Trying to explain how God created the universe by using the Big Bang

[SuperDarkMan12]

I’m debating with an atheist about the existence of a first cause and he was discussing how the laws of logic and science show that there is no need for a first cause. He also was getting on the lines of how there was no time before the big bang so how could God could create the universe? Could someone help me out with this stuff? Also he was stating there is no nothingness for some reason.

 

[z_0101]

Honestly, go find someone else to talk to as he has already rejected the idea that God is outside of time/space.
You should take a read thru
Trent Horn’s “New Support for the Cosmological Argument” and his follow-up Does Physics Disprove the First-Cause Argument?

 

[DavidFilmer]

Before the theory of the Bang was introduced (by a Catholic priest, by the way, Monseigneur Georges Lemaître) the prevalent theory was “steady state” - that the universe had always existed. This idea is compatible with most pagan religions, in which the gods formed the world from a pre-existing primordial matter.

The Judeo-Christian religion was unique in that it taught that God created the universe from nothing. When Msgr. Lemaître proposed the Bang, many physicists initially scoffed at the idea, thinking it was trying to put a scientific spin on a theological idea of creation. Today, no reputable scientist disputes the Bang. They dispute what happened in the first umpety-umpth of a second after the Bang, but nobody disputes the Bang itself.

Back in the 70’s many physicists had this idea that the Bang was a cyclical event. We know the universe is expanding, but the idea was that gravity would eventually pull everything back together and the Bang would happen all over again, ad infinitum. This would establish an infinite progression of Bangs, and maybe that could be extrapolated to an infinite regression, not requiring a First Cause. But nobody believes this today - Edwin Hubble proved (long before the 70’s) that the universe reached escape velocity at the Bang and would never coalesce. The Bang is a one-time event, and this is now settled science.

It helps to understand the basic idea of the Bang. The universe did not come from an object the size of a golf ball, or a marble, or a pea, or a grain of sand. The universe came from a zero-dimensional singularity. It had ZERO mass (modern science believes that matter acquired mass shortly after the Bang thanks to the Higgs field). It had no size and occupied no space and had no mass. In fact, space itself did not exist - space is created as matter moves into it.

When ancient people say God created the universe from nothing, a zero-dimensional singularity could fit that description, to the best of their ability to understand. It’s not matter - which, by definition, has mass and occupies space. The initial singularity did neither.

But what caused the Bang? It was an event that took place some 14.3 billion years ago. There is no scientific reason to believe anything like it ever happened before, or will ever happen again.

No scientist can say what caused the Bang. But there are only two logical possibilities: either the universe created itself, or it was created by an external entity which exists beyond space and time (which could be rightly called “God”).

Obviously, an atheist prefers the first idea - that the universe created itself. Which is really silly, if you think about it. What OTHER thing can you think of that causes itself to exist? And there’s a logical problem with this idea - for something to create itself, it must simultaneously be in a state of possibility and actuality, but these states are mutually exclusive.

And there you have it.

 

[powerofk]

Before the theory of the Bang was introduced (by a Catholic priest, by the way, Monseigneur Georges Lemaître) the prevalent theory was “steady state” - that the universe had always existed. This idea is compatible with most pagan religions, in which the gods formed the world from a pre-existing primordial matter.

The Judeo-Christian religion was unique in that it taught that God created the universe from nothing. When Msgr. Lemaître proposed the Bang, many physicists initially scoffed at the idea, thinking it was trying to put a scientific spin on a theological idea of creation. Today, no reputable scientist disputes the Bang. They dispute what happened in the first umpety-umpth of a second after the Bang, but nobody disputes the Bang itself.

Back in the 70’s many physicists had this idea that the Bang was a cyclical event. We know the universe is expanding, but the idea was that gravity would eventually pull everything back together and the Bang would happen all over again, ad infinitum. This would establish an infinite progression of Bangs, and maybe that could be extrapolated to an infinite regression, not requiring a First Cause. But nobody believes this today - Edwin Hubble proved (long before the 70’s) that the universe reached escape velocity at the Bang and would never coalesce. The Bang is a one-time event, and this is now settled science.

It helps to understand the basic idea of the Bang. The universe did not come from an object the size of a golf ball, or a marble, or a pea, or a grain of sand. The universe came from a zero-dimensional singularity. It had ZERO mass (modern science believes that matter acquired mass shortly after the Bang thanks to the Higgs field). It had no size and occupied no space and had no mass. In fact, space itself did not exist - space is created as matter moves into it.

When ancient people say God created the universe from nothing, a zero-dimensional singularity could fit that description, to the best of their ability to understand. It’s not matter - which, by definition, has mass and occupies space. The initial singularity did neither.

But what caused the Bang? It was an event that took place some 14.3 billion years ago. There is no scientific reason to believe anything like it ever happened before, or will ever happen again.

No scientist can say what caused the Bang. But there are only two logical possibilities: either the universe created itself, or it was created by an external entity which exists beyond space and time (which could be rightly called “God”).

Obviously, an atheist prefers the first idea - that the universe created itself. Which is really silly, if you think about it. What OTHER thing can you think of that causes itself to exist? And there’s a logical problem with this idea - for something to create itself, it must simultaneously be in a state of possibility and actuality, but these states are mutually exclusive.

And there you have it.

And not only is the universe expanding… it’s ACCELERATING! Regardless, there are many scientific truths that science simply cannot explain… it can describe, but not explain.

Quantum physics, for example, is nothing more than a description of what happens, but cannot explain exactly how it happens, and actually states that it is impossible scientifically to know. “Fuzzy motion from a distance” - two entangled sub-atomic particles always have opposite spins, regardless of how far away they are in space. Flip the spin on one of the two particles, and the spin of the other is instantaneously flipped, as well. Electron jumps are literally practically teleportation events of individual electrons.

 

[dmar198]

I’m debating with an atheist about the existence of a first cause and he was discussing how the laws of logic and science show that there is no need for a first cause. He also was getting on the lines of how there was no time before the big bang so how could God could create the universe? Could someone help me out with this stuff? Also he was stating there is no nothingness for some reason.

One argument for God’s existence that might be effective with him is to talk to him about matter being an effect. We can use reason to examine the properties of matter and conclude that nothing material can be eternal. For one thing, matter loses energy. An eternal thing can’t.

In that light, I think we can conclude with moral certainty that matter started to exist at some point.

The reason this is important is because of the following argument based on the law of contradiction:

Either the material world is caused, or it is not. If it is caused, either something nonmaterial caused the material world, or something material. Using reason alone, we can exclude all other theories, because the law of contradiction says that, in any case between an option and its negation, one of the two must be true.

That simple argument gives us three options for the world: (1) the material world is eternal, (2) something material caused the world, (3) something nonmaterial caused the world.

That’s where the earlier argument about matter being an effect comes in: by showing that matter must be an effect, using reason alone, we can exclude options 1 and 2. Therefore, something nonmaterial caused the world.

Let me know what you think of that argument.

 

[DavidFilmer]

And not only is the universe expanding… it’s ACCELERATING!

And not only accelerating, but accelerating faster than the speed of light! Nothing is really moving faster than light, but the space between them is expanding faster than light.

Quantum physics, for example, is nothing more than a description of what happens, but cannot explain exactly how it happens, and actually states that it is impossible scientifically to know. “Fuzzy motion from a distance” - two entangled sub-atomic particles always have opposite spins, regardless of how far away they are in space.

Einstein described quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” We’ve proven that it is instantaneous over ANY distance, seemingly to defy the speed of light. And it’s not just quantum particles - we’ve entangled buckyballs! (complex carbon molecules - C[sub]60[/sub]).

No scientist can explain how any of this is possible, but the day may come when they can. So I wouldn’t introduce God into any of this strangeness. But the causative agent of the Bang is something that cannot be logically explained without introducing an entity which exists beyond space and time.

 

[Kmon23]

The universe came from a zero-dimensional singularity. It had ZERO mass (modern science believes that matter acquired mass shortly after the Bang thanks to the Higgs field).

I definitely appreciate your post, but I think (from my limited knowledge of physics, haven’t gotten to the higher level classes yet…) that you made a small mistake in this statement.
The entire mass of an object cannot be attributed to the Higgs Field, only part of it. The majority of the mass comes from the mass-energy equivalence. Besides that great post

 

[StrawberryJam]

“by using the big bang”

Using people or ideas is not making marks in your favor. In stating you are using people or their ideas you are at least admitting doing so without shame, is not something that helps make your case IMHO. Not even your notapology.
You are not worth it

 

[AtheisticTatska]

I’m debating with an atheist about the existence of a first cause and he was discussing how the laws of logic and science show that there is no need for a first cause. He also was getting on the lines of how there was no time before the big bang so how could God could create the universe? Could someone help me out with this stuff? Also he was stating there is no nothingness for some reason.

God didn’t create the bib bang. Hope this helped.

 

[DavidFilmer]

The entire mass of an object cannot be attributed to the Higgs Field, only part of it. The majority of the mass comes from the mass-energy equivalence

The current scientific theory maintains that there was NO mass-energy equivalence at the instant of the Bang, because there was no mass. If there was zero mass, then there was zero energy, according to the idea of mass-energy equivalence (famously expressed by Einstein’s equation E=mc[sup]2[/sup]). Zero mass multiplied by anything is still zero, so energy was also zero at the instant of the Bang. Zero mass means zero mass-energy equivalent.

NO reputable physicist thinks that mater had mass at the instant of the Bang. Because matter would immediately coalesce due to gravity, and the Bang would be an infinite but very short-lived occurrence, never expanding more than a few millimeters. Peter Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics by demonstrating that matter had no mass at the instant of the Bang.

The Bang itself originated form a zero-dimensional singularity which had no mass and no energy (and no size). It was as close to the idea of “nothing” as we can possibly conceive. This is not religion - it is settled science.