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Science Proves That There Is A Deist God Or A Spontaneous Universe


SerenelyBlue

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There is no knowledge of what happened prior to the big bang. I say prior to the big bang even though I know that there was no time in this universe prior to the big bang.

There might have been time in another universe where this one originated.

Science shows that this universe ocurred by logical scientific processes. No need for a god. Only room for him to be the first cause. Or some spontaneous initial process like in a multiverse.

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You need to be a bit more careful with what you say, SerenelyBlue.

 

When it comes to the sciences, only math deals with proofs.

Other sciences like physics, chemistry or cosmology cannot and do not deal with proofs.  They offer logically coherent explanations (theories) , according to the available evidence.  These explanations are not final and not absolute - like a proof.  For example, when it comes to the scientific explanation of gravity, Newton's explanation is not final.  It works very well, most of the time, but not all of the time.  It couldn't account for the way the planet Mercury precessed in it's orbit around the Sun.

 

http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node98.html

 

Einstein's explanation of gravity (General Relativity) could explain why Mercury moved in the way it did.

It is a better explanation than Newton's, but even then, it is not final and absolute and therefore isn't a proof.  Also, it's expected that just as Newton's work was found to be an incomplete explanation of gravity, so will Einstein's.  Eventually a new and better explanation of how gravity works will be formulated.  But even then, that explanation will not be a proof either.  For the very reasons I've described.   

 

So, do you see how it works now, SL?

In math, we can prove certain things, but in other branches of science we cannot.  Therefore, it's not correct to say that, "Science proves that..." unless we are talking math.  

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

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Nevermind semantics. What I'm saying is that the universe originated in such a way that excludes a god. But we do not know what happened before the big bang.

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What happened to this place? It used to be much busier in here.

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It's Sunday morning.  Everyone must be at church.

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BAA - that would be why evolution is not considered a scientific law? Biology cannot have a mathematical formula to explain it hence cannot become law?

 

Just thinking that there is the law of gravity, the law of thermodynamics etc which are considered pretty solid.

 

It's rather funny - the religious are fairly keen on telling you what science cannot prove, and then you have to explain to them that sciences doesn't generally do 100% proofs. Now prove God.

 

The best I've been able to come up with is a deist God, a first mover. But this is not because of any evidence pointing to such a being, which in itself raises even more complex questions, but our own lack of understanding of the first cause of the universe. A deist god is still kinda god of the gaps.

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Science shows that there could only have been a deist god and not a theist god. Because since the big bang rhe universe has pretty much made itself. That is my point.

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Science shows that there could only have been a deist god and not a theist god. Because since the big bang rhe universe has pretty much made itself. That is my point.

 

 

 

Scientific theories/explanations do not require or predict a god.  A hands-on god does becomes less necessary as science provides more theories/explanations.  This trend has been going on for centuries and is quite likely to continue.  

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BAA - that would be why evolution is not considered a scientific law? Biology cannot have a mathematical formula to explain it hence cannot become law?

 

Just thinking that there is the law of gravity, the law of thermodynamics etc which are considered pretty solid.

 

It's rather funny - the religious are fairly keen on telling you what science cannot prove, and then you have to explain to them that sciences doesn't generally do 100% proofs. Now prove God.

 

The best I've been able to come up with is a deist God, a first mover. But this is not because of any evidence pointing to such a being, which in itself raises even more complex questions, but our own lack of understanding of the first cause of the universe. A deist god is still kinda god of the gaps.

 

If you re-read my post LF, you'll see that I've made no reference to any scientific law.

That's because a scientific law, as defined here...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law   ...is different from a mathematical proof.  SerenelyBlue wrote that science proves that there is a deist god or a spontaneous universe.  I was simply advising him that his use of the word 'proof' was incorrect.  

 

You've actually hit the nail on the head when you mentioned our lack of understanding.

Since there's insufficient data about the origin of the universe, we're unable to say if there's such a thing as the "Law of Universe Creation".  But if you read the Wiki link, you'll see that there is sufficient data from repeated experiments and observations for us to use the terms Ohm's Law, Newton's Law, Hooke's Law, etc.  Thousands upon thousands of experiments have been performed over the centuries and it's their collective findings that are the foundation of these scientific laws. 

 

It's totally different when it comes to cosmology.

Due to the limits imposed on us by the speed of light, the observable universe...   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe  ...is all we have to go on.  Therefore our sample consists of just one example - this universe.  So it's impossible to perform any kind of repeated observations and compare different universes, to see if they are created in the same way.  In a nutshell, that explains why cosmologists don't speak about the Law of Universe Creation.  Scientific laws require repeated experiments and observations.  And this is more or less why SerenelyBlue shouldn't use the word, 'proof'.  We understand too little to be able to say that science proves X, Y or Z about the origin of the universe.

 

Evolution and biology aren't subjects I know much about LF, so if you want an informed opinion about scientific laws in those branches of the sciences, please ask the Redneck Professor.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA. 

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My apologies BAA, my post was very poorly worded. I was coming from a somewhat off topic thought and throwing it at you.

 

My question arose from the line "When it comes to the sciences, only math deals with proofs" and it seems I have incorrectly equated scientific law with mathematical proof, hence my first question regarding why certain sciences might not have/be laws. (So my line of reasoning that because you can't have a mathematical formula for evolution then that is the reason it's not a law. I need to do more research on this - obviously I have a bit of a fog of war area in my knowledge smile.png )

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My apologies BAA, my post was very poorly worded. I was coming from a somewhat off topic thought and throwing it at you.

 

My question arose from the line "When it comes to the sciences, only math deals with proofs" and it seems I have incorrectly equated scientific law with mathematical proof, hence my first question regarding why certain sciences might not have/be laws. (So my line of reasoning that because you can't have a mathematical formula for evolution then that is the reason it's not a law. I need to do more research on this - obviously I have a bit of a fog of war area in my knowledge smile.png )

 

 

 

Many scientific laws are described with formulas with mathematical components, i.e., the inverse square law as it applies to gravitational influence depending on the distance between masses.

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OK...there seem to be a few misconceptions here. Fortunately BAA has clarified all of them with his usual thoroughness. If I may make a few additional, hopefully helpful points:

 

 - Basing any religious doctrine or even rejection of religious doctrine on scientific discovery is generally tenuous because, as BAA correctly states, scientific discoveries are often superseded by more generally-applicable scientific discoveries. Newtonian and Einsteinian gravitational theory is a great example of this. Right now it seems that modern cosmology rules out a god of the 'prime mover' category. However, future discoveries could change this.

 

 - The non-mathematical nature of evolution isn't strictly relevant here. Because biology deals with more complex processes than physics, it's generally far more difficult to communicate biological principles mathematically. But from an epistemological standpoint, there's no reason that principles of evolution can't be formulated mathematically. The problem with creating a mathematical formalism for evolution is practical, not theoretical. But ultimately the theory of evolution is built on observation and inference, just like the theory of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics.

 

 - In grade school they teach you that a "theory" is a hypothesis that has been subjected to rigorous scientific testing, and a "law" is a theory which is so widely tested and observed that it is now considered axiomatic for all intents and purposes. Realistically, scientists sometimes throw these terms around a bit too carelessly, and I do wish this were not so. Ohm's law, for example, describes ideal resistors, and is often not true of real materials. The Law of Universal Gravitation would be a better example of a true "law," and even this law was ultimately superseded by the Einstein Field Equations.

 

I would be remiss not to point out that the Big Bang theory doesn't rule out the existence of a theistic or even personal god. It does pretty conclusively preclude the possibility of the Christian God being responsible for creating the universe, since the scientific chronology of the universe's creation doesn't align with the Bible's. But there are a lot of proposed deities out there, and it would be irresponsible of scientists to conclusively say that the Big Bang theory rules all of them out completely.

 

My advice: when studying science, follow the data where it leads, and abandon preconceived notions, including religiously imposed ones. If your conclusions allow you to preserve your idea of God, that's great. If not, then you must accept that your belief system may not align with reality.

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Right now it seems that modern cosmology rules out a god of the 'prime mover' category. However, future discoveries could change this.

Hey Bhim, I often find myself with questions after reading your posts. I hope it's not too much of a hassle.

 

I am very interested in what you say above. I have heard the same from others, but my training is not in modern cosmology.

 

Can you say more about why modern cosmology rules out a god of the "prime mover" type? There are some very hard-hitting apologists who maintain that science has nothing to say about the existence of God, and that Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics has not been superseded.

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Nevermind semantics. What I'm saying is that the universe originated in such a way that excludes a god. But we do not know what happened before the big bang.

 

Not only do we not know what happened before the Big Bang, we don't really know if there was a big bang that started the universe in light of Inflation Theory, multi-verse theory, etc..with many other recognized and unrecognized possibilities concerning a finite or infinite universe(s).

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Right now it seems that modern cosmology rules out a god of the 'prime mover' category. However, future discoveries could change this.

................................................................why modern cosmology rules out a god of the "prime mover" type? There are some very hard-hitting apologists who maintain that science has nothing to say about the existence of God, and that Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics has not been superseded.

 

 

Modern cosmology is a group of competing theories/ cosmologies which do not necessarily rule out god as a "prime-mover." Collectively they instead state that a god is not needed to explain the universe as we observe it. In a finite universe model like the Big Bang (BB) model, theory asserts that the "seed" which promotes change and time were within the beginning entity -- such as a singularity having the internal potential energy to change itself. Another BB version is that such a beginning entity sprang from a very high density, high temperature state, leaving the beginning form to be unstated, allowing the possibility of Inflation theory or other possibilities as being the beginning of an expanding universe.

 

Another possibility that some consider is that the beginning of the universe resulted from what has been called "quantum fluctuations" in a background field such as the so-called Zero Point Energy field. Others propose that our universe was the result of actions within, and caused by another universe concluding that there may be an infinite number of universes not necessarily similar to our own. Multiverse models are generally considered infinite models concerning time in that there would have been no ultimate beginning to them. To meet the definition of a theory, hypothesis must be falsifiable. Most consider multiverse theory as not being falsifiable.

 

The "god created it" versions of the universe could be considered either finite or infinite versions depending upon whether one considers god(s) as being a part of this universe or not, or part of a separate spiritual world. If a spiritual would is considered a part of this universe then the universe would be infinite, if not this universe would be finite and the spiritual world infinite. Many logical arguments against the necessity of an initial prime mover involves this question: if this universe required a cause for its existence then why wouldn't god need a cause for his existence? The usual theistic answer would be that the spiritual world is different. Accordingly God operates in accord with his own volition, not by known rules of any kind.

 

What many theorists and layman alike do not realize is that regardless of what model of the universe one chooses or believes in, the universe could not have had an ultimate cause if the definition of the universe includes everything in existence like this definitionThe Universe: "All existing matter, energy, time and space; all that is real, considered as a systematic dimensional whole held to arise and persist." This is because an infinite universe could not have had an initial cause by definition, and, if a finite universe had an external cause, then what was the cause of that entity-- and so on ad infinitum -- again resulting in an infinite regression of  time and an infinite universe having no beginning. If an finite universe had within it potential energy to begin with then no external prime mover would be needed. For such a universe, questions concerning where or when would have no meaning in that this place would be the only possible place, and that time itself would be solely defined by changes in such an all inclusive universe.

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Hey Bhim, I often find myself with questions after reading your posts. I hope it's not too much of a hassle.

 

I am very interested in what you say above. I have heard the same from others, but my training is not in modern cosmology.

 

Can you say more about why modern cosmology rules out a god of the "prime mover" type? There are some very hard-hitting apologists who maintain that science has nothing to say about the existence of God, and that Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics has not been superseded.

 

 

Hi F! No problem, It's always a pleasure to talk about this stuff.

 

The basic idea of the Big Bang leaves some open questions about how certain asymmetries can occur in the current universe. For example, if the universe began as an equally-mixed soup of primordial particles, then why did it not expand into an equally well-mixed gas of light elements, i.e. why are there structures such as galaxies? Also, we generally assume that any particle creation processes in the early universe would generate equal parts matter and antimatter, but why do we have an abundance of matter? And why does the cosmic microwave background - the relic from the epoch of recombination (the moment at +300,000 years when the universe cooled enough to become transparent to light) - appear slightly different in different directions? These suggest a fine tuner. However, Alan Guth's theory of inflation posits certain subatomic processes, which are fully consistent with known particle physics, which explain these asymmetries.

 

While this explanation omits a fine tuning prime mover, it doesn't by itself rule out an apathetic prime mover. To take care of this, Stephen Hawking proposes a mathematical trick, leveraging complex analysis in order to describe the early universe without a time variable (see the Hartle-Hawking model). You're probably aware that in general relativity (and quantum field theory), time can mathematically be treated as a spatial variable alongside the three dimensions of Euclidean geometry. Basically, in the very early universe that parameter can be eliminated, resulting in a point at which time itself disappears. At a philosophical level, this rules out a prime mover.

 

I suppose that strictly speaking, this claim is too strong. There is still space in this philosophical framework for a prime mover god. But that space is so small that such a god's role is minuscule to the point of irrelevance. Now, the theories I cite above are, to my knowledge, the most widely accepted among cosmologists. There are certainly a few skeptics, including no less than Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, who wrote my undergraduate textbook in cosmology and is widely respected in the field. But the two models I describe above seem to fully describe the creation of the universe and account for empirical observations, whilst negating the need for a prime mover.

 

I stress, however, that in a dynamic field such as cosmology, it would be foolhardy to base a religious belief or lack of religious belief on results that could be contradicted by new evidence. The Hartle-Hawking model isn't on such sound footing as general relativity or quantum mechanics (or evolution, if you prefer). Just as evangelical Christians who justify their belief in God via the Big Bang are contradicted by this model, a future model may likewise disaffirm the belief of those of us who are skeptical of prime mover gods. However, I believe it is a stretch to say that science has nothing to say about the existence of gods. Because the notion of a prime mover god is so general and requires minimal assumptions, it is exceedingly difficult to disprove such a supposition. However, I suspect that the apologists to whom you refer are evangelical Christians. They believe in a very specific god, and said belief requires us to assume the truth of a very large body of propositions. Such a deity's existence can be contradicted not by early cosmology, but by better understood processes such as nucleosynthesis, stellar evolution, and theories about the origin of the sun and earth. The sun was created before the earth, the stars were created before the sun, the sun and moon were not created simultaneously, etc.

 

I suspect that during your time as a Christian you were an old earth creationist; I certainly was. Even if we take such a liberal approach to the interpretation of the Bible and assume that the earth is not 6,000 years old, we must still reckon with the order of creation asserted by the first chapter of the Mosaic creation account. The order in which celestial objects are created simply doesn't agree with what modern astrophysics tells us. As such theories of our origins are unlikely to be contradicted by future scientific experiments, we can certainly rule out the existence of the God of Moses!

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Hello Bhim, many thanks for this reply. There is a lot to chew on here.

 

The apologists I have in mind are not Protestant evangelicals but conservative Catholics, Thomists, chief among whom are people like Brian Davies, Edward Feser (the latter not so much for his publications as his blog) ... So they have many dogmatic commitments but, I think, have more resources to draw from than do evangelicals, and more latitude with calling this or that biblical passage allegory or whatever. The latter factor, I think, would help them simply ignore the order of creation seen in Genesis 1-2. They can call it inspired myth without giving up anything that they need, as far as I can see.

 

Most of what you say above applies to something like the Kalam Cosmological Argument but not, as far as I can see, to Thomas' first three Ways.

 

The crux lies in the type of causal series that one envisions. What you say above applies to an "accidentally ordered causal series." That's a temporally ordered series of causes, in which only the proximate cause brings about effect E. Causes earlier in the series need not act on E. It's the kind of series we get in analogies like the window is broken by the ball that is hit by the bat that is swung by the child that is sired by the father ... etc back to the Big Bang. Most of the causes in the causal chain need not exist, need not act on the window, in order for the window to break now. 

 

You may already be thinking that on this model, the problem, "there cannot be an actual infinite" goes away. We may be able to envision an accidentally ordered series of causes going back into infinity, and it wouldn't amount to an actual infinite because most of them need not exist at the same time.

 

But Thomas' cosmological argument poses a "per se ordered series." That's a causal series in which the operation of all subordinate causes is impossible if the first cause does not operate. In other words, it's a series in which the first cause sustains all the other items in being and actualizes their causal power. An analogy would be the leaf pushed by the rock moved by the stick moved by the hand moved by the man, who is the first cause of this little subseries. If the man stops acting, the leaf stops being pushed by the rock. So the effect cannot exist if the first cause does not actualize the whole series.

 

Thomas is OK with an eternal universe from the philosophical point of view, though of course he holds that by revelation we know that God created the universe out of nothing. Thomas' cosmological argument holds that unless there is something that exists necessarily and that causes other things to exist, nothing would exist, because, given infinite time, a collection of contingent beings would at some point cease to exist. But contingents do exist. Therefore, something must exist necessarily and sustain the entire collection/universe. Put another way, anything that is potential must be brought into being by something that is actual. All things that are subject to change have some potentiality, so none of them can cause itself. The first cause must be pure act. And since everything in the universe is subject to change, and therefore, has potentiality, the cause of the universe must be outside the universe, as something that is purely actual. Its essence and its existence are identical, unlike everything else, which has an essence that comes into being.

 

What prompted my question is not so much the above argument but rather, the way that modern Thomists try to insulate it from attacks from scientific cosmologists. They insist that questions like, is there a God, or Why does anything exist, are metaphysical questions, not scientific questions. So they happily say, sure, Thomas' science was off, but his metaphysics is the best we have to account for why anything should exist. To bring conclusions from scientific theories into a metaphysical discussion is a category mistake, like bringing in plate tectonics when you're trying to isolate the Higgs-Boson (that's a simile someone actually proposed to me).

 

I have my opinions about all this. But if you have leisure and care to share thoughts about the intersection of science and metaphysics, I will profit from hearing them. I gather than some empiricist types of the last century just consigned metaphysics to the dustbin. The Thomist would reply that such dismissal is "scientism" and is self-refuting; that questions about the role of science get into metaphysics, which is the "first philosophy" (as Aristotle called it), the principles for any body of knowledge about things that exist. -----  Adding: there is something of a revival of metaphysics among analytic philosophers, now that logical positivism has been abandoned.

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...

I suspect that during your time as a Christian you were an old earth creationist; I certainly was. Even if we take such a liberal approach to the interpretation of the Bible and assume that the earth is not 6,000 years old, we must still reckon with the order of creation asserted by the first chapter of the Mosaic creation account. The order in which celestial objects are created simply doesn't agree with what modern astrophysics tells us. As such theories of our origins are unlikely to be contradicted by future scientific experiments, we can certainly rule out the existence of the God of Moses!

 

 

 

Logically, the only thing that can be tentatively ruled out is the specific order of creation as set forth in the Biblical account and nothing more.

 

But it is not your burden to demonstrate the Biblical claims are wrong.  That burden falls on Biblical believers to demonstrate the claims are true.

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I have my opinions about all this. But if you have leisure and care to share thoughts about the intersection of science and metaphysics, I will profit from hearing them. I gather than some empiricist types of the last century just consigned metaphysics to the dustbin. The Thomist would reply that such dismissal is "scientism" and is self-refuting; that questions about the role of science get into metaphysics, which is the "first philosophy" (as Aristotle called it), the principles for any body of knowledge about things that exist.

 

I also would benefit. I am getting a lot of "science has nothing to say about God" thrown at me, while at the same time it is being claimed that science like evolution, cosmology, geology etc is... wrong.

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Here is Edward Feser's presentation of the contemporary Thomist claim that science has nothing to say to/about metaphysics. I bold what I think is the most salient sentence:

 

" ... Empirical science seeks to uncover the physical causes that happen to exist, or the chemical structure of the material substances that happen to exist, or what have you.  The philosophy of nature is concerned with deeper questions -- for example, with what has to be true if there is to be any causality at all, or any material substances at all.  

 
Hence, when the Aristotelian says (for example) that natural objects must have substantial forms, he is not trying to give an explanation of the sort that the modern chemist is giving.  He is not claiming that we can say everything we need to know about opium simply by noting that whatever it does it does by virtue of its substantial form, and that no further chemical analysis is needed.  Rather, he is saying that, whatever the specific chemical details of opium (or water, or lead, or whatever) turn out to be, if these really are natural substances about which we can have scientific knowledge, then there must be some intrinsic principle that grounds the properties that chemistry uncovers and that gives them the regularity that chemistry shows them to have.  That is to say, it cannot be that a tendency toward such-and-such effects is to be found only in this or that sample of opium, but must derive from opium as such, from something common to any instance of opium; it cannot be that opium’s typical behavior derives from something extrinsic to it, but must be grounded in an inherent source; if it has causal properties that are irreducible to those of its parts, then there is a sense in which opium itself is irreducible to its parts; and so forth.  Naturally we still have to do chemical analysis in order to discover the specific means by which opium brings about its characteristic effects.  The Aristotelian does not deny this because he is not making a claim that is in competition with chemistry.  He is rather approaching the phenomenon from a different and more fundamental level of analysis, and asking a different sort of question about it.  (This is one reason Moliere-style “dormitive virtue” objections to substantial forms are puerile.  I have discussed that objection in more detail in The Last Superstition and Aquinas.)  
 
Thus, to raise considerations from physics, chemistry, biology, etc. as if they cast doubt on arguments like Aquinas’s Five Ways is simply to make a fundamental category mistake.  For such arguments are not addressing the same sorts of questions addressed by natural science in the first place, but rest instead on premises derived from the philosophy of nature.  Nor is the point merely that empirical science is different from the philosophy of nature.  Natural science is less comprehensive and fundamental than the philosophy of nature.  Physics in particular confines itself to those aspects of material reality susceptible of rigorous prediction and control, and thus susceptible of mathematical modeling.  It deals with abstractions from concrete reality, not concrete reality itself.  It does not tell us anything about the deeper nature of the substances and processes that bear the mathematically definable properties it identifies.  But that deeper nature is precisely what the philosophy of nature is concerned with.  
 
This, as I have emphasized before, is the deep reason why considerations drawn from Newtonian mechanics or quantum theory simply do nothing to undermine arguments like Aquinas’s First Way, contrary to what Oerter and others suppose.  For physics does not give us anything close to a complete description of material reality in the first place.  Hence, that physics makes no reference to some principle affirmed in Aristotelian philosophy of nature is neither here nor there.  You might as well say: “There’s good reason to think that the scissors cannot be in any of the kitchen drawers.  Therefore the scissors are nowhere in the house.”
 
No doubt some will object that this makes arguments like Aquinas’s “unfalsifiable” or otherwise arbitrarily immune to criticism.  This is like saying that someone who insists on looking for the scissors in the rest of the house and who refuses to draw conclusions from what can be found in the kitchen drawers alone has thereby made his position unfalsifiable.  Obviously such a person’s position is not unfalsifiable; rather, the range of evidence that may or may not falsify it is simply larger than is supposed by someone who is fixated on the drawers.  Similarly, nothing I have said entails that the arguments of classical natural theology are not subject to rational evaluation or criticism.  The claim is rather that the kind of rational evaluation and criticism to which they are subject is not the sort typical of empirical science."
 
This is excerpted from a longer post:
 
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BAA - that would be why evolution is not considered a scientific law? Biology cannot have a mathematical formula to explain it hence cannot become law?

 

Just thinking that there is the law of gravity, the law of thermodynamics etc which are considered pretty solid.

 

 

 

law describes what nature does under certain conditions, and will predict what will happen as long as those conditions are met. A theory explains how nature works.

http://science.kennesaw.edu/~rmatson/3380theory.html

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Nevermind semantics. What I'm saying is that the universe originated in such a way that excludes a god. But we do not know what happened before the big bang.

 

In a multi-verse framework, our universe could simply be the collision of 2 branes (imagine 2 parallel universes colliding) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology

 

Later, the pre-big bang, ekpyrotic and cyclic proposals appeared. The ekpyrotic theory hypothesizes that the origin of the observable universe occurred when two parallel branes collided.[9]

 

42-46205410.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg

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Oooh I listened to Lisa Randall talking about branes and strings.... hurts the brain.

 

Someone on Quora gave a good explanation of how there is no edge to the universe - it like if you keep travelling in the same direction for long enough (Like a trillion years) you'll come back to your starting point from the opposite side.

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Oooh I listened to Lisa Randall talking about branes and strings.... hurts the brain.

 

Someone on Quora gave a good explanation of how there is no edge to the universe - it like if you keep travelling in the same direction for long enough (Like a trillion years) you'll come back to your starting point from the opposite side.

 

Yes you would be travelling along the edge of an expanding balloon and come back to your starting point ;)

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So this means that you wouldn't travel "though" the universe, but around the curve of space?

 

In which case can we see though space, or only along the edge? (Might be something to do with a flat universe in there) Sorry my knowledge in this area is very limited and I'm trying to figure out how what I read all fits together.

 

Edit: Hmm or thinking about the balloon idea - is space like the inside of a balloon where you can travel across the distance from one side to the other, but cannot travel beyond the universe space boundary represented by the physical balloon inside wall?

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