Before God...

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Many of the Theists present on this forum and elsewhere like to make the claim that "The Big Bang etc" provides no answers really as it does not explain what came before. Some choose to believe that their God was responsible for it. Others do not. In any case, I find it deeply ironic that they can make this claim, because the concept of a Creator does not actually provide a solution to what happened "before" either. Where did the Creator originate from? Their answer will almost always be "God is infinite"

Okay, that's fine. But how can one make such a statement while simultaneously deriding the Big Bang Theory of the universe for its position that the universe "just exists"? Is this not literally the same argument made by Theists?

"God has always existed"
"The universe/multiverse has always existed"

How can anyone reasonably claim that the scientific explanation for the origins of our universe provide no answers to the beginnings and are inferior when the Theistic explanation also provides no answer?

Last edited by Vigilans on 17 Dec 2011, 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLGGKraKmXc[/youtube]

You can't fool me - it's turtles all the way down.

I got news for you. The "World Plate" was made in China and sold in Wal*Mart stores.

The idea the universe always existed died with Humason's discovery that the universe was expanding. It was followed up by Perlmutter's work on super nova explosions to try and get an accurate read of the expansion rate. The universe is cooling and expanding. Anyone who claims the universe was always here has a screw loose if not for the aforementioned evidence, the Hubble Space telescope has recorded observable evidence the universe was made primarily of hydrogen clouds in it's infancy.

I don't buy into the multi-verse theory as I think it's intellectually lazy and just another form of Theism. All Hail Multi-dimensional spaghetti monster exhibit A:

[img][800:480]http://images.wikia.com/andromeda/images/a/a0/Maruenteringslipstream.jpg[/img]

No wait, that's just the Eureka Maru entering slip-stream.

we are far from any real evidence of a multiverse thats for sure, as for its non existence;
there is quite many theories that might end up solving some of our problems that require a multiverse or pseudo multiverse to function.

tthen there is the phenomena of dark drift and its asociation to the interpretation that "dark matter" is actually matter in another universe.

now it is far fetched and we have better things to focus on that much i think we agree with

I actually agree with you.
Theism does not provide a reasonable explanation at all especially Christianity. In my opinion both theism and atheism take faith.
Theism is faith in a god or gods and atheism is faith in science.

The only faith required by science is that it works well enough that you don't have to run around conducting experiments to prove everything for yourself. The evidence is all there to examine if you're determined, though.

I'd rather experiment and know than assume and believe.

But since I don't have a hadron collider in my basement, I'll just have to trust those who do.

If you take god out of the picture, you have on your hands a good philosophical question. Rephrased, you would be asking, was there a first cause? Someone would chime in and ask, well, what caused the first cause? Can there be a cause to the first cause, and it have corresponding causes. Well, no, that's the whole point of the first cause, that nothing can come before it.

So, what do we have? Everything that we look at in life has a cause behind it - usually several. If we follow those causes back, and follow those back too, ad. infinitum, would we ever reach a first cause? Or would it just keep going like an infinitely long chain, stretching back in to infinity, and forward to infinity? Or would the chain be circular-like? Kind of like you being your own grandparent because you traveled back in time for some of the 'ol incest.

Me and my siblings used to discuss this as children. It stretches the brain to its limits, which is good for all developing minds.
I like to think that infinity is the answer to this question because I think it removes the "God" cause, and the "first" cause.

The only problem we have with infinity is that our brains are uncomfortable with it, which I think is a bearable problem.

The universe as we know it has only existed for a finite amount of time. Certain theories such as string theory do open the possibility of the multiverse. Many incredibly intelligent people think the multiverse is possible considering string theory solutions point to it. Whether string theory itself is correct is another question. But to call it intellectually lazy and a "form of Theism" (what God?) is incredibly inaccurate. A lot of thought has gone into the multiverse theory. Another way of describing it is the "never-ending expansion" theory



Infinity does not make me uncomfortable.

Many incredibly intelligent people thought the earth was in the center of the universe also. It seemed completely obvious by observing star patterns as they circled around the night sky. But it was also completely wrong.

They did not have the right tools or inclination to observe the greater picture that showed the true nature of the universe. There are unfortunately still people who think the Earth is the center of the universe. In any case when attention was really paid to what was happening in the sky and more advanced mathematics made possible accurate measurements and predictions, it became obvious what the truth was. Unfortunately those of "faith" chose to try to silence them through violence and ridicule

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tcOi9a3-B0[/youtube]

The Cosmological Argument from Contingency contends that:

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.

Lets just take this first premise in isolation. The first premise gives us two options, contingency or necessity. I would not argue that God does not need an answer because he is 'infinite' rather I would argue that it is impossible to have a God, as Christian theists define one, that exists as the result of a contingent event. God under Christianity is the creator of all things, he brings everything into existence that is not himself. So he cannot be contingently existing, therefor one is apt to conclude that God exists necessarily, if he exists at all.

Secondly you also seem to be arguing that Cosmological argument treats the two explanations are comparable. No Cosmological argument I know of treats both answers as equal and claims that God is more parsimonious, I agree that this would not be a particularly strong argument. Rather, the family of Cosmological arguments all distinguish features of naturalistic account; in the argument from contingency it is done from modal properties and the Kalam uses the standard model. This family of arguments treats both the naturalistic account and the theistic account and creates an argument in favor of the later and makes points against the former.