The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

Zombrex

Jakkass wrote:

Answer me this, is the Big Bang meant to be the means of which the universe came into being?

Think of the Big Bang itself as a change of state.

There was "something" and then this something changed into the universe. We have absolutely no idea what that "something" was, what its nature was, what laws covered it, we know nothing about it. We don't even know if calling it "something" is valid.

We can certainly guess at what it might have been, but those guesses mean almost nothing.

We don't have any idea of the nature of the state before this change. The universe as we know it was formed by this change of state. Big Bang theories attempt to model our side of this change, from the instant of the change of state up until a few hundred thousand years in. Everything we know and understand about the universe was created from that instant.

Jakkass wrote:

How dare you. Just to tell you, I'm perfectly capable of understanding what you are all saying but you are all continually contradicting yourselves.

In fairness Jakkass if you simply stopped fishing around for contradictions and actually took a bit of time to listen to what is being explained to you I imagine you would get this very quickly.

Kevster

Good Lord (forgive the pun)! ...this thread moves fast. I can't keep-up with all of these posts.


*waves*

Bye bye
Kevin

Scofflaw

Jakkass wrote:

Answer me this, is the Big Bang meant to be the means of which the universe came into being? You are continually contradicting yourselves.

I suspect the contradiction is a question of how much physics you know, together with what you mean by "explains how the universe came into being".

The Universe starts with the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory does not attempt to explain where the Big Bang came from, or what it was - it simply explains what happened from that point on.

Depending on your point of view, this either is, or isn't, a statement that the Big Bang is how the universe came into being. The Universe is explained by the Big Bang, but the Big Bang is not explained.

Jakkass wrote:

How dare you. Just to tell you, I'm perfectly capable of understanding what you are all saying but you are all continually contradicting yourselves.

I understand your irritation, but no kid gloves here. Feel free to speak your mind.

cordially,
Scofflaw

wolfsbane

wolfsbane wrote:

bluewolf said:

Just jumping in here as I review all the posts I've missed.

I don't see any change to the argument, bluewolf. The destruction of the nation was due to the parents' sins. I see you may be thinking God's actions are in conflict with His command for man not to punish children for their father's sin, and vv. God is the Creator, the giver of life, 'in Whom we live and breathe and have our being', so He can legitimately end the life of anyone at anytime. It may be in punishment, it may just be in providence. Man has no power or right to such sovereignty in providence, and in the exercise of punishment, he must abide by God's restrictions.

That's a bit inconsistent, isn't it?
I mean, if I'm a parent and every day I tell my child they mustn't lie on threat of dire punishment, but then I go around lying, what message does that send to anyone? "I have power so I can do what I like"?

Jakk, I'm assuming from your posts on things "banging themselves into existence" you haven't yet read the talkorigins link I gave you. Or perhaps there was something you misunderstood?

Son Goku

Scofflaw wrote:

Jackass wrote:

How dare you. Just to tell you, I'm perfectly capable of understanding what you are all saying but you are all continually contradicting yourselves.

I understand your irritation, but no kid gloves here. Feel free to speak your mind.

I should explain what I meant by "Is this that hard to grasp?" in case it sounded elitist. I was referring to the common creationist rebuke you came up with which basically says the Big Bang is useless because it doesn't explain absolutely everything, including the origins of the universe. Maybe I am being elitist, but I think that's a ridiculous objection. It's an incredibly stringent criteria that isn't being applied to anything else.

philologos

Scofflaw wrote:

The Universe starts with the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory does not attempt to explain where the Big Bang came from, or what it was - it simply explains what happened from that point on.

If the Big Bang is the thing that started the universe, surely it is what "created" it?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html#misconceptions

In most popularized science sources, BBT is often described with something like "The universe came into being due to the explosion of a point in which all matter was concentrated." Not surprisingly, this is probably the standard impression which most people have of the theory. Occasionally, one even hears "In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."

There are several misconceptions hidden in these statements:

* The BBT is not about the origin of the universe. Rather, its primary focus is the development of the universe over time.
* BBT does not imply that the universe was ever point-like.
* The origin of the universe was not an explosion of matter into already existing space.

The famous cosmologist P. J. E. Peebles stated this succinctly in the January 2001 edition of Scientific American (the whole issue was about cosmology and is worth reading!): "That the universe is expanding and cooling is the essence of the big bang theory. You will notice I have said nothing about an 'explosion' - the big bang theory describes how our universe is evolving, not how it began."

^^ a quote from the link, not the entire link.

and http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html#theory

BrianCalgary

bluewolf wrote:

Part of Bluewolfs quote:

You will notice I have said nothing about an 'explosion' - the big bang theory describes how our universe is evolving, not how it began."

from: http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html

In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom.

from:
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm

About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point.

and:
The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble.

and:
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_home.html

About ten billion years ago, the Universe began in a gigantic explosion - the Hot Big Bang!

All agree that the universe began with an explosion of matter with no known origin and is still expanding.

Scofflaw said:
Depending on your point of view, this either is, or isn't, a statement that the Big Bang is how the universe came into being. The Universe is explained by the Big Bang, but the Big Bang is not explained.

Explain the Big Bang then? I understand you statement and it rings true.

bonkey

BrianCalgary wrote:

Explain the Big Bang then?

I assume by "explain" you mean "explain where it came from" and not "explain what it is" ???

If this is the case (as the latter has been fairly well explained here, I would say), then as Son Goku pointed out, there is currently no explanation. There are a vast number of possibilities, but the Big Bang is as far back as our current models go, and arguably as far back as they are capable of going.

Does this leave room for God to have created the conditions which led to the Big Bang? Of course it does. I don't think anyone has ever disputed that.

What has been the object of dispute is the notion that the scientific model of the Big-Bang and everything leading from it, up to and including evolutionary theory are all bunk because it contradicts Genesis which in turn supports an Ussheresque timeline.

BrianCalgary

bonkey wrote:

I assume by "explain" you mean "explain where it came from" and not "explain what it is" ???.

Correct and thanks for the post.

Zombrex

BrianCalgary wrote:

All agree that the universe began with an explosion of matter with no known origin and is still expanding.

THe reason some scientists get technical about the use of the word "explosion" when describing the Big Bang is that it can sometimes confuse because the Big Bang explosion wasn't like an explosion one would see in every day.

In a every day explosion something explodes out into empty space. A house on the A-Team explodes when it is blown apart by TNT.

What is actually happening with the Big Bang is not that matter is exploding into empty space. Space itself is exploding (expanding very quickly) from a very small size to a very large size.

Of course the instant question is Ok, what is space expanding into? The problem is is that it doesn't work like that, which is why some don't like saying an explosion because it implies that what ever is expanding is expanding into something, such as empty space.

In reality what is happening is that every point in the universe is expanding away from every other point. This is very hard to visualize in our minds that are used to seeing things in 3D space.

The closest, and often quoted, analogy is that of the surface of a balloon. If you draw a number of dots on a balloon and blow the balloon up the distance between all the dots on the balloon increases.

Now the universe isn't like a balloon, but it is the same kinda of idea.

Schuhart

bonkey wrote:

Does this leave room for God to have created the conditions which led to the Big Bang? Of course it does. I don't think anyone has ever disputed that.

What has been the object of dispute is the notion that the scientific model of the Big-Bang and everything leading from it, up to and including evolutionary theory are all bunk because it contradicts Genesis which in turn supports an Ussheresque timeline.

Is it also far to say that the physical space for God is much smaller than it would have been when religion was first conceived. I sometimes wonder what it must have been like to be an atheist at the time those words ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God’ were first written. Picture a discussion like this, with theists saying ‘how is it the Sun rises every morning’ and us responding ‘well, just because we don’t know how the Sun rises doesn’t mean there’s a God doing it’, to cries of dismay at our obtuse natures.

Now we know why the Sun rises every morning without need for any supernatural explanation. We know we orbit it, which also came across a little resistance. I think I’ve post a link to an article by a cosmologist (and theist) Bruno Guiderdoni before, which I think expresses this shrinking physical space for God quite well.

In the Middle Ages,the distance to God's throne was “measured” by the Arab astronomer al-Farghani to 120 million km, under simple assumptions on the properties of the planetary spheres in the paradigm of the Ptolemaic cosmology. This ``spatial horizon'' was eventually evacuated by the scientific revolution of the Renaissance and the emergence of the Newtonian paradigm. In a simplistic interpretation of the standard Big--Bang model, which has been rather fashionable during the last decades, God takes place at the horizonof the singularity t=0 and at the ``particle horizon'' located 15 billion light-years from us. Now, it is indeed possible that quantum cosmology will evacuate the notion of an initial singularity. The universe might have emerged as a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum. Moreover, according to the theory of chaotic inflation, our observable universe is only a bubble located somewhere in an infinite number of ``patches'' of the physical universe, which could even have different values for the constants of nature. Is there still a ``place'' for God if the universe emerges from a random fluctuation of ``nothing'', if it has no spatial and temporal boundaries, if the constants themselves could have any value?

Clearly Guiderdoni still finds a reason to hold to his faith, and so do many other scientists. But if it’s ever possible to pull a conclusion out of this thread, surely it will be the pointlessness of trying to create a gap to put God into. It’s almost like the demand of the Philosophers’ Union in the The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for ‘rigorously defined areas of doubt and uncertainty’.

The physical need for a God to explain the reality of which we are part is shrinking. The spiritual or emotional or social or whatever we want to call it remains for many people. Is it really impossible for atheists and theists to acknowledge that as a common starting point?

Son Goku

BrianCalgary wrote:

Explain the Big Bang then? I understand you statement and it rings true.

There's no explanation. There was some event of an unknown nature. At some point 10^-32 seconds after this event, according to a reliable universal clock, conditions are cold enough for us to understand.

BrianCalgary wrote:

All agree that the universe began with an explosion of matter with no known origin and is still expanding.

Explosion is a bad word, but it's the best you have when the reality is counter-intuitive and thus most cosmologists will use it. In truth what humans view as the distance between points is a dynamic entity on its own. The universe can literally create more distance between points, distance is an actual physical thing. Early on, near the Big Bang, the universe was "making" distance in vast quantities.

It comes from General Relativity. Similar to how charged particles can generate an electric field and attract eachother. Particles with mass can generate or destroy distance and change how it works, which is what gravity is.

robindch

> I think I’ve post a link to an article by a cosmologist Bruno Guiderdoni before

Yes, you mentioned this before. Extending Guiderdoni's idea:

• Man lives on the plains and gods live on the tops of mountains
• Man gets to tops of mountains and gods move beyond the clouds
• Man develops telescope, balloons and gods retreat beyond planets
• Einstein arrives and gods disappear into "other dimension" or "outside of space and time"

The common feature of each of these is (a) that the deity or deities have always existed where they can't be reached or detected and (b) that religious people seem unaware, even denying, that the earlier stages were orthodox beliefs at one time or another.

BrianCalgary

robindch wrote:

> I think I’ve post a link to an article by a cosmologist Bruno Guiderdoni before

Yes, you mentioned this before. Extending Guiderdoni's idea:

• Man lives on the plains and gods live on the tops of mountains
• Man gets to tops of mountains and gods move beyond the clouds
• Man develops telescope, balloons and gods retreat beyond planets
• Einstein arrives and gods disappear into "other dimension" or "outside of space and time"

The common feature of each of these is (a) that the deity or deities have always existed where they can't be reached or detected and (b) that religious people seem unaware, even denying, that the earlier stages were orthodox beliefs at one time or another.

True enough, but in Christianity, God became man in order to be reachable. He is here now, and I get to talk directly to Him.

BrianCalgary

BrianCalgary wrote:

True enough, but in Christianity, God became man in order to be reachable. He is here now, and I get to talk directly to Him.

What? Does he answer? :?

bonkey

BrianCalgary wrote:

True enough, but in Christianity, God became man in order to be reachable.

How then do you explain all of those conversations God had with various people in the Old Testament?

Scofflaw

bonkey wrote:

I assume by "explain" you mean "explain where it came from" and not "explain what it is" ???

If this is the case (as the latter has been fairly well explained here, I would say), then as Son Goku pointed out, there is currently no explanation. There are a vast number of possibilities, but the Big Bang is as far back as our current models go, and arguably as far back as they are capable of going.

Does this leave room for God to have created the conditions which led to the Big Bang? Of course it does. I don't think anyone has ever disputed that.

Indeed. Consider that God created Time, as clearly He must have done. Now ask "what was before that?".

Cosmologically, there is no difference between this and the Big Bang. Neither have a 'before', because time only started "then".

We, as creatures of time, find it impossible to look back "before the Big Bang" to see what "caused" it. Therefore we do not, and probably cannot, know what "caused" it. Even the word "caused" is inappropriate, since "caused" means something led to something else which occurred after it, and in the absence of time, there is no sequence. God is as good an explanation as any.

cordially,
Scofflaw

wolfsbane

bluewolf said:

That's a bit inconsistent, isn't it?
I mean, if I'm a parent and every day I tell my child they mustn't lie on threat of dire punishment, but then I go around lying, what message does that send to anyone? "I have power so I can do what I like"?

That scenario would be inconsistent. But it is not analogous to the God/Man relationship.

That would better be represented by the State telling us we must not imprison or kill anyone, then them doing it. No inconsistency, just different roles and responsibilities.

wolfsbane

wolfsbane wrote:

That would better be represented by the State telling us we must not imprison or kill anyone, then them doing it.

Do you think that's acceptable/right? I don't.

wolfsbane

Wicknight said:

What you fail to realise is what you are asserting is a logical impossibility. You might as well claim that God can make it so he cannot do something, because God can do anything.

As I have pointed out, your definition of God-in-eternity does not match the Biblical one, so you are arguing against a strawman god. I've asked you to point to the passages of the Bible that you allege reveal your sort of God, but you have failed to do so.

My case stands: the God of the Bible is not the self-contradiction you made Him out to be, but the Lord over all.

bonkey

wolfsbane wrote:

Wicknight said:

As I have pointed out, your definition of God-in-eternity does not match the Biblical one, so you are arguing against a strawman god.

In fairness, Wick was responding to your claim that God is infinitely powerful and showing that this isn't a panacea unless we accept that it leads to irreconcilable contradictions.

If his argument is a strawman, it can only be because your claim of infinite power is false.

I've asked you to point to the passages of the Bible that you allege reveal your sort of God, but you have failed to do so.

I would wager they're the same ones you can use to show that God is infinitely powerful.

Once you posit infinite power, then the ability to do anything follows.
Once you posit the ability to do anything, Wick's argument regarding irreconcilable contradictions is no longer a straw man.

Or you can redefine "infinite power" to mean "infinite power, with certain caveats"...in which case, your own choice of passages from the bible will surely delineate those caveats, no?

wolfsbane

Son Goku

Thanks for your post 5291 and 5293. A fasinating theory, one I will endeavour to look into in the coming weeks.

I take it you are saying that these few forces acting on the original 'material' produced the increasingly complex material that led to what we are now?

wolfsbane

bonkey said:

Or you can redefine "infinite power" to mean "infinite power, with certain caveats"...in which case, your own choice of passages from the bible will surely delineate those caveats, no?

Yes, my use of infinite power included - repeatedly stated - His infinite holiness. That means God cannot lie, for example. So we have the Biblical God as One who cannot be overcome or frustrated, who brings all things to the end He has determined, but cannot violate His own nature. That's all-powerful in my eyes, and it is the God I presented.

Thus Wickie is indeed arguing against a strawman god.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

bonkey said:

Yes, my use of infinite power included - repeatedly stated - His infinite holiness. That means God cannot lie, for example. So we have the Biblical God as One who cannot be overcome or frustrated, who brings all things to the end He has determined, but cannot violate His own nature. That's all-powerful in my eyes, and it is the God I presented.

Thus Wickie is indeed arguing against a strawman god.

How does any of that imply a god who cannot create an object He cannot move?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Son Goku

wolfsbane wrote:

I take it you are saying that these few forces acting on the original 'material' produced the increasingly complex material that led to what we are now?

Yes, basically. Although remember that even today most of the universe, that isn't dark matter, is just unprocessed hydrogen and helium, with large portions of lithium and boron, as well as several trillion black holes left over from stellar death.

hairyheretic

wolfsbane wrote:

That means God cannot lie, for example.

Bit of a poor example, because he does.

Genesis, Chapter 2
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."


They ate the apple. They didn't die.

Scofflaw

hairyheretic wrote:

Bit of a poor example, because he does.

Genesis, Chapter 2
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."


They ate the apple. They didn't die.

Unless of course 'day' doesn't literally mean 24 hours....but let's not go there!

cordially,
Scofflaw

wolfsbane

Scofflaw said:

How does any of that imply a god who cannot create an object He cannot move?

Yes. Such a god would indeed be a contradiction.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

Scofflaw wrote:

How does any of that imply a god who cannot create an object He cannot move?

Yes. Such a god would indeed be a contradiction.

Granted, it does look a bit weird. Let's go for the more explicit version:

wolfsbane wrote:

Yes, my use of infinite power included - repeatedly stated - His infinite holiness. That means God cannot lie, for example. So we have the Biblical God as One who cannot be overcome or frustrated, who brings all things to the end He has determined, but cannot violate His own nature. That's all-powerful in my eyes, and it is the God I presented.

How does "cannot violate His own nature" make "can God create a stone He cannot move?" a meaningless question?

If it is a meaningless question, I think you need to show why it's meaningless. If it's not a meaningless question, then it presents a contradiction.

cordially,
Scofflaw