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Something From Nothing

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Theland | 21:17 Sat 28th Jul 2018 | Religion & Spirituality
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I find this assertion totally ludicrous.
The bible has it totally right. "In the beginning." It took centuries for us to accept that here was a beginning, preferring a perpetual universe.
As atheists, you don't like the possibility of a Creator God.
No problem - for Him.
Not met Him today so do t believe?
Your problem not His.
Not preaching to,you, just giving you facts.
Lots of unbelievers.
Think there is safety in numbers?
Sadly, go for it.
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Seems like J. Andrews agrees with the OP
//As atheists, you don't like the possibility of a Creator God.//

No so. ‘Liking’ isn’t part of the equation because that assumes choice, and speaking only for myself, I haven’t made a choice. I reached my conclusion by examining the evidence. As I’ve said so many times, I don’t know if this universe was created but I see no evidence to suggest it was. However, if it was, your God wasn’t responsible. He wasn’t omnipotent – he was impotent.
Can't be that impotent. He got Mary up the duff.
Haha! It's a lie, I tell ya!
The thing is that the starting premise isn't even accurate: nobody claims that there was "something from nothing".

But we've been here before. I am sure you have read replies to your previous posts, so the question really is, why have you forgotten them?
Probably too complicated and one has to match explanations to level of previous study.
jth - we could call this the Brexit theology thread
same q - same answers - week after week....

//It took centuries for us to accept that here was a beginning, preferring a perpetual universe. // ..... is untrue or if you prefer - the evidence is fully in favour of the opposite
it took centuries for us to realise that there was a beginning aka the big bang

the spade work on a changing earth and NOT an earth that God created and then left in its splendour was done by Geologists 1800-1850 and most of them anglican vicars ( Sedgwisk etc )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconformity

Hutton noted strata which were L shaped or T shaped and said this has to be made and twisted later. There then grew up an idea of Naturalism - where the scientists said that if something could be explained by natural means (such as a sedimentary layer explained by er sedimentation) then an appeal to God was not justified.

Clearly the key to a changing world and what causes the change had been turned ....
According to Theland’s link, Hawkins said something like ‘Because there is a law like gravity the universe can and will create itself out of nothing’. Theland’s man says that if creation depended upon the pre-existence of gravity, then gravity must have existed before the universe came into being. Therefore the universe didn’t create itself out of nothing. That sounds logical to me. Not that I think Theland’s God or any other alleged supernatural force dunnit - but it stands to reason that if gravity existed, the claim that the universe created itself out of nothing must be erroneous.
*Hawkins* ... Hawking. Tut!
Don't think you can hold a lump of gravity. The word 'nothing' can and is used with various definitions. I have nothing in this box, whoops it's really full of air, there's nothing in empty space then, whoops loads of particles coming into existence then annihilating each other again. shrug
-- answer removed --
Some of us do both, Jordy. Pity is surplus to requirements. ;o)
Invoking the existence of a creator god is the hallmark of abandoning the quest for an understanding of the means and process by which something (a god no less) exists. Failing to grasp how a universe and everything in it exists, one is made no wiser by added something infinitely more complex (ex nihilo) to the equation.
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Vetuste - I have not read the book by Lawrence Krausse, but I have watched his lecture, and his debates.
I honestly do try to find an explanation from the scientists that is credible, and so far I have been totally disappointed.
Hawking and Krausse both refer to "nothing," as a little bit of, "something."
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Nailit - There are no originals, or copies, or copies of copies, or copies of copies of copies.
What there are though, are copies from wide geographical locations in several languages, that can reliably trace their origins back to original material.
Bart Erhman, (atheist), and Daniel B Wallace who is a believer are both New Testament scholars who can give you the answers you ask for.
One problem, at least, is that I don't think you are truly engaging with the scientific explanations as well as you think you are. Any analysis of science that is restricted to reading a book written for the layman misses out the massive amounts of mathematical justification for those claims. Once you follow, and understand, that mathematics, then it becomes rather a lot easier to appreciate why Hawking et al claim what they do.

To take an example at random: why do you think these scientists keep referring to "nothing" as really a little bit of "something"? It's because you will find, again and again, that every time you write down a theory for the structure of the Universe, or for the behaviour of gravity, that theory will almost force you to concede the idea that nothing -- in the most literal sense -- is an impossible state to achieve, or at the very least an impossible state to maintain.

Consequently, the assertion that the origin of the Universe is about creating "something from nothing" is rejected just as much by scientists as from you. To insist that scientists are saying this, so that you can ridicule them, is to misunderstand their argument.

To be sure, the exact mechanism for the origin of the Universe remains -- and, perhaps, may always remain -- a mystery. But, once you recognise the near-universal truth of physics that "something always happens", then the spontaneous emergence of the Universe at all is, at least, no longer surprising.
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Jim, many thanks for that. Taking the time and trouble.
The problem as I see it is that what you say holds true for the physics we know, which are all part of THIS universe.
Even wrapped up in science, you are describing initial starting condition of something.
Any names I could look up?
"...what you say holds true for the physics we know, which are all part of THIS universe."

Not exactly: there are many solutions, for example, to the equations of General Relativity that have no resemblance to things that exist in THIS universe, and they *still* have the basic property I described, namely that something always happens. Nor is it even particularly dependent on initial conditions; even starting off from nothing, you will find that state impossible to maintain (at least, in the short term).

This is a general property of what is called Quantum Field Theory; since this is merely a description of a general mathematical technique, its consequences are not restricted to the physical universe.

I can't see the point of offering up names: rather than chase authorities, what I am advising is that you consider taking a long-term (Open University?) course in Mathematics and/or Mathematical Physics. At the end of that you may still find that you believe in a Creator God, of course -- it's not unheard of for even modern physicists to be religious, and anyway I am certainly not claiming that physics disproves the existence of a Creator -- but, at the very least, it would improve your understanding of the arguments you are trying to refute.
The corollary of the above suggestion is that you should stop thinking that watching YouTube videos in any way constitutes actual research, ie, if you must keep posting them then maybe be a bit more neutral about it. For example, why not try "This is an interesting video, thoughts?", as opposed to "Watch this and see your puny understanding exposed as a sham..."
As a side note, I finally watched the video link you posted and was somewhat surprised to see Dr. Lennox essentially saying the exact same thing I am but reaching entirely different conclusions. Perhaps it was because the video was necessarily short, but it seemed that the only reason he was going the other way was because he was saying "it's just ridiculous" all the time, or words to that effect.

No matter, maybe it's more coherently expressed in his book(s), but I still remain unpersuaded.

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