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The Universe
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Imagine it had mentioned an inflation field, I wonder how many people would have embraced it when it was written. “In the beginning the inflation field created the heavens and the earth”A large amount of world religions have what are known as "creation myths", as they believe the world was created some how, often by a deity or deities.
It isn't really that unusual that your religion has a creation myth, it is after all an either or situation (it either does or it doesn't, two options). Most of the religions from the area your religion originated from also have creation myths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth
So I can't really see the remarkable aspect of this. If your creation myth had mentioned an inflation field that would be interesting.
In any case the biblical account for the creation is the only one that has the creator create from nothing. God speaks and the thing spoken becomes reality e.g. “Let there be light”. Contrast that with the Babylonian account of creation. There you have two monsters rearranging stuff that was already there. And only in the Bible do we have the concept of “before time”: “No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” 1 Corinthians 2:7. Most other non Abrahamic faiths have a view of the universe as being eternal in the past.
I have no reason not to conceded that point.But given that God is supernatural he can influence the universe without indication. So unless God decided to leave evidence of himself that can be modelled and tested it will remain outside of our grasp. And even then there are a lot of potential issues with the idea of modelling a supernatural being. You would have to figure out what he did
If we didn’t have the Bible then we could not have a good discussions now could we?And to be honest (and this is just my opinion) one would think that if he was going to do that he would have done it already (the Bible doesn't count
Yes religious people do but religious faith just is what it is and requires now scientific testing to be proved correct or otherwise. There are other ways to determine that and that is done with much research and knowledge of history, philosophy and many other tools. Instead of saying that religious faith issues cannot be tested scientifically what should be said is that science is ill equipped to deal with such things. Most of early science was un-divorced from the theology of its day anyway. It’s only since the likes of Hume, Kant and Darwin that science (especially the area of biology and natural history) that science stepped out on its own two feet. I say fair play, if that is the way it has to be then so be it, but it is noteworthy that it wasn’t always that way, theology was once reckoned among the sciences and nearly all the great thinkers of science to a man was either theistic or deistic in their beliefs, from Plato through Aristotle to Newton and on one might go, even Albert Einstein was Deistic in his view of the universe.Religious faith often asks to be accepted as a scientific hypotheses. The world is full of people complaining that science does deal with their particular religious beliefs. That is basically what Creationism is.0 -
Soul Winner wrote: »But I thought Occam’s razor favored the simplest explanation? Inflationary theory is not the simplest explanation, especially when you have to explain how it works which involves understanding a lot of scientific jargon and is still only theoretical an unproven at the end of the day. Whereas “God created it” is still the simplest explanation.
Once again, you are refusing to explain god. Without knowing what god is it doesn't even come into consideration.Soul Winner wrote: »Space and time encompasses everything in our reality. Just because we cannot see outside our own reality does not mean that there is nothing beyond it in a separate reality possibly called eternity. I know this cannot be tested scientifically but as said earlier, science may never be equipped to test all reality, only what is observable by our limited senses.
What are you talking about, separate reality? There can be only one reality, by definition. You just said 'Space and time encompasses everything in our reality' and that's literally it, end of the line, there's no need to go any further because you can't! Repeating myself once more, it's the same as asking what's north of the North Pole, it's meaningless.Soul Winner wrote: »‘Nothing’ cannot be defined because ‘nothing’ isn’t! As soon as you define ‘nothing’ it becomes something. And yet even Stephen Hawking believes that the Universe just popped into existence from ‘nothing’ without violating the laws of physics. Of course it didn’t, because there was no laws of physics to violate, they were created along with everything else in the beginning. From the earliest initial conditions the Universe already encompassed the laws of physics and all this from nothing and also by nothing. If you are a proponent of the Big Bang theory and you are an atheist then this is the position you must hold. That everything just popped into existence from nothing and by nothing.
Gah, please reread my post in it's entirety.Soul Winner wrote: »Yes and this infinitude of mass and temperature means it had zero mass, and zero everything else, i.e. ‘nothing’.
That's self-contradictory, how can an infinitude of mass = zero mass. What?Soul Winner wrote: »When you measure the positive and negative forces in the universe like the positive and negative charge and put the resulting values side by side then of course it will come out at a ‘0’ value, but that does not mean that there is nothing there. If you weigh two elephants that have the exact same weight say 2 tones each, then obviously they will cancel each other out on the weighing scale but you wouldn’t then turn around and say that because of that there are no elephants on the scales would you? Well that is what this theory is implying, that there is really no universe after all because when all its positive and negative components are balanced together the value comes to zero.
This is what you're (emphasis on you!) implying from the theory, the theory itself says no such thing, it's self-contained. Here's where you need to begin studying physics Here's a link to paper by Andre Linde, one of the scientists working on inflationary cosmology, enjoy!
http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0503203Soul Winner wrote: »Well there are billions and billions of particles of energy in existence now so why don’t we observe things popping into existing like our universe all the time anymore?
In my very first post and my second post I said that we do.Soul Winner wrote: »Why only our Universe? Why can’t we observe galaxies just popping into existence? Planets, Stars etc?? If all that is needed are tiny bits of energy?
This universe, the one we are in, may have come from ONE piece of energy, and evolved via the Big Bang - over a very long period of time, the slightly denser regions of the distributed matter gravitationally attracted nearby matter and thus grew even denser, forming the galaxies, gas clouds, stars and all the other things we can see today. I.E. the singularity popped into existence, the suggestion that entire complex structures pop into existence is ludicrous. The hypothesis may very well mean that other bits of energy may spawn other universes entirely, but we'll probably never know of them. Read the paper I linked above.Soul Winner wrote: »Yes but they don’t create universes anymore. Why not? Why do they just annihilate each other all the time instead of creating a new universes or galaxies or stars or something that we have never observed before?
As above, perhaps they may create other universes, but by the very definition of a universe, we'll never know about them. Look up the various multiverse theories and the paper above.Soul Winner wrote: »If we define God as comprising of ‘Mind’ with no matter or substance as some theologians do then we would have the simplest of entities that could not only be immaterial but also personal.
If something has no matter or no substance then it's immaterial alright, you've just defined it right out of existence.Soul Winner wrote: »There are very good reasons and plenty of evidence that show that God exists.
What evidence? Don't you understand that if there is evidence of a god it would be the most fantastic thing ever for science, scientists would be tripping over themselves to investigate it.Soul Winner wrote: »The problem with people who don’t want to believe is that they have excluded this evidence as good enough because it is not scientific evidence.
What evidence ?Soul Winner wrote: »It’s like locking yourself into your room and refusing to believe in other rooms because there is no evidence in your room that other rooms exists. Stop limiting yourself to what you can prove whilst locked in your room and try unlocking the door and looking out side. Ok you might have to employ other methods of investigation which only work when your door is unlocked but that doesn’t mean that is in anyway invalid as a method or that it even invalidates your locked door method as sufficient for investigations things locked in your room.
I'm afraid this analogy completely fails as the door and the lock are evidence that there may be other rooms so there is no reason to refuse to believe in them.Soul Winner wrote: »Like I said, I don’t need science to have a faith in God, I have that by other means.
Interesting, what are these if you don't mind me asking ?Soul Winner wrote: »Like I said, if we only use the scientific method then we may never find God. Maybe God has so constituted the Universe that He will not allow personal knowledge of Him to come via that route.
The universe is by definition everything, therefore no info can come from any other route. You can't keep changing the definitions to what suits you.Soul Winner wrote: »The God of the Bible at least does not like being tested.
So what's the point in praying or asking him for help in anything?Soul Winner wrote: »From His point of view we are to be tested by Him, not the other way around. In the NT Jesus would not submit to performing miracles by means of proving who He was to anybody, be they ordinary folk, religious leaders or even earthly rulers.
Why not ?Soul Winner wrote: »All the recorded miracles in the NT came as result of prior faith in Him by the individual(s) for whom the miracle(s) were performed.
If the only source and evidence for these miracles is the NT then that means nothing to me. Without those you're saying - miracles in NT mean NT speaks of genuine god, thus NT is genuine, thus miracles are genuine = circular reasoning.Soul Winner wrote: »If God really did create it then as an explanation of how it got here we can’t go any further.
You're asking me to explain how the Big Bang came about from 'nothing', you're not satisfied that at this particular moment there is no definitive answer, while simultaneously as soon as god is mentioned you are willing to stop questioning right there - why the different standards ?Soul Winner wrote: »If I understand it correctly even now when delving into the microscopic elementary particle world, science can go no further than theoretical naming conventions, quarks, gluons, bosons and so on. (snippety snip). It’s like both ends of reality are cut off from a full understanding of our minds, with us sort of stuck in the middle, at least that is how I see it.
The important bit above is "even now". Science is an ongoing process and these questions might be answered tomorrow. You're simply using the god of the gaps argument.Soul Winner wrote: »If there is such a being as God then God would be defined as the greatest conceivable being, anything greater than that, is God.
I don't understand, anything greater than god, is god ? That makes no logical sense whatsover
Soul Winner wrote: »Science and Scripture agree on this point, that space and time had a beginning in the finite past. If God really did do it, then obviously He exists outside the universe which had this beginning in order to create it. But I fail to see how you can make the leap that just because He exists outside the universe that He cannot interact with it, especially being a being powerful enough to create the universe in the first place. That would be like saying that a keeper of fish who exists outside his fish tank cannot interact with his fish tank, like cleaning it out and introducing new fish and so on.
Awful analogy, but if you want to use it.. e.g. if I were a fish in the tank I could simply look through the sides and see the keeper outside. If the sides were black and another fish suddenly plopped in I could measure it's size, length, calculate where it came from, etc.
It would be obvious that there's something outside, thus the fish tank is not the entire universe, i.e. the observable universe expands and we can make diret measurements, i.e. it's subject to science.
If the sides are black so that I can't see out, and/or the top is blocked off or whatever else, then the keeper cannot put another fish in or make any changes, he cannot interact! So to repeat myself again, by definition there cannot be anything outside the universe.Soul Winner wrote: »If God exists at all then He is the greatest conceivable being, powerful enough to create a universe plus is not made of the same stuff as the universe i.e. matter, energy etc then surely his interaction with it would not effect it in the same way that say an object made of solid iron the size of a billion billion galaxies would affect it if it was suddenly and instantly added to its composition would affect it, just like how the arm of the fish keeper would affect the behavior of the water in the fish tank and the objects that he touches in it would be affected once he decides to interact with them.
See above.0 -
Soul Winner wrote: »Imagine it had mentioned an inflation field, I wonder how many people would have embraced it when it was written. “In the beginning the inflation field created the heavens and the earth” In any case the biblical account for the creation is the only one that has the creator create from nothing. God speaks and the thing spoken becomes reality e.g. “Let there be light”. Contrast that with the Babylonian account of creation. There you have two monsters rearranging stuff that was already there. And only in the Bible do we have the concept of “before time”: “No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” 1 Corinthians 2:7. Most other non Abrahamic faiths have a view of the universe as being eternal in the past.
I'd recommend reading Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha von Dechend; it deals with creation myths in a facinating way.
Taoism creation myths state that all was created from nothing, that nothing existed before; as do Sikhist creation myths and the creation myths in Mandaeism; likewise, the Apaches stated that nothing existed before the creation. So you see that the idea of nothing existing before isn't confined to Christianity.
Anyway, I don't think even mentioning that there was nothing before lends any credence to the idea. In human life, there is always a start and a finish with all things we deal with; so I don't find it too difficult to see how humans may have thought that the universe had to have started at some stage: It's the natural conclusion.Nearly all the great thinkers of science to a man was either theistic or deistic in their beliefs, from Plato through Aristotle to Newton and on one might go, even Albert Einstein was Deistic in his view of the universe.
I'd have to disagree on the case of Einstein. Einstein certainly wasn't theistic; but, I'm not so sure about him being deistic. There are many, many quotes expressing his lack of a belief in any god, and, I think that when he expressed his disbelief in a god, that he is talking about both a theistic god and a deistic god. From what I've read about him, the general consensus is that he was pantheistic; and I think that most scientists who mention a god are doing so in a pantheistic way.0 -
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