The Big Bang is evidence for the existence of the supernatural
Offline
I have often heard creationists say that everything in existence must have been caused by something else thus leading to a chain of causes all the way to God Himself. To which atheists respond, “Then what caused God to be in existence?” But this passage from C.S. Lewis refutes this common atheist counter to creationism.”
“For instance, it is a mistake to view everything as needing a cause, for in this case there would be an infinity of causes and even God would need a cause. Only limited, changing, contingent things need causes. Once one arrives at an unlimited, unchanging, necessary being, there is no longer any need for a cause. The finite must be caused, but the infinite being would be uncaused.”
Furthermore. . . . .
Since the Big Bang definitely demonstrates the beginning of all time for Nature, that is (the universe, the closed box/system of everything). And being that time began because of a definite beginning (The Big Bang) therefore infinity, that without beginning or end, cannot exist within Nature itself but rather must exist beyond Nature. Within Nature everything is in relation to everything else, everything is interdependent, nothing is independent of the system as a whole, nothing can be truly added or taken away. Therefore within Nature things must exist as spontaneously regenerating patterns and designs, including life. Nothing save that which is outside Nature can operate independently of the system as a whole. Nothing except for mankind with his freewill which enables him to act independently of the system as a whole. Freewill cannot emerge from this system because it is independence in a system of total interdependence. Therefore, freewill, like the causation of time and Nature, is beyond time and Nature, it is not Natural but supernatural. Since mankind has freewill which is supernatural, he is therefore at least partly supernatural. Mankind is therefore both Natural and supernatural, the body and the spirit.
- Login to post comments
First, what about the mechanism requires one to trigger that mechanism? I have no reason to think that is necessary.
Second, From the sounds of it, your trying to say that events necessarily need a temporal referent--that is "you need to add". What about this requires your "need to add"? And I see no reason to think that willing something before performing action then performing that any different. In fact, it is more complex rather than simpler and would require even more addition....
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
So you and Craig get out of the problem by simply affirming such a being exists. Craig needed such a being to make his argument work so he created one. Where's the mind-boggling conclusion again?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Then this mechanism would have triggered the event out of necessity and physical need. how would you explain that ?
what explanation do you have for the existence of our universe ? how do you think, it came to be ?
I don't really think about it all that much. I'm content just learning about how awesome it is in it's current state.
That being said, I'm sure it doesn't involve magic from a Canaanite sky-god.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
and what makes you be so sure, if you , as you say really dont think about it all that much ?
Doesn't it ever strike you as a little, I don't know, presumptuous, to flatly state you know that the universe was created by an omnipotent being outside of time?
There is zero evidence for your hypothesis. The only way you can arrive at your conclusion is to state, purely on faith, that a being with certain charactaristics exists, call it God, and then make this stuff up to plug the logical holes in the fundamental idea.
You can't start from zero and end up with:
"So on the view I propose, God exists timelessly without the universe with a timeless intention to create a universe with a beginning. He exercises His causal power, and time as a result comes into being, along with the first state of the universe, and God freely enters into time. It all happens co-incidentally, that is, together at once. This is, I own, a mind-boggling conclusion, but makes better sense to me than the alternatives."
You have to start with massive assumptions to even began a line of thought that might lead you to that place, and none of those assumptions have any merit beyond the wishful thinking of an iron age tribal society. Am I missing something?
I don't know how else to say it. People like Aquinas came up with the proofs they did, not in light of evidence, but in light of the necessity to create an explanation for a logical contradiction they had blind faith in *at any intellectual cost*.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Because there is no real magic. Why do you use the Canaanite sky god as an excuse to keep you from learning the answers if you really want to know?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
What about the mechanism requires necessity and physical need? I suppose one could suppose that the physical instability moving to a more stable form dictated the necessity as many things in nature do. There are explanations that are possible that do not require a god from string theory that fit this bill.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
beyond the universe, nothing physical existed. So there could not be physical needs. Beside this, this mechanism would have to be essentially spaceless, eternal, timeless, beginningless, incredibly powerful as well.
Angelbrazil said: "beyond the universe, nothing physical existed."
"' YES angelbrazil; that is the deffinition of the "universe" .....
Angelbrazil said: "So there could not be physical needs"
"YES Angelbrazil: the "needs" you speak of are very poetic but not realistic. Nature is not a matter of "needs" it is a matter of "reactions" : By Darwin's deffinition , we survive "Not by being bigger or faster, but by haveing the better "reactions" to the situations around us. We adapt to current situations better then other animals. "Needs!!!" have nothing to do with it.
Angelbrazil said: "besides this, the mechanisim would have to be essentially spaceless, eternal, timeless. beginningless, incredibly powerful as well."
"NO angelbrazil: There is NO mechenisim, we live and breath by way of reaction to the simple reality's around us: It is called "survival of the fittest" . Wallace & Darwin espoused this simple ideal way back in the 19 th centry. Reality has not changed since then; weather YOU Angelbrazil like the IDEA or not.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
how do you want apply evolution prior to the existence of the first living being ?
Actually atheists should not be spreading that lie. That is a common myth even amongst supporters of evolution.
EXAMPLE:
Guy number one works out every day. He weighs 250lbs and is 6 feet tall.
Guy number two weighs 145 lbs does not work out, has a beer gut and is only 5 foot 9. This guy has kids and the muscle bound guy does not.
They get into a beef at a bar and the frumpy beer gut guy pulls out a gun and shoots the "fit guy" before he has kids and kills him.
Evolution is not about "survival of the fittest". It is as much random as it is luck and adaptation. All it takes is making the next generation. Being bigger or brainier have nothing to do with evolution.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Your God didn't exist before the universe either. As he didn't exist before people thought of him and wrote about him he doesn't fit the description of the mechanism you and Craig need.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
A more recent question I came up with that I am now using frequently that I have not gotten a rational answer from a theist for is this.
If you can accept that no one was around 5 billion years ago to claim the existence of Allah, what makes anyone think that Jesus will be remembered 50 billion years from now?
All god claims will die when our species goes extinct because there will not be another generation for these claims to be sold to.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I think we need to qualify "physical" then. I'm calling that which existed beyond the universe "physical" because I'm thinking that fundamental components that composed whatever started the universe are the fundamental components that compose the universe.
But something that is "essentially spaceless, eternal, timeless, beginningless, incredibly powerful" does not entail a being.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
why not ?
Because those are positive qualifiers and there is no reason to assign them to something unknown. Pure speculation (or wishful thinking). The only honest position at this point is to say, "I don't know". That is assuming something spaceless, eternal, timeless, beginningless and incredibly timeless is even a meaningful series of categories.
So first you have the basic absurdity of discussing whatever caused our universe when we have no evidence for anything, then we've absurdly claimed that to be an 'entity', then we have the layered absurdity of assigning 'necessary' qualifiers and description to that thing, and finally we don't even have a real perspective on what those qualifiers mean since we have no direct experience of any of them. I'm not sure how we could be more divorced from reality even if we tried.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Nothing "essentially spaceless, eternal, timeless, beginningless, incredibly powerful" implies anything about a a mind, will, the ability to think, etc. I'm asking how it does.
If you want to suppose that a being is mindless and lacks the ability to think, then any such god that fits this description would be mindless and lack the ability to think.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
It seems my point was misunderstood. I'll clarify.
Let's say A causes B. In order for this to happen, A must occur before B, which means there's some time at which A occurs but not B, and then some later time at which B occurs.
But when you use "time existing" as B, you're claiming that there's some time at which time does not exist. This is, of course, impossible.
It is literally the case that there always has been a universe. This is because time itself is part of the universe, so the universe existed at all points in time. There's no need to explain how the universe "came into existence" because it didn't. It has existed for all of time. The fact that "all of time" is finite does nothing to change this.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
The universe is finite in time. Beyond the universe, there was nothing physical. That demands for a explanation. Why is there something, rather than nothing ?
Do this: define what you mean by "physical". Because insisting that nothing "physical" exists beyond the universe is not necessarily true if that which is "physical" is reducible to something like strings or branes.
Also, asking the "why" question is ultimately question begging, such as it is supposing teleology.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
Why is there something rather than nothing? You say "God".
Why is there God? You say "Magic".
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
You're using poor terminology, or maybe just poor concepts. Beyond the universe? Do you even have an idea of what that would mean? Remember that space is a part of the universe, so in addition to there being no "before" there's also no "outside." So what do you even mean by "beyond" the universe? Is this even a coherent concept? You seem to argue that there is some "beyond" the universe (yet this "place" is neither a location nor a time) and that in this "beyond" we find nothing physical. I instead argue that there simply is no "beyond" the universe.
Regardless of that, here's one potential answer to your question.
-Two cases: A state of nothingness is in equilibrium, or it is not.
-If nothingness is not in equilibrium, then a tendency towards equilibrium will lead us away from nothingness into somethingness.
-So if nothingness is an equilibrium, we have two more cases: The equilibrium is stable, or the equilibrium is not stable.
-To figure out which of these is the correct case, we see what happens if we take a small deviation away from nothing. If nothingness is stable, then a system that is close to nothing but not quite nothing will tend towards nothingness. If it is unstable, then a state that is close to nothing but not quite nothing will tend away from nothingness.
-So consider a small deviation away from nothingness. The only way to do this is to have a little something. But with a little something, you have spacetime for that something to exist in. Then quantum effects ensure that you keep having something, and spontaneous matter-antimatter creation-anihilation lead towards more something (you very occasionally get a proton-electron pair instead of a positron electron pair. The proton then very slowly decays into a positron). In other words, a small deviation from nothing results in a system that tends away from nothing, so nothingness is unstable.
Simply put, there is something rather than nothing because somethingness is a more stable state than nothingness.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
nothing has no properties, since it is the absence of anything........ And can therefore not become unstable.....
Love the badge. Saved me all that time I would have wasted reading this thread.
Then again, is there ever "nothing"? The Bible says God had raw materials to work with.
Or is this a variation of the category error which leads to "Evil is the absence of good (aka "God"
".
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Then since God created us in his own image, how exactly does a human exist without the universe in a 'timeless intention'?
It's special pleading - "Nothing exists outside of time...except the deity I happen to like and worship. He can do anything 'cos he's MAGIC".
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Uhh... Wha? Even if this is true (and I'm not saying it is), it is a total non-sequitor.
Me: Somethingness (as in, a state which contains something) is a more stable state than nothingness (as in, a state which contains nothing)
You: Nothing has no properties...
But I didn't assign any properties to nothing. I assigned properties to a state which contains nothing. This clearly can be done. For example, the empty set (literally a set containing nothing) has the property of finiteness.
Also, your "become" should probably be replaced with "be." I'm not talking about states becoming unstable at some later time (remember, there's no time in nothingness), I'm talking about them being unstable as a characteristic independent of time.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.