Did God create the universe?

[Arjun Artro]

I recently saw 'Stephen Hawking special- Did God create the universe? ' , a program in the Discovery channel. The great mind concluded that he believes there's no god, and before the big bang, there was no space or time to begin any creation. And that everything was made from "nothing".

So i was thinking, okay, there may not be a God, but what was this "nothing"? If the Big Bang started from an atom sized thing, how did it appear in the first place? If space is not "nothing", then what is it?

For those who want to watch the program, search the title in youtube.

Thanks in advance

[Klaynos]

but what was this "nothing"? If the Big Bang started from an atom sized thing, how did it appear in the first place?

 

We don't know. Science is never afraid of the we don't know answer.

 

As for what space is then an acceptable reply would probably be, a framework composing 3 dimensions. Humans and our language isn't well equipped for these concepts.

[Arjun Artro]

But there should be some scientifically known facts and theories right.. ? Isn't there any way we can find what existed before the big bang, if there was any.

 

We don't know. Science is never afraid of the we don't know answer.

 

As for what space is then an acceptable reply would probably be, a framework composing 3 dimensions. Humans and our language isn't well equipped for these concepts.

 

I agree. But why? Maybe the most difficult question science faces is just the word "why".

But there's one thing we should remind ourselves. Maybe 5-6 hundred years ago, we didn't have any idea about antimatter,black holes and all that stuff... But we do know something now..

Edited December 1, 2012 by Arjun Artro

[iNow]

"Why" is not a question that lends itself well to testing, falsification, and potential dismissal. It is little more than interpretation. "How" is the more appropriate question in the domain of science, IMO.

 

We don't yet fully understand the earliest times. The question of what came "before" the big bang doesn't even make sense since time itself seems to have begun there. There are ideas that the universe doesn't have a beginning or an end and is just continuous. There are ideas that there are multiple verses and our own universe began when two of them bounced against one another. There are many great ideas out there. I suspect the truth is some combination of them somewhere in the middle.

 

The god concept, however, is not a factor for me at all. It merely distracts us from the pursuit of real truths. It also merely displaces the question... If god created then universe, then what created god, and what created that, and what created that ad infinitum.

[Arjun Artro]

"Why" is not a question that lends itself well to testing, falsification, and potential dismissal. It is little more than interpretation. "How" is the more appropriate question in the domain of science, IMO.

 

We don't yet fully understand the earliest times. The question of what came "before" the big bang doesn't even make sense since time itself seems to have begun there. There are ideas that the universe doesn't have a beginning or an end and is just continuous. There are ideas that there are multiple verses and our own universe began when two of them bounced against one another. There are many great ideas out there. I suspect the truth is some combination of them somewhere in the middle.

 

The god concept, however, is not a factor for me at all. It merely distracts us from the pursuit of real truths. It also merely displaces the question... If god created then universe, then what created god, and what created that, and what created that ad infinitum.

 

Okay, equations may tell us that time started with the big bang. But , it's only true when we think of time with respect to all the "happenings" following big bang. and most importantly what triggered the big bang?

[iNow]

We don't yet know. That is one of the questions for which an answer (or, at least greater clarity than we have today) is being sought.

[Phi for All]

I would say no, that a god (whatever that means, whichever god you're referring to) did NOT create the universe. As iNow mentions, that explanation requires far more incredible paradoxes while mainstream scientific explanations don't, and gods can't be falsified in any case and thus fail any kind of meaningful consideration. Besides that, gods are not observable phenomena, so science really can't include them in any viable model.

 

The energies involved in the Big Bang make it impossible currently to determine exactly what was happening at t = 0. And since time itself seems to begin at that point....

 

You're right though that 600 years ago we didn't know as much as we do today. A big part of that, a really big part, is using the scientific method to ensure that we're always looking for better explanations. If religion had kept us from using the scientific method, we'd be stuck at "The Truth", the god-did-it explanation as interpreted by the church of 600 years ago. Yay, science!

 

The god concept, however, is not a factor for me at all. It merely distracts us from the pursuit of real truths. It also merely displaces the question... If god created then universe, then what created god, and what created that, and what created that ad infinitum.

To this day, I still think the best explanation I've heard for the existence of gods and religion is from a post you made, iNow. You had quoted someone talking about how it's an adaptive survival function for humans to imagine things that don't exist. The hunter who imagines there's a lion in every shadow survives more often than the hunter that doesn't, and this naturally leads to imagining beings responsible for everything that happens that we can't explain.

[iNow]

To this day, I still think the best explanation I've heard for the existence of gods and religion is from a post you made, iNow. You had quoted someone talking about how it's an adaptive survival function for humans to imagine things that don't exist. The hunter who imagines there's a lion in every shadow survives more often than the hunter that doesn't, and this naturally leads to imagining beings responsible for everything that happens that we can't explain.

Indeed. "If you understand why we crave fatty McDonalds hamburgers then you understand why our brains are susceptible to religious ideas and belief in deities." Ultimately, what you're referring to is our ability to imagine unseen others and to mentally rehearse interactions with people not presently there. It is a powerful thought, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I can, however, only take credit for sharing the idea. I heard it from Andy Thompson.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHhweA8Zz04

[DarkStar8]

Isn't God a shortened word of Good and isn't the Devil D' Evil, The Evil? Then isn't Good and Evil, light and Dark, complementary opposites shown in the ancient Taoist ideas of yingyang.

Perhaps if light as electromagnetism with its fields and photons makes up all things we see, and I mean matter too, then perhaps the the hidden dark stuff like dark matter and energy gives everything substance and structure, maybe just maybe they the Taoists were onto something.

[iNow]

<deleted... misread previous post>

Edited December 1, 2012 by iNow

[Arjun Artro]

One answer leading to another heavier question. And where will it all end? Just like the universe. We know the universe is expanding. But to "where" or to "what"? Started from a point so small, growing and growing each moment. Maybe we humans are bound to laws and properties so much that it restricts our thinking. Knowing lesser may have been the secret of great thinkers like Da Vinci, Einstein, Newton..... . Who knows....

Edited December 1, 2012 by Arjun Artro

[STeve555]

you should realize that space and time at the "time" prior to the big bang was non existent.

Even scientists do not know and can not know what was before the big bang, since time is a necessary asset in order to know. Time and space were not there in the first place. So that means an absolute nothing pregnant with potentially something of an outburst, you may conclude.

Not so.

When nothing is there, nothing does not even mean nothing. even zero is not there. Nothing is too much because there can not be a description of nothing when there is nothing. ................. o000000.00000.0000000.000000.0000000000000000000.000000000000000000000000000000000.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 etc etc etc endless nameless.

I do not blame you for not getting a picture there. There is no picture for there was not even light and mass, let alone human senses.

Imagine how hard it is nowadays to be a buddhist monk reaching nirwana.....imagine his task to reach that very same thing prior time and space. That is why I do not buy that buddhist crap. People are born the way they are, and buddhism says that all people can reach nirvana...that is not true. Not even if all of tried their best. Its a lie. Do not trust buddhism. Or any other religion. Regardless of people saying it is not a religion. Buddhism is a dogma that, while it says it is not, directly blurs our vision.

Edited December 2, 2012 by STeve555

[Arjun Artro]

you should realize that space and time at the "time" prior to the big bang was non existent.

Even scientists do not know and can not know what was before the big bang, since time is a necessary asset in order to know. Time and space were not there in the first place. So that means an absolute nothing pregnant with potentially something of an outburst, you may conclude.

Not so.

When nothing is there, nothing does not even mean nothing. even zero is not there. Nothing is too much because there can not be a description of nothing when there is nothing. ................. o000000.00000.0000000.000000.0000000000000000000.000000000000000000000000000000000.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 etc etc etc endless nameless.

 

 

Maybe nothing means -"without space, energy,matter or time present" my opinion is different. Time and space may not be present, but something that might not be accessible by us today would have been there before the big bang. Maybe a dimension different from what we can understand.

 

Because we know that the universe is expanding. It is said that at the time of the big bang, space and time was instantaneously created. There's no big bang happening now but still more and more space is occupying the "nothing" as universe expands. So there should be something else that can be measured by some unknown dimension that keeps converting into space and maybe vice versa.

 

 

I might be wrong, but i believe that's the only way to explain this.

[doG]

define god...

[elfmotat]

define god...

 

You, but backwards.

[IM Egdall]

I think this thread maybe should be in Speculation. But here's my opinion anyway. I've tried till my head hurts to come up with something, anything which connects a "higher power" to the science of the beginning of the universe, some essence which goes beyond our minds, beyond one's personal religious beliefs, beyond opinion, beyond all subjectivity. The only thing I can come up with is this:

 

Our universe is inherently logical.

 

I know, I sound like Spock. But it seems to me to be true. Stripped of everything else, what is left is a logical universe. That is why humans can come up with mathematical equations to describe the behavior of physical phenomena. No matter what working scientific theory we look at-- including Hawking's -- at its foundations is the fact of logic.

 

So here's my question. Who or what made the universe logical?

[immortal]

I recently saw 'Stephen Hawking special- Did God create the universe? ' , a program in the Discovery channel. The great mind concluded that he believes there's no god, and before the big bang, there was no space or time to begin any creation. And that everything was made from "nothing".

So i was thinking, okay, there may not be a God, but what was this "nothing"? If the Big Bang started from an atom sized thing, how did it appear in the first place? If space is not "nothing", then what is it?

For those who want to watch the program, search the title in youtube.

Thanks in advance

 

The conclusion of Stephen Hawking is ill founded and he is intellectually dishonest. Scientists are basically asking the wrong questions, all scientific evidence is pointing towards the existence of a God owing to the belief that science is the study of God's creations.

 

 

"The message would be that the purpose of life is not to eat and drink, watch television and so on. Consuming is not the aim of life. Earning as much money as one can is not the real purpose of life. There is a superior entity, a divinity, le divin as we say in French that is worth thinking about, as are our feelings of wholeness, respect and love, if we can. A society in which these feelings are widespread would be more reasonable than the society the West presently lives in."

 

- Bernard D'Espagnat, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science.

 

[Ophiolite]

The conclusion of Stephen Hawking is ill founded and he is intellectually dishonest.

Can you provide an example of his intellectual dishonesty?

 

Scientists are basically asking the wrong questions,

What questions should they ask?

 

... all scientific evidence is pointing towards the existence of a God owing to the belief that science is the study of God's creations.

Only those who believe in God through faith believe that science is the study of God's creations. Therefore your statement here makes no sense. Moreover only very small amount of inconclusive scientific evidence points towards the existence of God.

[immortal]

Can you provide an example of his intellectual dishonesty?

 

For example his claim that philosophy is dead.

 

What questions should they ask?

 

Steven Weinberg: "Against Philosophy" (from "Dreams of a Final Theory").

 

 

I do find that there is a strong social influence on what constitutes as scientific consensus and which hypotheses gets more funding and media hype. I do think that the discipline of science should work under the positivist philosophy of science but there are things which are unobservable for example:- quarks, one cannot find an isolated quark no matter what but we can see that it exists by observing its effects through a phenomena known as bremsstrahlung. In the same way even God and the numinous is unobservable but its effects can be empirically studied. So if we can accept that quarks exist why can't we accept that the numinous exists too. Why such double standards?

 

Only those who believe in God through faith believe that science is the study of God's creations. Therefore your statement here makes no sense.

 

I know what science is but most religious people see science as the study of God's creations while scientists often try to reject a God hypothesis by applying Occam's razor.

 

Moreover only very small amount of inconclusive scientific evidence points towards the existence of God.

 

Scientists should be more matured while making claims about religion and philosophy. They even go on to say that God is dead.

 

[Ophiolite]

thank you for your responses immortal. You say Hawking is dishonest when he says philosophy is dead. I confess I have not read his thoughts on this matter, so I must rely upon you.

 

If he states unequivocally as a fact that philosophy is dead, when it self evidently is not, then he is being intellectually dishonest. However, I rather suspect that he is using rhetoric and hyperbole to emphasise his opinion that philosophy has passed it Sell By date. Can you clarify?

 

In the same way even God and the numinous is unobservable but its effects can be empirically studied. So if we can accept that quarks exist why can't we accept that the numinous exists too. Why such double standards?

There is no double standard. A decision evolved a few hundred years ago that science would employ methodological naturalism. That is to say it was decided that whether or not the supernatural existed science would not investigate it because its randomness would render it inconvenient or impossible to study. Supernatural events were not discounted, simply excluded from the field of scientific study. It's analagous to not learning any French words when you are studying Swahili.

 

I know what science is but most religious people see science as the study of God's creations while scientists often try to reject a God hypothesis by applying Occam's razor.

You seem to be conceding that your statement was indeed meaningless. In other words you cannot define science on the basis of what people who don't understand it think it is.

 

Any scientist who rejects God is not functioning as a scientist. He is perfectly free to reject God in his role as person, but science - because it is currently methodologically naturalistic - has nothing to say about God.

[immortal]

thank you for your responses immortal. You say Hawking is dishonest when he says philosophy is dead. I confess I have not read his thoughts on this matter, so I must rely upon you.

 

If he states unequivocally as a fact that philosophy is dead, when it self evidently is not, then he is being intellectually dishonest. However, I rather suspect that he is using rhetoric and hyperbole to emphasise his opinion that philosophy has passed it Sell By date. Can you clarify?

 

Even I have not read it but I saw a couple of threads about his claim in the philosophy forums(SFN).

At Google's Zeitgeist Conference in 2011, Hawking said that "

philosophy is dead

." He believes philosophers "

have not kept up with modern developments in science

" and that scientists "

have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge

." He said that philosophical problems can be answered by science, particularly new scientific theories which "

lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it

".

He must be really crazy, irrespective of in what form he has expressed it, its quite evident that he is saying philosophy is dead. As far as I know philosophers are being hired in every new research field of science from consciousness studies to interpret the results of quantum experiments and if there were no philosophers I wonder what erroneous claims scientists would have made while interpreting their results. Has science explained the ontology of space and time, does science know what space and time are really made of? Has the problem of universals been solved or has science solved it?

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/66219-hawkings-and-philosophy/

 

 

There is no double standard. A decision evolved a few hundred years ago that science would employ methodological naturalism. That is to say it was decided that whether or not the supernatural existed science would not investigate it because its randomness would render it inconvenient or impossible to study. Supernatural events were not discounted, simply excluded from the field of scientific study. It's analagous to not learning any French words when you are studying Swahili.

 

No, scientists cannot act as though they cannot see the history of mankind and think that only modern science exists. When making claims about religion and philosophy they should consider other phenomena as well and also what disciplines other than the exact sciences have discovered.

 

You seem to be conceding that your statement was indeed meaningless. In other words you cannot define science on the basis of what people who don't understand it think it is.

 

If the existence of God turns out to be a well established fact then science will indeed turn out to be a study of one of his creations.

 

Any scientist who rejects God is not functioning as a scientist. He is perfectly free to reject God in his role as person, but science - because it is currently methodologically naturalistic - has nothing to say about God.

 

That's the reason I said scientists reject a God hypothesis and not science.

Edited December 3, 2012 by immortal

[Moontanman]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If the existence of God turns out to be a well established fact then science will indeed turn out to be a study of one of his creations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If frogs turn out to have invisible wings we will be faced with explaining why they bust their little slimy butts every time they jump...

[justinater22]

There are many theory's suggesting different things. Some think it came from a parent universe in which we are the creation of another universe. Others believe our universe has a timeline, and in expands contracts and then expands again from that. Another is that we are just one of many universes in a multiverse. I even believe there is one that suggests that every black hole contains another universe in it self so we could just be the inside of a black hole. So when a black hole formed a white hole was formed that acted as a valve and shot out all of the mass in our universe. One of the most popular is string theory which has the possiblity of what could be before the bigbang if it was prooved true. The thing is if we can't see it people will speculate, any of those theory's could be correct but because we can't go into a black hole our leave our universe or see any evidence it shrinks we can't know for sure.

Scientists are looking for if another universe might have smashed into ours leaving a mark. Determining if dark energy is real or not could make some theory's impossible like the falling back together. But I don't think it is truly possible to ever know for sure unless we can check out some black holes, see the universe shrink, or noticing a universe colliding with ours. A good source for other theories is howstuffworks.com type in what was before the Big Bang.

Edited December 5, 2012 by justinater22

[36grit]

Time is but a playground for light. I am.

[David Levy]

If the Big Bang started from an atom sized thing, how did it appear in the first place? If space is not "nothing", then what is it?

 

 

Just think about Darwin.

 

What could be Darwin's reply about the Big Bang Theory???