In the beginning...

[Altfish]

God didn't come from anywhere but everywhere came from God. You can't have a place for God to come from before He created places.

I rest my case - that is what is called Special Pleading and cannot be argued with.

 

[Ted Evans]

Welcome to RF, Ted. Love the avatar, I haven't seen a cardinal since I moved out here to the wild West. I miss the bluejays, too. Our Steller's jays are a poor substitute, IMHO.
Of course, back East I'd never seen any roadrunners or mountain bluebirds, either.

Thanks for the welcome Valjean. I do some bird photography and have a number of images of Cardinals and Bluejays. We move to TN from Montana and I was not into bird photography when I was there, wish I would have been.

 

[Ted Evans]

Yes -- but not by the ordinary, Newtonian physics we observe in everyday life.

Keeping in mind, "in the beginning", can you explain how anything can be created without matter? Something that can be duplicated, observed being done, not a hypothesis or theory?

 

[metis]

It also doesn't mean a deity did not create or does not exist.

I'm with you as long as you include that statement.

Agreed, as I'm an agnostic, not an atheist.

 

[metis]

God didn't come from anywhere but everywhere came from God.

Evidence?

You can't have a place for God to come from before He created places.

Again, evidence?

 

[leibowde84]

Keeping in mind, "in the beginning", can you explain how anything can be created without matter? Something that can be duplicated, observed being done, not a hypothesis or theory?

Do you use the same standard of evidence when it comes to God? That you must be able to observe God directly?

 

[Ted Evans]

Yes. Energy can be converted into matter. E=mc^2.

Can this be demonstrated, has it been done in a lab, can you provide some examples? Or, is it a mathematical formula that suggests it can be done?

 

[metis]

so we really cannot say for certain how old the universe is then, can we?

Fiorst of all, welcome to RF.

As to the above, it would also depend on when do we start counting? What I mean by that is that most cosmologists do believe there was somethings that lead to the BB, so do we start counting with the expansions or do we go back before that into uncharted territory?

Also, probably a majority of cosmologists nowadays lean in the direction of us being in, not just a "universe", but also a "multiverse", and this hypothesis is based on what we now know about quantum mechanics. The idea that there was only one "dot" and that this "dot" expanded to make all doesn't seem compatible with q.m.

 

[metis]

Can this be demonstrated, has it been done in a lab, can you provide some examples?

"Fusion".

 

[Ted Evans]

How would these things exist without space? They sort of define space.

IOW, if there

How would these things exist without space? They sort of define space.

Are you saying that if there is matter, energy and time, there has to be space also or have I misunderstood? My contention is that all four of these components are required, in the beginning, before there can be a universe. Is that an incorrect assumption?

 

[Ted Evans]

The question doesn't make sense. Matter is energy -- they're equivalent, and so are time and space.
You need to brush up on your Relativity -- or get a relative and brush up on him...

May I remind you that the OP specifically states, “In the beginning” so, with that in mind, what were the conditions, in the beginning, where energy created matter or matter created energy? In addition, what conditions are required for transformation to take place, can it be done without outside influence?

 

[Ted Evans]

Space is time. The two are inextricable, and equivalent. You can't have space and no time.(See last sentence in #3)

Thank you, that is my point.

 

[Ted Evans]

This involves physics way over my head. If you're seriously interested it's all there in textbooks and professional journals.
We can no longer understand reality through commonsense and our physical senses. It's all spooky and counter-intuitive.

Now, we are getting to the crux of the issue. Science cannot or has not, proven where these components, which are required for creation, came from. They speculate, believe, think, could be but they cannot answer the question with anything more than hypothesis and/or theories. However, creationists cannot provide any “scientific” evidence for our beliefs either but are ridiculed by many “evolutionists” because of our beliefs. Why can both sides not just admit that what was, in the beginning, is our belief?

 

[HonestJoe]

You are correct, and I do appreciate honesty, nothing wrong, in my view of saying "I do not know". I still do not know where space, time, energy and matter came from in the beginning as seen by those that believe in cosmology evolution (CE). IOW, it is a belief by CEs that those components were there, no different than creationist "believe" that God was there and He created those components.

What upsets me are those that scoff at creationists views of creation but try to pass of CE views as being "scientific".

The key difference is that the scientists openly admit that they don’t know where those initial elements came from but actively continue to investigation and research to understand. They’ve already pushed that level of understand a long, long way.

The problem with creationism is that it tends to assert a very specifically defined creator being and typically wraps that concept in some kind of logical immunity to scientific study; not just that we don’t know but we can’t know. The other issue is that many of the creation hypothesis have been contradicted by subsequent discoveries yet are so often clung on to by their adherents.

 

[LuisDantas]

Would you care to share how that answers my questions, or, is it only a deflection?

You just don't have the basic ideas well understood enough for a meaningful exchange.

 

[Ted Evans]

Both -- depends on how you look at it and define the terms.

So, now I have a question. What the heck is a "cosmology evolutionist?"

I have read views on both sides and as far as I know, it is not a proven fact, one way or the other.

To answer your question, it comes from past experience, when I would address the subject of "evolution" in regards to creation of the universe, I had tell me that creation was not evolution, that evolution was about biology. Therefore, to make clear my intentions, I began using CE.

"Physical cosmology is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the Universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate."

Does that answer your question? BTW, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to each one of my questions.

 

[Ted Evans]

I would suggest reading Steven Hawking's "The Grand Design".

Thanks for the suggestion, I would suggest that you read Answers in Genesis and Institue for Creation Research, is that fair?

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

You are not starting at, "In the beginning", what components were in the "dot" and where did they come from?

Just please at least admit that positing "God" as the answer for where they came from is JUST AS ARBITRARY AS ANY OTHER ANSWER that you may deem arbitrary. Ultimately, you don't know. I don't know. Let's just both not know until we know, shall we?

 

[DavidFirth]

I rest my case - that is what is called Special Pleading and cannot be argued with.

No, it is called the great almighty power of the I AM, something you are not very familiar with.

There had to be a first something. God is that something.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I hope that this thread isn't just another thread that has it that because we don't know some answers that this means a deity must have created all.

Of course it is. It's another implied god of the gaps arguments dressed up as an effort to collect information. Creationists don't care about the scientific answers to such questions, and they don't care about science in general. If they did, they would pursue these matters the ways that those who are interested do and have:

It begins in childhood, with a fascination in things scientific. Kids peruse age appropriate encyclopedias for scientific input. They want chemistry sets and Radio Shack kits. They pay attention in science classes, and then often go to university and major in one of them. They subscribe to Scientific American and Sky & Telescope. They buy popular treatments of scientific subjects in bookstores like Barnes & Noble from authors like Dawkins, Gribben and Davies.

Eventually, such a person has a good general education in the sciences, and it shows in his or her treatment of scientific subjects. You don't see "I want facts, not theories" coming from such a writer, or phrases like "cosmology evolutionist."

Notice how the creationism apologist never asks about well understood areas of science like electromagnetism or infectious diseases. He probably knows just as little about such matters as he does about cosmology and abiogenesis, but as I said, he's not really looking for answers, and he doesn't care about science. He is making an implied argument rarely made explicitly, namely, that if you can't answer as yet unanswered scientific questions, you never will, and that means there must be a god.

Ted has already tipped his hand. He asks questions about some of the most speculative physics, physics best understood by great minds like Hawking and Krauss, each of which has distilled his highly technical understanding into books of a few hundred pages each digestible by the lay public, books that would answer his questions to the best that they can be answered to somebody not in the field, books that have already been suggested to him by posters trying to accommodate him. He's not interested in looking at them, but instead, refers you to Answers In Genesis, which is his way of telling you that he feels the same way about such books as he presumes unbelievers feel about such apologetics sites.

He is obviously not interested in having questions answered, which makes his questions rhetorical, that is, statements worded as questions. He's making the implied argument that I spelled out explicitly, and there is no hope of educating such a person. It would require his cooperation, and an open mind capable and willing to critically and impartially examine and be convinced by a compelling argument. When does that happen with a creationist?

But that doesn't make threads like these worthless, just worthless to the creationist, who forgets that even though he won't be reading the answers, people interested in the sciences will, and we have some very well educated and articulate contributors posting in these threads that educate the interested readers.

I'll bet that you knew all of that already, but I still thought it worthwhile to spell it out.

@ Ted: My apologies for a post that might irritate you by making so many judgments about you based on only a few dozen of your words, but any of us that has been at this kind of activity for any time now has encountered dozens to hundreds of creationist apologists (I'm assuming that that is what you are based on your reference to AIG), and what I summarized above has been invariably true in every case in my experience. Such people never learn a thing, and continue to make the same mistakes year after year however many times they are corrected.

You are welcome to offer a rebuttal if you don't agree.