Chris and Sieben's Creationist Thread

Miscellaneous General
121

This is to Epicurus’ latest post (so it doesn’t get mixed up)

Out of nothing, nothing comes. A cosmic accident out of what? Nothing existed materially before the universe. Nothing is not a thing. It means not anything.

The universe had no material cause, because all matter came into existence at one singularity. There was nothing materially before this.

The noodly appendages of the spaghetti monster are material in nature, and thus, sadly (I might add), the spaghetti monster cannot be an efficient cause.

The Big Bang is not an assumption, by the way. The multiverse also requires a cause. The multiverse was posited to avoid the teleological argument, not a cosmological one.

122

This is to Nirgraham’s latest post.

I don’t know if I’d lump them into the same class, but I would say that all material things in the universe began to exist as well as the concept of time.

123

but I would say that all material things in the universe began to exist

I would ask how this is known?

and also why solving the ‘mystery’ by throwing up one hands and saying ‘God’ did it and that he is inneffable , is superior to saying ‘theres an infinite regress’ one encounters when one seeks to find rgw ‘ultimate’ material causation which makes the answer ineffable

124

Why couldn’t the multiverse be eternal?

And once again, if God acted upon the universe in its creation, there would have to be some evidence of this beyond pure logic. What evidence is there?

(I will say tho that, at least logically, your argument is sound and one I had never heard expressed. So, Kudos for trying to go beyond "God did it, and we can never understand God.)

125

Not logical positivism. Ayer explains that understanding can come from analytical exercises too.

126

This is to Sam’s post.

I believe Stephen Hawking is referring to the Quantum Gravity Models.

Alexander Vilenkin, James Hartle, and Stephen Hawking have all worked on these models.

Vilenkin admits that it’s an exercise in “metaphysical cosmology.”

These models depend on the introduction of imaginary numbers for the time variable in Einstein’s gravitatonal equations. This is supposed to effectively eliminate the singularity.

However, Hawking just declines to reconvert to real numbers. When reconverted, the singularity reappears.

His own quotation betrays his theory:

“Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities…When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still apear to be singularities.” --Hawking, Brief History of Time, 138-139.

127

Nirgraham, this is known by the Big Bang. This is also known through logical arguments such as the impossibility of an actual infinite number of things.

We know through the Big Bang that matter came into existence at a singularity. There literally was nothing (not anything) before this.

I wouldn’t say that God is ineffable. We are comprehending his very causal attributes by observing the origins of the universe. There is nothing in and of itself which is incomprehensible, irrational, incoherent, or ineffable about it.

A vicious infinite regress is inadequate. Not only inadequate as an explanation, but quite incoherent as well.

Finally, I’m not sure what ‘rgw’ means.

128

Epicurus, thanks for your comments. I’m glad we can have a cordial discussion about a sometimes heated topic :slight_smile:

The multiverse in no way removes the singularity or the problem of causation. It is even more irrelevant, since we are living in and observing just one universe. This universe has a definite singularity.

There is absolutely no evidence to prove the multiverse, either.

129

Fellows, keep posting your questions, but I’ve got to head out for a while. I’ll be back later to make replies, but it may be divided between today and the following days.

Cheers for a productive discussion.

130

Exactly, there is just as much evidence for God as for the Multiverse. So what is the point? This is why I disagree with the christian position that belief is the only way to salvation. Why should I believe in something that has not, nor cannot be verified?

Better to “do good and be good” and let the chips fall where they will. Heaven, hell, or nothing… at least in my short time here I contributed to a better existence for the other creatures of creation.

131

Nirgraham, this is known by the Big Bang

A theory about how compressed material expanded to a dispersed arrangement shows that ?

This is also known through logical arguments such as the impossibility of an actual infinite number of things.

if we are talking about an infinite regress of time, and if you think that time is immaterial then maybe there is not a problem? Certainly there is not a problem with the fact that PI ‘actually has’ an infinite decimal expansion.

We know through the Big Bang that matter came into existence at a singularity.

citation?

I wouldn’t say that God is ineffable. We are comprehending his very causal attributes by observing the origins of the universe.

tell me all about God then, what does he want me to do on Monday? what will he cause on Monday?

A vicious infinite regress is inadequate. Not only inadequate as an explanation, but quite incoherent as well.

by the same token God is not an adequate explanation nor coherent, it is a paradox you wish to offer as explanation, a non-material cause of material.

Finally, I’m not sure what ‘rgw’ means.

oh, I typed fast and its just the word ‘the’ transposed by my hand being the width of a keyboard key to the left of where they should have been

132

“One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?” - Steven Hawking

133

What do you mean by “God”, though? If you can say God has X, Y, and Z attributes, only then can there be evidence that God does or does not exist (depending on X, Y, Z are. E.g., someone showed me a wonderful “proof of God” many years ago, using formal logic; there was nothing wrong with the proof, that I could find: I’m happy to admit that it proved the existence of something, which was being called “God” throughout, but what it actually proved about “God” was nothing any religionist would recognize as “God”: what it ultimately proved was that “something exists” – well, I already knew that: if nothing else, I exist! The assumption that the thing-proved-to-exist was the “God” the person who showed it to me believed in, with all the other attributes he associates with “God”, was just something he was trying to sneak in unnoticed). E.g., the Christian conception of God is a logical absurdity, which constitutes proof that that God doesn’t exist.

I have a problem with all these people trying to make minute distinctions between “atheist” and various varieties of atheist (“agnostic”, “ignostic”, etc.) – they’re all atheists.

134

Atheism entails you have a lack of belief in God. I, personally, do not lack a belief in Gld. To me existence is the thing we give reverence to, you can call it God if you want. I dont believe in an acting/creator God, but I do believe in a form of what some call God.

On top of all that, I think surmising on the nature of God is an almost totally pointless feel good exercise with no bearing on real people in the real universe.

So… am I an atheist?

135

Nah, you’re straight up deist man:

136

Ya, I know lol. Just posing the question. I was a deist before I knew what deism, theism, atheism, or agnosticism were.

137

To Epicurus:

In the posts below I see you’ve aligned yourself with deist thought.

With that in mind, it seems you’ve accepted my argument of the creation of the universe, albeit with reservations on the personal nature of God.

In this post I hope to take apart this sort of verification method.

Your idea of what can be verified is nothing but circular reasoning. You simply pre-suppose that the only things that can exist are what can be ‘verified’ by the five senses.

Don’t you see how this is a flawed method of knowing and understanding reality? You leave no room for logical possibilities, no room to follow wthe evidence where it leads, you simply pre-suppose naturalism.

As well, don’t you think you may be taking a little bit of a chance in letting the chips fall where they will? Sounds a little bit like deciding your eternal destiny with Russian Roulette. Frankly, it would be in your best interest (or even instinct, if you will) to ensure continued existence, which is why I’m puzzled at your (seemingly) uncritical acceptance of deism.

Deism is definitely the right step for to take, but if I seem reasonable, don’t you suppose that I have many more reasonable arguments for everything I believe in? I’m not exactly a typical fundamentalist Christian. Be careful in judging ideas by the often uncritical people that hold them. That would be a modified form of the genetic fallacy.

You accept God and reason, but why rule out revelation? I already argued for his personal nature in my cosmological argument. Do you have anything to counter that? The impossibility or impracticality of miracles? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?

I’m ready to counter all of it.

Also, there is far more evidence for God than the multiverse. The multiverse is totally ad hoc and speculatory, while God is the entity that fits all the causal requirements of being a big banger :slight_smile:

Remember, I’m only using one argument here. I have an arsenal.

138

Nirgraham, I think that’s a fundamental misstatement of the Big Bang theory.

I’m going to give five lines of absolutely solid evidence to put this behind us.

  1. The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

Summary: the universe is dying. The amount of usable energy in the universe is slowly winding down. One day the universe will just up and die. Those are the cold hard facts of the matter.

The First Law states that the universe has a finite amount of energy and if the Second Law is consuming that energy, then if the universe had never begun to exist and was eternal, then it is inexplicable why we are actually still here, on Mises.org, debating about God.

The First and Second Laws together totally refute the idea of an eternal universe – it most certainly had a beginning. Astronomer Robert Jastrow calls the universe a ‘wound up clock’. It’s been wound up by someone and is going to wind down.

“The Law that entropy increases—the Second Law of Thermodynamics—holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe
is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations—then so much for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experiments do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest
humiliation.”

– Arthur Eddington

  1. The universe is expanding.

Einstein’s theory of General Relativity predicted an expanding universe. He was right. Hubble discovered in the 1920’s that the universe is expanding from a single point. Now if you can imagine the universe on speed rewind, you would eventually see the universe contract until it was nothing. Until it did not exist, both logically and mathematically. You would rewind until you saw the absolute beginning of the universe. The point which space and time and matter all came into being. There was no ‘before’, since time itself was created.

““According to the Big Bang Theory, the whole matter of the universe
began to exist at a particular time in the remote past. A proponent of
such a theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the matter of
the universe came from nothing and by nothing.””

– Anthony Kenny

  1. Radiation from the Big Bang

“No explanation other than the Big Bang has been found for the fireball
radiation. The clincher, which has convinced almost the last
Doubting Thomas, is that the radiation discovered by Penzias and
Wilson has exactly the pattern of wavelengths expected for the light
and heat produced in a great explosion. Supporters of the steady
state theory have tried desperately to find an alternative explanation,
but they have failed. At the present time, the Big Bang theory has no
competitors.”

–Agnostic astronomer, Robert Jastrow

Penzias and Wilson discovered the predicted radiation from the intial explosion at the singularity of the Big Bang at the Bell Labs in 1965. This discovery alone put most of the steady state theories to rest.

  1. Great galaxy seeds

Nasa launched their satellite COBE in 1989 to further investigate the radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson. They found exactly what they were looking for.

Stephen Hawking called it “the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time."

The ripples that they found show that the amount of matter created at one point was just enough to allow proper galaxy formation, because too much would’ve caused the universe to simply collapse back on itself. Think about that precision for a while. Think about the purposefulness. It was done right the first time with absolute mathematical precision. If the universe had attempted to start itself (by itself or by any random accident or cause), then it would’ve almost certainly collapsed.

  1. Einstein’s General Relativity

His theory of General Relativity predicts that matter, space, and time are co-relative. That they can’t be separated from one another.

Here are some lovely quotes surrounding this amazing event.

"When an astronomer writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters.” – Robert Jastrow

“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” – Robert Jastrow

“The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.” – Arthur Eddington

“Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.” – Stephen Hawking

Nirgraham, if you would like to know what God wants you to do on Monday, I highly suggest that you find out which God is the God that exists and noting how powerful he is evidenced by his creation, you may want to do what he says.

God is in no way incoherent, illogical, irrational, incoherent, or any other adjectives you could use to describe him – there is no proof for any of these adjectives. None.

An immaterial cause of material? A simple matter of elimination. It cannot be material – all material came into being at the singularity. Therefore, it must be immaterial.

139

Sam,

Those are some peculiar metaphysics. In fact, if you’ll read the rest of his book you’ll find that he’sjust throwing out ad hoc theories to justify his unbelief. It’s interesting that during the discovery of the Big Bang, many other noted scientists and astronomers were similarily ‘irked’ by the unavoidable conclusions of such an event.

Hawking admits that his theory is just “a [metaphysical] proposal”.

“In real time,” he concedes, “the universe has a beginning…”

It’s your choice. You can live in Wonderland, or can face the facts that we all have to face.

140

Paul,

I’m glad someone here realized that this first argument doesn’t even establish the moral character of the first cause.

Cosmological arguments alone, you can only end up with theism. Which brand of theism you choose is determined by evidential argumentation.

The God described by the first cause has many properties similar to the Judeo-Christian concept of God, but some still need filling in. I have other arguments for that.

I would like to know why you think that the Christian God is a logical absurdity.