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

[Strathos]

We know from scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning in time.

 

[Michael]

Only a beginning for the universe as we see it.

Sounds like a great example of hair splitting to me.

If our universe originated as a phase change in a pre-existing universe, a rapidly expanding point of spacetime, it could start with the low entropy we calculate existed at the big bang.

The operative word in that sentence is the word "if".

It might even be possible for such an event to occur in our own spacetime, so our universe might itself spawn 'pocket' or 'bubble' universes.

Yet nothing like that has happened it at least 13 billion years, but I guess hope springs eternal.

 

[Michael]

We know from scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning in time.

Meh. Even *if* one presumes that redshift is caused by "space expansion", a "beginning in time" isn't a given. The mere existence of mass/energy implies gravity, and implies the existence of 'time'. Alfven's "bang" didn't require the universe to condense itself to a "point", just to a somewhat smaller, more condensed cloud of matter/antimatter prior to expanding again. The concept of a "beginning of time" is actually pretty dubious in any cosmology theory based on GR theory.

 

[Halbhh]

We know from scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning in time.

Just a thing to know: Rather, that theory (that Universe has a particular beginning moment in 'real time') is the leading theory, which I label shorthand as the plain-vanilla Big Bang/inflation model. It's definitely the most widely respected of the current competing theories.

But there are also other theories, of course, which haven't been ruled out, a variety, including those that simply modify that model radically. Here's one recent example that is interesting to illustrate that (I've posted this upthread once, but it's not a favorite pet theory, just an interesting radical modification of the leading model that helps illustrate how open and unsettled cosmology is):
https://phys.org/news/2016-07-big.html

 

[Halbhh]

The concept of a "beginning of time" is actually pretty dubious in any cosmology theory based on GR theory.

This might help fill in some missing aspects on that:
How (Relatively) Simple Symmetries Underlie Our Expanding Universe

 

[SkyWriting]

Only a beginning for the universe as we see it. If our universe originated as a phase change in a pre-existing universe, a rapidly expanding point of spacetime, it could start with the low entropy we calculate existed at the big bang. It might even be possible for such an event to occur in our own spacetime, so our universe might itself spawn 'pocket' or 'bubble' universes.

Yes. An infinitive number of possible universes could be currently producing every instant.

But the idea that there is only one is easier to support, especially from scripture.

 

[Chesterton]

When it comes to a universe which is eternal or cyclical or one of the "multi-", remember that science allowing for something is not the same as having any evidence for it. Known biology allows that I could be 6'5" tall, but I'm not. Math and physics allow that there could be 15 zebras in my kitchen, but there are not. We have to go by what we actually have evidence for, which is an absolute beginning of space and time, and that requires something which is of neither.

 

[muichimotsu]

Personally, my opinion(counting God in this equation, of course)lies in two primary possibilities;
1. We(Christians) are misinterpreting God's being/physicality(for lack of a better word)and trying to fit him into a box he simply doesn't belong in

2. God would have to exist not necessarily in or outside of time and space, but as some sort of 'exception' to it.

2 seems like the answer to the problem 1 brings up and still does the special pleading by saying God's an exception to rules we generally understand applying to time and space consistently. 1's problem is that the "box" you're putting God in seems incoherent in the same vein as a square circle rather than just a category that's inaccurate to its nature

Einstein certainly had an interesting take on God. To think that God exists as the universe itself, in a way, or as a primary driving force--is an interesting proposition. I've always considered the fact that God had given us a way to understand Him that was meant to me almost a metaphor or an allegory; maybe so that way people who weren't as intelligent or well-versed in sciences(like the people back then)could understand it? Like when God is described as creating the earth and everything in it, it could have been describing the gradual forming of the earth on even a molecular scale, really. Perhaps 'speaking things into existence' to Him is more like rearranging building blocks. I think I read somewhere that the early church, for example, did not take Genesis or the first five books of the bible as being literal interpretations; and I think it was either Augustine(?) or someone else who said that we should adjust our interpretations on Scripture based on what is observable in the real world(science).

God being the universe seems to equivocate and make it almost pointless except in that we cannot investigate the universe in itself, only as we experience it, in which case, sure, there's a mystery, but calling the universe God seems a bit redundant.

The whole flat earth was supposedly not as popular as people thought, though I can't say how much of it was just illiterate peasants believing the church or that the church was just the most common source of knowledge and they interpreted things literally to suggest the earth was flat (ala Columbus suggesting otherwise, though even that's supposedly a bit iffy in historical accuracy)

In any case though, proof is not necessarily an absolute in science. I'm not saying that science is just guessing games--some things really are definitively provable. But other things, are a bit trickier. For example, the theory of gravity cannot really be 'proven'. Evidence in science seems to be more like uncovering arrows that all point in certain directions; the more arrows you find pointing in a direction, the more likely it is to be true. Such a case is fitting for the theory of gravity. We cannot definitively prove that the theory of gravity is true, but we can assume that it is either partially true or mostly true based on what we do know about it. In short, science is not a matter of finding 'truths'. It never has been--that's why scientific theories are always being improved, disproved, corrected & fine-tuned.

Science, as I pointed out, doesn't generally engage in proof, except in mathematics and logic. For natural science and such, it's demonstration of the reliability of a theory to explain things that makes it as conclusive as possible without being absolute.

Not partially true so much as provisionally true given the consistency of our observations and qualifications dependent on context (obviously gravity is different on the moon, Mars, etc because of distance and relative gravitation to the sun and other objects, the moon being a satellite)

The truth of a scientific theory is not less of a truth because we adjust to it, it's more honest in how we modulate our confidence to the evidence

Perhaps the Church's biggest failure is not taking the opportunity to try to learn more about God in a realistic way. I'd imagine God would become a lot more feasible of a concept if more great Christian minds would ditch the ego and admit that quoting the bible isn't going to cut it when we(Christians)are literally living in a world created by God. Why we choose not to seriously examine His handiwork?

Cataphatic and apophatic theology both run into walls in terms of explaining God, a supposedly transcendent, borderline ineffable entity in a way that is cogent to humans

The Bible seems to make some circular notions to support the truth claims it has, particularly the idea that we just innately know God when that's debatable, especially in the idea of a personal entity that you want a relationship with. My experience, being autistic, was far more detached and that's probably why Deism made more sense, it wasn't an entity that was involved in human affairs, but even that seemed needless in terms of the explanatory power being based on unknowns that were beyond our realistic capacity in the first place (beyond the Big Bang, etc)

 

[muichimotsu]

When it comes to a universe which is eternal or cyclical or one of the "multi-", remember that science allowing for something is not the same as having any evidence for it. Known biology allows that I could be 6'5" tall, but I'm not. Math and physics allow that there could be 15 zebras in my kitchen, but there are not. We have to go by what we actually have evidence for, which is an absolute beginning of space and time, and that requires something which is of neither.

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

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

Big Bang is a beginning, adding the absolute qualifier is unfounded given the necessary limitations we have in observing the universe as a whole.

And no, it doesn't require this timeless spaceless entity, because you're positing a square circle at that point

 

[muichimotsu]

Yes. An infinitive number of possible universes could be currently producing every instant.

But the idea that there is only one is easier to support, especially from scripture.

Only if you take scripture seriously, but it's not like the ancient peoples had that concept of a multiverse even remotely in mind, they likely thought the universe was centered around their existence on earth, not that they even understood the concept of gravitation and outer space.

 

[muichimotsu]

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.



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.



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.

What you've done is shift the goalposts in such a way that you cannot help but conclude that something you think is uniquely Jesus's statements (it's not) must follow to his other claims being true, which is another faulty line of thought. Jesus can be right about certain things, it doesn't follow he's right about other things, that's not even about falsifiability, instead it's about leaps in logic you make to infer one thing as true because you've found another thing to be reliable

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.

I seriously doubt you tested the other ways of living in any meaningful sense beyond particular "controls" you thought appropriate, but that's not objective science, that's methodologically biased

There is no best possible way to live when you're talking in generalities about something that doesn't require some special revelation to be discerned in the first place

I'm not convinced that merely because Jesus might say something that seems agreeable that he must be correct in something categorically different in nature, such as the idea of a god or an afterlife being real.

 

[muichimotsu]

We know from scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning in time.

A beginning as far as we understand time, but not that we can be remotely certain of, since we can no more observe non time than we can observe non space, so it's basically speculative from that point and scientists are honest enough to admit that rather than use God as a placeholder that's unfalsifiable

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Yes. An infinitive number of possible universes could be currently producing every instant.

But the idea that there is only one is easier to support, especially from scripture.

We may never know, but if I had to choose, I'd pick a multiverse - every time we expand our knowledge of our position in the universe, our intuitions of significance are dashed - geocentrism to heliocentrism, centre of the universe to sidearm of the galaxy, one galaxy to billions, nine planets to unimaginably many planets, the observable universe to a vastly larger universe...

Nature doesn't care how easy ideas are for us, or which scripture says what.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

When it comes to a universe which is eternal or cyclical or one of the "multi-", remember that science allowing for something is not the same as having any evidence for it. Known biology allows that I could be 6'5" tall, but I'm not. Math and physics allow that there could be 15 zebras in my kitchen, but there are not. We have to go by what we actually have evidence for, which is an absolute beginning of space and time, and that requires something which is of neither.

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.

 

[SkyWriting]

We may never know, but if I had to choose, I'd pick a multiverse - every time we expand our knowledge of our position in the universe, our intuitions of significance are dashed - geocentrism to heliocentrism, centre of the universe to sidearm of the galaxy, one galaxy to billions, nine planets to unimaginably many planets, the observable universe to a vastly larger universe...Nature doesn't care how easy ideas are for us, or which scripture says what.

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

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

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

For example,
the scriptures describe the hydrologic cycle fully, thousands of years before we gave it that title.

Granted,
all of the descriptions of nature in scripture are from viewpoint of man. That's a sound plan when trying to connect with people.

 

[Ronald]

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)

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.

 

[SkyWriting]

Only if you take scripture seriously, but it's not like the ancient peoples had that concept of a multiverse even remotely in mind, they likely thought the universe was centered around their existence on earth, not that they even understood the concept of gravitation and outer space.

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

Yes, You ARE the Center of the Universe

 

[muichimotsu]

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

Yes, You ARE the Center of the Universe

Only to our knowledge, that's not a remotely rational conclusion to make, it's literally the anthropic principle, the earth was not made for us, we came about through evolutionary processes over time and the earth would still continue even if we wiped ourselves out in nuclear war (reminded of the film Wizards by Ralph Bakshi, took 2000 years or so, but nature and the earth recovered)

Practically speaking, we are still not the center of the universe in a physical sense, only in the imagined notion that we are special, that's not a matter of pragmatism, that's ego

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Sounds like a great example of hair splitting to me.

What things sound like to you often seems very different from what they sound like to others.

The operative word in that sentence is the word "if".

Of course; it refers to one of many speculative histories.

Yet nothing like that has happened it at least 13 billion years, but I guess hope springs eternal.

If it could happen, it may have happened many times. If such events occur at random, the chances of one occurring in our own Hubble volume are remote - the minimum size of the larger universe is estimated to be 250 times the radius of the visible universe, and it may be spatially infinite. If it happened outside our observable volume we'd never know, and if it happened inside it, we wouldn't be here.

 

[Michael]

What things sound like to you often seems very different from what they sound like to others.

Of course; it refers to one of many speculative histories.

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

If it could happen, it may have happened many times.

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

If such events occur at random, the chances of one occurring in our own Hubble volume are remote - the minimum size of the larger universe is estimated to be 250 times the radius of the visible universe, and it may be spatially infinite. If it happened outside our observable volume we'd never know, and if it happened inside it, we wouldn't be here.

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)".