Swift refutation of God as "Creator of Universe"?

[blowero]

@Snakespirit

Then it’s also a swift refutation of the creation of the Universe by the Big Bang.

No need to refute it. The universe wasn’t created by the big bang. The big bang marks the beginning of time, but not the cause. It would be like saying the alphabet was created by “A”.

[ex_animo]

@blowero

The big bang marks the beginning of time, but not the cause.

There was no beginning of time, that’s the whole point.

[blowero]

@ex animo

There was no beginning of time, that’s the whole point.

For our universe - but you can’t extend that to say that time or time-like properties are impossible in another universe(s). You can say there’s no evidence for it, but you can’t say it’s DISproven.

[ex_animo]

@blowero

For our universe - but you can’t extend that to say that time or time-like properties are impossible in another universe(s). You can say there’s no evidence for it, but you can’t say it’s DISproven.

I don’t mean to be pedantic, but with all due respect, please check the definitions and posts from this thread. When the Universe is “everything”, basically – the sum of space-time, then there can be no other universes. There cannot be something [matter] outside of everything.

[Aldebaran]

[Apologies to the OP… One more post in this thread-hijacking]

@Voyager

The book that started the myth was called * The Warfare of Science with Theology* which tried (and failed) to proved that Christians were ignorant in the Middle Ages because they believed in the Flat Earth. This is one time where theology won.

This is no myth at all.

I said in my post:

Early Middle Ages + based on Christianity (in defense of what they believed was written in the Bible).

You only need to take a look at the cartography and picture yourself the reasoning beind this to understand why the earth had to be flat in their view.

I’m known for not providing links because I do not trust “websites”. Yet on this one - for sparing myself the effort to write it all out in this language - I can make an exception because the link I give you here gives not only very beautiful slides of charts but in addition an explanation on the authors and a trustworthy bibliography.

I’ll give you the link to a chart of Cosmas Indicopleustes of Alexandria, which links you to further information.

http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/202F.html

A few quotes:

Much of the tone of medieval European cartography and geography is reflected and exemplified by the work of Cosmas of Alexandria (later being conferred with the honorary surname of Indicopleustes, i.e., the “Indian - sailor”). During this time cartography was heavily “Christianized” as evidenced by the many religious themes and references incorporated in and even dominating many of the surviving maps from the Middle Ages. The rejecting of ‘classical’ geography and the impetus and rationale for this theocratic trend, while not originating with Cosmas, was synthesized and exaggerated in his works. Both philosophically and cartographically Cosmas’ ideas were strictly dictated by his literal interpretation of the Bible.

The Christian Topography contains references to nearly seventy authorities selected from among philosophers, historians, travellers, doctors of the Church, soldiers, and statesmen. Comas’ primary objective and motivation in writing the treatise was to discredit the “false and heathen doctrine of a spherical earth”. This he accomplishes with reprehensible religious zeal in the first book [chapter]. In order to disprove the pagan writers with such stature as Plato, Aristotle, Strabo, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Pytheas of Marseilles, Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, and many others, Cosmas used two very effective weapons: the words of God and “common sense”.
In subsequent Books (II-XII) he fulfills his secondary objective, that of revealing the “true doctrine” of the universe and the earth’s place in it, as defined by Cosmas’ interpretation of the Scriptures, confirmed by the Church Fathers (Book X) and even non-Christian sources (Book XII).

Using this biblical passage by the Apostle Paul (Hebrews IX:1-2) which declares that the first Tabernacle was a pattern of this world, for the first “had ordinances of divine service and a worldly sanctuary; for there was a tabernacle made; the first wherein was the candlestick and the table and the shewbread, which is called the Sanctuary”. Cosmas undertakes, with much else, to explain the symbolism of that Tabernacle in detail. In calling it worldly, Cosmas explained, St. Paul was indicating a sort of pattern of the world; the candlestick represents the luminaries of the heavens (sun, moon, stars); the table was an analogy to the earth itself and the shew-bread symbolized the fruits produced from the world. The same logic was applied by Cosmas in his conception of the shape of the world, for the Scripture said “thou shalt make the table in length two cubits and in breadth one cubit” (Exodus XXXVII:10). This indicated to Cosmas that the earth was flat and twice as long, from east to west, as it was broad. Moreover, the earth was suspended, as Job said (Job XXXVIII:38), on nothing, but was founded on God’s stability.

[/end hijack]
Salaam. A

[blowero]

@ex animo

I don’t mean to be pedantic, but with all due respect, please check the definitions and posts from this thread.

O.K., I think I see where you’re getting off track. We’re talking about whether the (or our) universe could have been created. It couldn’t have been created from within our universe, but that doesn’t prove it wasn’t somehow spawned from outside of our universe. It doesn’t have to be a god that did it; some physicists have suggested conditions which might lead to a universe being formed. We do not know what, if anything, exists outside of our universe, so we can’t make positive OR negative statements about it. YOU need to check the previous posts, especially Spiritus Mundi’s and Mangetout’s. You can’t just define the unknown away. As a practical matter, you can ignore that for which there is no evidence, but you can’t definitively state that nothing exists outside of our universe, nor can you state that our universe is “all there is”. I can define the Universe as my room, but that doesn’t prove that nothing exists outside of my room.

When the Universe is “everything”, basically – the sum of space-time, then there can be no other universes.

That’s simply not true. Multiple universes have been hypothesized. There’s no scientific reason that they can’t exist. Can you give us a valid, non-tautological reason for your statement that “there can be no other universes”?

There cannot be something [matter] outside of everything.

That’s circular reasoning. You define the universe as “everything”, then say there can be nothing outside of “everything”.

[FriendRob]

A couple of points:

The OP says:

Time cannot have a beginning because there cannot be a “time where there was no time”. Indeed, “when” is a time-dependant word. There can be a time where t=0, but there cannot be a beginning to time.

Think of the half-open interval [0,infinity). This is the subset of the real line that includes 0 and all the positive real numbers. I don’t see any problem in saying that this interval “begins at 0”. If I think of the interval as embedded in the real line (-infinity, infinity), then there is something “before” 0 (that is, the negative numbers), but even if I think of the interval on its own, with nothing to the “left”, then 0 is still the beginning of the interval. The same is true of the standard BB cosmology: time (and the universe) begins at t=0. So I don’t think the argument of the OP makes any sense.

When we bring physics into it, the argument falls apart completely. We have no reason to trust General Relativity for times less than the Planck time, 10^-43 seconds. So any argument based on a physical model of the universe before that time is a theological argument. You can say "I believe in the BB cosmology at t=0: if you like, but that statement has no more basis in science and logic than “I believe God created the universe at t=0.”

[Voyager]

@Aldebaran

[Apologies to the OP… One more post in this thread-hijacking]

This is no myth at all.

I said in my post:

Early Middle Ages + based on Christianity (in defense of what they believed was written in the Bible).

You only need to take a look at the cartography and picture yourself the reasoning beind this to understand why the earth had to be flat in their view.

Salaam. A

Pretty pictures. Thanks for the link. However, that a few clerics thought the earth was flat is not in dispute. I believe Gould mentioned one later than Cosmas. My claim is that the flat earth hypothesis was an extremely minority opinion among the educated. That Cosmas disputed a lightweight like Origen is evidence of this.

I agree that the pre-Greek Bible posited a flat earth, by the way. (Or just assumed it, rather.) The scholarly standards of that day meant that his appeal to his 70 authories does not mean much -especially some, like statesmen, would have no valid opinion anyway. I’d wonder about him quoting out of context for others, but I would be that the original sources have been lost.

I’d be more interested if the flat earth was taught in universities, and became a part of the “official” cosmology, and when it changed to a spherical earth, which it clearly did before 1300. They myth is not that there was no belief at all in the flat earth, but that it was a widely accepted and majority belief. The cultural myth about Columbus is that he bravely fought for a spherical earth against the flat earthers in Ferdinand and Isabella’s court who said that he would fall off. I assure you that when I was growing up this was the accepted view in popular culture.

I’d hate for someone in the year 3000 thinking a book by Art Bell represented majority scientific opinion today!

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Aldebaran

Did you ever ask an animal or a plant or a star what “time” is?

I once asked a cat what time it was, but he’d left his watch at home.

[Wake_up_call]

@Aldebaran

Like mangetout sais, the OP forgets that “time” is nothing but a way to describe a human perception of things.
Did you ever ask an animal or a plant or a star what “time” is?

It is not because humans claim that something “was always there” that their perception of this is the only perception possible because they are humans and have this idea.

I think you need to come with stronger evidence if you want to lecture that the universe was not created because in your idea “time is eternal”.
Salaam. A

Have you ever thought of applying the same principal to yourself?

Have you ever thought that your self-righteous and the “certainty” you have developed based on your chosen field of studies has merely perpetuated an inherent set of beliefs and perceptions that could have been totally WRONG at the first place.

Can we use your own quote to deduce that:

It is not because Aldebaran claims that “God was always there” that his perception is the only perception possible because he is simply a human and has this “idea”.

What if your perception was baseless and WRONG all the time, and you spent all these years of university studies in theology merely to strengthen your initial “perception” that was based on wrong premises? What a waste of time and life. It must be embarrassing now, after all these years of dedications, to admit that “everything I know and believe is WRONG”.

Maybe we should, at some point, start changing course based on the wrong assumptions and certainties we developed through decades of fairy tale indoctrination.

I don’t remember whose quote is this:

“Certainty is that state of ignorance which has yet to recognize itself”

[Clothahump]

@ex animo

Einstein’s Relativity showed that time was a component of the Universe. Or, more accurately, a coordinate on it. Simple premises, simple conclusion:

If something is said to have a “beginning”, then it means that there must have been a time where it did not exist. If there is no time or end when it did not exist, then it is eternal.
Time cannot have a beginning because there cannot be a “time where there was no time”. Indeed, “when” is a time-dependant word. There can be a time where t=0, but there cannot be a beginning to time.
That which does not have a beginning cannot have been created – it is eternal.
Time being eternal, and being a component of the Universe, it makes the universe eternal whether it has existed for a finite or an infinite period of time.
Therefore, the Universe was not created.

Thoughts, anyone?

Works for me.

It certainly makes more sense than anything else that’s been brought forth over the centuries that says God IS the creator.

[ex_animo]

@FriendRob

Think of the half-open interval [0,infinity). This is the subset of the real line that includes 0 and all the positive real numbers. I don’t see any problem in saying that this interval “begins at 0”. If I think of the interval as embedded in the real line (-infinity, infinity), then there is something “before” 0 (that is, the negative numbers), but even if I think of the interval on its own, with nothing to the “left”, then 0 is still the beginning of the interval. The same is true of the standard BB cosmology: time (and the universe) begins at t=0. So I don’t think the argument of the OP makes any sense.

I agree that we could say it “began” by saying the beginning was t=0, but when you consider it as I mention it, I find it hard to disprove. The argument is deductively valid, so for its conclusion to be false, one of the premises must fail. If so, which is it, and why? Those points again:

If something is said to have a “beginning”, then it means that there must have been a time where it did not exist. If there is no time or end when it did not exist, then it is eternal.
Time cannot have a beginning because there cannot be a “time where there was no time”.
That which does not have a beginning cannot have been created – it is eternal.
Time being eternal, and being a component of the Universe, it makes the universe eternal whether it has existed for a finite or an infinite period of time.
Therefore, the Universe was not created.

@FriendRob

When we bring physics into it, the argument falls apart completely. We have no reason to trust General Relativity for times less than the Planck time, 10^-43 seconds. So any argument based on a physical model of the universe before that time is a theological argument. You can say "I believe in the BB cosmology at t=0: if you like, but that statement has no more basis in science and logic than “I believe God created the universe at t=0.”

That’s actually a good point; don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that.

@Clothahump

Works for me.

It certainly makes more sense than anything else that’s been brought forth over the centuries that says God IS the creator.

I don’t think I necessarily agree, but there do seem to be a few potential problems with the argument; I’m not clear of them yet, but FriendRob seems to be making some sense.

[blowero]

I believe this is the premise that fails:

“That which does not have a beginning cannot have been created – it is eternal.”

“Beginning” and “ending” are concepts specific to our universe. All you are really saying is that our universe cannot have created itself, not according to the laws we have observed to be in effect in our universe. Time is simply a property of our universe; it does not transcend our universe. Therefore, you can’t use our time to make any statements regarding our universe with respect to the Meta-Universe, or everything-that-exists.

Our universe is, for want of a better word, timeless; it exists for all times and all places in our universe. IF our universe were created, its origin would NECESSARILY have to be in an outside realm, i.e. another universe, with it’s OWN time. The way I understand physics, there could be no temporal connection between our time and time in another universe. We currently have no way to test whether other universes exist, or whether one universe can spawn another universe. But I haven’t seen any proof here that it’s impossible. It’s illogical to take the observed properties of our self-contained universe, and use those properties to make pronouncements about what is or isn’t possible in other universes.

[SentientMeat]

I personally think that this universe vs. multiverse point is actually just linguistic clumsiness, which I am partly reponsible for since I used it in my other thread.

Universe: Literally “Combined Whole”. This should mean EVERYTHING which physically exists, not just the 3-D space and 1-D time region (or “3-brane”) we happen to occupy. So instead of talking about “our universe in the multiverse” I suggest that the convention might become “our 3-brane region of the universe”.

In this way, one might say that “our universe” was “caused” by some state or even “outside” it, and the multiverse is causeless. However, I would suggest that a more accurate way to say this was “our region of the universe is connected to other regions of the whole. The universe itself exists over all dimensions, and has no cause or Creator.”

[II_Gyan_II]

@blowero

nor can you state that our universe is “all there is”.

I think you’re interpreting the particular use of the term universe here, narrowly. The poster is not defining universe as “all there is”, rather “all there is” as universe. Our observed universe could be the whole or just a component.

[Aldebaran]

@Wake up call

Have you ever thought that your self-righteous and the “certainty” you have developed based on your chosen field of studies has merely perpetuated an inherent set of beliefs and perceptions that could have been totally WRONG at the first place.

1. I don’t see any “self righteous” coming from me.
2. My religion has nothing to do with the choice of my studyfield and the way I approach that studyfield. In fact: My original first enrollment at the univ was to study medicine. I discovered very quickly however that was not something for me, so I changed in the second semester and actually choosed Arabic and Islamic studies because that was (for me) the most easy to switch to in the middle of a year with exams already approaching. Looking back afterwords that was a lucky choice because I was always fascinated by history, already as a child. So I went further on that studyfield and kept Islam and Islamic studies included.
3. Of course I can be wrong.

Can we use your own quote to deduce that:
It is not because Aldebaran claims that “God was always there” that his perception is the only perception possible because he is simply a human and has this “idea”.

Where do I say you can not do this?

What if your perception was baseless and WRONG all the time, and you spent all these years of university studies in theology merely to strengthen your initial “perception” that was based on wrong premises?

What if I studied what I studied out of interest which became fascination?

What a waste of time and life. It must be embarrassing now, after all these years of dedications, to admit that “everything I know and believe is WRONG”.

Well, what a waste of bandwith I should say at this point
Tell me, why should an academic study on no matter which issue be “a waste of time” and even “a waste of life” and become “embarassing” ever?

Maybe we should, at some point, start changing course based on the wrong assumptions and certainties we developed through decades of fairy tale indoctrination.

Yes. Maybe you could do that indeed.

“Certainty is that state of ignorance which has yet to recognize itself”

Which - even if you don’t know where it comes from, and I am much too lazy to look that up for you - you could now apply at yourself.
Salaam. A

[Dob]

I do love these discussions, but just when I think I have a good grasp on something, I read the next post…and I lose it all…
One thing about this always gets me;

big bang = t=0, or the point in the “life” of our universe when time began. but without time, or for lack of better terminology, moving forward, why would we even have a big bang? I would think in a timeless void, nothing happens…ever.
So what changed? Well what could change, without time? Time is a progression, point a to b, or b to a, how did nothing progress to something without time?? arggghh…I just cant wrap my head around this one…

And yes, I understand the futility of wondering “before” BB, if BB caused everything, then there is no before. And if there was a “before”, we will never know what it was anyway, so stop thinking about it…but I cant! lol

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Dob

I do love these discussions, but just when I think I have a good grasp on something, I read the next post…and I lose it all…
One thing about this always gets me;

big bang = t=0, or the point in the “life” of our universe when time began. but without time, or for lack of better terminology, moving forward, why would we even have a big bang? I would think in a timeless void, nothing happens…ever.
So what changed? Well what could change, without time? Time is a progression, point a to b, or b to a, how did nothing progress to something without time?? arggghh…I just cant wrap my head around this one…

And yes, I understand the futility of wondering “before” BB, if BB caused everything, then there is no before. And if there was a “before”, we will never know what it was anyway, so stop thinking about it…but I cant! lol

I share your frustration in this. I can never get my head around it either, but as a feeble attempt to answer your main question, I understand that there is currently speculation that the BB was caused by a random fluxuation in the quantum field. Now having said that, I must confess that I haven’t a clue what the quantum field is nor do I have the foggiest notion what what a random fluxuation is. That is simply the phraseology that I have seen and I guess it makes sense to physicists or something.

[blowero]

@II Gyan II

I think you’re interpreting the particular use of the term universe here, narrowly. The poster is not defining universe as “all there is”, rather “all there is” as universe. Our observed universe could be the whole or just a component.

I disagree. The OP made this argument:
“Time being eternal, and being a component of the Universe, it makes the universe eternal whether it has existed for a finite or an infinite period of time.”

To avoid confusion, I’m using the word “multiverse” to refer to “all there is”, and the word “universe” to refer to OUR universe (what we can observe).

Time is a component of the universe, but we know from relativity theory that time is contained within the universe. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that time is a component of the multiverse (And if Universe with a capital “U” is supposed to be the same as multiverse, then the OPs statement is incorrect). The multiverse may have its own time; we don’t know. But it clearly does not share our time, since our time is undefined outside of the (our) universe. Clearly, the OP is either referring to the (our) universe, OR is conflating the universe with the multiverse.

You can’t change that fact simply by being sloppy with your definitions.

“Time” as we define it, is not a component of the multiverse, or captital U Universe, or whatever you want to call it. It is a component of the small-u universe, or “our” universe, or “our 3-brane region”.

[blowero]

@SentientMeat

However, I would suggest that a more accurate way to say this was “our region of the universe is connected to other regions of the whole. The universe itself exists over all dimensions, and has no cause or Creator.”

But isn’t that simply a truism? Is the whole point of this thread just to say that whatever all-inclusive reality there is, was not created or caused? That’s no different than saying “an ultimate cause exists”. It doesn’t get us anywhere.

I don’t believe that a god created the universe, but isn’t there a theory now that the big bang was due to a quantum fluctuation? We can call that a “cause”, can we not? But it’s not a cause that is in any way connected to the time-space continuum that we observe, since the time that we observe becomes meaningless at t=0. So are we dismissing this theory out-of-hand, or are we admitting that our universe might have been caused? It seems to me that this thread is mistakenly attempting to take a component of the observable universe (time) and apply it outside of the observable universe, in order to make negative statements, either “The multiverse was not caused.”, or “The universe was not caused.” I don’t think we can definitively say either.