What does the Catholic Church have to say about this?

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The print is too small, but from what I gathered from the print I could read, I have say that no one should be surprised if the Holy Father finds something helpful in the Big Bang theory. I do too, as well as in the discovery that the universe is expanding and will fly apart at some distance time in the far future. It confirms what the prophets, apostles and saints have always taught–that the physical universe was created at a point in time, and that it is transitory, even if it seems eternal.

I do take issue with the opening sentence, though. Galileo was NOT put under house arrest for insisting on his theory that the earth orbits the sun. That gloss-over of the facts has been accepted as fact for far too long. It has been refuted time and time again. If people want to really know about Galileo the information is readily available, so there is no excuse for anyone repeating the old chestnut about Galileo’s supposed abuse by the Catholic Church. Really, it’s gotten past tiresome.
 
I imagine the Catholic Church would say something along the lines of “If that’s how God decided to make His creation, that’s OK by us.”

Does the paper say how and why such an infinite universe of universes came to be? I thought not.
 
Della said:
The print is too small, but from what I gathered from the print I could read, I have say that no one should be surprised if the Holy Father finds something helpful in the Big Bang theory. I do too, as well as in the discovery that the universe is expanding and will fly apart at some distance time in the far future. It confirms what the prophets, apostles and saints have always taught–that the physical universe was created at a point in time, and that it is transitory, even if it seems eternal.

I do take issue with the opening sentence, though. Galileo was NOT put under house arrest for insisting on his theory that the earth orbits the sun. That gloss-over of the facts has been accepted as fact for far too long. It has been refuted time and time again. If people want to really know about Galileo the information is readily available, so there is no excuse for anyone repeating the old chestnut about Galileo’s supposed abuse by the Catholic Church. Really, it’s gotten past tiresome.
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(Edited).

I disagree with the paper (i.e. I disagree with the cyclic model) but I thought the paper is thought provoking. Maybe in 20 years this will be the dominant cosmology if LISA fails to detect graviational waves.
 
VociMike said:
I imagine the Catholic Church would say something along the lines of “If that’s how God decided to make His creation, that’s OK by us.”

Does the paper say how and why such an infinite universe of universes came to be? I thought not.
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But wouldn’t the theory of creation supported in ribozyme’s article contradict the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilio, from nothing?
 
What if this other “demension” was God’s own hand?

That was my first thought.

I definately agree with a comment mentioned earlier: The universe is infintely big (at least to us). How can we “contain” it simply to a three demension?
 
crusader4life said:
What if this other “demension” was God’s own hand?

That was my first thought.

I definately agree with a comment mentioned earlier: The universe is infintely big (at least to us). How can we “contain” it simply to a three demension?
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Forgive my literalist thinking, but if you’re referring to an actual physical “hand” of God, the Church teaches that God has no body.
 
CollegeKid said:
But wouldn’t the theory of creation supported in ribozyme’s article contradict the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilio, from nothing?
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I think your question comes down to “can something that is infinite in time still be created?” What does infinite in time even mean? Where did time come from? It’s not clear to me that God, who is outside of time, could not create something that is infinite in time, or more accurately, appears to have been infinite in past time.
 
CollegeKid said:
But wouldn’t the theory of creation supported in ribozyme’s article contradict the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilio, from nothing?
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What science cannot answer and does not know is where the first elements came from that developed into all the other elements. The Church teaches that all the elements that make up creation came from God out of nothing. Of course, this doesn’t mean that each element came directly from God’s fiat, but it does mean that God brought the first elements into being as well as the mechanism by which they developed into what they later became.
 
VociMike said:
I think your question comes down to “can something that is infinite in time still be created?” What does infinite in time even mean? Where did time come from? It’s not clear to me that God, who is outside of time, could not create something that is infinite in time, or more accurately, appears to have been infinite in past time.
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I think it would have to be the latter half of what you said: “appears to have been infinite in past time.” If I remember correcty from *Theology and Sanity *(and I’m assuming everything in that was on the mark), then only God is Infinite Existence, neither the universe nor anything contained in it can be.
 
CollegeKid said:
But wouldn’t the theory of creation supported in ribozyme’s article contradict the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilio, from nothing?
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Yes it would. You are correct, but the alternative, inflation, isn’t very friendly to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Well, at least the versions of inflation promoted by Alexander Vilenkin, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, and Leonard Susskind.
 
More pseudo-scientific talk in a religion forum. Nothing to see, move along.

If you are so confortable with your scientific knowledge please post on Slashdot and not on CAF.
 
ribozyme said:
Yes it would. You are correct, but the alternative, inflation, isn’t very friendly to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Well, at least the versions of inflation promoted by Alexander Vilenkin, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, and Leonard Susskind.
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I respect your opinion as an atheist, but I think you can see there is a clear counter-argument. Also, given that you’re an atheist, with all due respect, I think commenting on the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilio, unless you’ve studied it extensively, might be beyond your scope. Note that I’m not pretending that I know the full implications of this teaching either.
 
Cristiano said:
More pseudo-scientific talk in a religion forum. Nothing to see, move along.

If you are so confortable with your scientific knowledge please post on Slashdot and not on CAF.
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Well, I did not say that the cyclic model is supported by the vast majority of the evidence, nor did the Discover article, which I found on Professor Paul Steinhardt’s website. To the contrary, I said I disagreed with it, mainly due to this theorem: arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012 .

Well, it is not a pseudoscientific proposal by Steinhardt and Turok; it is a tentative hypothesis. It has the potential to displace the so-called “Standard Model”.
 
Interesting article. But there is no need for the Pope to “weigh in” on any cosmological theory. Certainly it would be a mistake for the Church to “canonize” any particular cosmological theory.

Theists do tend to like the Big Bang theory because it seems linear and seems to posit a beginning point, which is emotionally satisfying.

But that’s not critical to the theology of creation. God could have created a non-linear, temporally infinite, or oscillating universe. The question is whether the universe contains within itself sufficent reason for its own existence. That’s not a question that will be settled by science.

Cosmological theories really have nothing to do with the proposition that God created the universe from nothing. How it might have evolved, and whether it had a beginning in time or not is something for the scientists to explore.

The fact that the universe may or may not have had a beginning point in time, does not obviate the need for time and space itself to have a Creator. Creation *ex nihilo * implies nothing about whether or not time and space is or is not infinite in extent.
 
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JimG:
Interesting article. But there is no need for the Pope to “weigh in” on any cosmological theory. Certainly it would be a mistake for the Church to “canonize” any particular cosmological theory.

Theists do tend to like the Big Bang theory because it seems linear and seems to posit a beginning point, which is emotionally satisfying.

But that’s not critical to the theology of creation. God could have created a non-linear, temporally infinite, or oscillating universe. The question is whether the universe contains within itself sufficent reason for its own existence. That’s not a question that will be settled by science.

Cosmological theories really have nothing to do with the proposition that God created the universe from nothing. How it might have evolved, and whether it had a beginning in time or not is something for the scientists to explore.

The fact that the universe may or may not have had a beginning point in time, does not obviate the need for time and space itself to have a Creator. Creation ex nihilo implies nothing about whether or not time and space is or is not infinite in extent.
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Personally, I think the standard big bang model suggested divine intervention, that is the classic big bang model, but that model had several problems, such as the monopole problem, the flatness problem, and the horizon problem. However, when inflation was introduced to solve those problems, it removed any theistic involvement that the standard big bang implied. Cosmic inflation destroys any perceived instance of divine intervention in cosmology.

Other cosmologies, such as the Turok and Steinhardt cyclic model, does the same. Without any beginning, it does not seem necessary to postulate any divine intervention, and Occam’s razor can be used to slice the involvement of God.
 
ribozyme said:
Personally, I think the standard big bang model suggested divine intervention, that is the classic big bang model, but that model had several problems, such as the monopole problem, the flatness problem, and the horizon problem. However, when inflation was introduced to solve those problems, it removed any theistic involvement that the standard big bang implied. Cosmic inflation destroys any perceived instance of divine intervention in cosmology.

Other cosmologies, such as the Turok and Steinhardt cyclic model, does the same. Without any beginning, it does not seem necessary to postulate any divine intervention, and Occam’s razor can be used to slice the involvement of God.
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Well, it can if you approach the existence of God the way you approach any other natural scientific question, with hypothesis and experimentation, but that begs the question of whether or not God is something we believe in, primarily, because of scientific evidence. He is not, however. The fact is, Occam’s Razor cannot be used to “slice the involvement of God” or to prove the involvement of God. Atheists believe it nullifies the need for God because it does seem to destroy the linear idea we have of the universe’s creation when considering these other cosmologies, whether its the inflationary model, or Turok and Steinhardt, or another. But as Jim said, there’s no reason God could not create a universe that appears to have been created non-linearly. Even if the prevalent model was for an “infinite” universe or series of universes, I and many other theists would still be compelled to ask, “Why anything at all?” To me and many others, the principle of Occam’s Razor suggests that there is anything at all only because an infinite creator, the last chain in the link, the Only One Who Needs No Explanation, created the universe.
 
CollegeKid said:
Well, it can if you approach the existence of God the way you approach any other natural scientific question, with hypothesis and experimentation, but that begs the question of whether or not God is something we believe in, primarily, because of scientific evidence. He is not, however. The fact is, Occam’s Razor cannot be used to “slice the involvement of God” or to prove the involvement of God. Atheists believe it nullifies the need for God because it does seem to destroy the linear idea we have of the universe’s creation when considering these other cosmologies, whether its the inflationary model, or Turok and Steinhardt, or another. But as Jim said, there’s no reason God could not create a universe that appears to have been created non-linearly. Even if the prevalent model was for an “infinite” universe or series of universes, I and many other theists would still be compelled to ask, “Why anything at all?” To me and many others, the principle of Occam’s Razor suggests that there is anything at all only because an infinite creator, the last chain in the link, the Only One Who Needs No Explanation, created the universe.
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pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/nd-paper.html
Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge.
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Well, I could imagine being brought to religious belief though scientific investigation, much like Carroll’s statement.

I will say the the linear idea of the universe, i.e. a universe with a definite beginning and ending, is remarkably compatable with theism. However, I did not think the other alternatives are amiable to theism.

The standard big bang actually supported the existence of God, but it is not even correct anymore. It has been modified by cosmic inflation, and cosmic inflation destroys any percieved notion of the involvement of God in the universe. If you have any argument that demonstrates that inflation cannot be eternal in the future time direction (i.e. the claims of Alexander Vilenkin and Andrei Linde are shown to be impossible by the laws of phyics or at least the physics of inflation) my argument that inflation supports atheism is quashed. Until then, I will not reconsider my metaphysical viewpoint.
 
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