Logic and evolution: Plantinga project. God is Back? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, December 28, 2020, 08:18 (1217 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Irrelevant only in your philosophy. The fact that this current universe had a timed appearance which is unexplained is entirely relevant. At Hawking's 70th birthday conference it was fully accepted in a Guth, etc. article there is no before, before the big Bang. Further you are describing a theory known as a 'Big Bounce' which requires a curved universe spacetime and this one is measured as flat.

dhw: This is an astonishing claim from someone who believes in a conscious mind of “pure energy” which engineered the big bang! Of course you believe in a before. And if you can believe in pre-existing and eternal conscious energy, you can believe in RED pre-existing unconscious and eternal energy and matter. The big bang may be relevant to your belief in conscious design, but it’s not relevant to a discussion on “first cause”.

DAVID: It is extremely relevant. Note the bold above. The only 'before' is God from my view. For the reason that I don't believe your red phrase can accomplish anything without a designing mind hard at work.

dhw: The article George quoted was an attempt to convince us that there has to be a first cause, which has to be God. I argued against George’s idea that “there was no time before” the big bang (if the big bang happened). Please look at your reply, quoting Hawking: “There is no before”. You have now simply confirmed what I wrote in relation to your own beliefs. The big bang is only relevant to your design theory. There are alternative versions of a “first cause”, and the fact that you are only prepared to consider one is no justification for quoting Hawking at me!

DAVID: Since this universe appears with a start of space and time, this can be turned about to say without a universe there is no space or time.

Without a universe, there is nothing, so of course there is no space or time! But there is a universe, and the claim that the big bang (if it happened) was the beginning of all things is totally unprovable because it is impossible for anyone to know what preceded the big bang!

DAVID: So we are left with either nothing or primordial energy with no form. Or only energy in the form of God. Something must be eternal.

Exactly. If, like me, you reject the idea that billions of stars and galaxies can emerge from nothing, you are left with an eternal something. I don’t accept the restriction to primordial energy with no form, as the universe might just as well have gone on throughout eternity forming different combinations of matter. George called it an “infinite regress”.

DAVID: My discussion about the geometry of spacetime is to the point our current studies do not support some sort of continuing process back to infinity. Therefore a universe has to have a start. Just following pure science.

There are no “pure science” studies that can possibly prove or disprove eternity, and I strongly doubt whether we shall ever be able to reach the borders of the universe, even if it is not infinite. You have yourself demolished Hawking’s claim that “there is no before”, so I don’t know why you brought it up in the first place, or why you continue to defend it now.