God did not create the universe, says Hawking

[enfield]

I can't read all of this - y'all let me know if someone steps out of line.

[Smith]

Jamie, I didn't write this, it's quoted from a reply on another forum, but it's exactly what I was gonna type anyway, regarding the Universe as an Atom, Theory.

"You're not the first person to wonder that. The first thing to remember with this line of thinking is that we have no information about anything "outside" of this universe (if such a place exists at all)...so we're mostly limited to speculation (imaginative and mathematical).

In general, our universe does not seem to behave like a subatomic particle...so it's probably not...but then again, we cannot see our universe "from the outside".

But, there are scientific speculations that our universe is but one in an infinite number of other, equally valid universes or that our universe is contained within a larger meta-universe. Interesting to think about...no hard evidence though. Check out the "many worlds" theory, M-theory (string theory), etc."

I have no problem with String or M-theory. In fact I can see perfectly how that would encompass things like heaven and hell and how God can be timeless in a world set in time. It would also explain how God could see the past and future in every variable since he would be moving in the other folds where we are limited to this one dimension.

Like Jaime said it is speculation since we are limited in what we can see, but it would explain some of the supernatural aspects of God description that he indicates will be available to us in eternity that are limited to us now. Very interesting theories non the less.

[Guest Jamie]

I can't read all of this - y'all let me know if someone steps out of line.

Nah... we'll just hunt 'em down and shoot 'em.

[Chucktshoes]

Nah... we'll just hunt 'em down and shoot 'em.

Nah, I say you can use em instead of the goat.

[Guest Jamie]

It would also explain how God could see the past and future in every variable since he would be moving in the other folds where we are limited to this one dimension.

But again, there goes free will. And also, being judged, since all that would ever need to be known about you would be there before you were ever even conceived, much less born.

In essence, even if god didn't create you, he'd know exactly when you'd arrive, when you'd leave, and everything you'd do in between. In other words, even if you do make your own choices, he'd already know what those were going to be, and why you made them. Which would also make it possible - and relatively easy - to steer you where ever he wanted you to go, if that's what he had a mind to do.

Like Jaime said it is speculation since we are limited in what we can see, but it would explain some of the supernatural aspects of God description that he indicates will be available to us in eternity that are limited to us now. Very interesting theories non the less.

Perception is always limited to what a person can "see"... and by that, I also mean what one can imagine, as well as what their eyes can take in.

[Guest Jamie]

Nah, I say you can use em instead of the goat.

Y'know, there's just so much wrong with that sentence that I believe I'll just leave it alone.

[E4 No More]

That would be petrification, not fossilization. Petrification takes place when minerals are completely deposited on the outside of an object & take the form of the object they surround. Fossilization is a process of lithification & remineralisation by the surrounding minerals

Not really. That's like pouring concrete over something & calling it a fossil. Once again, Mt St. Helens remains are petrified, not fossilized. the remains were covered in hot volcanic ash & molten lava which hardened upon cooling, leaving mineral covered remains.

You're partly right, but a miss is still a miss.

The comment that I was responding to was concerning the claim that rock covering the fossils doesn't form that fast. Mt. St. Helens is a Peléan volcano which underwent a Peléan eruption which consists of magma with a high water content building up pressure until it blows out the side of the mountain creating a pyroclastic flow that forms volcanic tufts; not a "molten lava", (redundant), flow pouring over the area in question because the water and high silica content in the magma makes it very viscous and not a fluid to be poured-out over anything. Heat and pressure formed rock out of ash and tufts for miles within a relatively short period of time.

EDIT: BTW, sedimentary rock formation depends heavily upon the chemical content of the sediment itself. This is why you can see solid rock covering loose rock in the same strata.

Edited September 3, 2010 by SWJewellTN

[Smith]

But again, there goes free will. And also, being judged, since all that would ever need to be known about you would be there before you were ever even conceived, much less born.

In essence, even if god didn't create you, he'd know exactly when you'd arrive, when you'd leave, and everything you'd do in between. In other words, even if you do make your own choices, he'd already know what those were going to be, and why you made them. Which would also make it possible - and relatively easy - to steer you where ever he wanted you to go, if that's what he had a mind to do.

It has no impact on free will. The fact he knows all possible variations of choices and consequences doesn't mean I didn't choose. Because I am limited in my knowledge the choice is free will. That would account for how God could know all and yet allow free choice. Of course this is yet another debate that will never die and is perhaps longer and more drawn out than any other that's been started here!

[Chucktshoes]

Smith, am I correct in guessing that your background is in one of the more Wesleyan/Arminiast traditions?

[Smith]

Smith, am I correct in guessing that your background is in one of the more Wesleyan/Arminiast traditions?

Well ... neither. funny thing is Arminius considered himself a good Calvinist and Calvin (IMO) would not recognize the Hyper Calvinism of the 21st century. I'm am really neither but see value in some of both of their thinking. You have to remember they were coming out of Catholicism and some of their critiques were reactions to the state of the church at that time period. Their understanding of scripture and theology was somewhat limited and tainted because of the lack of exposure prior to these events.

Long way of saying I believe in God's full sovereignty and man's free will. Exactly where those two intersect and I don't know, but the scripture indicates both and the early writers had no problem with it. In fact many of the problems Paul addressed in the early church where issues where groups became too extreme in either thought.

BTW - my education is in the Southern Baptist "tradition", but within SB there are camps on both sides of that debate and it is a hot topic ATM. Most protestant denominations tend to pick a side more than SB.

[Chucktshoes]

I definitely fall into the Reformed camp, however the TR's don't like me because I am both charismatic and egalitarian in my theology. That's a nice mix there isn't it? I do think that God allows and honors some of our choices, I just don't see that extending to us have the ability to choose to follow Christ. I can't argue with the TULIP.

I agree with you on the Hyper Calvinists, IMO they have substituted "correct doctrine" for "correct action" as man centered saving work and in end have still managed to disregard the Cross.

In the end, I don't view the Calvin/Arminius debate as a salvific issue, so it isn't something I will spend time arguing about. Just like I won't spend time arguing down dispensationalism. You start throwing in things like baptisms for the dead or adding new texts to the Cannon, and we might be in for a conversation.

[Guest trigem]

Quotes from a Satanist. Anton Lavey

“If anything, we are enslaved more as human beings now than at any time, probably, in man's history. But it is so sugarcoated, it's so slick, it's so polished.â€

“Every religion in the world that has destroyed people is based on loveâ€

“A friend of mine who was a founding father of the Church of Satan, who later I compared notes with, said when he was a kid, he too managed to get into Sally's Nude Ranch, and in the corral he saw his Sunday school teacher!!! That was a real epiphany for him. From that moment on he was a Satanist.â€

“I've always been timid. I wait for the mating signal, yet I want to show my interest, but I'm too ******* bashful to go for it! I have no sympathy for wolves. Why can't a man wait and see if there is any interest in them? Every woman wants to be pursued, it's a courting dance, a mating game and it should be that way, played out. The world is full of creeps.â€

“But the average person doesn't have that much imagination. They just want to be entertained. They want to have the tableau presented for them. They don't want to participate beyond a certain point. They want the safety of the herd, to be catered to, sit back and enjoy.â€

“My parents were lenient. My mother believed God was another word for nature. I took up Satanism not out of desperation, but out of logic. I rebelled, not but because of a religious or repressive childhood. I wanted to join the French Foreign Legion.â€

Stop yelling with those colors, Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I'm going blind

[Guest trigem]

For Thinking Minds, Please no endless ranting of nonsense

Remember:

1: Science explains what happened - they call it the Big Bang; but science cannot explain why creation came about.

2: The Bible tells us that God decided to create; and he did. It's the same story. And here we are today.

Creation

Creation: Big Bang, or what?

Creation according to God? Or according to science?

Scientists talk about the 'Big Bang' theory of the appearance of the universe. How does the Big Bang compare with the Bible's description of creation?

'Big Bang', says Science...

The scientific approach says that in the beginning, before the universe appeared, there was nothing. And at some stage, there came the biggest 'Big Bang' ever: a tremendous explosion of energy, matter, and of course, light. There never was such an explosion of light, either before or after this event.

In scientific terms, in the cosmology of Physics, the Big Bang theory states that that the universe appeared from nowhere as an extremely dense and hot state, about 13.7 billion years ago (±2%). This is based on observations indicating the expansion of space as indicated by the Hubble red shift of distant galaxies, taken together with principles of cosmology.

If these observations are extrapolated into the past, they show that the universe exploded from a 'gravitational singularity' - the tiniest pinpoint of the most extreme density and temperature, as predicted by general relativity, which contained all the matter and energy of the entire universe.

What scientists cannot explain is WHY.

'Let there be Light', says the Bible

We can read this in the very beginning of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, in a book called Genesis. Here are the words from the New International Version, Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to 5:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."

How should we interpret this?

The word Genesis in Hebrew: בראשית, in Greek: Γένεσις, have the meanings of "birth", "creation", "cause", "beginning", "source" and "origin". It is the first book of the Torah, the first book of the Tanakh and also the first book of the Christian Old Testament. As Jewish tradition considers it to have been written by Moses, it is sometimes also called The First Book of Moses.

Bible scholars are generally in agreement that Genesis was written by Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, during the forty years that the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness (1450 - 1410 B.C.) This society would be of semi-nomadic herdsmen, living in a period that we would call the late bronze age in that region, just entering the iron age; this ties in with descriptions in the Old Testament that refer to bronze, copper, iron, etc.

So, how would God describe the stages of His creation to semi-nomadic herdsmen? The concept of counting in 'hundreds' appears in Genesis 6; the concept of 'thousands' does not appear until Genesis 20. So, how would you explain to bronze-age man the concept of 13.7 billion years? (Can you even imagine it yourself?) I would explain creation in stages, or phases; around 3,400 years ago I would probably call them 'days'.

(And what is time, to God? In the New Testament, 2 Peter 3:8 says this, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." Just expand that to the whole timescale of the life of the universe.)

Big Bang: The First Day

So the first 'day', the first stage of creation was "Let there be light". And there was the biggest blaze of light the universe has ever seen, in the massive explosion of the Big Bang. What a wonderful description; what a wonderful picture the Big Bang event creates in the mind's eye!

Big Bang and Scientists

I am a scientist; I studied Physics, Electronics and Control Engineering at four universities. And I have no problem with reconciling the story of creation as read in the Bible, with the scientific Big Bang theory. To me, they are the same thing.

Example: Suppose you are a scientist. How would you explain the scientific story to semi-nomadic, uneducated, mostly illiterate tribesmen in the semi-desert regions of Maasailand in Kenya today? Would you not explain the Big Bang in pretty much the same way that God does in the Bible?

Big Bang: something to think about

Big Bang: Creation or Evolution?

Edited September 3, 2010 by trigem

[Guest SUNTZU]

I just pulled a story off the top of my head, I'm not trying to make any comparisons other than that both are stories that may, or may not, be fictional. Star Wars was probably a bad example, because the author is still alive & can deny it's truth. Possibly a better story would've been Dante's Divine Comedy. Believeable if you're in that frame of mind, but in reality, just a story.

Who's to say though, that 1500 years from now Star Wars can't be the basis for a World Religion? It tells the story of good prevailing against evil, so it does have some basic moral teachings for us all & no-one will be alive to prove it's origins as a fictional movie.

Jedi Church - Jedi Religion and Jedi Faith

For Thinking Minds, Please no endless ranting of nonsense

Remember:

1: Science explains what happened - they call it the Big Bang; but science cannot explain why creation came about.

2: The Bible tells us that God decided to create; and he did. It's the same story. And here we are today.

I'm not a religious person, but I do admire your faith, and that of those others who stand up for something they believe. I hope you find peace in it.

[E4 No More]

Jedi Church - Jedi Religion and Jedi Faith

I'm not a religious person, but I do admire your faith, and that of those others who stand up for something they believe. I hope you find peace in it.

Thanks, Suntzu. I know that I do.

[willis68]

Daniel,

My apologies for condemning you for this thread, I quit smoking COLD turkey exactly 8 days ago and am just now starting to calm down. It was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be after smoking for 26 years and I have been a Prick to everyone but I am much better now

[robbiev]

I'm surprised I haven't seen any Pastafarians come out of the woodwork in this thread.

I'm reasonably sure the flying spaghetti monster is real. For proof, I submit the following:

Yummy Link: Edible Flying Spaghetti Monster

[G27]

I quit smoking COLD turkey exactly 8 days ago and am just now starting to calm down. It was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be after smoking for 26 years and I have been a Prick to everyone but I am much better now

Congrats - keep up the good work!

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Quotes from a Satanist. Anton Lavey

...

“A friend of mine who was a founding father of the Church of Satan, who later I compared notes with, said when he was a kid, he too managed to get into Sally's Nude Ranch, and in the corral he saw his Sunday school teacher!!! That was a real epiphany for him. From that moment on he was a Satanist.â€

Doesn't look especially satanic to me. Rather divine, in a 1939 down-home Texas fashion--

[Garufa]

It still amazes me that people where just as naughty back in the black & white days as they are now.

[G27]

It still amazes me that people where just as naughty back in the black & white days as they are now.

[Mike.357]

Daniel,

My apologies for condemning you for this thread, I quit smoking COLD turkey exactly 8 days ago and am just now starting to calm down. It was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be after smoking for 26 years and I have been a Prick to everyone but I am much better now

Well that explains a lot. Nothing harder in life than quitting nicotine. I wish you nothing but the best with it. Hang in there you can do it!

[willis68]

Well that explains a lot. Nothing harder in life than quitting nicotine. I wish you nothing but the best with it. Hang in there you can do it!

Thanks Mike!

[Guest Jamie]

It has no impact on free will. The fact he knows all possible variations of choices and consequences doesn't mean I didn't choose. Because I am limited in my knowledge the choice is free will. That would account for how God could know all and yet allow free choice. Of course this is yet another debate that will never die and is perhaps longer and more drawn out than any other that's been started here!

I think you might be missing the point; it doesn't matter whether you choose or not, since the outcome was known before you ever even existed. That's what I mean when I say there goes free will. Your perception(s) of the situation have no real bearing on it if the outcome is still the same.

In that regard, you're place in heaven or hell... whichever you're destined for... is already reserved for you.

And if you want to go the multiverse route, where all realities are valid, then where you end up may simply vary from one to the other as you play out all the possible choices you could make in your life.

Let me put it this way... if we sit down to play a game of chess, and I already know what the last move is going to be, and who's going to make it... does the rest of the game really matter?

[Guest trigem]

I'm not a religious person, but I do admire your faith, and that of those others who stand up for something they believe. I hope you find peace in it.

Believe it or not, I am not religious, I don't belong to any denomination, God opened up my hard head to His word, I'm growing in faith as I read the Word, Understanding comes slowly, I look at it as a personal relationship with Him.

I have been seeking for 20 years now, I challenge Christians whom don't read the Word but follow false teachings, it's really sad so many are following false non biblical teachings,

I do not just follow blindly, I tare every teaching that comes out of the denominations and compare it to what the Word says, It's amazing how many ways preachers can twist words.... It is the only real peace I have ever found

Thanks for not passing judgment, I genuinely care for others, I do this for no other reason.