Henry And The Cosmos

[themonkeyman]

Henry,

 

You must understand that although we cannot rule out a theory of a God creating the Universe we cannot prove it.  However the question people are asking is why do you think a God created the Universe?  In other words (Which God do you think did it and can you prove said God exists)

 

As I said we cannot rule out a Creator God however if your head is jumping to Yahweh / Jesus then your view of the heavens and the earth is being looked at from a modern perspective and not the actual Hebrew perspective.

 

Heres an example

 

Example 1:

 

Heb ::

God destroyed the tower of Babel because he seen them as a threat!

 

Now ::

God destroyed the tower of Babel because people wanted to be like God?

 

Reasoning:

Because we all know that god does not exist above the Clouds anymore so we had to adjust the scripture to fit.  However it does not detract from us knowing that people would have eventually died building the tower of babel from oxygen starvation!  So where is the threat to God if he is outside of the Universe?

 

Example 2:

 

Heb ::

God could not stand up and fight against Chariots of Iron

 

Now ::

God probably wanted his people to fight and he would be ‘With them’ in Spirit.

 

Reasoning:

Because God supposedly created the entire world and everything in it so is God weaker than his own creation?  So we needed to adjust the statement to make it that God is more powerful or that God chose not to fight!

 

Example 3:

 

Gk:

Jesus healed people as they were brought to him.

 

Now:

Jesus only healed people with faith!

 

Biggest question: Why did he only heal in a local setting and not a Global One?  E.g. why did he only heal one person at a time?  It makes me think sometimes there may have been stooges!

 

Reasoning:

Because as we read Jesus was rejected in Nazereth and no bloody wonder they probably seen his magic tricks that the brought with him from Egypt!  And knew not to fall for it,  Surely a God among people in Nazereth would be proof enough.  So we needed to change the phrase to show that Only those with Faith could Jesus heal.  However this falls foul to ‘Does Jesus Magic only work on Faith’ E.g. If you believe enough it will happen.

 

See what has happened is that as science has advanced Christians have come up with new ways to adapt to the new information.

 

If you listen to any Christian preach they will never base their teaching directly upon Scripture but on later theological ideas sprinkled with Scripture to make them sound like they are scripture.  And why is this?  Well because they would have to preach that their God is evil / small and cannot stand up against Iron?  They would also need to explain why God did not just give his people Rifles and Shot Guns in their crusades.

 

Bonding Ignorance with Knowledge.

 

We know from the writings of Celsus that Christianity in its early days recruited the poor and women, and why was this?  Because these people were the most ignorant and fell foul to tricks easily.

 

So as time when on mothers gave birth to Children whom they taught the ‘Good News’  these children then went onto be Philosophers who seen contradictions and problems with what they were originally taught so developed new ideas to fix the poor ideas.

 

Then as we know when you have a Philosopher on your side your religion becomes stronger and stronger because they can edit scripture and stories in the face of Criticism.

 

Celsus also says: They change their scripture so frequently as if they were on a drinking binge and also in the face of Criticism!

 

Further:

 

I believe Matthew / Mark / Luke to be the exact same story just written down by scribes in each city in which the story was told.

 

We could see this if we take the Virgin Birth

 

Kings = Romans | Wise Men = Greeks / Egyptians | Shepherds = Jerusalem

 

So the argument is not made that the stories contradict one another directly but its proof that they openly changed things as they went along to suit the people and to trick them!

 

The fact that we know there are over 300,000 variances in Scripture in the NT Alone shows that there has been tampering and I would say the reason we cannot find a ‘First Copy’ is because it would then show the significant alterations against later copies.  And even if it does not – The story was transmitted orally so if you have ever played Chinese whispers all it takes is for one person with an active imagination and suddenly the story changes from Boring to a Miracle.

 

Lastly

 

When you gaze up at the Universe just think when the LHC was turned on an created the effect of the Big Bang it essentially created a Universe capable of sustaining life!  So if we can create an entire Universe with a 23 mile loop and some lasers it doesen't give God much hope for being a Genuis lol.

 

How do we know we are not the by product of an even greater existance and we are in essence inside a laboratory.

 

When the LHC created its big bang we created a Universe from Nothing because before we switched on the LHC the Universe that we went on to create did not exist.  Therefore how do you know that the closest we will get to our own existance is the energy that spawned us but not before it as you cannot evaluate nothing!

 

 

 

Anyone else agree with this?

[Bhim]

Hi Henry.  Since you're still around and since others have expressed interest, I'd like to respond to your comments in the other thread.  Your statement was as follows:

 

I still am an agnostic, but I cannot help ask can those hoards of stars, galaxies and possibly even universes come into existence without a Creator. I have heard for example the argument that there needs to be a creator for God too if something can only come into existence with a creator, but that means nothing to me. It is an empty defense. Do you have any good reason why the universe wasn't created by a God?

 

Now, the most obvious response might be, "the burden of proof is on you (Henry) to prove that God exists, it is not incumbent upon me to prove an extraordinary claim such as this."  However, I interpret this statement to mean that you believe in the existence of some creator deity and invite us to disprove your claim.  So in this context the burden is, almost by definition, on the atheist to prove his claim.  While I don't personally identify as an atheist nor believe that this is a particularly virtuous position, I do thus far see no evidence for any creator deity and do concede that atheism is the most logical intellectual position of the available options, so let me go ahead and try to sway you.

 

You specifically mentioned astronomy, which as you know is my field of expertise.  So let me procede along these lines and tell you what science does and does not tell us.  If you've paid attention to BAA's posts on science (you really should since he's a great science communicator), you problably know a bit about inflationary cosmology.  Cosmology posits that the universe originates from the Big Bang.  Inflation, which refers to the very rapid expansion of the universe in its first few moments of existence, explains how the large scale structure of the universe can come from nothing.  In particular, the universe is assymetric: there's more matter than antimatter, stars come in galaxies rather than existing in a homogenous soup of matter, etc.  In his seminal paper, "Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems," cosmologist Alan Guth outlines the problems and his proposed solution.  The abstract is very readable, check it out:

 

The standard model of hot big-bang cosmology requires initial conditions which are problematic in two ways: (1) The early universe is assumed to be highly homogeneous, in spite of the fact that separated regions were causally disconnected (horizon problem); and (2) the initial value of the Hubble constant must be fine tuned to extraordinary accuracy to produce a universe as flat (i.e., near critical mass density) as the one we see today (flatness problem). These problems would disappear if, in its early history, the universe supercooled to temperatures 28 or more orders of magnitude below the critical temperature for some phase transition. A huge expansion factor would then result from a period of exponential growth, and the entropy of the universe would be multiplied by a huge factor when the latent heat is released. Such a scenario is completely natural in the context of grand unified models of elementary-particle interactions. In such models, the supercooling is also relevant to the problem of monopole suppression. Unfortunately, the scenario seems to lead to some unacceptable consequences, so modifications must be sought.

 

Let me put this in English.  Physicists like symmetry, and so we say that in the early universe everything had to be homogeneous.  However this is problematic because different parts of the early universe would have been causally disconnected, i.e. light from one area could never get to another area, since the universe would expand so fast that the light would never reach that other area.  So how does one part of the universe "know" information about another part?  This in essence is the horizon problem; it would appear that some creator God had to at least set the initial conditions of the universe to cause it to be homogeneous (if you believe, as we physicists do, that the universe must necessarily begin in a homogeneous state).  The flatness problem refers to the fact that the spacetime of the universe, overall, is flat.  As you may know, gravity curves space around massive objects such as the earth, the sun, and black holes.  But in order to make the universe flat, you have to fine-tune the Hubble parameter, almost as though some creator God did this of his own volition.

 

By invoking the idea that the universe expanded rapidly in its first few moments of existence, it turns out you can solve these two problems.  Similar solutions have been proposed to explain how protons and neutrons arise (baryogenesis) and how electrons came to be (leptogenesis).  We can also explain where all the antimatter in the universe went.  We can even explain why there are four forces in nature by creating theories in which the forces are unified at sufficiently high energies.  Basically what we can do is reduce the number of assumptions we have to make about the initial state of the universe, and explain how we can still have such a diverse universe as we do.  We no longer have to believe that the universe was finely tuned or set up in a homogeneous state by an external creator.  We don't have to believe that the zoo of fundamental particles was specially created in all its diversity.  So if there is a creator, he's left with very little work to do.

 

That said, I know of no explanation as to why the fundamental laws which evolve the universe from its initial, simple state into our current world exist in the first place.  Maybe we'll come up with an explanation for this too; it's very possible given how far we've come in the last century.  But as yet, no we cannot rule out the possibility that a creator God exists.

 

That said, this isn't really what you asked, is it?  You asked me if I have a good reason to suggest that there is no creator God.  Well, I think the above scientific accomplishments provide that reason.  In the past century we've gone from not having a better explanation for our existence than a creator God to ruling out many of the deeds that we would otherwise attribute to him.  We have been able to make a plausible case for "a universe from nothing" (as Dr. Lawrence Krauss would put it).  So while I can't rule out deism as an option, I can present a competing theory, with the promise that the evidence for my case is ever expanding, while the case for deism has not had much bolstering as of late.  Given this, I think you should strongly consider the possibility that there is no creator God.

 

One thing I will say is that while we can always push the bounds of our knowledge further, I can never get away from this idea that the universe requires a "substratum" for its existence, a canvas if you will.  My religion of Hinduism provides for this philosophy because it portrays God as part of the creation.  In that sense you can never get away from God no matter what you explain.  I'm not going so far as to commend my religion to you, but it's an idea to consider if you're still attached to God.

 

It goes without saying, of course, that there is a compelling reason to utterly reject Christianity and Jesus, no matter what else you believe.  Judaism provides excellent rebuttals to the messiahship of Jesus.  The New Testament is a historical mess, and Jesus is an immoral teacher since he introduced the world to the doctrine of eternal hell.  So whatever you conclude, I believe you can safely stay away from the Christian alternative.

[FreeThinkerNZ]

Gosh, it's good to have an astrophysicist in da house.

[Orbit]

Hinduism is like pantheism in that regard, Human. The Brahman is part of all creation, not separate from it.