God is the origin of the Universe.

[LorentzHA]

Interestingly enough, he has also built in this response to that objection:



How far does this fly iyo? Obviously the guy is not a cosmologist. But here he is defending the adage that if we say there is no 'before' then it necessitates an extra-temporal cause.

This is of course, unprovable. But as some people have pointed out, even if we have observed quantum particles coming in or out of existence we have only seen them do so within our space-time. If space-time started at some point, can we really postulate that the Big Bang works like the quantum particles we've seen? Maybe those quantum particles are dependent upon the time that already exists around their occurrance.

I realize that I'm defending the argument, but I've been doing so only for sick amusement. At this point I think the horse is dead though.



LorentzHA, this is a very interesting summation. Can you recommend some reading material on the subjects? Anyone else have some material on quantum fluctuation theory that I could read? Thanks to all.

I see someone already mentioned it, but Yes, The Elegant Universe by Greene, is a good one. Also The Universe in a Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking and I have read, A Brief History of Time (also by Hawking) in the early 90's and recently read it again. Last year I tackled Relativity, by Albert Einstein, himself. and over the holidays this year I read Faster Than The Speed of Light by Jauo Magio (sp?). I think all of these books are excellent. And then I had a book a friend at school lent me last year and I think it was called String Theory it was a thick book with a paper cover but I cannot remember who it was by. Another book I loved not directly on, but related to this topic was, Euclid's Window-The story of Geometry from Parrellel Lines to HyperSpace, by Leonard Mlodinow....If you live by a Border's books they typically have a great science section where you can find these and more. My favorite Borders in in Chicago on Michigan Avenue because they have a LARGE science section, I could stay for days -The Border's we have in Dallas do not compare to that one which is multi level.

 

[LorentzHA]

Other atheists have charged that the argument’s conclusion is incoherent, since a cause must come before its effect, and there is no moment before the big bang. This objection, however, is easy to answer. Many causes and effects are simultaneous. Thus, the moment of God’s causing the big bang is the moment of the occurrence of the big bang. We can then say that God existed alone without the universe before the big bang, not in physical time but in an undifferentiated metaphysical time, or that he is strictly timeless and entered into time at the moment of creation. No incoherence has been shown in either of these alternatives.

How far does this fly iyo? Obviously the guy is not a cosmologist. But here he is defending the adage that if we say there is no 'before' then it necessitates an extra-temporal cause

I am not a cosmologist either, but IMO- Mr. Craig does not sound very scienctific when he talks about this (the highlighted about). It is interesting that he uses God and the way he wishes to think of Him, as a default. His whole answer seems to be, 'Well if there was no before..then it has to be God who lived alone and was not bound to the laws of the Universe', which to me is a little, 'God of The Gaps(ish)' and also 'Here is how I want it to be.' Then adds that it is not incoherent. I wonder how long this entity existed outside of time, since, there was no time and since, "he" was not bound to time-what made him create it? This is a hyperbolic example but we could say the same for a Pink Rabbit who floated above time..decided he was loney and created them both (space and time) but I guess a Pink Rabbit would fall under, Deity.... That is not falsifiable either. I believe in a "Deity", but find it a little unfair that the playing field is a little slanted and that option is not held to the criteria, as the others.

 

[Chapter 2]

The Light in front changing to green and the driver of the car behind honking the horn.

Oops, somebody doesn't know what cause and effect means.

Cause: light changeing to green.

Effect: driver honking horn

The effect is ALWAYS dependant on the cause.

 

[MartinM]

Oops, somebody doesn't know what cause and effect means

I'm sure he knows what humour means.

 

[Prometheus_ash]

JEt black allready touched up on this briefly I think, but I would like to mention it once agian, with a little simpler language.

The big bang theory does not exactly state that it is the begining of the universe. It really covers what started to happen as the universe as we know it started to expand. It could have been siting there all along for all we know. Another subset of Big Bang theory holds that the universe has been continually expanding and contracting (somewhat like a sun and super nova, sort of I think... ) firever untill the correct balance of forces were achieved for the universe to expand at the right pace with the right level of gravity and other forces for it to be stable as we know it. IN fact, the univsre may in fact not actually be stable, as it is possible to expand too much, or rather may eventually begin to fall back in upon itself again, the end result which would be another big bang all over again.