An eternal universe and the 'special plead' of God [cosmology]

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

@muichimotsu I'm changing the title to include 'Christians only', since I would really like you to leave the thread--and that is the only fair way to do it. Such a shame, because there are plenty of well-versed Atheists on this subject too.

You want to exclude all non-Christians because you don't like the way one individual posts?

I would ask you to consider the fairness of such a move and how it would look to all other non-Christians in the thread.

If you don't like posts from particular individuals you can hide them, or, for serious problems, report them to the moderators.

 

[muichimotsu]

I fail to see how or why your speculations are any more valid than religious oriented speculations.



If God exists, he/she/it may have created may different visible universes too. *If* is such a lovely word.



Again, we're back to speculation based on "if" things exist or work as you assume. I fail to see how that's empirically different than any proposition based on a religious assumption.

One could just as well state: "If God exists......(fill in speculation of choice here)".

I don't think atheists are claiming our speculations are more valid, unless you're talking about the logical implications of it, in which case, the inferences to an agency are a leap in logic beyond the basic consideration of a causal relationship between what preceded the Big Bang and the Big Bang itself, which doesn't require a mind behind it and we cannot be certain on what its nature is in the first place

Why are we to assume things would work drastically different prior to the Big Bang without some remote basis for it? There's a difference between time and space functioning differently and seemingly not functioning at all for some creator entity that has to be posited outside of that metaphysics to not be subject to it.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I fail to see how or why your speculations are any more valid than religious oriented speculations.

I didn't say they were 'more valid', so that's a straw man. But at least they are based on, and consistent with, the well-tested theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

If God exists, he/she/it may have created may different visible universes too. *If* is such a lovely word.

Exactly. If God exists...

Again, we're back to speculation based on "if" things exist or work as you assume. I fail to see how that's empirically different than any proposition based on a religious assumption.

See above.

One could just as well state: "If God exists......(fill in speculation of choice here)".

God is too ill-defined to be a solution to Einstein's equations or an implication of quantum mechanics; so such speculation is not grounded in well-tested, well-established empirical knowledge ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[muichimotsu]

God never physically existed before He created the universe. God is spirit and His spiritual existence is eternal. God t walked with Adam in the Garden and appeared (Christophonies) throughout the Old Testament, angelic spirits as well, appearing and disappearing, I'm and out if the physical realm. Then God Himself became an infant, then a boy, then a man, the God/man, Jesus.

And spirit is so poorly defined it might as well not exist or becomes unfalsifiable unless you acknowledge that relying on inferences and induction through some particular lens of revelation and such is insufficent for reliable assessments

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I tested things that are clearly and definitely falsifiable.

I could have found that "love your neighbor as yourself" worked less well to my own benefit than the previous variety of ways of relating with the people I encountered I'd already been testing.

But it worked far better, which I thought was possibly only luck for quite a while, so I continued skeptically testing it, look for a point of failure.

Any failure.

Even just one -- that would have been very interesting. But that did not happen. Instead, it worked better than I expected, far better, like flipping a light switch really, from just-ok living with a few friends, to a flood of friendship and love (more than I could handle I admit, and I'd often turn down many invitations, even with people I really preferred -- it was too much).

After having these repeated supported-by-results evidence that Jesus's ways to live work better -- testing that could have gone other ways -- then I simply, just like a scientist trying to falsify General Relativity -- testing in new various ways looking for a flaw or failure -- then continued testing, repeating in a variety of new situations.

I still wanted to find the limits and the failures. That was my goal.

I began to think He'd gotten many things right, so the goal was to find where He went wrong, finally -- that I'd someday find a failure.

(wonder if you can hear that?)

All of that testing was potentially able to get results that would have disproven something Christ said.

Example: it would have disproven "love your neighbor as yourself" for me if I had an outcome that was less good than other ways, like being more selective instead, and not relating with all the random people that were my neighbors, but instead just picking out a few people in life (a less open way which I very much preferred actually: I did not like having so many people enter my life at that time).

But His instruction works far better, under a large range of varying conditions I've tried it out in.

(I wonder if you can read and see and hear this last sentence just above....)

Anything He said I could find a way to test in a falsifiable way proved to work far better than other competing ways of living, which I'd also tested at length.

Really, so far it appears you've been letting your confirmation bias overwhelm your perception here, in reading what I'm saying to you. You seem afraid to allow that Christ might say the best possible way to live.

That's a self-limiting bias, to be predecided -- to prejudge, without evidence -- that He could not say the best possible way to live.

It's a bias you'd want to drop for your own self interest.

It seems to me that testing that a few lifestyle aphorisms have positive results for you in your life has nothing to do with testing or proving the existence of God. If that were the case, we'd be knee-deep in tested and proven gods, spirits, mystical ways, and other woo...

Oh, wait...

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Biologically speaking, it is. As well as practically speaking. All dreams and wishing aside.

Yes, You ARE the Center of the Universe

Interesting article - it suggests that the discovery that we're insignificant compared to the universe at large puts people off science and helps nonsense beliefs persist:

You ARE the Center of the Universe (in one sense...)
...is it any wonder that so many people cling to nonsense like Creationism?
...The universe has no physical center.
...So it's true. We are not at the center of the universe.
...we are infinitesimally small when compared to things like red supergiant stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters.

After admitting to the fact that we're not at the centre of the universe because it has no centre, and that we're insignificant in scale compared to the universe at large, it manages to find a crumb of comfort in the thought that we're 'midway' in the scale of size from smallest to largest - but then admits that this is the only scale at which biological life can emerge and exist...

"All dreams and wishing aside."

​

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Only a handful silver tongued of scientists have made that mistake of demoting the value of humanity.

OTOH a large number of believers have made the mistake of thinking that having an insignificant size relative to the universe and not having a special position in the universe demotes the value of humanity.

This is the kind of thinking Feynman despised; the idea that extrinsic factors could make you special, that status gave you value.

every point in the Cosmos is expanding away for every other. So every point is actually in the center.

That's not a valid link, but I did find an article with a title matching the 'URL':

...the center of the universe is technically — everywhere... The moment you pick a frame of reference, that point becomes the center of the universe... technically, we are all standing at the center of our own observable universes.

Of course, this is only true if the universe is infinite. And physicists actually have no idea whether the universe is infinite or not.

But if it is infinite, then this bubble universe idea gets really wacky. It implies that multiple universes exist. Someone could be standing on a planet outside our sphere of visibility from Earth, and when they look through a telescope, they're seeing an entirely different sphere of the universe illuminated. They can see stars and planets that we can't.

We might just be one bubble in an infinite soup of other universes.

So sure, you can claim to be the center of the universe, but you also have to acknowledge that there are, potentially, an infinite number of other universes out there.

Doesn't leave you feeling so special, after all.

That one speaks for itself

For example, there is no evidence of life off of earth. So biologically speaking, we are still at the center.

More accurate to say, "We don't know";

 

[SkyWriting]

OTOH a large number of believers have made the mistake of thinking that having an insignificant size relative to the universe and not having a special position in the universe demotes the value of humanity.This is the kind of thinking Feynman despised; the idea that extrinsic factors could make you special, that status gave you value.That's not a valid link, but I did find an article with a title matching the 'URL':
More accurate to say, "We don't know";

We don't know if leprechauns do exist.
We don't know if a flying spaghetti monster does exist.
We don't know if dark matter exists.
We don't know if we will live until nightfall.
We don't know if the sum will supernova this afternoon.
We don't know that Jesus ever existed.
and we don''t know if we are the only form of life in the Cosmos.
But the evidence points to just this one location.
As does scripture.

 

[SkyWriting]

This is the kind of thinking Feynman despised; the idea that extrinsic factors could make you special, that status gave you value.

Value is created by appreciation, and is a skill to be developed.
Because it seems he didn't know this, I don't value Feynman's analysis.

 

[SkyWriting]

OTOH a large number of believers have made the mistake of thinking that having an insignificant size relative to the universe and not having a special position in the universe demotes the value of humanity.

Scripture explains that the parts work together with no importance given to size.

 

[Ronald]

And spirit is so poorly defined it might as well not exist or becomes unfalsifiable unless you acknowledge that relying on inferences and induction through some particular lens of revelation and such is insufficent for reliable assessments

If you want to know God, look at Jesus. Jesus is God, the exact radiance, expression and light of God, to the world. One does not have to rely on some mystical induction or revelation. He existed, He lived among us and we witnessed His LIGHT, He died and He rose from the dead. Eye witnesses testified to His miracles and over 500 people saw Him after His death and resurrection and witnessed His ascension.

Why would the Jews of the Old Testament believe in God? Because they experienced His presence, His power, His guidance, His love and forgiveness on a daily basis. He spoke through prophets who gave predictions of future events that played out precisely as they said. The rule was if a so called prophet was misrepresenting God and predicted anything, one thing that did not happen, he was stoned to death. You know the story of Moses. Millions of Israelite slaves were freed from Pharaoh. Why would he do that if he himself did not experience the plagues? So through the generations God blessed them and also punished them. They were the test group, if you will, that was given the LAW and they were the example for the rest of the world, that proved no one could keep the Law. Hence, Jesus was sent to fulfill the LAW for us. Then the gospel spread to the gentiles.

Back to the Spirit. You say there is a weak definition. Well, God made man in His image. What does that mean? It is not physical, it is invisible, which means He gave man will, emotions, a mind and each unique in his own way in that we have different talents, abilities, intelligence - all gifts from God. The mind, emotions and will are what is called the soul. The soul is not exactly the same as the spirit. Animals have souls. So God separates us from the animals by giving us a spirit, a compartment of our soul (highly integrated by the way) which is either dead to God or made alive in Christ. We are born with a dead spirit because of the original sin. It just means we are separated from God. Like a cell phone without a battery, but not quite though, because an unbeliever can still speak to God, they just don't get a clear signal, it's confused, static, distorted or nothing at all. And sometimes they are evil thoughts or ideas as well, which we need to learn how to filter out. Let me say this, that all your thoughts are not self generated. You can get them from reading, listening to someone else, deductive or inductive reasoning as it may be; but also you can receive them from God. He guides us, tells us what we ought to do, go this way, do that and if we don't listen to that first intuitive voice, we screw up. One sometimes argues with this in his own mind, conflicting thoughts, torn in different directions, we resist them or dismiss them. Why? These thoughts and ideas, sometimes new and profound come from outside us, from God or our enemy, Satan.
As you said, we need more than inner revelation. It's true, if people did not get more than intuitions in the past, then it would be understandable why some don't believe. Prophecy is one proof to God's existence, that future events came to be with hair-splitting accuracy. Eye witness accounts of angels, miracles and of course Jesus is evidence. Evidence of His design is all around us. This natural world did not design itself through a mindless series of nature selecting mutations (defects), from slime to Marilyn Monroe - sure.
Back to the soul (mind, emotions, will). There are invisible attributes that are not physical. Your mind, will and emotions are not physical. They are expressed in the physical realm, but when you die, you leave your body and they go with you. As someone said, you can't dissect a brain and see thoughts, ideas, talents, memories. All you see is flesh, blood, chemicals. The mind uses the brain to function in this realm and so a thought is sent by neurotransmitters through the body.
Now the spirit is a special compartment of the soul that is empty when we are born. It needs to be quickened, enlightened, recharged, if you will, by God. And then, something wonderful happens, He takes up residence within our spirit. He prepares you for a divine appointment through a series of events and people that come into your life and His power draws you to Himself. You cannot do this on your own. This is why a Christian can say, I was blind but now I see. He gives us spiritual vision that you CANNOT attain by leaning on your own understanding. Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father unless the Father draws him." Here is a list of fruit of the Spirit which grows in the individual as God prepares you and after you are enlightened, continues. Love, joy, peace, hope, faith, goodness, kindness, patience, self control. These are not physical in nature, they are expressed in many ways outwardly but they are not chemicals that you can take. If that were so, we would have found them and could all give the world then and get along perfectly. No, sin is the problem that keeps us from getting along. It is missing the mark, what doesn't work, a rebelliousness against God and people as well. We all are sinners, we lie, steal, covet, etc.
You don't need to look out there in space for answers. The universe is quite simple compared to this incredible body, soul and spirit that we possess. I always say look at the fetus from conception to nine months later, how it develops. Do the cells communicate with each other, do they have a head foreman that says okay, we have many systems to build simultaneously with intricate organs, fibers, cells all contingent on each other to work ... so if you have any questions, refer to the code. NO, they would be pretty smart cells - smarter than Einstein. This life growth process does not happen by itself. Life is not self generated, or designed by nature, it is created and guided by God

 

[Halbhh]

It seems to me that testing that a few lifestyle aphorisms have positive results for you in your life has nothing to do with testing or proving the existence of God. If that were the case, we'd be knee-deep in tested and proven gods, spirits, mystical ways, and other woo...

Oh, wait...

That testing was, again, about whether Christ's instructions on how to live worked better than any alternative ways.

I didn't consider the results to mean more than results that could support or possibly disprove individual propositions.

Is that clear?

If a person has the interest, they can test for themselves.

(You'd need to fully apply the principle in any one instruction of course; i.e. "Love" means actually a loving attitude, no small thing.)

There are several specific instructions one can put to the test.

They are quite clear and testable.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Okay, to keep this short, I was wondering if anyone had a genuine theory/explanation to this concept I see a lot;

Eternal universe = false, because we need God for the universe to exist
God's existence = He always existed, thus created the universe

There's kind of a...contradiction here? A 'special plead' or exception for God, as I've heard some put it. It's an interesting concept and I wondered if anyone else has put much thought into it.

We say that the universe cannot be infinite or eternal because it needed God to exist, yet we have no explanation for how or when God came into existence.

I'd prefer replies from people who are at least semi-versed in cosmology, so no quoting the bible to base arguments (which is funny coming from a Christian)

Nobody knows either way! There. We can all kick back and enjoy our Saturday now, ruminating over the never ending problems of axiomatic regression(s) due to the fact that we, as limited human beings, can only see our world and the universe from our own finite, limited point of view.

..... as IF there is a humanly graspable answer to everything and to every question.

 

[Michael]

I didn't say they were 'more valid', so that's a straw man.

Well if it is not "more valid" then from an empirical perspective, it's six of one, a half dozen of the other.

But at least they are based on, and consistent with, the well-tested theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

And yet some so called "scientific" explanations include gross violation of the conservation laws of energy however. Metaphysical dogma is quite different from empirical fact regardless of the source of the concept.

Exactly. If God exists...

Sure, but that applies to everything. If inflation/multiverse/DE/DM exist....

God is too ill-defined to be a solution to Einstein's equations or an implication of quantum mechanics; so such speculation is not grounded in well-tested, well-established empirical knowledge ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Meh. One could simply call it "Godflation", "Godenergy", "Godmatter", etc, use the very same math, and viola, they're indistinguishable mathematically and it even offers a "source" of these things unlike "scientific" concepts.

 

[Michael]

I don't think atheists are claiming our speculations are more valid,....

I'd say that depends on the atheist in question. Krauss, Tyson and what I'd call "evangelical atheists" tend to ridicule religion while promoting their own metaphysical mumbo-jumbo as "scientific fact" (which it isn't).

unless you're talking about the logical implications of it, in which case, the inferences to an agency are a leap in logic beyond the basic consideration of a causal relationship between what preceded the Big Bang and the Big Bang itself, which doesn't require a mind behind it and we cannot be certain on what its nature is in the first place

Well, assuming a bang ever even happened, *something* proceeded it What are the logical implications of promoting "space expansion" claims? Already one is offering inference to a physical process that defies experimental laboratory support, now and forever. It's still a leap of faith in what I'd call "metaphysical dogma" which has to be accepted without empirical (experimental) support.

Why are we to assume things would work drastically different prior to the Big Bang without some remote basis for it?

I don't personally even assume that a "bang" ever occurred in the first place, let alone that the universe worked differently prior to it. Any concept of God that I personally hold tends to take the form of something akin to Pantheism/Panentheism. From my perspective an intelligent "creator" could chose to create/organize the visible physical universe without necessarily being separate from it.

There's a difference between time and space functioning differently and seemingly not functioning at all for some creator entity that has to be posited outside of that metaphysics to not be subject to it.

True, but take a step back for a second. Any concept of "time" that we (as humans) hold is based on the existence (and movement patterns) of atoms, and light, and objects, none of which *necessarily* existed prior to any sort of "bang" process. I've heard plenty of astronomers/scientists claiming that time didn't exist prior to the bang (not that I believe them). Even the mere existence of pure energy implies the existence of "spacetime" in GR theory.

I guess my point is that "science" is just as guilty of proposing metaphysical entities/processes that defy empirical experimental support in the lab as any religion. Scientists just tend to clothe their metaphysics in mathematical constructs. Look at Ptolemy for instance. It was bogus nonsense for thousands of years, but the mathematics of Ptolemy sure gave it an air of credibility.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

That testing was, again, about whether Christ's instructions on how to live worked better than any alternative ways.

I didn't consider the results to mean more than results that could support or possibly disprove individual propositions.

Is that clear?

OK - you didn't say which alternative ways you've tried, or how many, but it's necessarily a subjective judgement. Different people will find benefit from the instructions of different lifestyle gurus - for example, some people find that Buddha's instructions on how to live work better for them.

That lifestyle instructions from one particular guru seem to work particularly well, or better than alternatives, for somebody, is the least you would expect - it's memetic selection, instructions that seem effective last the course, the 'outcompete' instructions that seem ineffective.

If a person has the interest, they can test for themselves.

(You'd need to fully apply the principle in any one instruction of course; i.e. "Love" means actually a loving attitude, no small thing.)

There are several specific instructions one can put to the test.

They are quite clear and testable.

No doubt; nevertheless, wise lifestyle aphorisms are a low hurdle for ascribing Godhead...

"If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him" - Lin Chi

"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory" - Bruce Lee

 

[Chesterton]

It doesn't require an absolute beginning unless you insist on absolute knowledge, which we cannot have in regards to the universe in general beyond the Big Bang, the best we have in terms of an origin of sorts, even if it isn't the absolute beginning of the universe itself, only the universe that we observe at present

Science can only deal with what can be observed. Observation is the first step in the scientific method; speculation about the unobservable is not.

You're dealing in plausibility, which is only sufficient if one doesn't apply critical thought and skepticism to the claims that seem plausible.

I'm dealing in science.

 

[Chesterton]

We don't have evidence for an absolute beginning of space and time; the opacity of the early universe blocks our evidential view. It stops at what is called 'recombination', when hydrogen atoms and the cosmic microwave background formed, around 377,000 years after the big bang.

Our theoretical model of earlier times eventually fails when both quantum mechanics and gravity become significant, so we're unable to model what happens earlier until we have a full theory of quantum gravity.

We certainly do have evidence for absolute beginning. We also have a lot of evidence that a lot of people simply don't like where the evidence points.

When it comes to cosmology, the line between valid scientific hypothesis and speculative fantasy can get blurry. We can no more prove or disprove a multiverse than we can talking unicorns on a planet in a distant galaxy. If you want to believe in a multiverse, fine, but don't call it science just because 1) it's possible and 2) you like it better than the alternative.

 

[Strathos]

We don't know if the sum will supernova this afternoon.

Actually we do know that one. Our sun is not massive enough to become a supernova.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Well if it is not "more valid" then from an empirical perspective, it's six of one, a half dozen of the other.

I didn't say anything about validity.

But since you mention validity, I do consider that an explanations (hypotheses) about the real world that are based on, and congruent with, successful physical theories, which can be checked for mathematical and physical consistency, and which have some explanatory power, are better (by the criteria for argument to the best explanation) than hypotheses that have no basis in, or congruence with, any successful physical theories, cannot be checked for consistency - not least because they're intrinsically ill-defined and/or inconsistent, which are less parsimonious, which have no explanatory power, and which raise many more unanswerable questions than they answer. YMMV.

And yet some so called "scientific" explanations include gross violation of the conservation laws of energy however.

No, they don't; this has been explained more than once.

Sure, but that applies to everything. If inflation/multiverse/DE/DM exist....

That was my point.

Meh. One could simply call it "Godflation", "Godenergy", "Godmatter", etc, use the very same math, and viola, they're indistinguishable mathematically and it even offers a "source" of these things unlike "scientific" concepts.

If they're indistinguishable mathematically, then Occam's Razor applies. You could change the name if it makes you happy, but a supernatural ontology is redundant.