Posted on 02/25/2017 6:54:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Your puns cause me to blush!
I require no faith in science or scientists to accept experimental results observed in nature. I do find it troubling that so many scientists today have rejected the scientific method for a politically satisfying theory of climate change.
I require no proof of God. That is the realm of faith. I do feel a very deep sense of wonder as God slowly reveals his subtle and beautiful universe to us.
That said, the fact that the best scientific evidence we have suggests that the universe, everything, had a beginning a long but comprehensible time ago suggests creation to me.
The question for Christian believers for about 800 years had been not whether God exists, but how:
1) outside the world, as a “prime mover” who periodically steps in the material world, as in the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit
2) intertwined with the world, not pantheistically, but distinct AND embedded, including of course the Incarnation and the ever present Holy Spirit
Discuss...
re: Yes, I’ve heard theories about how the universe could “spring from nothing”, but scientifically the Big Bang is open territory.”
Yes, I’ve read some of those ideas, too. I guess it depends on what one means by “nothing”. If there really were nothing prior to the “something” - how did the “something” come into existence? I’ve heard of a gentleman whose last name is I believe, is Crick, or Krick, who claims that something comes from nothing on the quantum molecular level all the time, but when one really examines what he is saying, the “nothing” really isn’t “nothing”.
I wouldn’t say that the “God did it” view sums up the theistic view for the existence of the universe. I think what theism would claim is that the First Cause for the universe would have to be outside of time and space (since time and space came into being at the Big Bang), vastly intelligent who put design and order along with physical laws into the universe, immensely powerful, eternal, capable of intentionality (and who puts intentionality into the universe itself), etc.
The problem for the materialistic atheist is that if nothing truly existed prior to the universe, no physical laws, no matter or energy, nothing, really, really nothing - which seems to be the case by the evidence we have - then atheists have to say that nothing caused something. That natural laws brought the natural laws into existence, even though natural laws did not previously exist. That life spontaneously created itself from non-living materials completely by random chance.
The theist would say it takes more faith to believe the atheistic view.
You’re right on a lot of that. Something does come from nothing on the quantum level, which we call “vacuum fluctuations”. It’s a result of the Heisenberg uncertainty principal and has been proven to exist in laboratories by way of the Casimir effect. And there is an hypothesis called “brane cosmology” which says the universe was created as a result of a collision between two “branes” in a higher dimensional universe (called “bulk”). It’s all completely hypothetical, not even theory, so as I said the Big Bang is open territory.
What makes me think atheists rely more on faith than theists do (making them hypocrites to some degree) is that they claim there is no God though they have no evidence (or counter evidence). Lack of evidence is not evidence in itself, so their beliefs (or non-beliefs) are based on pure faith, not science or anything else.
The properties of water are a powerful evidence of design.
The Multiverse Theory is powerful evidence that some people will make all sorts of mental contortions to avoid seeing God.
(c.f. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - your Towel - “wrap it round your head to... avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you”)
The book author or the blog author? From my impression you must mean the latter.
I like that.
Simple entropy also works for me.
Since everything in the universe becomes increasingly chaotic, the “self-organization” of matter into things like plants, animals, and human beings is miraculous.
It has always seemed counterintuitive and hubristic for anyone who has deeply studied the physical laws and mathematic certainties which govern the universe to not recognize the hand of a law giver and mathematician behind it all. This was not the case with the epic geniuses who invented modern physics at the beginning of the twentieth century. But as that century wore on the inferiors who tweaked and played with the fringes of the science have mostly been atheists. Forests versus trees.
Sorry, I realize my comment was ambiguous.
I was referring to the blogger. I thought the book author was taking pains to be respectful.
I asked because some up-thread seemed to think the former...I agree with you.
re: Something does come from nothing on the quantum level, which we call “vacuum fluctuations”. It’s a result of the Heisenberg uncertainty principal and has been proven to exist in laboratories by way of the Casimir effect. And there is an hypothesis called “brane cosmology” which says the universe was created as a result of a collision between two “branes” in a higher dimensional universe (called “bulk”).”
So, are those “vacuum fluctuations” truly nothing? Two “branes” colliding doesn’t sound like two “nothings”.
These are two entirely different concepts. Brane cosmology is just an hypothesis, “brane” standing for multidimensional “membranes”, a sort of play on words. The vacuum fluctuations are real, however, ironically consisting of virtual particles. They guarantee the rule of quantum mechanics that no energy state can be exactly measured, and must fluctuate randomly by a very small degree. As a result, no energy state can be exactly zero either, and so a tiny amount of random energy must exist even where there should be none. It’s a natural consequence of the Heisenberg uncertainty principal. But there is a problem explaining the Big Bang this way... As you said, there was no space or time before it occurred, which vacuum fluctuations are a property of. It’s sort of like the chicken and the egg.
Imagine his surprise when he finds out the Big Bang theory was started by a Catholic priest. /s
The multiverse idea actually springs from the notion by Hugh Everett and his “Many Worlds” (1957) interpretation of quantum mechanics, wherein he envisioned ALL possible quantum states as actually occurring, even though only one such event had been observed by experimenters.
It’s very aesthetically pleasing, as God would seem to have made things in their simplest state.
Interesting. Thank you for sharing that info and your expertise.
Discuss...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aquinas’ synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity.
Anything else?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.