Necessity: A proposition is necessarily true if and only if it is true in every possible world.

The universe had a beginning, that has been proven. For the universe to have a beginning, it must have been created by something. It cannot have been created by anything other than something which exists necessarily. Necessarily in this case means that it must exist. That means that whatever created the universe has to exist by it's own nature. We can only conceive of two things which exist necessarily: God and numbers. The number 9 exists, even if the human race were to be destroyed. There could be nine moons in one orbit or nine birds in a V formation. Since numbers cannot do anything on their own, we are left with God. When Moses asked God "Whom should I say sent me?", God replied "I am that I am...". What God was saying is that I exist so that I exist. God was making a distinction here that God exists for only one reason, because he exists. You, however, exist because your parents made love, that you existed to birth, you were born, you lived a life until this moment, always getting the food and water and shelter that you needed to live and now you are reading these words. Your existence is contingent upon billions of events. Whatever created the universe had to be non-contingent. God exists necessarily, not contingently, as everything in our universe.

To reject that the universe was created by a god is to reject the only rationalization we have for the existence of the universe. At that point, you are left believing that something which humans cannot imagine and have no proof of, created the universe. A position that makes the theistic position appear more logical and rational in comparison.

Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe that is, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be eternal in the past but must have had an absolute beginning.

According to Vilenkin,

Vilenkin believes in a multiverse and eternal inflation.

He admits that there's no proof of eternal inflation, just that there's suitable evidence that the theory is correct.

That's fine, and I find theoretical science fascinating. His theories include that countless baby universes are made from big bangs as a result of dark energy which he ties to his conservational constant.

Heady stuff that I can't pretend to fully understand but basically it seems as if universes make new universes.

I don't quite see the connection between that and a universe being created out of nothing. Wouldn't the matter and energy come from the universe that spawned it?

Of course I then read something about each universe not necessarily having the same physical laws and at that point my head hurts to much to go on.

I still dont get the god link though ... but Im prepared to listen.

Not at all. The observation of the Big Bang does not imply that anything began at the Big Bang. All it implies is that something changed states. Science has not proven, not does it even suggest, that nothing existed prior to the Big Bang. In fact, most Big Bang theories demand that something existed prior to the Big Bang, even if only a quantum field.



Who says? If you want to apply 'human logic' to the problem, then for a god to exist it must have come from somewhere too,. They very idea of a god is an illogical idea. Logic is nothing more than human's experience of this world. If something makes sense with respect to this world we say that it is 'logical' if it doesn't makes sense to us, we say it's not 'logical'. If there is a supreme magician who can create entire universes at its whim, that very notion is 'illogical' by our standards of what we mean by logic. Logic wouldn't even apply to such a being, so why would you even attempt to rationalize it?

Almost ever sane person will confess that the mere existence of the universe defies logic. But that's true whether you make up a god or not. The very idea of a god is an idea of an entity that can do things that we consider to be 'illogical'.



As I've said, even if a god exists that's still an 'irrational' concept as far as humans are concerned.

Moreover, if you actually take this whole picture of a preexisting god who 'creates' this universe where does that lead? Especially if you want to claim to remain 'rational'. What would god be able to create the universe from? Nothing? That makes no sense by your own assertions.

In order to stick with your demand that things be 'rational' then a preexisting god could only create a universe out of itself. It would need to 'become' the universe. That's the only 'rational' conclusion there. But then you end up with Pantheism which you don't like.

You can't logic your way to the biblical God Spider. If you want to have faith in the biblical God you'll just have to do it and confess that this is precisely what it is,... PURE FAITH.

You're attempts to prove the biblical God will get you nowhere.

On the contrary it's already been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Biblical stories are so self-contradicting and self-inconsistent that they couldn't possibly be true even if we knew for a fact how the universe came to be. The Biblical myth just doesn't hold water in the face of it's own contradictions. It makes claims about its God's character and then goes on to tell stories that completely defy those traits that its God is supposed to have. It's a self-disproved mythology. It has proven itself to be absurd.

However, your arguments here could be a used effectively by a Pantheist.

The most rational conclusion based on what you've stated here is that God 'became' the universe. That's Pantheism.

Trying to argue for a 'rational' explanation for the Biblical God is an oxymoron in the first place, because there's nothing 'rational' about a supposedly all-powerful God who is at war with a fallen angel and can't forgive sins unless it is appeased by a blood sacrifice. Those are both totally 'irrational' ideas.

The words "Bible" and "Rational" should never be used together in the same sentence. You have to believe that God is irrational if you want to believe in the Biblical picture of God. That's a given.

So your plea for 'rationality' is nothing more than a plea for Pantheism.

If you're that concerned about a rational picture of God you may as well start converting to pantheism already. It will probably take you several decades to recover from the biblical irrationalities anyway.

Knowledge is gained by observation followed by logically sound processes, and it is only as accurate as any given one of the individual elements that led up to the conclusion. Wisdom, however, is undeniable.

Human knowledge may be thought of as a sort of chain. This chain, which consists of interlocked conceptual links, have language at their core. The individual elements of which humans regularly use in order to accurately convey their individual thoughts and/or ideas to another.

Meaning is only established with a shared understanding.

With this in mind, there is no true wisdom to be had, when it concerns the supposed beginning of the universe. It can only be a conclusion based entirely upon the perceptual faculty's ability to determine what should be considered as knowledge by the individual.

Agreed. Especially concerning a philosophical notion such as what may have caused, or not caused, a unviverse to 'apparently' come into existence.

The very notion that it has been 'proven' to have come into existence from 'nothing' is a lame claim to begin with. Science certainly doesn't claim that this is the case. However, it does claim that it didn't always have this 'form'. It does claim that this has been 'observed' to be the case insofar as we can tell. The universe appears to have evolved from a previous state into the one we are now experiencing based on observations.

To jump to the conclusion that this someone proves that there must be a "god" is clearly not the case. If it were the case then scientists themselvs would be rejoicing over the fact that they have proved the existence of 'god'. Clearly they do not considered that to be the case.

Moreover, as I've said in my previous post, even if they were to make that conclusion it would be pointing more toward a pantheistic view of 'god' not to the 'magician' type of human-like Gods of ancient mytholgoies. Those human-like Gods would theoretically not need to use a 'process' to create something. They just wave a magic wand and 'poof' whatever they want just appears in its finished form.

Actually if a person is going to conceded that a 'god' created the universe over 14 billion years ago using a Big Bang, then it seems to me that they must also concede that evolution is the process by which that same 'god' created man.

The 6-day creation scheme that denounces evolution would suffer dearly.

What's truly 'irrational' is when religious fundies attempt to prove the existence of their Gods using science, and then turn around and deny science in another topic.

That's not only 'irrational' but it's a bit hilarious actually. It's like they are saying, "Science Proves God! But don't teach evolution in our schools!".

That's hardly rational.

It does not follow that if God created the universe out of some part of himself that Pantheism holds true. It is quite possible that He could create it without having to be to be a part of everything. The idea that "God is a tree - a tree is God" is far beyond a logical conclusion to an established premise of His creating it (if that is to be the accepted premise)

The difficulty with the scientific evidence in this manner - is the projection backwards in time based on the short period of investigaton. It has only been since our lifetime Abra - that the sophistication of instruments to even study space has been available to us - yet how is it that Scientists can even conjecture what occured 10 centuries ago - let alone 10 billion years. It is a supposition at best. Even the events on this planet alone looking back in time is conjecture and theory - based upon projecting what has been studied in recent time - over an extended perod of time. It is useful for anticipating what is to come - useless for detemining what no one was around to witness to accumulate the necessary factors to extablish a control on the experiment.

So putting one's faith in Evolution - is just that. There's nothing "scientific" about Evolution. And I'm not talking about the micro evolution we've witnessed since Darwin devoted himself to the study. A point to this is the attempt to determine what the skeletons of the dinosaurs were covered with. How can it possibly be determined what that is? Scales - fur - feathers - skin.... No way to know - no way to establish proof.

Intelligent Design - Macro Evolution

Subjective conjecture at best.

You'd have to take that up with a pantheist.

When you say, "The idea that "God is a tree - a tree is God" is far beyond a logical conclusion to an established premise of His creating it", you may not be thinking along the same lines as a panthiest.

You may require that all of God is alway 'conscious' of it's existence and form. A Pantheist may not feel that way. You have hair and fingernails, yet you cut your hair and clip off your fingernails and never give it a second thought. Plants may be like God's hair. Rocks may be like his fingernails.

Rough anology, but I hope you get the idea. Of course, a human would be one of his many faces, as would all living beings.

Just because you don't understand pantheism (or don't accept the idea of it, doesn't mean that it's irrational)

All I am saying is that pantheism would be a much more 'rational' picture to deduce based on the arguments that Spider gave in the OP. The biblical god isn't supposed to need crutches (like big bangs and evolutionary processes) to create his universe. He's supposed to be able to do it in 6-days like a magician. Once you get into the business of allowing that God uses evolutionary processes to create things you're leaning far closer toward the pantheistic view of god than you are toward the ancient human-like God-dieties described in Mediterranean mythologies.

I'm not saying that it would 'prove' pantheism. In fact, I don't think Spider's scenario proves anything. But if it were going to suggest anything at all it suggests panthism far more than the Mediterranean mythology picture. In fact, it doesn't support the biblical picture at all.

To say that it's supposition at best is truly ignorant Eljay, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word ignorant. To say such a thing is to simply reveal that you truly don't know how they know these things. It's not conjecture. Science isn't philosophy. It's observation and detailed analysis.

The bottom line is extremely simple Eljay, as well as utterly ridiculous.

Science has been proven to be correct beyond any shadow of a doubt. We have nuclear generators that wouldn't even work if Science wasn't correct. Unfortunately atom bombs were dropped that wiped out two entire cities. If you want to call that conjecture and supposition by my guest.

Science works. Much of our modern technologies wouldn't work today if quantum physics was wrong. It's clearly not wrong Eljay. To call science nothing more than supposition and conjecture is nothing but a huge act of total denial.

And all for what?

To support an ancient myth that claims that blood can wash away 'sins' where 'sins' themselves are disobedience to some perverted God that told people to stone each other to death?

You would rather reject what has been proven to be true beyond any shadow of a doubt, for the sake of believing in an ancient mythology that says that all of mankind is in hot water with their creator. A creator who already had a fallen angel, and can't even keep him under control. A creator who designed a universe such that he would need to be nailed to a pole to save it from his own judgment?

You can't be serious Elay.

But the truly sad thing is that you are serious. You'd rather believe in a superstitious mythology based on nothing at all, than to believe in a science that based on nuclear powered generators and all manner of technological toys that you use on a daily basis.

That's the truly sad thing Eljay. You are so determined to support a demented myth that you're willing to forfeit any inkling of sanity or rationality to support it. And for what purpose? To save your soul from the damnation of an angry god according to some completely unproven ancient superstition? A superstition that was common in many differnt forms all throughout the entire region from whence that myth came?

You call that 'rational'?

I'm afraid this is where we need to agree to disagree. To reject proven science for a completely unsubstantiated mythology is not even close to being rational as far as I'm concerned Eljay. Not even close.

Proof that God exists?

As I gaze
at all the twinkling stars in the heavens above
suspended perfectly in space

I know in my heart
that no one else
but God
could have placed them there.

No One else
but God.

Like Psalm 8:3 says,

"When I consider thy heavens
the work of thy fingers
the moon and the stars
which thou hast ordained"

I stand in Awe.
How can I not help but stand in Awe,
of Our Awesome God .


But the Best Proof of All
That God is Real?

The day that God
thru Jesus Christ
Came to Live Within My Heart.

If You Look
You Will Find
Him Living There.

I believe in time scientists will unravel more of the mysteries of how the universe works. How religion will fare with it is another question? Perhaps by then religion will have little to say when science can explain how a galaxy is created or how planets or suns evolves. I am sure they have some answers already.

Unfortunately many humans (if not most) will continue to use a simple way out by saying a god created it. It is usually a God from a bible, quran, torah, or whatever other book they use. It is like saying I don't care to even study or really want to try to figure out how these many universes work, just believe in the scriptures written 2000 years ago.

It seems to me like a easy way out of everything! I am glad that scientists exist and they want to explore and look beyond on how many of the things we cannot explain can be explained later on.

May the scientist endure in their studies and are left to do so!

The issue at hand is this: the universe had a beginning. Imagine that there is an infinite number of universes spawning other universes (I am not convinced of this), the first universe has to have had a source. That source must be necessary. Necessary means that the creator of the universe cannot change, it must be the same no matter what the universe around it is like. Something which can change can also not exist. If there is no necessary creator, you run into the anthropic principle. The numbers in the anthropic principle are staggeringly against our universe existing, so it points to a necessary creator. Necessary also means that the creator must be eternal. If the creator isn't eternal, then the creator does change and you once again run into the anthropic principle. The truly amazing part of this is that so many different fields of study: physics, cosmology, philosophy all point to a necessary creator which fits the attributes attributed to the God of Judaism and Christianity. Think about it, whatever created our universe must be: Unchanging, eternal and non-material. This excludes as a possibility, almost every religion that has ever existed. As I already pointed out, the only religions that are left standing is Judaism and Christianity.

i dont believe in athiesm. lol.
Q- What did they say at the athiests funeral?
ans. - all derssed up and noplace to go.

p.s. to assume that a christian is dumb to believe in creationism is dumb. Dont you think we are able to research a topic without a pre determined agenda? The fact from my chair leads tme to believe that science and the bible are in perfect harmony assuming your able to look at the evidence objectivly. I for one dont simply follow the crowd, on the contrary i have to see all the evidence, do the math, ect. .... which i have been doing for years.
heres an example: The bible says to circumsize a child on the eighth day. It turns after all these millenia,medical science has found out that on the eighth day, the baby is at its most resistant to infection.
im my opinion to dismiss God, whatever the name, is to appoint ourselves God... which may be convienant and allow us to act as we wish but in the end its always been a recipe for failure. Those people and societies who have followed Gods teachings have ALWAYS prospered. when they eventually fall away, thinking they know better than God how to run things, they have ineveiably fallen. its a matter of historical record even without the bible. Wouldent God, who created all things, know best how we should live, what we shoud eat, ect???

This begs the question "Where did the quantum field come from?" Everything which exists must have an explanation. What is the origin of this quantum field?



I misspoke...er typed. Everything in our universe has an explanation. A necessary being would be explained by being necessary. Everything else would be contingent upon the actions of the necessary being as the first mover and upon other contingent entities.



Not true in the least, God cannot do anything which is illogical. The founder of calculus, Gottfried Leibnitz, wrote about that extensively. He believed that for God to exist, his power would only be limited by contradiction. Namely: Contradictions of logic and character. God, according to Leibnitz (and I agree 100%) cannot create a square circle, because a square circle cannot exist.



No, it makes perfect sense. If God exists, then God exists necessarily. That means that everything else that exists does so contingently upon God's existence. For God to create the universe out of preexisting matter would mean that the matter existed necessarily. Matter does not exist necessarily, that's easily proven. Burn a piece of wood. That matter has just been changed. Even on the atomic and subatomic levels, matter does not exist necessarily. In a different possible universe, different atoms and different subatomic particles could exist. If you believe that the universe is eternal, then you have to explain why it is eternal when it can change. Mathematically, the possibility of the universe existing without a necessary creator is incredibly small. Something like a 1 followed by a billion zeros to one, against. That's not according to me, that's according to the anthropic principle developed by physicists. The math behind the anthropic principle has never been questioned academically. It's a proven fact that statistically, the universe shouldn't exist.



No, God couldn't create the universe out of himself. That would mean that God could change. Anything which can change can also not exist. Therefore if God could change, the anthropic principle would demand that God not exist. The chances of a god who could change existing is negligible. Also, if god exists as material, then god couldn't be the first mover. A god could not create itself, that's logically impossible. A god could not be made of matter and create all matter, that is also logically impossible. What remains is improbable, but it's the only possibility: God exists, was not created, cannot change and is not composed of matter.

At the subatomic level, matter is made of quarks. Quarks exist, but they are made of nothing. God could create the quarks and arrange them into the shape that God desired.



That's a completely illogical conclusion. If god can change, then god can not exist and therefore cannot be necessary. If you believe in a non-necessary god, then what created your god? Another god? And what about that one? Your belief would demand an infinite number of gods. Occam's razor: one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. To assume an infinite number of gods would violate occam's razor. By occam's razor, if you were to believe in a god, it would have to be a single necessary god.

Gods laws never change. They are as solid now as ever.(which in itself is a big clue) Mans laws, or thier interpetation of Gods laws, change daily.

Hmmm...If there is a God, I hope your all praying to the right one...wouldn't it be messed up if you spent your whole life praying to the wrong God...good luck from all us Atheists

Logic dictates that there could only be one necessary god (that is all that would be needed). Which excludes all religions with multiple gods.

That god would not need anything (because of the nature of being necessary). Which excludes all religions which posits that god needs something from the universe.

That god would have to be eternal, unchanging and non-material. Which excludes all relgions which posit a god which don't have those three characteristics.

You are only left with two religions: Judaism and Christianity. That means that anyone who believes in either of those religions has a base chance of 50% of being right.

Now we look at Christianity: The radical conversions of James and Paul, the peaceful martyrdom of the apostles and their commitment to their beliefs even under torture. The brutal honesty of Jesus' family and friends rejecting Jesus' claims (James converted after Jesus' resurrection). The scales tip in the favor of Christianity.

I am very comfortable with the God of Abraham, I don't believe that luck will help anyone in the long run.

Well this would rule out the biblical God then. The biblical God clearly changes.

In the Old Testament the biblical God drowns out humanity as a way to deal with their disobedience to his rules. In the New Testament the biblical God sends his only begotten son to be sacrificed to pay for the disobedience of humanity. This same God deals with the same problem in different ways over the course of time. That is not the behavior of an unchanging God.

From a religious point of view the reason that it is so important that God doesn't change is so that we can trust God to always be the same and always want the same things from us. What good does it do to have a God who is constantly changing his mind about what he wants from us? That would be an undependable God. A God that we can't trust to always be the same. A God who changes. But that's precisely what the biblical picture of God is all about. It's about a God who is constantly changing his mind. It's about a God that is constantly changing.

The doctrine claims that Jesus said that he did not come to change the laws, yet it goes on to have in do just that. This is typical of this myth. It claims one thing, and then goes on to completely contradict what it just claimed. The God of Abraham said 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' (in other words, getting revenge for what people do to you is ok). But Jesus said, "turn the other cheek", (in other words don't seek revenge for what people do to you). So which is it? The biblical God clearly changed his mind.

The God of Abraham said, "Stone sinners to death and kill heathen". Jesus said not to do that. This is supposed to be a picture of a God that doesn't change? Clearly if you want a picture of a God that doesn't change you'll need to avoid the biblical picture of God. That God change like day and night.



To begin with, the anthropic principle assumes evolution, as does the Big Bang theory. It amazes me that someone like yourself, Spider, who has vehemently denied evolution and who has argued that the 6-day creation in the bible does indeed refer to 6 earth days, would now turn around and rely on accepting evolution and a Big Bang theory that demands that the universe was created over a period of 14 billion years. Clearly you'd argue anything to support your mythology at all cost, including being just as inconsistent and changing as the God in your mythology.

The anthropic principle is based on the following: Look around at the current state of the universe. Now imagine that 14 billion years ago it was nothing more than an exploding chaotic mess. What's the probability that, that mess, would evolve into what we see around us to day. Everything would have had to have been so precisely perfectly set into motion that the odds of that being the case are virtually impossible.

Well the major flaw with the antropic principle is that it's looking at the picture all wrong. It looks at the way the universe is today and see that as the 'goal'. But that's wrong. That assumes that what exists today was predetermined to be precisely what we see around us. That's flawed logic. Things are the way they are because that's the way they evolved. Not the other way around. We can't look at what we see today and assume that this is the only way that things could be. There might be an infinite number of ways that things could have turned out. The ways things turned out is just one of those infinite possibilities. So we look around and say, "What is the odds that this one way would have turned out?" Well, clearly they are slim. But that would be true no matter how things turned out.

So the anthropic principle is really an invalid way of looking at things.



Well again, if you're so worried about a God that changes then why are you so obsessed with the biblical myth? That God clearly changes dramatically. You're arguments that God must not change are actually arguments against the biblical picture of a God who does change.



This statement is nothing short of absurd. The biblical God clearly changes. All you need to do is read the stories to see that. The overall myth might claim that he doesn't change, but their stories reveal otherwise. You must believe that God changes if you're going to believe in the Bible because the biblical God clearly changed drastically between the Old and New Testaments. Judaism might have an argument for an unchanging God since they don't accept that Jesus was God. But Christianity doesn't have a prayer of claming that their picture of God is unchanging.