Good point. Semantics break down. The is no "before, the big bang.
You would know.
I’m an expert on dipshits, having read your posts in some detail. 
Hawking, at least in the linked article, isn’t talking about the origins of the universe. He’s talking about the concept of life after death. So Kirk does not actually score a point, because he’s not addressing the question under debate.
Also, simply offering an idea is not valuable in and of itself, unless you can provide evidence for the idea. Cameron does not have any evidence that God created the universe (well, he *thinks *he does, but that’s a different pit rant). I, also, do not have any evidence for what created the universe, which is why I’m not offering an opinion on what created the universe. Keeping your mouth shut when you don’t know anything is a virtue, not a vice.
This is wrong on so many levels. The first one is that it’s a pure tautology. If you define “God” as “the origin of the universe,” and the only evidence that you have for his existence is that there this universe lying about, then you haven’t explained anything. You’ve merely observed that the universe must have a start point, and arbitrarily assigned the label “God” to this point. Second, while creating a universe is a pretty neat trick, it’s far from evidence of omnipotence. The universe is made up of hundreds of rules that appear to be inviolate: we call these rules “physics.” Nothing in the universe can violate these laws - in fact, it is the constraints of these laws that cause the universe to have the form that it does. If, as you suggest, we define God as “the originator of the universe,” all the evidence we have at hand indicates that these laws bind God as much as they bind his creation - which means he is not, in fact, omnipotent, just very, very powerful. Lastly, Cameron is not defining God as “the origin of the universe.” He’s defining God as the God of the Isrealites, father of Jesus Christ, direct revelator of the Holy Bible, and the guy who invented the banana. You can’t separate out one aspect of his claim, ignore everything else about it, and say that it’s a good argument. The whole thing comes as a package - either the universe was created in six days by a large bearded man who lives on a cloud, or Cameron is full of shit.
I could be mistaken, but I strongly suspect that Hawking has, indeed, addressed the question of what instigated the Big Bang, and what existed before that point. His thoughts on that question aren’t included in this article, because (as noted earlier) this article isn’t about what Stephen Hawking thinks happened before the Big Bang. It’s about what Stephen Hawking thinks happens after you die.
Neither does making up shit without evidence. In fact, it tends to get you farther away from the correct answer, because you tend to look only for evidence that supports your preconceptions, and ignore evidence that contradicts it.
This is interesting, because you’ve managed to make a statement that is inaccurate by both Hawking’s standards, and Cameron’s standards.
Cameron would disagree vehemently that the universe contains all things. His definition of God revolves on the concept that God is not of or within the universe. He exists outside of it entirely.
Hawking would disagree that the universe contains all possibilities. For one thing, there are a huge number of things that are flatly impossible under the laws of physics as we understand them. The speed of light being a hard limit is just one of them. Further, there are things that, while technically possible, are so statistically remote that they will never, under any circumstances, come to pass, even in an infinite universe.
Your statement also fails as a synthesis of these two arguments. Hawking views the creation of the universe as a function of the universe itself. Cameron views the creation of the universe as an act of will by a being that exists outside of the universe. No amount of label switching will ever force these two views into congruence. The universal origin that Cameron believes in is fundamentally different from the universal origin that Hawking theorizes.
Nonsense. The fundamentalist Christian response faces exactly the same problem you ascribe to the Big Bang theory: the creation of nothing out of nothing. If an omnipotent creator deity creating himself out of nothing is a satisfactory answer to the question of the origin of the universe, then the Big Bang exploding out of nothingness is an equally valid answer. If the Big Bang’s self creation is an insufficient answer, then the creator deity’s self creation as an act of will is equally insufficient.
Regardless of that, science doesn’t claim that the Big Bang exploded out of nothing, it simply says that we have no idea what existed before the Big Bang, because as near as we can tell, everything in this universe was created in that explosion. What existed before that is not currently knowable, but that’s not the same as saying that there was nothing before that.
Cameron, in positing a deity with no particular evidence to favor that deity, is really only offering a placeholder. Hawking is offering no placeholder.
Hawking could offer a placeholder, and call the placeholder “God,” with the understanding that observation and hypothesizing would continue, and the placeholder would need to give way before more refined knowns. But he declines to do that, because of the trap inherent in doing so.
The trap is the one that Cameron falls into: Offering up the placeholder, and saying “That’s the answer. No need to look further.”
Gen 1 says there was day and night before god created the sun. And there were plants before there was a sun. This is “eerily similar to the scientific explanation” for you?
BTW god also seems to believe the moon only shows up at night, which is a tad forgetful of him.
Others include parking and great seating at concerts.
Do you truly believe that making up an answer for which there is no evidence at all is better than saying “I don’t know yet.”??
When an answer is the answer you can give to every question, it’s not really an answer.
And you are engaging in extreme vanity to claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster wasn’t responsible for the event. May his noodly appendage touch your mind soon, lest ye be drawn into the fiery hells of the wok.
It’s not “vain” to decline a theory for which no evidence has ever been given. If I were to tell you “I exhumed your dead grandmother and raped her corpse”, would you believe me? Would you think it reasonable that I claim that you’re “vain” for saying “I don’t believe you”? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. You’re shifting the burden of proof unreasonably.
Can you provide a single scrap of sound evidence (logical or empirical, preferably the latter) that points to god (or better yet, your god) as the responsible party for the event?
“I don’t know” is better than “false explanations X Y and Z”.
Look, this is the disconnect we have here. Scientists fill their “holes” (i.e. the gaps in their knowledge) with “I don’t know”. It’s an honest answer, and it’s easy to replace when we figure the problem out. I don’t know is an honest placeholder for when we find a good answer.
The religious fill their holes with “God did it”. It’s not an honest answer, it’s not easy to replace when we do figure the problem out (see also: creationism vs. evolution; that debate should’ve ended back in the early 1900s but it’s still raging on!). God did it is not a placeholder; it’s a dishonest answer that will not go away when we find the right answer.
OK. Kirk’s explanation offers an answer. But tell me this… Say you’re walking with your girlfriend, and she suddenly disappears, would you accept “FSM did it” as an answer, because it’s better than “we don’t know”? No, of course not! It’s a false answer! It’s effectively worthless! It also gives you no help towards, say, doing something about it.
Omnipotence does not mean “able to create the universe”. It means all-powerful. As in, can do/create anything. (Omnipotence is, by the way, self-contradictory and logically impossible)
The idea of a “first cause” is interesting, but AFAIK it’s been refuted by modern astrophysics as a logical necessity.
No, no he doesn’t.
First two. And no, science does not require an omnipotent creator.
Plus, let’s not forget this: time is believed to effectively not exist before the big bang. Without time, causality kind of falls apart.
I do not have a source at the moment (couldn’t find it) but I’m fairly sure that recent research has established that a first cause actually was not necessary.
Of course. Because, you know, making up an answer is at least providing an answer. And that’s why Cameron is one up on Hawking.
Seriously, I’ve never understood why the people of this board even bother to engage this idiot.
I assumed he, you know, wasn’t quite as stupid as he seemed.
Might wanna rename this thread to “Everyone else schools Scylla in science”. :V
Good luck with that. When it comes to defending the idiotic religious right, Scylla is as receptive to “schooling” as a Klansman is to Affirmative Action. No argument is to stoopid or incomprehensible when defending GOP/Godbotherer/Anti-Librul “values.”
My favorite Scylla argument:
Remember a few years back when Bush groped German Chancellor Angela Merkel, totally creeping her out? Well, according to Scylla, that was a brilliant geopolitcal move demonstrating America’s dominance over the European Union… or some shit.
He’s a fucking idiot.
How does this support the existence of a god? It sounds like you are proposing a “god of the gaps” wherein everything we know is science, and everything we don’t know must therefore be god. That is the antithesis of logic and the scientific method, but hey, whatever gets you through the night. Just don’t expect the rest of us to buy into it.
If you simplify the explanation down to this level, then it’s not that hard to be ‘eerily similar’ when you’re essentially just making a 50/50 guess as to whether the universe has always existed or not.
Geeezzzz!!! This foolishness is still getting debated?
Originally Posted by Scylla
Okay let’s go back to a time when science didn’t have an answer and now does.
The work of Kepler, Newton, Cavendish, et al permitted scientists to determine the mass of the Sun. Scientists then went on to speculate about what fuel it used to produce that energy (assuming the Sun had an adequate oxygen supply). No matter what fuel was chosen, the Sun could not possibly have burned for as long as it did.
The scientists’ answer - we don’t know what fuel the Sun is using.
The Kirk Cameron answer? God did it.
That isn’t the way science works. Eventually, it was found that the Sun’s energy is produced by hydrogen atoms fusing into helium.
So, we had a Kirk Cameron answer that is now definitely shown to be wrong.
So, no points for Kirk whatsoever just for having an answer.
Hey, I’m new here. 
Does sound like an… interesting character. You’d think some form of intelligence would’ve rubbed off on him if he’s been here for more than 5 years, though…
Yes. And now add the problem that “god did it” has that “I don’t know” doesn’t: when we actually do learn the facts, they will be ignored by those who have gotten “god did it” into their head. Again, refer to evolution/creationism “debate”.
God always was. Our human minds will never be able to understand this though.
Logical reasoning or physical evidence or GTFO.
Nice.