philosophical thinking in general.

You have your homework cut out for you.
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No, we DO discover order in nature through science - we look at the data and then find equations that fit them. An exception I suppose would be Newton’s laws of motion - which he originally presented in the Principia as axioms - but these were definitions relating to fundamental concepts; they do not presume any more “order” than the consistency of a definition.

That being said, I don’t see how the attempted proof works any more than you do. Things in nature can be ordered - usually through statistical “ordering” - without there being any person doing the ordering. Statistical distributions are inherent in the nature of matter, without being imposed on from without.
 
Cecilianus said:
Which ones (besides the discovery of the microwave background radiation confirming the Big Bang)?
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Such as the beryllium-carbon resonance alluded to by Hoyle (above). Personally I wouldn’t have mentioned the MBR as one of the evidences pointing to the existence of God.
 
mathematician said:
Such as the beryllium-carbon resonance alluded to by Hoyle (above). Personally I wouldn’t have mentioned the MBR as one of the evidences pointing to the existence of God.
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But that still begs the question: Why is it so remarkable that we should have carbon? If God created us and life is intrinsically good rather than just another random state of the universe, then certainly such a coincidence would have to be part of divine Providence; but if not, then beryllium-carbon resonance is no more special than any other state. It is only evidence for God’s existence if there is somehow a natural teleology towards carbon, and we can only derive this teleology from a prior theism (Aristotle’s teleology being wrong either way). From an atheistic view, life is no more probable or special or good than any one of the zillions of alternatives that could have happened. Out of the google or so possibilities for what the universe could be like, one of them had to have happened, and each one is equally improbable.
 
Cecilianus said:
But that still begs the question: Why is it so remarkable that we should have carbon? If God created us and life is intrinsically good rather than just another random state of the universe, then certainly such a coincidence would have to be part of divine Providence; but if not, then beryllium-carbon resonance is no more special than any other state.
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The problem is that there need to be a great many “coincidences” before a universe consisting of more that just hydrogen or helium can exist. When one “coincidence” gets piled on top of another, and then another, and the another, sooner or later it has got to stop looking like coincidence.

For example: Another coincidence. If the value of the universal constant of gravitation had been different by just one part in 10 to the 40th, the universe would either have collapsed back in on itself almost as soon as it was created, or it would have flown apart too quickly for stars or galaxies to form.
 
mathematician said:
The problem is that there need to be a great many “coincidences” before a universe consisting of more that just hydrogen or helium can exist. When one “coincidence” gets piled on top of another, and then another, and the another, sooner or later it has got to stop looking like coincidence.

For example: Another coincidence. If the value of the universal constant of gravitation had been different by just one part in 10 to the 40th, the universe would either have collapsed back in on itself almost as soon as it was created, or it would have flown apart too quickly for stars or galaxies to form.
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Why shouldn’t the universe fly apart too quickly for stars to form? Is there any natural reason why the universe ought to have stars, or larger elements? Those situations are just as random - and improbable - as the one we have now.
 
Cecilianus said:
Why shouldn’t the universe fly apart too quickly for stars to form? Is there any natural reason why the universe ought to have stars, or larger elements? Those situations are just as random - and improbable - as the one we have now.
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There seems to be a natural reason why the universe shouldn’t have any stars, because the chances of that happening, taking into account the value of G alone are:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 : 1 on

But in spite of the enormous in favour of a universe without any stars or galaxies, the one which actually exists does have stars and galaxies.
 
mathematician said:
There seems to be a natural reason why the universe shouldn’t have any stars, because the chances of that happening, taking into account the value of G alone are:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 : 1 on

But in spite of the enormous in favour of a universe without any stars or galaxies, the one which actually exists does have stars and galaxies.
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Yet there are 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 other situations that are equally improbable. And one of them HAD to happen. Why is our universe - one with stars - any different than any one of the others?

Secondly, can you give me a reference as to why your claim is true? I was only aware that G had been measured to 6 figures - if I were told that it had been measured to 40 I’d ask what you’d been smoking.
 
Cecilianus said:
Yet there are 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 other situations that are equally improbable. And one of them HAD to happen. Why is our universe - one with stars - any different than any one of the others?
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There are only two possibilities. Either the universe came into existence with fundamental constants which allowed stars (and therefore elements heavier than helium) to form, or it didn’t, and the latter is hughly more likely than the former.
Secondly, can you give me a reference as to why your claim is true? I was only aware that G had been measured to 6 figures - if I were told that it had been measured to 40 I’d ask what you’d been smoking.
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You can find that number all over the web.
 
Cecilianus said:
Yet there are 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 other situations that are equally improbable. And one of them HAD to happen. Why is our universe - one with stars - any different than any one of the others?
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In Britain we have a National Lottery, and there is a machine which each week draws six numbered balls, along with a “bonus” ball. I won’t go into the boring details, but the chances of the lottery ticket you bought having precisely those numbers on it is about 14,000,000 : 1.

Now suppose that for 10 weeks in a row the same six numbers popped out of the machine. The philosophers amongst us might say “Oh well, that outcome is just as likely as any outcome, nothing to be explained there.” The majority would say that there must something wrong with the machine. So when the machine was examined, which outcome would you put your money on - the philosophers being right or the uneducated masses being right?

Alongside the question “Is this outcome as likely as any other” you also need to asdk, “Does there seem to be anything particularly significant in this outcome?” - i.e. the formation of stars and the production of the heavier elements.
 
mathematician said:
In Britain we have a National Lottery, and there is a machine which each week draws six numbered balls, along with a “bonus” ball. I won’t go into the boring details, but the chances of the lottery ticket you bought having precisely those numbers on it is about 14,000,000 : 1.

Now suppose that for 10 weeks in a row the same six numbers popped out of the machine. The philosophers amongst us might say “Oh well, that outcome is just as likely as any outcome, nothing to be explained there.” The majority would say that there must something wrong with the machine. So when the machine was examined, which outcome would you put your money on - the philosophers being right or the uneducated masses being right?

Alongside the question “Is this outcome as likely as any other” you also need to asdk, “Does there seem to be anything particularly significant in this outcome?” - i.e. the formation of stars and the production of the heavier elements.
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Being a mathematician i would have though you would understand it is pointless to assign probabilities after such an event.

Thunderf00t has a good rebuttal to such bogas probability arguments. One which i am slightly surprised to see you use as it a common creationist argument, and from what i have seen you post you do not seem to be a YEC.

youtube.com/watch?v=p3nvH6gfrTc

I know whats coming next, so…

youtube.com/watch?v=7aGEXMyFWyg

Good old TF saves us all a lot of typing…

It does beg the question though… If the universe is “fine tuned for human life” then why as all but 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of it totally hostile to human life??? lol we can’t even use 2/3rds of our own planets surface.

This video explains what the universe really seems to be fine tuned for, your god must love black holes :D. liveleak.com/view?i=ed3_1216586842
 
Charles_Darwin said:
Thunderf00t has a good rebuttal to such bogas probability arguments. One which i am slightly surprised to see you use as it a common creationist argument, and from what i have seen you post you do not seem to be a YEC.
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I have no problem with creationists saying that evolution is unlikely; only with them saying it didn’t happen.
 
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