Was there nothing before the Big bang?

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meltzerboy said:
You seem to be placing G-d on a human level.
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Actually, exactly the opposite.
meltzerboy said:
You seem to be placing G-d on a human level.
For humans, free will necessitates choice, …
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For ANY sentient entity to have and/or exhibit free will to necessitates choice. It is meaningless to discuss free will without choice. What would it mean to have free will without choice? Over what would you exhibit that will, since there would be no choice? How would you illustrate that free will existed in such a circumstance?
meltzerboy said:
…but for G-d free will to choose between good and evil and always choosing the good does not reflect His omnipotence or consistency since there is no choice required:
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BY DEFINITION such choice is required, since without choice there is no free will.
meltzerboy said:
G-d is, I repeat, by His very nature, goodness, mercy, justice, and strength and always acts accordingly.
meltzerboy;11748961:
God is by His EXHIBITED nature such things. He is by His action such things.
meltzerboy;11748961:
Lacking the free will to choose goodness does not render G-d incomplete any more than lacking weakness, stupidity, hatred, immorality, temporality, or biological and psychological needs.
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Yes, it does, since by definition there would be the possibility of something more complete than Him - namely a being with such ability to choose.
meltzerboy said:
G-d’s essence is the opposite of these finite and limited characteristics.
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This shows confusion on your part. I am arguing that God is complete, and in essence, an infinite “set of all sets” with the resulting logical problems that this creates as noted by Russell, Cantor, Gödel and others. There was no argument made for finite and limiting characteristics - in fact - exactly the opposite.
meltzerboy said:
G-d is “I am” not “I choose to be.”
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Without choice, the “I am” has no meaning. Without choice you may as well believe in an agnostic universe where all has arisen by random chance, since He would have had no choice in creation. God is not an automaton. To make Him such diminishes Him.

You seem to be highly confused about the point you are arguing. You are actually arguing to limit Him - I am arguing that He is unlimited – NOT vice versa.
meltzerboy said:
It is only mankind’s will that is based on “I choose to be,” but not the will of G-d. The Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma according to Jewish thought. G-d neither chooses the good nor is something good because G-d chooses it. There is no choice involved, only action based on the nature of G-d.
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Then you’ve reduced God to a machine. For such a God, the sacrifice of one’s son would have no meaning. Read the end of Genesis chapter 22 - it is clear that Abraham’s act had great meaning to God.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son” is an act of choice. It is an act of redemption - which is an act of choice. Love is an act of choice. How could you be so confused about this?
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Della said:
No. There is no capacity for evil in God, nor does he create evil.
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So then, God is limited? He is not all powerful? He is not the creator of everything? This is the logical conclusion of your statement.
Della said:
He created us with the ability to choose him or reject him, but that is not the same thing as compelling us to make any particular choice.
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I never argued that He compelled us to make a particular choice. Neither did I argue that He is compelled to make a particular choice. Such an argument would be limiting of God. I argued exactly the opposite, which places God in a position of being infinite.
Della said:
God tested man so that his innocence would remain his choice or he could reject God’s instructions and choose death.
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I am not arguing anything about the nature of man. I am presenting an argument about the nature of God.
Della said:
Our parents chose death for themselves, and thus for us. God chose to send his Son to die to redeem us. Hardly the action of a God who had evil intentions for us from the beginning.
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No one argued that God has evil intentions - in fact - again - exactly the opposite! I argued that God CHOOSES not to be evil - that is exactly the opposite of evil intentions.

Here is the point - again. If God’s “components” are only good, then He is limited - and thus incomplete. And if He is the creator of all, and He is ONLY good, then where did the “ungood” come from?

But if God has elements of good and ungood in Him - just as He has elements of every other part of creation in Him, then where these things came from makes sense, AND the concept that God CHOOSES good and only good makes sense.

If God had no choice in sending in His son to redeem us, then there was no redemption, because there was no sacrifice, because there was no choice. Giving your son over to death isn’t a selfless act of love if you have no choice in doing it.

Abraham offered up Isaac and was blessed. Would he have been blessed if He had no choice in the offering? Would he have been blessed if he was forced to do it?

Instead, he was blessed, and the blessing reflects that he loved God and chose to be obedient to Him. It reflects a choice.

And this test is important because it is exactly the test to which God had held Himself. This is why it held so much meaning - because Abraham CHOSE to do for God exactly what God had chosen to do for Abraham (and all mankind.)

This concept that you and several others propose that God is incomplete and finite is not one that I can buy into or make logical sense from.
 
Again, this thread is getting off track. It is not about the problem of evil.

It’s about:

Was there nothing before the Big Bang?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Since you cannot observe or measure “nothing” there is no such evidence.

However, the only measuring we can do begins with the Big Bang … which was SOMETHING! 😃

So if there was something before the Big Bang (which is not likely since time began with the Big Bang) we will never know from science.

We can get lots of speculation and theories. Those are cheap. But no observable facts.

Since Catholics believe God created the universe, there was Something before the Big Bang.

But since God exists outside of time, even saying he existed “before” the universe is not right.
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I read something that said the universe came from a hot point the size of an electron. If true, how do we know the hot point is not eternal, which is the way it sounded to me.

And don’t physicists say the universe is eternal?
 
The part that I don’t understand is why all the matter in the universe would explode so violently all of a sudden. Black holes are created when matter becomes so dense, usually from collapsed neutron stars, and rips a hole in the very fabric of space and time, all matter bends and distorts it but it actually rips it.

The theory is that all the matter in the universe was so dense and that all the trillions of estimated galaxies all were smaller than an atom. If a neutron star collapsing causes a rip the fabric of space and time, sucking everything into itself, why wouldn’t something unimaginably more dense create a bigger rip instead of blowing up and literally doing the exact opposite. I’m not calling it wrong, I mean there’s plenty of evidence to show that things are expanding but stuff just doesn’t make sense to me.
 
dmwessel said:
What do you mean by eternal? The universe (big bang) had an existence but it’s not eternal. It just suddenly imploded.
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I read something online yesterday (don’t remember which article it was$ that said that physicists say that before the Big Bang there was a “hot point” and the Big Bang came from that, meaning the hot point was eternal.
 
Faith1960 said:
I read something online yesterday (don’t remember which article it was$ that said that physicists say that before the Big Bang there was a “hot point” and the Big Bang came from that, meaning the hot point was eternal.
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Or from a vacuum?
 
What are the most common theories and are any compatible with creation ex nihilo?
 
There are no good theories.
  1. It is unknown where the material/energy for the Big Bang came from or why it exploded.
  2. The medium into which this ‘bang’ exploded into is undefined.
  3. Nothing could mean that there was literally nowhere for this explosion to go.
  4. Years before the Hubble space telescope, astronomers could detect faint galaxies in the distance. The latest Hubble deep space images still show faint galaxies at the very edge of its range of vision.
Peace,
Ed
 
No one can presently say with any certainty what preceded the Big Bang. I am 56 years old and the Big Bang was creating a real stir among religious and scientists in my youth. In other words, this is quite new.

I lean toward a disordered jumble of mass or a preceding universe, but I can’t even begin to explain the science behind theses theories…too much math.
 
edwest2 said:
There are no good theories.
  1. It is unknown where the material/energy for the Big Bang came from or why it exploded.
  2. The medium into which this ‘bang’ exploded into is undefined.
  3. Nothing could mean that there was literally nowhere for this explosion to go.
  4. Years before the Hubble space telescope, astronomers could detect faint galaxies in the distance. The latest Hubble deep space images still show faint galaxies at the very edge of its range of vision.
Peace,
Ed
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If God created the universe out of nothing, yet physicists believe that before the Big Bang there was something like a hot point or vacuum that preceded the Big Bang…then how can the universe have come from nothing? A hot spot or vacuum isn’t nothing?!
 
Faith1960 said:
I read something online yesterday (don’t remember which article it was$ that said that physicists say that before the Big Bang there was a “hot point” and the Big Bang came from that, meaning the hot point was eternal.
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And to add to this, if a hot point where the Big Bang came from, the hot point wouldn’t be nothing, creation ex nihilo. Help! I’m getting really confused. :o
 
Faith1960 said:
And to add to this, if a hot point where the Big Bang came from, the hot point wouldn’t be nothing, creation ex nihilo. Help! I’m getting really confused. :o
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Holy Scripture begins with “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…” We have it on the word of God that God created the entire universe and the Church teaches us that he created it out of nothing. For before God created the universe, He was the only existant being. Now God and creatures are beings of two different orders, i.e, creatures are not God. Therefore, creatures must have been created from nothing.
 
science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang.htm

<<<<<<<<It is difficult enough to imagine a time, roughly 13.7 billion years ago, when the entire universe existed as a singularity. According to the big bang theory, one of the main contenders vying to explain how the universe came to be, all the matter in the cosmos – all of space itself – existed in a form smaller than a subatomic particle.>>>>>>>>>

A subatomic particle isn’t nothing…How can we align this with our faith?
 
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