I hope you will find this text interesting.
According to science our universe (space-time) has a beginning paper is written by the cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of the Tufts university and Arvind Bonde.)
It is a fundamental law of physics (causality) that every physical occurrence in the universe has a cause. Since space-time has a beginning there was a first physical occurrence. Causality requires that the first physical occurrence had a cause. Causality and the fact that space-time has a beginning implies that this Prime Cause is non-dimensional and independent of space-time.
To conclude the above paragraphs:
Fact: No thing nor event in the known universe or laws of physics lacks a cause.
Assume: There is no Prime Cause (Creator).
Ergo: There is no universe.
Fact: There is a universe.
Therefore: the statement that was assumed is proven to be a false statement by reduction ad absurdum (proof by disproof).
(Since "There is no Creator" is proven false, the opposite is true: There is a Creator.)
Being logically consistent (orderly), our (to say perfectly-orderly would be a tautology) orderly universe must mirror its Prime Cause / Singularity-Creator—Who must be Orderly; i.e. Perfect. An orderly—"not capricious," as Einstein put it—Creator (also implying Just), therefore, necessarily had an Intelligent Purpose in creating this universe and us within it and, being Just and Orderly, necessarily placed an explanation, a "Life's Instruction Manual," within the reach of His subjects—humankind.
It defies the orderliness (logic / mathematics) of both the universe and Perfection of its Creator to assert that humanity was (contrary to His Torah, see below) without any means of rapproachment until millennia after the first couple in recorded history as well as millennia after Abraham, Moses and the prophets. Therefore, the Creator's "Life's Instruction Manual" has been available to man at least since the beginning of recorded history. The only enduring document of this kind is the Torah —which, interestingly, translates to "Instruction" (not "law" as popularly alleged). (Some of the text is a quote from
The fact that the Creator is perfect implies that He isn’t self-contradictory. Therefore any religion, and all religions contradicts each other (otherwise they would be identical), that contradicts Torah is the antithesis to the Creator.
The most common counter arguments are answered here:
Anders Branderud
Last edited by Peter Zack; 10-17-2009 at 11:12 AM.
Actually, the argument doesn't follow. The 'beginning of the universe' as cited (referring to the Big Bang theory) doesn't refer to an event in the spacetime it purports to be citing: basically all of spacetime as we know it in this universe is seen to have expanded out from a locus where it was all crammed in together. It's not just matter exploding into space over time, it's space and time and matter and all expanding from what we chart as a single 'point.'
There's a difference there.
We can certainly call it a beginning, but it's not quite the same in terms of time and cause and effect: for one, the universe was on a quantum scale, where these things do not seem to be linear.
Nor does postulating it as a beginning 'prove' or even necessarily indicate the Universe is an artifact of intelligence: it's as easy to say that the properties of matter and energy and what we chart as 'physical laws' are just a point of stability among all possibilities, like, water seeking its level in a terrestrial example, the shape of things simply keeps changing till it finds a place where it meets such an equilibrium. (In fact, the universe as we know it may be a long process of getting to that sort of equilibrium, if you've got some hundred billion years or more )to wait.
Kind of goes into stuff like M-theory and branes, and how many physical dimensions our universe seems to be based on, (Have to be, to make the math work out to explain all physical phenomena we *can* observe, unless someone comes up with simpler math) ...This is where we do well to look if we want to try and see what can be 'proven' and what can't: in science and mathematics' real current notions of the 'beginning' of our space time. ... Our big bang could be a result of an intersection of great structures in a still bigger sea, so to speak. I go with the notion that all possibilities are actual, and that we're in one of the points stable enough to be here talking about it.
None of this *precludes* the existence of Gods, but neither does that old bit of sophistry quoted 'prove' the existence of one, never mind any particular one.
In fact it offers no explanation at all why its own rationale 'proves intelligence.' It simply posits some. But there are plenty of other possibilities.
(And no, I'm not an atheist. I simply don't believe the whole matter depends on gainsaying or dumbing down science and logic. When people put stuff like this up, they aren't really 'proving the existence of God,' they're trying to claim some *authority* of *religion* over our understandings of the natural world.)
Last edited by Ratmagiclady; 10-17-2009 at 11:06 AM.
It is a fundamental law of physics (causality) that every physical occurrence in the universe has a cause. Since space-time has a beginning there was a first physical occurrence.
Fact: There is a universe.
Therefore: the statement that was assumed is proven to be a false statement by reduction ad absurdum (proof by disproof).
(Since "There is no Creator" is proven false, the opposite is true: There is a Creator.)
You have constructed a logical fallacy. Since you state everything has a first cause, you can't omit your conclusion (a creator) from the same logical scrutiny. What caused the creator? Your logical construction sheds no light at all on the beginnings of the universe.
This is why no one wants to argue with creationists; it's like trying to discuss the finer points of cooking with a 2 year old.