How The Universe Came Into Being

[Varg]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' date='05 January 2010 - 01:37 PM' timestamp='1262716634' post='2030239']
Where is that trio?!?!?!

As in Hitchens, Dawkins and Hawking?
[/quote]
Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, to be pedantic.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 03:07 PM' timestamp='1262722058' post='2030303']
Why would he bother using the big bang when he could just create it like *poof*?
[/quote]
A big bang befits His Divine Power and Majesty so much better than a poof.

[Varg]

Why wait billions of years before creating any life?

Edited January 5, 2010 by Varg

[Thy Geekdom Come]

"If there's no mind behind all this, nothing matters. If there is no matter, then nevermind." -Dr. Regis Martin

[Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 04:23 PM' timestamp='1262723021' post='2030310']
Why wait billions of years before creating any life?
[/quote]

Why would years matter to an eternal, timeless being (if God is who we say he is like your question assumes)?

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 04:08 PM' timestamp='1262722111' post='2030305']
Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, to be pedantic.
[/quote]

Tushea

[Varg]

*Touché

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 06:08 PM' timestamp='1262729286' post='2030388']
*Touché
[/quote]

Thank you dear sir.

English language has a tendencey to be such a pain with its unphonetical approach.

[Varg]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' date='05 January 2010 - 05:10 PM' timestamp='1262729416' post='2030389']
Thank you dear sir.

English language has a tendencey to be such a pain with its unphonetical approach.
[/quote]
It's French.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 03:23 PM' timestamp='1262723021' post='2030310']
Why wait billions of years before creating any life?
[/quote]
Why not?

[AccountDeleted]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='05 January 2010 - 11:13 PM' timestamp='1262693610' post='2030147']
actually, there's already air and space in that cup. it's impossible to scientifically observe nothingness, since it doesn't exist. it'd only be theoretical to say that there was nothingness before the universe came into being; it is entirely possible for the universe to be eternal (and Aquinas, since he loves Aristotle so much, said that from the point of view strictly of the natural law philosophy without divine revelation, it is entirely possible to have an eternal universe with no beginning and no end)

I think a decent argument could be made from philosophy that there was nothingness before the big bang and that all matter came into being at that moment and then expanded; but scientifically, one might say that we could trace the big bang as coming from an infinitessimally small concentration, so that the further back in time you went, the smaller that concentration of matter in the singularity that caused the big bang is squeezed in... eternally because it's just infinitessimally smaller and smaller, and thus the universe is eternal. when Aquinas said it'd be possible philosophically to say that we had an eternal universe, however, he didn't exactly forget his first cause argument and proposed that it was still necessary, even if there is no beginning, to have a first cause. if there is an eternal universe with no beginning or end, there must be a cause for that universe which also has no beginning or end, a causeless cause.

anyway, yeah, the universe as we know it totally exploded from a singularity some 13.7 billion years ago or so, but the real juicy juice of the philosophical inquiry comes when you ask where that singularity came from. and what the nature is of whatever bordered that singularity... was there indeed nothingness bordering that singularity... can we even imagine a border to existence in such a way that beyond a certain line there is literally nothing? not even blackness, not even a void (because in a void there is still space)... the singularity contained all that we know of both matter and space, so there was no space surrounding it; so how could it expand? how could it blow? it had nowhere to blow up into, as it were; the very "explosion" of the big bang created the space into which it expanded. mind boggling... and really, thinking about it that way completely takes away the security of trying to say there's an eternal infinitessimally shrinking universe going back into endless ages; because it still doesn't solve the problem of the nothingness bordering it.

it is my opinion that contemplating nothingness is the surest way to realizing the existence of God. either our intellects truly are incompetent to imagine nothingness and thus there is a defect in our intellect, because we cannot apply our logic to this basic fact of the beginning of the universe about nothingness (because think about it, every time you imagine nothingness, you imagine blackness, which is something, you imagine a void of space, which is still something; it's impossible to imagine true nothingness, imagination can't do it), or there's nothing wrong with our intellects because there's no such thing as nothingness, and there really had to be something non-material and non-spatial "bordering" as it were, the edge of all existence contained in the singularity of the big bang. that which we call the spiritual, which continues to this day to border the edge of all material existence, where we imagine there to be nothingness, there is certainly something.
[/quote]


I loved this, particularly because what it is saying to me is that nothingingness can't exist. Since the uncreated cause is something, there can be no nothing (is that a double negative??).

And since the condition can't exist, the original question is meaningless. Right?

[Apotheoun]

Threads like this make me think about the biblical pericope where God speaks to Job from out of the whirlwind.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Theologian in Training' date='05 January 2010 - 02:31 PM' timestamp='1262716280' post='2030236']
How do we know about "nothingness" to begin with? Where does the concept of "ex nihilo" originate?
[/quote]
out of a logical necessity, if you hold to the big bang, then you hold that all matter and all space was once crunched into an infinitessimally small singularity. thus, you account for everything in a singular tiny location, all space crunched into one tiny point. any point must have a border, and thus there comes the need logically to decide what lies "beyond" that border. because if there is a border, there are two sides to that border, inside that border is the point where everything is; outside that border, we either have no ability to cognitively imagine it, or it is spiritual and thus we are perfectly able to cognitively imagine it because humans have been talking about spiritual things "beyond the membrane" as it were, from the very beginning of culture.

of course, the ultimate source of the idea of ex nihilo is Divine Revelation, so would say Aquinas who didn't think natural philosophy alone could establish an ex nihilo creation of the universe since the existence of an eternal universe is just as logically possible.

[OraProMe]

Aloysius,

Can you explain to me how the existence of an eternal universe is possible?

[mommas_boy]

Commonly, either an oscilliating universe that expands and contracts ad aeternum, or a static universe that just "is", "was", and "ever shall be" ... if you'll pardon my plagiarism.