The Universe did not have an absolute begining?

[Linusthe2nd]

Well, it looks like we have our response.

Thanks. Here is his response.: Re: Cave Diving and Apologetics

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Hi Linus,

Thanks for the catch. I simply had a mental lapse and thought of the fact that the Church does not declare De Fide that the universe has a particular age as opposed to its eternality. Once again thanks for your vigilance!

-Trent

And my response : " We appreciate the correction. So, in apologetics, folks should say the, " Catholic teaches that the universe had a definite beginning in time, but it does not and cannot teach how old the universe is. " We should explain that the age of the universe is something that may or may not be subject to scientific demonstration or determination. " And I should have added, " Catholics must accept, on Faith, that the universe had a definite beginning in time. "

Linus2nd

 

[Aelred_Minor]

To those mentioning the Big Crunch, by the way, the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion (supposedly caused by Dark Energy) has made that particular theory seem unlikely.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

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.

Certainly I have been mostly going by the scholastic concept of time, but this accurately represents history as perceived or conceptualized by humans. If the theory of relativity and such has bearing on the philosophical matter of causation over the course of history I’d be interested in hearing it.

Regarding Church teaching on these issues, someone on the original blog thread provided this Catechism quote:

"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 )”

 

[meltzerboy]

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

I don’t know what the official Catholic teaching on this matter is, but it seems to me from a theological perspective–and I think Judaism would largely concur–that since G-d alone is eternal, having no beginning and no end, His creation ex nihilo cannot also be eternal. Further, from a logical understanding, if G-d created the universe, there must have been some point at which the universe did not exist.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t know what the official Catholic teaching on this matter is, but it seems to me from a theological perspective–and I think Judaism would largely concur–that since G-d alone is eternal, having no beginning and no end, His creation ex nihilo cannot also be eternal. Further, from a logical understanding, if G-d created the universe, there must have been some point at which the universe did not exist.

But how does the universe exist now, other than in the Mind of God? God knows all and intends all from all eternity. So in a sense the universe necessarily existed from all eternity, since the intention of God was from all eternity and the intention of God is the act of God. What we don’t know is the mode in which God thought it.

But while all of that is mysterious and impossible to grasp in a human sense, that’s not surprising since, if we fully understood the Mind of God, we would be God.

 

[CompSciGuy]

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.

What he said.
The very idea of an eternal universe is illogical.

 

[JimG]

To those mentioning the Big Crunch, by the way, the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion (supposedly caused by Dark Energy) has made that particular theory seem unlikely.

Yes. If I recall correctly, the oscillating universe is no longer taken as a serious possibility. But many cosmologists simply do not like the idea of a universe with a beginning point, as the Big Bang theory seems to suggest. Consequently they have fallen back on the multiverse theory, which also seems, to me at least, unlikely.

Nevertheless, I don’t see any logical impossibility in the idea of a temporally infinite universe with no beginning point. It would still need a creator. Time itself needs a creator, as does space. So suggesting the possibility of a temporally–or spatially–infinite universe does not obviate the need for God.

Also I think it’s rather dangerous for apologists to premise the existence of God on the fact that the universe must have a temporal beginning point. Who knows when the oscillating universe will come back into favor?

 

[Iron_Donkey]

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.

The sequential creation of more and more history was just the way it occurred to me to describe it, but since God is timeless, then (in this model) He’d be creating these infinite number of pasts all at once and lining them up all at once as well. I think there easily either could or could not be “causal order” of some type on them, where we say that HE allowed how He created one to influence how He created an earlier one.

Arguably, you could say that a more standard timeline could be created in a similar faction, with God creating lots of chunks of time (perhaps of any length from 0 on) and lining them up. I don’t actually think this would be any different in any real way from creating all of history at once with time going in whatever directions it does (since again God is timeless), but is only a way of describing it to show that such could be imagined.

As to whether or not the past would be an illusion: well, the fact that it was actually created would imply not, but it is true that the present wouldn’t strictly require the past beyond a certain point. I think it could be done in such a way as to generally preserve most of what we think about how things work. If God created “time chunks” in some other kind of time which just contained our time and then spent that time lining them up, then you could say that for a person in a later chunk an earlier one didn’t actually happen since it hadn’t been created when he started his chunk - but I don’t think this necessarily has to be the case, since God is actually timeless. I think He could do it that way, but I can’t imagine any reason why He would-], except maybe to bury dinosaur bones which from our perspective were never really associated with actual dinosaurs just to mess with people/-].

I think playing with these sorts of ideas have a tendency to twist our brains into pretzels. (Brain pretzelification is, however, something that I think all people should engage in occasionally.)

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I don’t know what the official Catholic teaching on this matter is, but it seems to me from a theological perspective–and I think Judaism would largely concur–that since G-d alone is eternal, having no beginning and no end, His creation ex nihilo cannot also be eternal. Further, from a logical understanding, if G-d created the universe, there must have been some point at which the universe did not exist.

St Thomas did not think it contradictory. Indeed, if the world was eternal, it would be required. But remember, this is just Philosophical speculation. It becomes real when skeptics say the universe is, indeed, eternal. St. Thomas’ Five ways show that, in that eventuality, God would be the First cause every contingent, limited being ( both the material and the spiritual ); that is, he would be creating all contingent, limited being eternally. Linus2nd

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Jim G

**Also I think it’s rather dangerous for apologists to premise the existence of God on the fact that the universe must have a temporal beginning point. Who knows when the oscillating universe will come back into favor? **

What’s more dangerous for the apologist is not to know, and not to be able, to remind the atheist where the evidence really is, and it certainly is not on the side of the atheist.

Book of Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning [on the first day] God said: 'Let there be light.”

Atheist Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

As astronomer Robert Jastrow pointed out in God and the Astronomers:

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

 

[Iron_Donkey]

St Thomas did not think it contradictory. Indeed, if the world was eternal, it would be required. But remember, this is just Philosophical speculation. It becomes real when skeptics say the universe is, indeed, eternal. St. Thomas’ Five ways show that, in that eventuality, God would be the First cause every contingent, limited being ( both the material and the spiritual ); that is, he would be creating all contingent, limited being eternally. Linus2nd

Also, I believe there are two different uses of the word “eternal” being mixed up here: Eternal in the since of uncaused and unaffected, and eternal as in exists during all time. God is eternal in both senses, but even time itself is not eternal in the first sense.

So if something managed to exist during all the time that there was for it to exist in, we might say that it was eternal in the second sense, but since it would still be ultimately contingent on God, it would not eternal in the first sense. A universe with time going infinitely in both directions would also not be eternal in the first sense: God existed “before” it causally.

Not before it in time, because that doesn’t make sense. You can’t have before time existed with before meant in the time sense with either model of the universe because there was no time for the before to be in. But you can have before causally because God created time. (Which means that it would be possible for there to be state of being in which there was God but in which there was no time, but with such a state would not be within time, it is hard to say whether or not such a state ever actually existed - talking about timeless stuff from within time problems again.)

 

[JimG]

Jim G

**Also I think it’s rather dangerous for apologists to premise the existence of God on the fact that the universe must have a temporal beginning point. Who knows when the oscillating universe will come back into favor? **

What’s more dangerous for the apologist is not to know, and not to be able, to remind the atheist where the evidence really is, and it certainly is not on the side of the atheist.

Book of Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning [on the first day] God said: 'Let there be light.”

Atheist Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

As astronomer Robert Jastrow pointed out in God and the Astronomers:

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Those are all great quotes, and I am a firm believer myself in the big bang as it is currently proposed. My only point is that for God, a zero time point is simultaneous with a time-point of zero plus 17 billion years. God sees them as equally simultaneous. If evidence turned up that the big bang was preceded by an infinite timeline of negative expansion and backward moving time, it would not disturb my faith in the slightest.

 

[devoutchristian]

Those are all great quotes, and I am a firm believer myself in the big bang as it is currently proposed. My only point is that for God, a zero time point is simultaneous with a time-point of zero plus 17 billion years. God sees them as equally simultaneous. If evidence turned up that the big bang was preceded by an infinite timeline of negative expansion and backward moving time, it would not disturb my faith in the slightest.

The Church teaches dogmatically that the universe is of finite age.

 

[JimG]

The Church teaches dogmatically that the universe is of finite age.

I believe you, though I haven’t researched the doctrine. Is that the intended meaning of the catechism quote given above, which I copy below?

"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 )”

Because if that is the case, the above quote does not quite say it.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I believe you, though I haven’t researched the doctrine. Is that the intended meaning of the catechism quote given above, which I copy below?

"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 )”

Because if that is the case, the above quote does not quite say it.

The phrase " from the beginning of time " means " finite. " That means the created universe had an absolute beginning, prior to which only God existed. So the universe did not exist eternally into the past. Linus2nd

 

[Aelred_Minor]

The phrase " from the beginning of time " means " finite. " That means the created universe had an absolute beginning, prior to which only God existed. So the universe did not exist eternally into the past. Linus2nd

Technically, it means that there was a beginning of time and that from that moment God created creatures out of nothing. It technically does leave open the possibility of some kind of creaturely existence “prior” to the beginning of time (atemporal creaturely existence), but it does seem to rule out (as reason itself seems to) the idea of time extending infinitely into the past.

 

[JimG]

The phrase " from the beginning of time " means " finite. " That means the created universe had an absolute beginning, prior to which only God existed. So the universe did not exist eternally into the past. Linus2nd

Technically, it means that there was a beginning of time and that from that moment God created creatures out of nothing. It technically does leave open the possibility of some kind of creaturely existence “prior” to the beginning of time (atemporal creaturely existence), but it does seem to rule out (as reason itself seems to) the idea of time extending infinitely into the past.

The quote from the Fourth Lateran Council says that God from the beginning of time created ex nihilo both spiritual creatures, material creatures, and man.

It’s hard to determine quite what was meant by that, in respect to the timeline of the universe.

Angels, being pure spirits, do not really exist in a temporal continuum, so I don’t see how “the beginning of time” would apply to them. And to me, the “beginning of time” simply implies that time, along with space and everything in it, must be created by God, without necessarily stating that the universe as a whole must have a fixed beginning point. God’s creative act IS the beginning point (for the creation) whether it is a finite or an infinite series.

Now, because the universe is temporal, it cannot be eternal. Eternity means not being limited by a timeline. God, being eternal does not possess his existence as a series of temporal moments. For him the beginning of time is the exact same moment as every other moment of existence.

Mathematics deals with infinities (not eternities) as a matter of course. The series of integers is an infinite series, (1, 2, 3, …infinity), and combined with the series of negative numbers is infinite in both directions, for example. One can conceive at least in theory of an infinite series of moments of time in both directions as well.

It’s not that I doubt that the universe had a beginning point. I think it did. I just don’t see it as a necessity.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Technically, it means that there was a beginning of time and that from that moment God created creatures out of nothing. It technically does leave open the possibility of some kind of creaturely existence “prior” to the beginning of time (atemporal creaturely existence), but it does seem to rule out (as reason itself seems to) the idea of time extending infinitely into the past.

The Lateran Council meant exactly what it said. You are parsing the definition of time to open the door to some scientific " theory " on the meaning of time. Nothing existed in the universe before God’s creative act - period. It would be heretical to attempt to alter the obvious and clear meaning of the Council’s definition. It is to substitute scientism for Faith. Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

The quote from the Fourth Lateran Council says that God from the beginning of time created ex nihilo both spiritual creatures, material creatures, and man.

It’s hard to determine quite what was meant by that, in respect to the timeline of the universe.

You are introducing scientism into the clear meaning of the test.

Angels, being pure spirits, do not really exist in a temporal continuum, so I don’t see how “the beginning of time” would apply to them. And to me, the “beginning of time” simply implies that time, along with space and everything in it, must be created by God, without necessarily stating that the universe as a whole must have a fixed beginning point. God’s creative act IS the beginning point (for the creation) whether it is a finite or an infinite series.

"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 ). " It is clear the the Council taught that angels exist in time. They too had a beginning in time.

Now, because the universe is temporal, it cannot be eternal. Eternity means not being limited by a timeline. God, being eternal does not possess his existence as a series of temporal moments. For him the beginning of time is the exact same moment as every other moment of existence.

Mathematics deals with infinities (not eternities) as a matter of course. The series of integers is an infinite series, (1, 2, 3, …infinity), and combined with the series of negative numbers is infinite in both directions, for example. One can conceive at least in theory of an infinite series of moments of time in both directions as well.

It’s not that I doubt that the universe had a beginning point. I think it did. I just don’t see it as a necessity.

That is why the Council pronounced the definitin. It is a matter of Faith, as St. Thomas said. Linus2nd

 

[JimG]

I’m not introducing ‘scientism.’ I’m only wondering what the “beginning of time” means in relation to the eternity of God. Obviously eternity does not consist in an infinite series of moments. To use the words “prior to” the beginning of time is meaningless. God didn’t have to wait for a period of time before creating time. He creates ex nihilo and then time exists, but it doesn’t apply to him. Eternity applies to him. And if God creates an infinite series, either of space or of time, it is still not eternal.