The Universe did not have an absolute begining?

[Linusthe2nd]

The following statement was made by Apologist Trent Horn on the C.A. Apologetics Blog (catholic.com/blog/trent-horn/cave-diving-and-apologetics ), on April 24 :

" They ( Catholics ) may not even know that the Church does not require belief that the universe began, only that it was created (God could have created an eternal universe). "

In my 74 years as a Catholic ( educated in Catholic institutions through College ) I have never heard this. And in the CCC, paragraph 327 we read, " 327 The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body. ( Fourth Laturen Council ). "

So how does Trent justify the assertion that Catholics are not required to believe that the universe had an absolute beginning in time ? This is something entirely new to me. Even St. Thomas taught that Catholics believe, on Faith, that the universe had an absolute beginning in time.

Who is right ? May Catholics actually hold either position, that the universe existed eternally or that it had an absolute beginning in time ?

Linus2nd

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Creating an eternal anything is nonsense. Eternal means without beginning or end. How can something without a beginning be created?

The Lateran Council is correct and this apologist is misinformed.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Creating an eternal anything is nonsense. Eternal means without beginning or end. How can something without a beginning be created?

The Lateran Council is correct and this apologist is misinformed.

Thank you, I think Trent should come here and explain himself;

However, as Thomas Aquinas taught, that the universe had an absolute beginning in time must be accepted on Faith, it cannot be proven Philosophically. Philosophically ( speculatively ), God could have been eternally creating the universe. That is a little hard to wrap one’s head around, but it could have been similar to His eternal begetting of the Son. Linus2nd

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Linus

However, as Thomas Aquinas taught, that the universe had an absolute beginning in time must be accepted on Faith, it cannot be proven Philosophically.

But it can be proven scientifically through the Big Bang. According to science, the universe began about 14 billion years ago.

 

[LightFromLight]

The following statement was made by Apologist Trent Horn on the C.A. Apologetics Blog (catholic.com/blog/trent-horn/cave-diving-and-apologetics ), on April 24 :

" They ( Catholics ) may not even know that the Church does not require belief that the universe began, only that it was created (God could have created an eternal universe). "

In my 74 years as a Catholic ( educated in Catholic institutions through College ) I have never heard this. And in the CCC, paragraph 327 we read, " 327 The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body. ( Fourth Laturen Council ). "

So how does Trent justify the assertion that Catholics are not required to believe that the universe had an absolute beginning in time ? This is something entirely new to me. Even St. Thomas taught that Catholics believe, on Faith, that the universe had an absolute beginning in time.

Who is right ? May Catholics actually hold either position, that the universe existed eternally or that it had an absolute beginning in time ?

Linus2nd

We must believe the universe is created by God ex nihilo as you have already stated. Seeing that time did infact begin, what Trent has stated is scientifically unsound anyway. There is virtually nothing to be concerned about but it does come across like this Apologist is in error.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

It’s interesting that Trent Horn does not give the Catechism paragraph to support his view that Catholics may believe the universe was eternal. There isn’t any such support.

Then, speaking of misguided apologists, he goes on to say:

They might say that it is a fact that the entire universe began at the Big Bang without being aware of other plausible scenarios proposed by cosmologists. They may not even know that the Church does not require belief that the universe began, only that it was created (God could have created an eternal universe).

In point of fact, there is no evidence of the other plausible scenarios. There are other possible (as opposed to plausible) scenarios, but they are purely built upon the imagination, not upon real science.

Then Trent Horn has to deal with the biblical scenario, which makes it clear that there was a first day (time period) of creation. Are we to ignore that too?

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I would be cautious on this subject. Time from a scientific point of view is a difficult topic to get one’s head around and may not always match the scholastic concept of time. Also science never definitively “proves” anything, least of all past or distant events, no matter how practically overwhelming the evidence may be.

What we know for sure is that there can not be an infinite chain of causation extending backwards. Whether the Big Bang was caused by some atemporal physical reality which in turn was atemporally caused by God is a possibility we Catholics should be open to.

While there may be zero scientific evidence for such a theory such things have been proposed by cosmologists, and it is important for us to see how even if such was the case it would not nullify the First Cause argument.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Creating an eternal anything is nonsense. Eternal means without beginning or end. How can something without a beginning be created?

The Lateran Council is correct and this apologist is misinformed.

You’re looking at this from a human perspective, not from God’s. Now, it so happens that I think that you are right and that the universe does have finite age, and that I don’t think that it makes sense to say that it does not - but things could be different in such a way that it did.

Let me try to explain: God is outside of time. God created time. Now, I think we will agree that God could create something that would begin at a certain point in time and then last forever. This appears normal to us because we can imagine there always being a next.

But from God’s perspective, this is essentially drawing a ray, a line with a starting point that continues on forever in one direction without end. And because He is outside of time, He sees the entire ray at once. All infinity of it.

He does not have to experience “forever” like we do, where forever just means there’s always something next. It’s just there. He can make something that lasts forever - He can draw lines of infinite length in one direction, and finish drawing it.

But again, all creation is essentially a canvas to Him, He can see it from the outside and infinity is just another point. If He can draw a ray that continues an infinite distance in one direction, why not a line that continues an infinite direction in both directions? Why not something that has both an infinite future and an infinite history?

Now, this wouldn’t make the thing truly eternal, because while there would be nothing before it in time, we know that time isn’t the ultimate reality, so this isn’t really important. God is the ultimate standard - God is causally prior to time itself, no matter if time is a ray that goes in one direction or a line that goes in two, it was still drawn

Now again, I think that time does have a beginning in time, that is there is a time 0 so that there was no time before this (though there was probably some asymptotic weirdness around then), but I don’t think it’s a good ide to try to limit what we say God can create, and while I do think that the big bang is probably true, it is also always a mistake to count on science to prove faith or faith to prove science.

 

[dshix]

You know, I don’t think you guys exactly understand what Trent Horn is saying.

He is not making a definitive statement that the universe has no beginning, nor is he making a definitive statement to the contrary. All he is saying is that because the Church has not laid down a solid dogma as to how the universe was created, no Catholics are obliged to believe one thing or another.

We are free to believe in the Big Bang.
We are free to believe in the Multiverse.
We are free to believe in Evolution.
We are free to believe in Creationism.
We are free to believe that the world is 5000 years old.
We are free to believe that a giant purple alien vomited a lot of hydrogen and caused the universe.

The point of Mr. Horn’s blog post is not that we must believe one thing or another, but that we are free to believe whatever we wish about the beginning of the universe so long as it does not contradict Catholic dogma. To try to definitively state that the Big Bang happened and that the universe began** off of Catholic doctrine **should not be done.

Now, this is not to say that certain theories are not very unlikely and it is rather delusional to believe them (the last example I gave illustrates this point). However, it does mean that we cannot declare someone else’s opinion absolutely false based on Catholic teaching.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

You’re looking at this from a human perspective, not from God’s. Now, it so happens that I think that you are right and that the universe does have finite age, and that I don’t think that it makes sense to say that it does not - but things could be different in such a way that it did.

Let me try to explain: God is outside of time. God created time. Now, I think we will agree that God could create something that would begin at a certain point in time and then last forever. This appears normal to us because we can imagine there always being a next.

But from God’s perspective, this is essentially drawing a ray, a line with a starting point that continues on forever in one direction without end. And because He is outside of time, He sees the entire ray at once. All infinity of it.

He does not have to experience “forever” like we do, where forever just means there’s always something next. It’s just there. He can make something that lasts forever - He can draw lines of infinite length in one direction, and finish drawing it.

But again, all creation is essentially a canvas to Him, He can see it from the outside and infinity is just another point. If He can draw a ray that continues an infinite distance in one direction, why not a line that continues an infinite direction in both directions? Why not something that has both an infinite future and an infinite history?

Now, this wouldn’t make the thing truly eternal, because while there would be nothing before it in time, we know that time isn’t the ultimate reality, so this isn’t really important. God is the ultimate standard - God is causally prior to time itself, no matter if time is a ray that goes in one direction or a line that goes in two, it was still drawn

Now again, I think that time does have a beginning in time, that is there is a time 0 so that there was no time before this (though there was probably some asymptotic weirdness around then), but I don’t think it’s a good ide to try to limit what we say God can create, and while I do think that the big bang is probably true, it is also always a mistake to count on science to prove faith or faith to prove science.

I think you may be making a philosophical mistake here. In time, past conditions give rise to future conditions not the other way around, so we cannot equate an infinite past to an infinite future. While God is omnipotent he is not irrational, so any temporal reality created by him must conform to reason. While I agree we should not entrench ourselves into a simple “beginning of time” concept (though scientific evidence so far supports such a concept) we do need a begining to any chain of causation. That chain may pass from temporal to atemporal, but it cannot unendingly go back to earlier temporal causes.

 

[snarflemike]

You know, I don’t think you guys exactly understand what Trent Horn is saying.

He is not making a definitive statement that the universe has no beginning, nor is he making a definitive statement to the contrary. All he is saying is that because the Church has not laid down a solid dogma as to how the universe was created, no Catholics are obliged to believe one thing or another.

We are free to believe in the Big Bang.
We are free to believe in the Multiverse.
We are free to believe in Evolution.
We are free to believe in Creationism.
We are free to believe that the world is 5000 years old.
We are free to believe that a giant purple alien vomited a lot of hydrogen and caused the universe.

The point of Mr. Horn’s blog post is not that we must believe one thing or another, but that we are free to believe whatever we wish about the beginning of the universe so long as it does not contradict Catholic dogma, and to try and state definitively that the Big Bang happened and that the universe began** off of Catholic doctrine **should not be done.

Now, this is not to say that certain theories are very unlikely and it is rather delusional to believe them (the last example I gave illustrates this point). However, it does mean that we cannot declare someone else’s opinion absolutely false based on Catholic teaching.

I think this is right on the money.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

You know, I don’t think you guys exactly understand what Trent Horn is saying.

He is not making a definitive statement that the universe has no beginning, nor is he making a definitive statement to the contrary. All he is saying is that because the Church has not laid down a solid dogma as to how the universe was created, no Catholics are obliged to believe one thing or another.

We are free to believe in the Big Bang.
We are free to believe in the Multiverse.
We are free to believe in Evolution.
We are free to believe in Creationism.
We are free to believe that the world is 5000 years old.
We are free to believe that a giant purple alien vomited a lot of hydrogen and caused the universe.

The point of Mr. Horn’s blog post is not that we must believe one thing or another, but that we are free to believe whatever we wish about the beginning of the universe so long as it does not contradict Catholic dogma. To try to definitively state that the Big Bang happened and that the universe began** off of Catholic doctrine **should not be done.

Now, this is not to say that certain theories are very unlikely and it is rather delusional to believe them (the last example I gave illustrates this point). However, it does mean that we cannot declare someone else’s opinion absolutely false based on Catholic teaching.

While this openness to possibilities is the context or Mr. Horn’s post I don’t think it is his real “point.” His point, I think, is that some amateur apologists enter debates with atheists thinking that science has proven creation ex nihilo and that this in turn proves God’s existence. When the atheist responds with these alternative cosmological speculations that have been proposed by respected scientists the Catholic does not know how to respond or how Catholic beliefs relate to such theories, and so likely looses the debate and possibly their own faith.

 

[dshix]

While this openness to possibilities is the context or Mr. Horn’s post I don’t think it is his “point.” His point, I think, is that some amateur apologists enter debates with atheists thinking that science has proven creation ex nihilo and that this in turn proves God’s existence. When the atheist responds with these alternative cosmological speculations that have been proposed by respected scientists the Catholic does not know how to respond and likely looses the debate and possibly their own faith.

You are correct, but that is not *the point *p) of my post here. The reason I posting about this is because the OP and some other posters believe that Mr. Horn is advocating that the universe is eternal, and I am simply showing that he is not doing that.

I wasn’t addressing the point of the blog post at all; I was directing my reply to this thread.

What you mentioned in your post is the logical next step in my argument after I have managed to show that Trent Horn is not suggesting an eternal universe, or any other belief of creation.

 

[dshix]

Well, it looks like we have our response.

 

[devoutchristian]

Even the most knowledgable can occasionally fall into material heresy.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

I think you may be making a philosophical mistake here. In time, past conditions give rise to future conditions not the other way around, so we cannot equate an infinite past to an infinite future. While God is omnipotent he is not irrational, so any temporal reality created by him must conform to reason. While I agree we should not entrench ourselves into a simple “beginning of time” concept (though scientific evidence so far supports such a concept) we do need a begining to any chain of causation. That chain may pass from temporal to atemporal, but it cannot unendingly go back to earlier temporal causes.

True to a point, but it doesn’t actually rule out infinite chains of causation. It does mean that an infinite chain of causation must itself also be caused, because such a chain is insufficient to explain anything, but it doesn’t mean that such chains can’t exist at all.

We could, for example, have an infinite chain of causation happen even within finite time (if time is infinitely divisible). A sort of Zeno’s paradox like thing: An arrow (assuming constant velocity) is where it is now at t=0, because 1 second ago at t = -1, it was moving with a certain speed and was where it was then. It was where it was at t = -1 because half a second before that at t = -1.5, it was where it at t = -1.5 and was moving with a certain speed. Etc. We can look at positions and speeds at previous times with an infinite number of time divisions of decreasing width so that the divisions add up to a finite amount of time in the past. So we get:

x(0) AND v(0) <= x(-1) AND v(-1) <= x(-1.5) AND v(-1.5) <= x(-1.75) AND v(-1.75) <= …

Now, clearly that doesn’t explain where the arrow came from. The chain doesn’t prove anything unless you actually know that some link in the chain is valid, you can’t get that information from the chain itself, and if you do get that information, you’re not actually using the infinite chain to prove anything, just a finite portion plus the information that one link actually happens.

But nevertheless, and despite not being sufficient for explaining the position of the arrow, it is a valid infinite chain.

But again, the arrow is actually anywhere at all because it was shot from the bow. it was caused. This infinite chain is an argument that you enter into at some stage and then determine what happens at t=0 from a finite part of the chain. It’d be more or less the same with infinite time, except the time divisions wouldn’t add to a finite number: we’d be able to learn what happened at t=0 from t=-1 from t=-2 from…, but we’d have to know what happened at t= something to learn anything.

Note that in the first cause argument, infinite chains are discarded not because they can’t exist, but rather because they don’t explain anything - especially not themselves. (You could have, for example 1=0 <= 2=1 <= 3=2 <= 4=3 <=… which is a perfectly valid chain of implications, but doesn’t prove anything because no step in it is actually true.)

(And also, I don’t think that an infinite history actually exists - I’m only arguing that it potentially could.)

 

[Iron_Donkey]

As an addendum to my previous post, an infinite history could look something like: God creates world as we believe it to be: an initial starting point extending forward either infinitely or for some large amount of time, depending on what exactly the end of the world means. God then creates a finite history, and sticks it at the beginning of what He has already created, so that it is a seamless match and what used to be the beginning now appears to simply be a consequence of the new stuff that He has put before it. Then God creates a finite history for that now extended world, and glues it on to the beginning in the same way. Lather rinse, repeat.

Sort of like writing an infinite number of prequel novels, actually.

But it appears that the apologist has retracted his statement. I am perfectly willing to accept that it is a consequence of the Catholic faith that the universe has finite age if in fact that is true (as St. Thomas Aquinas said it was - and he’s usually right). It does appear to me that it’s not a consequence of reason alone (minus observation - to all appearances, observation and reason together tend to point to a finite age).

 

[JimG]

There is a difference between being eternal and having no beginning in time. A beginning in time is simply the starting point of a temporal timeline.

God does not live in a temporal continuum. He has no extension in time or in space. For him, all temporal points are seen from a simultaneous viewpoint. That is eternal.

While the Big Bang theory seems to show a beginning point for the universe, it cannot, at least so far, demonstrate that as the only possibility. Some have proposed that the Big Bang results in an expanding universe, followed by a contracting universe, followed by a Big Crunch, and a subsequent Big Bang, in an unending cycle.

Or one might even propose a steady state universe extending infinitely in time in both directions. (Astronomer Fred Hoyle once proposed this, but it has fallen out of favor.)

The point is, a universe with no temporal beginning still requires a Creator, because the universe itself is contingent. It might not have been. It has no necessary existence. God can create a universe with no temporal beginning just as easily as He can create a universe with a temporal begining.

 

[anruari]

" They ( Catholics ) may not even know that the Church does not require belief that the universe began, only that it was created (God could have created an eternal universe). "
In my 74 years as a Catholic ( educated in Catholic institutions through College ) I have never heard this. And in the CCC, paragraph 327 we read, " 327 The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, …( Fourth Laturen Council ). "

So how does Trent justify the assertion that Catholics are not required to believe that the universe had an absolute beginning in time ?
Who is right ? May Catholics actually hold either position, that the universe existed eternally or that it had an absolute beginning in time ?
Linus2nd

Look back to the description of creating a Line extending 2 directions from it’s starting point.
Who’s to say taht the day of creation wasn’t the moment God Created Adam and Eve, and that he created a universe stretching backwards in it’s dimension we perceive as time, with it’s full many billion year History…but for God the process of a 7 day creation is centered on that “Zero Point”… just as our calendar starts with an estimate of the date of Jesus Birth… could God’s view of our time not start with either the First or Last Adam?

Any Physicist will tell you that “Time” as we percieve it is simply another dimension like Up-down, Forward Back and Left Right… We percieve a direction of Times arrow and we are only able to percieve movement in one direction, but on a sub-attomic level, studying quantum physics astrophysics and other disciplines it becomes very obvious that time is not the simple linear unidirectional constant which we perceive it to be.

Linus
However, as Thomas Aquinas taught, that the universe had an absolute beginning in time must be accepted on Faith, it cannot be proven Philosophically.
But it can be proven scientifically through the Big Bang. According to science, the universe began about 14 billion years ago.

You misunderstand the concept of Science and the scientific method. The “Big Bang Theory” is simply the best available theory at the moment. It is not undisputed. it is not a complete theory. nothing is “Proven”. So far as I know it is the most widely accepted theory as being the most likely model. Others include circular universes where the arrow of time is circular… and many other options. There remains a huge question about the end of time: Big Crunch (Reversal of Time’s Arrow), Big Freeze(the universe evaporates to nothingness), or Big Stop (The universe expands so far and then stops… time itself stops resulting in a permanent static unchanging universe)… none of these options are yet known to be the best theory… there may also be others.

We must believe the universe is created by God ex nihilo as you have already stated. Seeing that time did infact begin, what Trent has stated is scientifically unsound anyway. There is virtually nothing to be concerned about but it does come across like this Apologist is in error.

We must believe the universe was created Ex Nihilo… but that does not require the zero point in time to have no negative section on it’s axis…!

I think you may be making a philosophical mistake here. In time, past conditions give rise to future conditions not the other way around, so we cannot equate an infinite past to an infinite future. While God is omnipotent he is not irrational, so any temporal reality created by him must conform to reason. While I agree we should not entrench ourselves into a simple “beginning of time” concept (though scientific evidence so far supports such a concept) we do need a beginning to any chain of causation. That chain may pass from temporal to atemporal, but it cannot unendingly go back to earlier temporal causes.

Sorry, but you are making the assumption that “Time” behaves how we perceive it to behave. Science has strong evidence to support the Theory of Relativity, which shows Time to be very different from our shared perception of it. It can speed up and slow down, and it can even move backwards… in our frame of reference we are unable to perceive these phenomena.
Your philosophy is uninformed about the latest scientific understanding of the nature of time and you therefore over-simplify it.

What we know:
God is outside our universe. He Created it. Time is part of his creation. The moment in our universe at which he created it is a “Zero point”. In the same way we could draw a map of the world with the garden of eden at the centre. that does not mean he did not create a universe in which time stretched in more than one direction.

However the best scientific understanding supports the interpretation of a moment of Creation we call the Big Bang, when this universe came into existence Ex Nihilo.

there is no DOGMATIC pronouncement on these issues, therefore while the tradition of the Church has understood a specific moment of creation, we remain free to hold views which have more complicated possibilities based on the best available scientific understanding about the nature of our universe - or even our own fantasies and delusions.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

As an addendum to my previous post, an infinite history could look something like: God creates world as we believe it to be: an initial starting point extending forward either infinitely or for some large amount of time, depending on what exactly the end of the world means. God then creates a finite history, and sticks it at the beginning of what He has already created, so that it is a seamless match and what used to be the beginning now appears to simply be a consequence of the new stuff that He has put before it. Then God creates a finite history for that now extended world, and glues it on to the beginning in the same way. Lather rinse, repeat.

Sort of like writing an infinite number of prequel novels, actually.

But it appears that the apologist has retracted his statement. I am perfectly willing to accept that it is a consequence of the Catholic faith that the universe has finite age if in fact that is true (as St. Thomas Aquinas said it was - and he’s usually right). It does appear to me that it’s not a consequence of reason alone (minus observation - to all appearances, observation and reason together tend to point to a finite age).

In this case would not the “original” beginning point be the true beginning of history, and all the rest of the “past” be a mere illusion? Or if the new past is real and God is outside of time, then what is the sense in speaking of his creating this span of time and then that?

I certainly see how when imagining ourselves viewing history from the outside, as God does, we could imagine an infinite past just like we can certainly imagine an infinite future. But for it to be a reality it needs to be logically consistent when viewed from within that created universe. If the arrow is moving within time there needs to be a temporal cause for that movement within history, not just outside of it, or else there has to be a miracle.