He doesn't provide a "this is how it happened" answer. We're not there yet. What he does provide is a "this is how it could have happened" answer. He describes the origin of our universe, based upon the natural laws we have. You asked: And I gave you one possible answer which doesn't need anything beyond natural laws. The point is: There is no need for god. It's not: We know there is no god.
No... as it exists. If there were no human beings there would still be time, wouldn't there. As I understand it most modern theories of the big bang state that time was created as part of the process, therefore to ask what happened BEFORE then is meaningless because there IS no 'before'.
You'll find the astronomer in the link given above calling that idea fallacious and obsolete, in so many words.
Yes, but he says lots of things, doesn't he... including that the universe is so bizarre that it couldn't possibly have been designed. Should we accept that too? In any event I think you'll find he says something slightly different to the way you've presented it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7440217.stm Meanwhile, Professor Carroll urged cosmologists to broaden their horizons: "We're trained to say there was no time before the Big Bang, when we should say that we don't know whether there was anything - or if there was, what it was." Not quite the same thing, is it. In any event, all of the “pre-universe” models that I’m aware of have underpinnings in particle physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and mathematics. What they don’t have at this moment are testable predictions. That’s not “no evidence” in my book. There is only one model I’m aware of that doesn’t have any of that — the god hypothesis. The playing field is not level in that regard.
I guess it is a matter of semantics then. If it is indeed the case that time as we know it didn't exist prior to the big bang, then we have to come up with another word that asks what happened prior to the big bang that does not imply that time as we know it existed. "Prior" is obviously just as inappropriate as "before", but I suppose we can use either word with the understanding that we are not using it to imply that time as we know it existed. It is still a valid question regardless of semantics.
Many years ago, (when I was young and even more stupid than I am now), I spent some time studying the major philosophies and religions and there was a story from Buddhist teaching that made me stop and re-examine the worth of the exercise. It's a few years ago so excuse me if I get it slightly wrong but the gist of it is this... Imagine a frog talking to a fish and a bird. The bird asks what it's like to swim and the frog does his best to answer but he can't because he 'knows' what it's like and the bird doesn't. Then the frog asks what it's like to fly and he tries to answer in terms of swimming but can't, because it's NOT swimming, it's flying. The point of the exercise in Buddhism is to make you think about the nature of reality and how little we can know about it but what occurred to me was that it illustrated that the majority of effort that goes into considering most religious teachings, (and philosophical ones, albeit to a lesser extent), are in the same vein as trying to explain flying to a fish and swimming to a bird, i.e. utterly pointless. Note, I'm not talking about considering matters of morals and ethics, they're DEFINITELY worth thinking about. I'm talking about all this mumbo-jumbo about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin where religion is the ultimate pointless exercise. IMO, most of these things are there to give the appearance of an intellectual past-time but without any of that messy 'thinking' business where somebody might be able to prove you wrong... or right. I suppose it's kinda interesting as a mental exercise but it's generally worthless. In terms of this debate the point is that if some scientist, at some point in the future, PROVES there was some 'time' before the big bang then he will probably be able to tell us what happened during it as well but until then, simply repeating the question 'what happened BEFORE the big bang', over and over again, thinking that you're making some incredibly telling point about the shortcomings of science and the understanding it can give, is idiotic. That's what the fella that started this thread is doing, (and he's one of many),... asking dumb, rhetorical questions about which he THINKS he already knows the answer.
What's idiotic is saying, "there was nothing before the big bang, and there will be nothing after the universe ends." That's fine as far as exploring the physics of this universe, but in terms of the totality of reality, no. Doesn't drawing lines in space and time and then saying, "there's nothing outside it," sound pretty medieval? What is that nothing that's outside it and where is the other edge of that? Then we pretend that we can get rid of the question by saying, no, no, space doesn't exist, and time doesn't exist outside of the edges of those lines, as if that's an answer and the final word. Infinite nothingness around the edges of reality is ultimately unprovable. Somebody's going to suss out infinity? If they could, it wouldn't be infinite, and we're back to edges with supposedly "nothing" beyond them. The unexamined assumption that this is all comprehensible to the end of it, is pure unsupportable faith.
What the hell are you blathering about? Who said anything about something being beyond 'reality'? I mean, leaving aside the fact that it's a meaningless phrase, of course, which was my point... that people are generally using words which mean nothing to describe stuff that either doesn't exist or concepts that have absolutely no meaning. In short, they're just rambling. As to what might be in 'the infinite nothingness beyond reality', (have you been watching too many old Star Trek episodes again?), well, maybe it's the pixies and elves like I said.
Our inability to explain the mechanism by which the Universe came into existence (if the Big Bang occurred then what caused it) is simply a consequence of the limits of our current knowledge and science. There does not need to be a supernatural cause for the Big Bang (a Maker), it might be a completely natural process. Remember folks used to not understand the mechanisms for unexplained phenomena such as tropical storms, plagues etc and so jumped to supernatural causes as explanations, the wrath of Poseidon, Set etc. We now know the cause of these events and they are natural phenomena albeit often a result of a very complex system of forces. Similarly as our understanding of the workings of the Universe grows then we may one day be able to make an accurate theory for the reason for the Big Bang. At the moment, the only truth is that we don't know what caused the Big Bang (or even if it occurred at all). Our ignorance is not proof that a Creator exists and anyone jumping to that conclusion due to our current lack of knowledge is failing to learn from the vast history of now debunked supernatural theories for natural phenomena which are now fully understood.
No natural phenomena is fully understood. We have incredibly accurate descriptive and predictive abilities for many natural phenomena or forces such as gravity. Is gravity understood? Not at all. The cutting edge is untestable WAGS. I'm not a religious person, but this idea of "natural explanations" as so rational and opposite from a God or gods..."Natural" vs "Supernatural" pretty much means understood versus not understandable. When we've sorted out causes and effects we say something is understood. But the beginning and current basis of all this existence ultimately has to be uncaused--and that is supernatural. "Natural" is a logical fallacy also.
Prior to the writing of Genesis -- and when we speak of God we are either talking about a specific god or an unknown one: i choose to talk about the specific god of OT and NT -- gods were beings with physical attributes. They could be personified, for the most part. They, of course, had names. Then in Genesis, a god bursts upon the scene who has no physicality, who is purely spirit, yet creates; in fact this god creates things that create other things. Also in Genesis, we are introduced to the concept of a being that is physical and spiritual by dint of having God breathe life into him, i.e., Man. When Dawkins or any other scientist/philosopher talks about that God, he is speaking of a being with no physical properties. Something with no physical properties can only be apprehended by what it does, yet the God of the OT tells Moses that his name is "YHWH", which can be partly understood as "essential being". The entire Pentateuch presents to the Hebrews a look back at the God who first created all that we can physically interact with, emphasizing what he did for the people whom he rescued from slavery in Egypt. It is an antidote to the four centuries of acculturation at the hands of the Pharaohs. It exemplifies the special care that God bestows upon those who follow him. There is little logic involved in the question of God. He is or he isn't. You follow him or you don't.
Actually, Genesis doesn't do that. You can interpret it that way, but that's it. All it does is to speak of "the spirit of God" which is really not the same you're writing. In fact, most of the OT does in fact imply that this is a pretty regular god with a physicality, like when he had to send angels to Sodom and Gomorrah in order to check out what was going on there, as he didn't know himself, or even in Genesis itself where he walked through the garden, unaware of what the snake and his humans were doing. On the other hand, look at Zoroastrianism which is even older. It's creation myth is in fact a lot more abstract, not so much the creation process of the material world itself, which is remarkably similar to that in Genesis, but the theological concept behind it, where everything good is made from "truth" and everything bad from "lie": http://www.hinduwebsite.com/zoroastrianism/cosmogony.asp Not to mention that the early Jews were in fact henotheists, monotheism was a later development that happened during the exile in Babylon. Their god was one of many, all of which had similar attributes. So it really wasn't anything new. Again, nothing remarkable about this at all...in fact, I can't even think if any creator god who didn't do that. Yeah? I don't know if that's accurate. Just think about the Aten religion in Egypt, which was the first monotheistic religion that we know of (14th century BC) and which was again even more abstract than the Jewish god. Aten was never described as having any kind of physical form and he was depicted in an abstract way, as sun-rays with hands, which represent the unseen spirit of Aten. During the time of Akhenaten, when Atenism became the state religion in Egypt, idolatry was banned and creating "graven images" was banned. Later, even the abstract depiction was replaced by a phonetic spelling so that people wouldn't confuse Aten with a sun god, the sun or anything physical. Sounds very familiar, doesn't it? I noticed that
Again, what is up with you and not including other gods in your posts. How about: There is little logic involved in the question of the Gods. They are or they are not. You follow them or you don't.
Y'see, to me, that seems a perfectly sensible, rational position. It's not one I agree with but, to my mind it is at least logically consistent to say you believe in god and he created the heavens and earth in 7 days, (he's god... he can do what he wants), and he's the ultimate power in the universe. There's the thorny old problem of evil as detailed by fellas like Epicurus and Hume... "Is he (god) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" But, again, it can be logically consistent to say, frankly, he's just not that bothered. HEY! God's a busy guy... he can't be doing with every little detail down here Whatever!!! But what is NOT rational, consistent, (and it fecking pisses me off), is for those people who DO believe in god to keep trying, over and over again, to convince the rest of us that their view of god is right if we don't happen to agree with them coz that's just asinine... plus it's extremely bad manners. BTW, it's probably worth mentioning that we've had the pope over here for the past few days.... I mean, the POPE, FFS!! We've had it rammed down our necks from arsehole to breakfast time with this old nazi droning on for hours on end. There's just something about that accent to me ears and I DON'T think I'm alone. Even singing nursery rhymes sounds a bit dodgy. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtDE3XCyQY0"]YouTube - al murray - german[/ame] The fella is the great-great-great-grandson of William Makepeace Thackeray if you can believe that :/ Oh yeah... sorry benz dude
Which leads us to a bit of Probability Theory: P(God doesn't exist) + P(God exists and he's an asshole) = 1.00 Either way I'm not gonna spend my life worshiping him.
je regrette, but you are reading far more into these episodes than is allowed. a) his questioning Adam in the garden had nothing to do with his knowing or not knowing. it is like a parent who asks his child, "Did you eat the last cookie?", when there is no other alternative, other than space aliens. b) Sodom and Gomorrah Jehovah stays with Abraham, knowing what he will do in Sodom and Gomorrah. sending the two angels becomes a further indictment of the sinfulness of the cities. but Abraham is concerned for his nephew, Lot, and he intercedes with the Lord for the sake of Lot. the discussion between the Lord and Abraham shows that the two are well-acquainted. God listens to Abraham's case and repents from immediately destroying the cities. the statement to Abraham by the Lord to the effect that he will find out from the angels what is going on there can't be taken as ignorance on God's part. he is obviously testing Abraham to see whether he will respond based on Abraham's own first-hand knowledge of the circumstances in S & G. your definition of henotheism is faulty. it means worshiping one god while allowing the possibility that there are other gods. so, yes, the Hebrews were henotheistic, in that they had dealings with other people groups, like the Phillistines, who had their own god(s).
So are you saying that God willfully let Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden fruit only so that he could punish them? What a nice guy... Whatever, if God was the way you believe him to be, why would he even bargain with Abraham, and why the need to send the Angels? Or why test Abraham for that matter? Or why mess with Hiob only so that he can win his bet? These stories are all in line with a typical bronze age god with anthropogenic properties, far removed from the transcendent kind of god that has developed ever since the late middle ages. The early Israelites did worship one god (although it was an amalgamation of several earlier gods, which can still be seen in the different names used in the Bible), but they recognized that other gods existed as well. One of the gods that merged into YHWH is El/El Shaddai/El Elyon/Elohim who was married to Asherah, the high goddess. And sure enough, an inscription from the eighth century BC was found, saying: "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah," and "I bless you by Yahweh of Teiman and by his Asherah." The belief that YHWH was the one and only god was actually a rather late development.
I've seen some theories which tangentially relate Ahkenaten's Atun with the Israeli's monotheistic ideas. I believe this would require the Israelites to be the Habiru, which I don't think there's enough evidence for.
Of course it's hard to find any concrete evidence for such a connection. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that Moses either was based on Akhenaten or on some person close to him. Today that seems to be highly unlikely, simply because the evidence isn't good enough. However, I'd say that once the monotheistic cat was out of the bag, it was impossible to get it back in. So while there may not have been any direct connection between Atenism and Judaism, it seems inevitable that some Egyptian ideas could have inspired the Israelites of old, especially since there was a close connection to Egypt itself (whether the "Israelites" fled or were kicked out of Egypt as some scholars believe doesn't really matter there, there certainly was some Egyptian influx into Canaan). For example, it has often been noted that Psalm 104 has some very peculiar similarities to the Great Hymn of Akhenaten. http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/psalm104.html Anyway, my entire point was not to speculate whether Judaism descended from Atenism or not, but to point out that Judaism was not special or novel and that it was not an "antidote" to Egypt culture. There was in fact a part of Egyptian culture that was very similar indeed. But even if we just look at the traditional Egyptian religion of that era, when you look at Amun-Ra, then he almost was kind of a monotheistic god. He was called "King of the gods", sometimes "God of the gods" and he was considered to be the god who created the world and the other gods. I've even read (but I can't find it again) that he was (at least at some point - we have to take into account that Egyptian religion existed for at least 4000 years and was subject to some big changes over this time, at earlier times for example, Amun and Ra were separate gods) considered to be the only god and all the other god were just different manifestations of Amun-Ra. So maybe the same reasoning that led Akhenaten to go from Amun-Ra to Aten and to outlaw idolatry and to decree that only one god shall be worshipped influenced the Israelites in their ideas about their god(s).
I'm sure their was a good amount of idea exchange given all the trade. The Exodus stories of the Israelites being led by pillars of smoke and fire sound an awful lot like the Egyptian military practice of coordinating their troop movements with fire boxes and smoke boxes.
are you a parent? because if you are, you know you can only tell your children the rules and wait to see what they do with them. is it "nice" of a parent to tell his/her kid not to use drugs but let them leave the house? you're not stupic. don't play the "what a nice guy" card. that's stupic. why not? you don't like that god, don't follow him. risk / reward situation A. you're completely missing the points. God and Abraham had a relationship like Father and son. Abraham had begun to demonstrate that he trusted and obeyed God. not perfectly, of course, but in an incremental fashion. that's what God wants. or, if you're really smart, you know that God tells his people what his name is. oh, i see. eighth century inscriptions are the genuine article, but the Old and New Testaments are flawed. perfectly clear.
You're analogy doesn't work, exactly because you claim that god was aware of what Adam and Eve were up to. If god had human properties (like I said) then this would be a reasonable argument: God gave them the rules but couldn't prevent them from ultimately eating the fruit. However, if god knew all along what was going on, then he is in fact an evil person. If you see that your toddler is about to run across the street and you see a truck coming down his way, you wouldn't let him run and make his own experiences about what it's like to be hit by a truck. You'd run and try to save him. God himself said that eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a matter of life and death, so how could he have let that happen if he loved his creation? Especially since Adam and Eve couldn't know the difference between right and wrong before eating from that tree...in that sense, they really were toddlers running on the street. I didn't say that the Bible is flawed, I'm saying that there is a clear development going on, from polytheism to monotheism. And the fact that YHWH and the Jewish religion are based in polytheism is really not controversial at all, it's a well accepted fact among scholars. Even the Bible mentions it at points: http://people.ucalgary.ca/~eslinger/genrels/issues/polytheism.html http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/11OT.htm
Sorry mate. You are talking nonsense. Do you understand what causes rivers to form in mountains? I do. Do you understand what causes rain? I do. Do you understand what causes plants to grow? I do. Do you understand what causes the day and night? I do. Do you understand what causes the seasons? I do. Do you understand what causes earthquakes and volcanoes? I do. Do you understand what causes plagues? I do. Do you understand what causes storms? I do. Do you understand what causes rainbows? I do. If you don't understand these natural phenomena then I suggest you stop sacrificing maidens to Poseidon and get educated. If you do understand these natural phenomena then you will have to explain how this contradicts your statement that these are not understood.
Also Adam and Eve are being described as innocent. They would not expect some talking snake to be a devious lying b@stard. So Adam and Eve are punished for believing in a talking animal when they had no experience of the concept of lying. And not only were they punished but every descendent (which is not fully explained without introducing incest between siblings) was also punished for this 'original sin' even though they were not the 'perpetrators'. The punishment is an eternity in hell unless redemption is achieved by acceptance of Jesus of the Saviour. The only exception is Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who was retconned to be born free of Original Sin. In other words every human (apart from Mary) is being punished because the innocent Adam and Eve believed a talking snake and ate an apple. That is Christian Doctrine. Christians believe their God severely punishes them for something that they never did but their extremely distant ancestor did. Does that sound like a benevolent entity who believes in justice. Do Christians believe that is perfectly just for people to be punished for the sins/crimes of their ancestors? The God they worship does, so obviously they do. If they do not then they are claiming they worship a God that acts unjustly.
You're being superficial. And you're confusing full understanding with descriptive and predictive abilities. When we get down to the time that allows us to perceive anything above that you mentioned happening, we don't have a clue what time itself actually is. When we get down to the gravitational forces that cause the rotation of the earth around the sun, we don't have the slightest clue what gravity actually is. When we get down to the consciousness that this supposed understanding exists in, we don't have a clue what that consciousness actually is. Not to mention that even on the more superficial level, rain, volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, and rainbows can't even be accurately predicted except with a short term myopic vision. Moreover, we isolate particular phenomena that aren't isolated from everything else at all, and then we say we "understand" that thing we've sliced out of an infinite system of which it is a part. The idea that you have any idea what's actually going on when you pick your nose is complete nonsense. On the full understanding curve, the collective scientific genius of the human race is closer to a baby still in the womb than to full understanding.