What caused the Universe?

Radrook said:

Because natural forces don't have a mind and the universe displays the activity of a mind.
You are in denial. But denial will not make it go away.

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DNA is the downfall of evolutionism. Everytime a post is presented using DNA...the code...the evolutionist squirm in their seats.

doubtingmerle said:

OK, so those who were saying the only possible way to explain the universe is by positing a God are wrong. It is possible that the laws and forces of nature caused the universe.

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You're turning into a question avoider, I had hope for you. Still have some hope. I understand it's easier to avoid the questions than to face the logical consequences.

I'll answer your question anyway: Of course it's possible, what matters is if it's true or not. However, many Christian theists including myself believe that God is order and a force that drives creation and guides and influences people. His will is to restore complete order to His creation and He will use a force called love to accomplish that. He is love.

Thanks for the discussion, if you're unwilling to answer my questions then I'll stop posting them.

God bless!

-57 said:

DNA is the downfall of evolutionism. Everytime a post is presented using DNA...the code...the evolutionist squirm in their seats.

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Lulz...wut?! DNA is ToE's smoking gun.

Chriliman said:

You're turning into a question avoider, I had hope for you. Still have some hope. I understand it's easier to avoid the questions than to face the logical consequences.

I'll answer your question anyway: Of course it's possible, what matters is if it's true or not. However, many Christian theists including myself believe that God is order and a force that drives creation and guides and influences people. His will is to restore complete order to His creation and He will use a force called love to accomplish that. He is love.

Thanks for the discussion, if you're unwilling to answer my questions then I'll stop posting them.

God bless!

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Rich!

victorinus said:

do you have evidence of something starting all by itself?

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Your question is rather poorly worded. As a result the only answer can be "Yes".

doubtingmerle said:

Resorting to ad hominems, huh?

Ad hominem is a logical fallacy. Do you have any reason for believing Victorinus's argument that don't involve resorting to logical fallacies?

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I am not attacking the persons . I am pointing out the flawed thinking they are presenting as if it were cogent reasoning. I strongly suggest that you be consistent in the application of your criteria. Essentially, all the conclusions you reach based on the senses must be taken as faith since their is absolutely no way to prove that you aren't a brain in a vat. In fact, you can't even prove that their actually is an external world. All you can say is that based on your senses it seems that way. In fact, physicists are beginning to strongly suspect that the universe is actually a hologram being projected from an outside source.

Kenny'sID said:

And I would have to ask you t look up the term "explanation", you might be surprised.

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I don't think it says "repeating the claims".

Oh, my, you people talking to *me* about switching definitions?...priceless.

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Yes and I expained the difference in both contexts as wel. If you have something to say, then just say it.

When you stop pretending, maybe we can touch on it.

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Pretending what, exactly? Once more, if you have something to say - then just say it. Stop playing these childish games.

It's not always about just what you said. These conversations sometimes get into generals.

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But you are talking to ME in this conversation.
Maybe, just maybe, you should be addressing ME when in a conversation with ME.

Yet, I still do not. What kind of comment is that anyway, maybe you should care about things you do not care about, but I highly doubt my saying so will change a thing.

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You replied with "i don't care" when I was explaining to you the different types of "creating" that you are mixing together while using it as a foundation for your actual argument. It's n equivocation fallacy, essentially.

When someone points out invalid reasoning and the response is "i don't care", then I can only respond with "maybe you should care..."

Explaining what to expect on a Christian forum is preaching? If you are that insecure, you should report me.

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No, that's not at all what I said.
I said that you are in the science subsection. If all you wish to do is preach, then there are enough other subforms where you can go do that.

It takes common sense to understand how common sense can be useful, enough said. .

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So, that's it? That's what you respond with?
I don't think I said that common sense is not useful, by the way.

I said that common sense can only account for things that you already know.
Common sense is useless for stuff outside of your day-to-day experience and for things that have ingredients or parameters that you have no knowledge of...

See, common sense only dictates that putting your hand in the fire will hurt, because you know what pain is, you know what fire is and through common sense you can conclude that putting your hand in it will hurt.

But if you do NOT know what fire is, then common sense won't inform you of such!!

Exactly.

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Ow, okay. So, no gods required then?

Maybe this will help. Cause and effect, you must have heard the term. Without cause, there is no affect. I'm not pretending, the affect is all around you...forrest/trees again.

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Causality is a phenomena of physics as it applies inside the universe.
And even then, it's not even clear that it is uniformly at work all the way down to the quantum level.

One thing is by definition the case though: causality requires a temporal context, and probably space also. So no universe = no causality (unless the universe itself alsso exists inside some exterior temporal context, but good luck demonstrating that..)

Well, they weren't too bright then were they....what is your point?

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They weren't more intelligent or more stupid then any other humans throughout history.

Just about ever generation from the dawn of time till this very day, there have been people stuffing their gods and deities into the gaps of our knowledge.

This is news to you?

I've wondered about all that too, and I'll get back to you when I figure it all out. In the meantime, do share any knowledge you might have on the subject.

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Well, it seems to me that climatologist are perfectly aware of how storms form and conditions make it happen. There are no supernatural forces there.
Neither are their any supernatural forces present anywhere else.

Not once in the history of mankind has a supernatural parameter been shown to play a role in anything. In fact, every time a mechanism for some phenomena was unraveled that was previously claimed to have supernatural causation, it was shown that there was nothing supernatural going on at all....

I don't recall, go find the post, bring it here, and I'll comment on it.

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So, first you accuse me of missing a point and when I ask about this mysterious, you say that you don't remember? And then even ask me, to do your homework?

Great.

victorinus said:

do you have evidence of something starting all by itself?

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Where shall we start? Hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes, coal and oil.

-57 said:

You're last statement made no sense at all.

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I'm not in the least bit surprised.

victorinus said:

that doesn't make sense

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But an all powerful being performing magic does?

Radrook said:

... In fact, physicists are beginning to strongly suspect that the universe is actually a hologram being projected from an outside source.

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No, they're not. The 'holographic principle' or 'holographic universe' means that it's been discovered that the informational content of any n-dimensional volume can be mapped onto its n-1 dimensional surface as a hologram. This means the 3D content of our universe is mathematically equivalent to the same information on a 2D surface sufficient to encompass that volume. So the universe can be considered either as stuff in a 3D volume, or holographic information on a 2D surface.

There is no suggestion of 'projection from an outside source'. It is simply a general equivalence principle that can be applied to any volume of any dimensionality.

Radrook said:

I am not attacking the persons . I am pointing out the flawed thinking they are presenting as if it were cogent reasoning. I strongly suggest that you be consistent in the application of your criteria. Essentially, all the conclusions you reach based on the senses must be taken as faith since their is absolutely no way to prove that you aren't a brain in a vat. In fact, you can't even prove that their actually is an external world.

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I always find it amusing when someone who wants to establish a baseless idea finally resorts to epistemological nihilism in order to abolish all standards.
But I´ll give you that: In the same way we can´t conclusively rule out that we are brains in vats we can´t conclusively rule out that there´s a God as depicted in the bible.

When considering the origin of the universe, people often invoke the 'fallacy of composition', suggesting that what we observe of the contents of the universe (e.g. causal relations) must be true of the universe itself. We have no reason to suppose this is the case.

It's also worth remembering that, inside the universe, we don't see creation ex-nihilo, we only see inter-conversion between matter and energy, and reconfiguration of matter into new forms. If we were to ignore the fallacy of composition and apply what we know about the contents of the universe to the universe itself, we'd be led to presume that the universe has always existed in some form or other.

There is also the problem of how to account for a start or beginning to time itself. What we know of time is from an internal perspective - we can only extrapolate back a certain distance in time, and we have no way to tell if that is the true start of the universe, the start of the universe as we know it, or the start of time itself (whatever that means). By analogy, if you were to calculate the results of a grenade explosion back in time, you might be tempted to extend the trajectories back to a single infinitely small point of origin (a singularity), but we know that would be incorrect; it's possible (even probable) that the universe as we know it did not originate in a singularity.

The various cosmological multiverse ideas that derive from work to explain some features of our universe, add a new level of complexity. If our universe is one of many 'bubble universes' that budded off, or condensed out, of some vastly greater 'bulk', then the start of time as we see it is only an act of a larger play.

None of this indicates any requirement for a creator entity or entities, and such ideas are not adequate (i.e. useful) hypotheses, not least because they introduce additional entities that raise more questions than they answer. In general, you can't explain the unexplained with the inexplicable. Better to follow Richard Feynman's example and not be afraid to say, "We don't know".

MasonP said:

But an all powerful being performing magic does?

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more nonsense -
it is clear that you and the others do not want to know -
you won't find what you are not looking for -
we need to know why we are here -
it has to make sense -
it is not proof -
it is just a reasonable explanation -
some of us need one

victorinus said:

more nonsense -
it is clear that you and the others do not want to know -
you won't find what you are not looking for -
we need to know why we are here -

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Then why not try and find out why we are here? why make something up when you can't find the answer?

it has to make sense -
it is not proof -
it is just a reasonable explanation -
some of us need one

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You obviously don't need to know or you would not have settled for a crazy irrational explanation like an invisible man did it.

doubtingmerle said:

If you know what caused the universe, tell us what caused it

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Nothing 'caused' it. It has always been here, shaped by God.

and how you know you are right.

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An eternally existing universe (even if punctuated by repeated "big bangs") shaped by an eternal God requires the fewest leaps of logic to understand.

For the universe to have a beginning requires time to have a beginning, but only inside time can cause and effect actually exist (so it cannot be that God created time as creation is an act that intrinsically exists within a temporal environment).

Thus the universe has always been, and it has always been shaped by God in all things (ie: this isn't pantheism).

victorinus said:

do you believe that it is possible to start all by itself?

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I don't know, but on the other hand I don't know that it is impossible.

Inkfingers said:

Nothing 'caused' it. It has always been here, shaped by God.



An eternally existing universe (even if punctuated by repeated "big bangs") shaped by an eternal God requires the fewest leaps of logic to understand.

For the universe to have a beginning requires time to have a beginning, but only inside time can cause and effect actually exist (so it cannot be that God created time as creation is an act that intrinsically exists within a temporal environment).

Thus the universe has always been, and it has always been shaped by God in all things (ie: this isn't pantheism).

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I've been leaning towards this line of thought as well. I would like to find Scripture that backs it up though.

One thing I've come up with so far is Genesis 1:1 Young's literal translation which states:

"In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth --"

Which clearly implies God has prepared the heavens and the earth, not necessarily created the heavens and the earth from nonexistent material.