To all athiests out there: bring it on

[Outspoken]

"Uh, yes you are."

Nooooo....

 

[webboffin]

To me, the universe did not create itself something created it. I have not so far been enlightened postively on to what was before the universe. Scientists claim to know up to the first billionths of a second of the universes age. Before then it seems anyones guess.
I would be interested if anyone with some scientific understanding could shed some light on what was before this Big Bang without wild theorising guesses that would be most scientifically plausable and would this have any affect of an existance or non existance of a god like creator?

P.S. And replying to an earlier post, I do not refuse to accept science I don't always have to agree with it anymore than all scientists agree completely, say, with the big bang theory in the form that is accepted in the mainstream.

 

[budoka]

webboffin: "I would be interested if anyone with some scientific understanding could shed some light on what was before this Big Bang"

There is no such thing as 'before the Big Bang' anymore than there is such a thing as the fourth point of a triangle. Space and time are fundamentally the same thing. Our linear experience is a localised phenomenon. A good explanation I have come across for the 'cause' of the Big Bang is quantuum fluctuation (energy/matter occurs spontaneously in a vacuum).

 

[webboffin]

Budoka, you have to try harder than that explaination. Since when is it solid sound theory that there was no before Big Bang and no pre-universe?
Science has not gone that far.

 

[webboffin]

Maybe there was only God.

Note that I use the maybe not the absolute like Budoka did.

 

[lithium.]

There is no evidence for what was really before the big bang. There is only theory, and they theory that is accepted is that there was a singularity (it was a little bit different than an black hole singularity) before the big bang.

Edited: because of spelling errors.

 

[GREG]

sorry you feel this way.......... creation just didn't happen by two pieces of dust

 

[webboffin]

There are many theories all respectfully plausable in their own right though there are some a little bazaar but it is a tough question to crack. Maybe untestable.

 

[Doubting Thomas]

Two pieces of dust? Huh?

 

[lithium.]

Originally posted by GREG
sorry you feel this way.......... creation just didn't happen by two pieces of dust

huh?

 

[lithium.]

Originally posted by webboffin
There are many theories all respectfully plausable in their own right though there are some a little bazaar but it is a tough question to crack. Maybe untestable.

We probably will never know what created the big bang because there is probably no more evidence of what was before the big bang. All we can go on is that the big bang did happen.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by webboffin To me, the universe did not create itself something created it.

That's fine as a belief.  If you believe that, then science has no problem.  All theistic evolutionists believe that deity created the universe.  No big deal.

I have not so far been enlightened postively on to what was before the universe. Scientists claim to know up to the first billionths of a second of the universes age. Before then it seems anyones guess.
I would be interested if anyone with some scientific understanding could shed some light on what was before this Big Bang without wild theorising guesses that would be most scientifically plausable and would this have any affect of an existance or non existance of a god like creator?

That the universe we see around us came into existence at the Big Bang is pretty accepted.  The question that comes out of that is: What caused the Big Bang?  The answer is: we don't know.

However, scientists hypothesize whenever they come up against an unanswered question.  That's how you get answers: you speculate and hypothesize, coming up with a hypothesis that hopefully you can test.  Of these hypotheses, none have been falsified and therefore they are all equally plausible (or implausible).  In no particular order, the hypotheses I am aware of are:

1. Logical and mathematical necessity.
2. Quantum fluctuation
3. Deity
4. Ekpyrotic
5. No Boundary.

I do not refuse to accept science I don't always have to agree with it anymore

There comes a time when the evidence is so overwhelming that it is perverse to withold provisional acceptance of a theory.  You are witholding acceptance of theories that have long ago passed that threshold. 

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Outspoken
"But which times? "

When he wills it. No, I am not calling for a gaps principle, so please don't build that strawman. What I am saying is that there is, in certain places flaws in theories. In those places you can choose to think either 1. the theory is true and there is a "gap" of info you will get later in time or 2. the theory could be wrong due to some reason science can't explain (ie a supernatural occurance). Its current knowledge for anyone that is a christian that science cannot enter the realm of the supernatural, it is not the right tool, thus inlies your answer.

Outspoken, when you say "the theory could be wrong due to some reason science can't explain (ie a supernatural occurance)." that is god-of-the-gaps.  Pure GOTG, in fact. Insert God into places where science can't explain.

While methodological materialism means that you can't test whether "natural" processes require a deity, you are proposing something else.  You are proposing God violating the laws of physics.

One problem with that is that if that happens, then in many instances there are going to be consequences that we can study today.  For instance, if God really had stopped the rotation of the planet to let Joshua continue the battle, the heat generated by doing that would melt the planet.

If you try to save that by saying that God tinkered with everything so that there were no consequences so that it looks like there was no direct action, then you have made God into a deceiver. A liar.  Now, while science can accept a deity that plays such games, Christianity cannot.  At the price of "proving" God exists, you have destroyed the trust of God that is the basis of Christianity.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by webboffin
Budoka, you have to try harder than that explaination. Since when is it solid sound theory that there was no before Big Bang and no pre-universe?
Science has not gone that far.

The Big Bang is also a singularity.   Nothing from the other side of a singularity can come through the singularity to affect our universe. No matter or energy.  That is solid General Relativity.  Therefore, as far as we are concerned, there was no "before" the Big Bang. That particular argument of atheists to get around the "beginning" implicit in the Big Bang -- that matter/energy always existed in some form -- is falsified by the Big Bang. The universe -- matter/energy/spacetime -- had a beginning.

Or rather, that's how it was until about a year ago.    Ekpyrotic seems to have a "before" the Big Bang. 

 

[Outspoken]

"that is god-of-the-gaps. Pure GOTG, in fact. Insert God into places where science can't explain."

NO, its a lack of science. Science is not the right tool for the job, that's the problem. Its not a "gap" its a falure of tool problem.

"if God really had stopped the rotation of the planet to let Joshua continue the battle, the heat generated by doing that would melt the planet."

I'd love to see the paper on that one.

"then you have made God into a deceiver. A liar."

Not at all. there are many recorded instances where cancer was there, then it was gone. This doesn't make God a liar at all, its called a miricle (ie an very unprobable event happening). Your loaded language is quite inapproprate though.

 

[King of Wishful Thinking]

Long before the theory of evolution came to be traditional Christianity went into decline because people found so many holes in it. That's how deism got started, which eventually led to atheism.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Outspoken
"that is god-of-the-gaps. Pure GOTG, in fact. Insert God into places where science can't explain."

NO, its a lack of science. Science is not the right tool for the job, that's the problem. Its not a "gap" its a falure of tool problem.

Not the way you are using it.  You said:
What I am saying is that there is, in certain places flaws in theories. In those places you can choose to think either 1. the theory is true and there is a "gap" of info you will get later in time or 2. the theory could be wrong due to some reason science can't explain (ie a supernatural occurance). 

See? A "gap in info".  That is not a problem with science, but simply the data you have on hand at the time.

Now, your next sentence:
Its current knowledge for anyone that is a christian that science cannot enter the realm of the supernatural, it is not the right tool, thus inlies your answer.

You are correct that science cannot test directly for action of the supernatural.  It's called methodological materialism and arises directly from how experiments are done. But that is separate from saying that there is, in certain places flaws in theories  Methodological materialism has nothing to do with any possible flaws or lack of data in an specific theory.

"if God really had stopped the rotation of the planet to let Joshua continue the battle, the heat generated by doing that would melt the planet."

I'd love to see the paper on that one.

It's easy enough to calculate.  Take the rotational energy and transfer that to the motion of the molecules that make up the earth.  You end up with motions of the molecules that correspond to a couple of thousand degrees centigrade.

"then you have made God into a deceiver. A liar."

Not at all. there are many recorded instances where cancer was there, then it was gone. This doesn't make God a liar at all, its called a miricle (ie an very unprobable event happening).

This is not the same thing.  Disappearing cancer (if it is indeed done by deity) is not covering up a consequence that would be there if deity had acted.  Here the consequence is the absence of cancer. What you are describing is the actual detection of a miracle.

In the case I brought up of Joshua, the consequence would be a molten earth.  Covering up that consequence (hiding God's action) is actually covering up the miracle by another one so that it appears that God did not act.  That is deception.

That creationism makes God a deceiver has been around for 150 years. 

In 1844 a pamphlet entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, espousing an evolutionary viewpoint, was published.  In response Philip Gosse, an minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote Oomphalos, published in 1857.  In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old.  In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures.
  Gosse expected Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists.  What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the religious community.  Asked to write a review of Oomphalos, his friend Charles Kinglsey, a minister and author of Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [the pamphlet discussed above] thebest shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos.  Shall I tell you the truth?  It is best.  Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds doso.  Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver.  I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie.  It is not my reason, by my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for al mankind.  To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds.  It will not make me throw away my Bible.  I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear.  I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands."  Garret Hardin, "Scientific Creationism'" - Marketing Deception as Truth" in Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu, 1982.

BTW, Kingsley was one of the first ministers to accept evolution after Origin was published.  Because Darwin solved this crisis of faith that creationism created.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by King of Wishful Thinking
Long before the theory of evolution came to be traditional Christianity went into decline because people found so many holes in it. That's how deism got started, which eventually led to atheism.

Since atheism was around before deism got really going, I doubt you have a progression from theism to deism to atheism.  Hume and others were devout atheists in the mid to late 1700s while deism got going in the mid 1800s.

It wasn't that "holes" were found in Christianity but that science seemed to point to a clockwork universe.  There was no need for the traditional continued intervention by deity that people thought theism required. Just wind up the universe and let it go.

Evolution saved Christianity from this.  "The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents him as an occasional visitor.  Science has pushed the deist's God further and further away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out all together, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend.  ... Either God is everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere."  AL Moore, Lex Mundi, 12th edition, 1891, pg 73.

Of course, quantum mechanics did in traditional deism altogether.  So if there is a progression from theism to deism to atheism, what happens now that deism is not viable?  Do you start going from atheism back to theism?

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Outspoken
[BYour loaded language is quite inapproprate though. [/B]

My language is telling it like it is.  Creationism is the greatest danger facing Christianity.  You just don't like the message.  Creationists have this self-image that they are the "good" guys.  They don't like hearing the truth that they are really the bad guys.

 

[King of Wishful Thinking]

How did the atheists explain the orgins of the world without an understanding of cosmology and evolution?