In The Beginning

[4gold]

The Big Bang theory was a phenomenal breakthrough, because it slowed the predominant atheist thought that the universe had always existed. In Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian, he says, "There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."

The scientific discovery of a beginning to our universe shifted the same question back a step: Was our beginning part of a larger picture with no beginning? MIT professor Alan Guth proposed the theory of Eternal Inflation, which attempts to explain the expanding universe in the larger context of multiple universes. But even the theory of Eternal Inflation has a beginning. It is called eternal, because it has no end. As Guth notes, "The question of whether the universe had a beginning is discussed but not definitively answered. It appears likely, however, that eternally inflating universes do require a beginning. "

A "beginning" brings some deep theological dilemmas with it. A beginning must have a cause. No matter how far back you shift the question, the beginning must have a "first cause", and not just that, but an uncaused cause.

While the science is not settled about a beginning, these questions assume that future science does not discover a way the universe could have always existed.

My questions for debate are:

How does a beginning influence your (non)beliefs?

Science requires materialism. Questions outside of materialism are outside the realm of science. Can an uncaused cause be explained by science, or is it necessarily a question outside of science?

Do you believe the universe has always existed, despite what science has so far shown? If so, why?

What do you believe sired the singularity?

[Confused]

"I don't know" is an agnostic position. An atheistic position is that the universe has always existed.

Why would you say this is an agnostic position? Even theists acknowledge that sometimes "I don't know" is the best answer we have at the time. Rather than invoking the metaphysical, we say it may have always existed or may not have. There simply isn't enough information available to make an assertion either way.

[Cathar1950]

Christians believe that God was outside of space, time, matter, and energy.

This belief is nonsensical is it not? It defies science and rational inquiry. Anything thought to exist outside the realm of the physical, which this belief does, defies the ability to adequately support any assertion.

Or for that matter they don't seem to be able to explain what outside of time and space could even mean. How is God all powerful and outside of these things/ How do we even talk about the attributes of God?
Actually the Bible or the book of Genesis does not report a BB. There is no sense of the gods creating the world out of nothing.
There is a watery chaos where the gods breath on the waters. “Let there be light”, in BB cosmology light only happens after the universe cools down. In the Book of Job and the Psalms El kills the Leviathan and creates. At any rate the “Biblical view” is not the same as the big bang nor does it say the gods created from nothing.

[QED]

4gold, I know there's a few theists who still get a kick out of Hubble's wonderful discovery about our expanding universe and the headwind it created for the naturalistic paradigm of the day -- but it has never delivered any genuine ontological insight (despite what the Pope said!). You've already acknowledged at least one level of deferral by mentioning Eternal Inflation. This branches out into several problems for the theistic paradigm so I'll itemise a few simple ones that spring to mind:

1) Does a sequence of inflationary regions run in series, parallel or both?
2) What does the sequence run "in"? Time is a purely local phenomena.
3) Does our singularity represent the first or the Nth etc.?
4) How many intermediate singularities can the theist tolerate before she gives up on being an intentional product?

[QED]

Universe
DEFINITION : The observable portion (our past light cone) originating from an apparent singularity event some 13 Billion years ago.

NECESSARILY NOT: Everything and everywhere that has ever existed (because our "Universe" gets "larger" as time goes on and light from previously unseen regions gets a chance to reach us)

4gold, I know there's a few theists who still get a kick out of Hubble's wonderful discovery about our expanding universe and the headwind it created for some corners of the naturalistic paradigm of the day -- but it has never delivered any genuine ontological insight (despite what the Pope said!).

Apparent beginnings aside, there's a huge problem with any kind of logic that says everything must have a cause -- and then goes on to make an exception for a first (uncaused) cause to terminate everything. Within that exception we can put anything we want to. For example, some might want to put God there, others might want to put a metaverse (something that pops out singularities that look on the "other side" like our big-bang universe). Just Wanting to invent these terminators in various flavours is no justification for placing one above any other as the "truth" of the matter.

The theist seems to equate the intent that they perceive in the creation of the world with a mind -- which makes it simpler to see a God-like entity as some kind of terminator. This is enhanced by the dividing of the world into the material and non-material (and making the material subordinate in some way) -- a division which has never, nor is ever likely to be justified. But this perception is driven by many probable misconceptions about chance, probability, apparent fine-tuning etc.

If we are unable to ascribe intent to the sum of our observables then the God explanation assumes a similar status to any other hypothetical "functional equivalent". You have not therefore proved the existence of the Christian or any other typical God of religion by simply contemplating causality.

[Jose]

I tend to be sort of geeky about this. [But then, I tied for first place some years ago at a Nerd Contest in our department.] I prefer to look at the data that we have, and then ask "how the heck can we explain the facts?"

In a very tiny nutshell, the data indicate that things are moving away from each other. There's not much friction in space, so they've probably been moving away from each other for a long time. So, if we calculate backwards, what do we find? Apparently, the folks who have pondered this have concluded that things were pretty close together.

If things were close together at one time, and are now whizzing away from each other, it seems likely that something went bang.

What caused the bang? That seems to be the argument here. The theists seem to believe that a "cause" must be supernatural. In most of the world we observe today, however, there are bazillions of causes that are entirely natural. Why not allow a natural cause for this "bang?"

Do I have to be atheistic to suggest that there might be a natural cause? No. Do I have to know what this cause is to suggest that it might exist (or have existed)? No. All I have to do is look at the data and think of possible explanations.

So, we end up arguing over whether the cause is a particular god, or not this particular god. That's a pretty narrow scope for the argument. Why not a different god? Why isn't it OK to say we haven't figured out what types of natural events might cause such a thing?

Maybe it's that misconception that science is "supposed to" produce facts. In fact, science starts with facts (observations, data, etc) and simply proposes explanations. It's unfortunate that people have imagined that these proposed explanations are supposed to be "facts."

___

How about chewing on this for a bit:

Black holes seem to swallow things. We don't know where stuff goes, or how this works. Maybe black holes are gods, or maybe they're something we don't fully understand yet. Either way, they seem to swallow things. What happens when a black hole has eaten so much stuff that it's filled to capacity? What if there's only so much energy one of these can contain before it becomes unstable? Maybe it goes "bang" and all the energy it swallowed comes spewing out as chunks of matter.

Should such a highly philosophical and speculative scenario be the case, then what we'd have is a continuous cycle of black holes gobbling up the universe, then getting sick and spewing chunks.

Right now, we can't "see" back before the last time one of these full-to-capacity black holes blew up. We have no evidence that they do this, even. But we have no evidence against it either. But we do have evidence that black holes swallow things...which is more evidence than we have for gods.

[4gold]

Why would you say this is an agnostic position? Even theists acknowledge that sometimes "I don't know" is the best answer we have at the time. Rather than invoking the metaphysical, we say it may have always existed or may not have. There simply isn't enough information available to make an assertion either way.

If a theist takes an "I don't know" position, it is certainly an agnostic position to take. I think Richard Dawkins describes it as a seven-point scale. Very few people are on point 1 (I am 100% positive that God exists) and every few people on are on point 7 (I am 100% positive that God does not exist). Most of us fit in points 2 through 6, which is not to say that we are agnostic, but that sometimes we take agnostic positions because we are not 100% certain 100% of the time.

[4gold]

Christians believe that God was outside of space, time, matter, and energy.

This belief is nonsensical is it not? It defies science and rational inquiry. Anything thought to exist outside the realm of the physical, which this belief does, defies the ability to adequately support any assertion.

Or for that matter they don't seem to be able to explain what outside of time and space could even mean. How is God all powerful and outside of these things/ How do we even talk about the attributes of God?
Actually the Bible or the book of Genesis does not report a BB. There is no sense of the gods creating the world out of nothing.
There is a watery chaos where the gods breath on the waters. “Let there be light”, in BB cosmology light only happens after the universe cools down. In the Book of Job and the Psalms El kills the Leviathan and creates. At any rate the “Biblical view” is not the same as the big bang nor does it say the gods created from nothing.

I don't know of a single Christian denomination that believes that God did not create the universe out of nothing, do you? I am almost certain that all Christians read Genesis as God creating something out of nothing, but I could be wrong. I know my denomination believes that God and the universe were created ex nihilo.

[4gold]

Apparent beginnings aside, there's a huge problem with any kind of logic that says everything must have a cause -- and then goes on to make an exception for a first (uncaused) cause to terminate everything. Within that exception we can put anything we want to. For example, some might want to put God there, others might want to put a metaverse (something that pops out singularities that look on the "other side" like our big-bang universe). Just Wanting to invent these terminators in various flavours is no justification for placing one above any other as the "truth" of the matter.

There are only two options: Either natural causes had a beginning or natural causes are infinite into the past. Agreed?

Christians, Jews, Muslims, and some of the other Creationists believe there was a beginning, or an uncaused cause. Atheists necessarily believe there is no such thing as an uncaused cause -- that something, whether it's matter or the naturalistic phenomenom that created matter, or the naturalistic phenomenom that created the naturalistic phenomenom that created matter -- that naturalistic phenomenoms are infinite and without beginnings.

That is the sum of the debate about beginnings, is it not?

You have not therefore proved the existence of the Christian or any other typical God of religion by simply contemplating causality.

But the predominant atheistic worldview that there was no reason to believe the universe had a beginning was disproven. Now, it seems to have just shifted back a step, because this universe likely had a beginning.

And then later the atheistic worldview of a multiverse theory with no beginnings, although not disproven, appears unlikely also. So the debate gets shifted back yet another step.

To me, science seems to support the idea of a beginning, even though it does not disprove the possibility of an infinite past.

[Goat]

I don't see how a 'beginning' or 'non-beginning' would influence 'non-belief' at all.

Prior to the Big Bang, the predominant atheistic thought was that the universe was without beginning. Clearly, the Big Bang has had tremendous influence on this "non-belief" ever since.

The Inflationary theory (or 'Big Bang' a term coined by Fred Hoyle to mock it),
only says that the universe expanded from a point. the current state only
addresses what happened at the point starting at 10 ^-43 seconds after "t = 0".

"t=0" is the same thing as a beginning.

Not necessarily. t=0 could very well be a change of state. One person has the hypothesis that the universe is either expanding or contracting, and t=0 could represent the state where it changes from contraction to expansion. There are a number of different scientific senarios that show have t=0 not as the kind of beginning you are thinking of (out of nothing).

Currently, science only has some speculations about what existed 'before'. Some include a cyclical universe, others theorize multidimensional 'branes' that impact each other to start things off.

My questions assumed that the universe began from a singularity.

You could very well have assumed wrong. There are several hypothesis that
bypass the beginning being a singularity.

From what I see of atheists, most of them are more than willing to say 'I don't know' in response to questions beyond which science does not have a definitive answer. It seems to me that many atheists have replaced their search for God/divinity/whatever with the search of 'what is the hidden naturalistic truth' in the world.

"I don't know" is an agnostic position. An atheistic position is that the universe has always existed.

Again, you are wrong. There is no 'atheistic position that the universe always existed' The only atheistic position there is that are are not god/gods.

[4gold]

Again, you are wrong. There is no 'atheistic position that the universe always existed' The only atheistic position there is that are are not god/gods.

There are atheists who believe in an absolute beginning and not an infinite past? I've never heard of that before. What do they say is the cause of that beginning?