The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[ImmortalFlame]

Gould, Sagan, etc... were not talking about the fine tuned results but fine tuned initiation conditions and necessary factors that allow anything to evolve successfully.

So, are you suggesting that there can only be one state in which things can evolve - and that this state cannot be even slightly altered without rendering evolution impossible? How did you work this out?

Imagine the possible range of universes. It can't be done but let's use an analogy to at least get some picture. Lets say we built a machine that actually produced random numbers in 100 digit strings. (there actually is no machine hat lacks any bias but lets pretend there was. That machine represents whatever natural mechanism produced this universe. Now if me and you only had one result from that truly random digit generator 100 numerals long and that we got only one result or could only view one of an infinite number of results, and that results was 99999999999999............... to 100 places. Any rational human who ever lived would think either that the machine was broken or that some mind had rigged it to produce that astronomically absurd probability on purpose. Now multiply those odds by trillions or infinity and that is what we are dealing with. According to cosmologists a structured universe (one that even had the potentiality for life) is among that tiny band of possible universes.

How is this worked out? In what way is the Universe objectively or measurably "structured"? How "structured" does the Universe have to be before its existence becomes likely?

Well since cosmology posits a finite universe before which nothing existed.

I'm not aware of any cosmological model that posts the existence of "nothing" at any point.

By nothing I mean non-being. No time, no space, no quantum fluctuations, no energy, no matter, no potential to do anything. Which is why the famous scholar Leibniz said:

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz made a similar argument with his principle of sufficient reason in 1714. "There can be found no fact that is true or existent, or any true proposition," he wrote, "without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, although we cannot know these reasons in most cases." He formulated the cosmological argument succinctly: "Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason [...] is found in a substance which [...] is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself."[13]
Cosmological argument - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Science is only able to ask that question, not answer it. In fact attempts at answering it have been embarrassing and clumsy. Since the modern infancy of atheist driven science simply rejects God as a possible cause they have to substitute the wildest fantasy because that is all hat is available to them.

But isn't God just another fantasy? It's just a simple, undefined answer flown in the face of questions that you're unable to answer.

Obviously I cannot list millions of reasons but I will give a few.

To begin with it needs to get a universe out of nothing. That chance is exactly zero.

Not required. How the Universe forms is irrelevant - the only thing that is relevant to evolution is that a Universe DOES form, by whatever means.

Next we need a very specific kind of universe fine tuned to even allow structure and matter to exist. That requires among thousands of things:

1. ratio of the strengths of gravity to that of electromagnetism;
2. strength of the force binding nucleons into nuclei;
3. relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe, or Density parameter;
4. cosmological constant;
5. ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass;
6. number of spatial dimensions in space-time.

Question: How do you know that these things are "required"? How do you know that life couldn't have developed, albeit in an wholly different form and fashion, if some or all of those conditions were not met? Are you capable of accepting the possibility that life formed as it is BECAUSE the Universe exists the way it does, not the other way around?

Some of these things are fine tuned to trillions of decimal places even according to Hawking, etc.......

I will just give a random smattering of other lottery's it had to win.

"[The entire biological] evolutionary process depends upon the unusual chemistry of carbon, which allows it to bond to itself, as well as other elements, creating highly complex molecules that are stable over prevailing terrestrial temperatures, and are capable of conveying genetic information (especially DNA). […] Whereas it might be argued that nature creates its own fine-tuning, this can only be done if the primordial constituents of the universe are such that an evolutionary process can be initiated. The unique chemistry of carbon is the ultimate foundation of the capacity of nature to tune itself." 8

"A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."


"The more I examine the universe, and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe in some sense must have known we were coming." — Freeman Dyson1

"A bottom-up approach to cosmology either requires one to postulate an initial state of the Universe that is carefully fine-tuned — as if prescribed by an outside agency — or it requires one to invoke the notion of eternal inflation, a mighty speculative notion to the generation of many different Universes, which prevents one from predicting what a typical observer would see." — Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog2

A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:

1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)

2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.)

3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.)

4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 )

5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.)
CSC - The Fine-Tuning Design Argument:


Also notice that most of this fine tuning is required just to permit a universe that will contain structure, or mass, or life of any kind. Not just humans or carbon based life.

All of these arguments are addressed by my above question. They all assume that the Universe is the way it is in order for life to form, rather than life forming as it is because of the way the Universe is. When you look at it from the other perspective, all of those objections just evaporate into empty, wrong-headed rhetoric.

 

[Ouroboros]

Laws of physics change over time and space. They're not as fixed as we think they are.

Laws of physics 'can change' depending on where you are in the universe | Mail Online
I know the article is from Daily Mail, but they have had similar articles in New Scientist in the past.

Also, there has been discovery of new lifeforms deep in Earth's crust. And now there's a metal eating plant recently discovered.

Life as we know it isn't the only way life can be. Between each of the major extinction events, the biological life was very different, even the atmosphere and natural resources, food, etc. Some of those phases had conditions that would have made it impossible for us to survive in. So currently, we're in a "perfect" or goldilock situation where we can survive, but it might not last forever.

 

[idav]

All of these arguments are addressed by my above question. They all assume that the Universe is the way it is in order for life to form, rather than life forming as it is because of the way the Universe is. When you look at it from the other perspective, all of those objections just evaporate into empty, wrong-headed rhetoric.

This is a HUGE point. When you look at the universe as the cause rather than the effect the "from something" argument really starts to crumble.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

The 'from something' argument is an infinite regress. If the argument is the universe had to come from a designer simply because its complex, we've constructed a scenario in which the designer, being complex, must also have a designer. If the designer didn't need a designer the argument has been rendered null since it is based on the premise that complex things need designers.

I suspect such logic comes from unwillingness or failure to comprehend evolution.

 

[1robin]

Pick one and consider the odds of its existence. Everything requires "fine tuning". Or, more likely, nothing.

This is not true. Worlds can be generated randomly and be tuned for nothing but your missing the whole point. Worlds such as this compared to the panorama of possible worlds is extremely rare. There are entire classes or types of worlds that do nor require anything like fine tuning. For example worlds in which Boltzmann brains would occur could be produced by countless variations. Worlds which lacked any life at all could be caused by countless variations of initial conditions. But this even belittles the issues. Why is there anything to begin with. Nothingness has no causal potential. The chance of getting any universe from nothing is 0. Like I quoted, experts look at this universe as if something built it expecting us to come along or that some super intellect monkeyed with physics to produce a unimaginably improbable result.

A tornado in a junk yard building a 747 is a bad analogy for evolution but not for the universe in general. Random expansions operating without intention by probability should have produced another type of universe.

Yes, and alien abductions imply the existence of aliens. Using "fine tuning" without evidence of intentionality in creating the universe is question begging, like all theleological arguments.

Produce as much evidence for abductions as for fine tuning and I will grant the existence of aliens. Why are you not that consistent?

Our human intution fails when we consider the concept of probability. A posteriori, everything that happened seems highly improbable. If I throw a coin 100 times, no matter what the outcome is, it was highly improbable, yet it happened.

That is not what occurred here. This universe is as if you flipped a quarter and it landed on it's edge a million times in a row.

My own existence is an amazing sequence of improbabilities. Another spermatozoon and I would be one of my potential siblings. The same for my parents, their parents, and so on. Yet, I am here. Do I need to appeal to God, because of this amazingly improbable chain of events? If yes, it is not clear why He wanted me and not someone else.

Your building some false sharpshooter fallacy case that does not apply. We are not finding an arrow stuck randomly in the ground and calling a improbability. We are finding an arrow (without any evidence of a bows pre-existence) that phased out of reality and shape shifted into a rose and calling that improbable and miraculous. I do not think you understand what is involved here and I do not have time to go through the whole range of what randomness would be expected to produce cosmologically.

I wonder why. You seem to assume that something is less natural than nothing, without a God. In other words, you seem to assume that something always requires a creator, which is also question begging. For if the creator is something then he should require a creator as well, unless we use special pleading.

Let me state modern cosmological evidence again. We have evidence of one universe that is finite before which nothing existed. That means there are only two types of potential things (that we have any reason to suggest could have existed) to explain the universe. Abstract concepts like numbers and disembodied minds. Since abstract concepts have no causal power they are impotent and are not a candidate. That leaves only a disembodied mind. By using principles of sufficient causation we can also induce the mind was more intelligent than anything known, that it is more powerful than anything know, that it is independent of matter (strangely enough major players in philosophy and physics have come to grant that mind is primary and mater derivative), timeless, space less, etc.... Now how in the world did men 4500 years ago guess the exact parameters that modern philosophers would derive for whatever cause the universe and ascribe them to God.

The data tell us that our universe can host things like complex life, neutron stars and the Ebola virus. Period. To single out complex life as something more special requiring explanation is also question begging, I am afraid.

I just happened to mention complex life as an example, as you point out even structured Universe would require extreme fine tuning. In fact most of the fine tuning that is discussed is not for intelligent life but a structured universe. One that has not "collapsed soon after it came into existence from nothing", one that has the right gravity constants to allow planets and stars, one that can produce chemical evolution, etc... This is not what we would expect a random event to produce.

If you follow the logic to its consequences, you should be a deist. Can you imagine an omniscient and omnipotent being thinking: oops, I did not expect this prayer that needs to break my laws in order to be fulfilled.

I had to read that three times to understand it. Yes I would imagine a God that created us intentionally to be interested in us, to care about us, to have right and wrong standards for us to follow, to have an ultimate plan for us. I was only discussing a limited segment of reality and not what all goes into my faith. If you add up everything that my faith is based on you get a personal God that I have personally experienced without question. I was just explaining something about freewill.

Theological scholarship dealing with the trajectory of meteorites orbiting between Mars and Jupiter as agents of bringing man on the stage?

There is some but it would only cove that type of thing in general. Theology Is not concerned with genetic technicality but the far far more important spiritual necessities, and the historical events that ground them, so there would not be much specific about some random event concerning the Dinosaurs and that is why I have probably never developed any position about it. It is not really a good question in a theological context.

Wouldn't have been more parsimonious to let dinos evolving moral agency, instead of causing mass extinctions of such proportions? I wonder what is so special about apes in God's eyes. They look definetely better than velociraptors, but as they say in italy: every coackroach is beautiful to its mother.

This is a little odd. Your grafting your own ascetic preferences onto an infinite consciousness that you deny exists. The Atheist position that there is no God but if there was then they would perfectly understand it's thinking is a little schizophrenic. I realize that your comment was also meant as humor.

Don't you think you are complicating issues beyond necessity?

The level of complexity is irrelevant. About the most simple explanation possible for the universe is that a mind created it, and about the most complex explanation possible for abiogenesis is some of the naturalistic journals I have read. I do not accept one or deny the other based on arbitrary complexity levels. This is the I know what the God who does not exist would do argument. I decide which one to accept based on comprehensiveness, best fit, consistent with the most evidence, philosophic necessity or deduction, etc.....

Nope. Evolution is more like winning small lotteries that give you more money to buy more tickets than the competition. So, if someone wins a small lottery and can pass this extra richness to their descendants so that they can buy more tickets, we should not be surprised to see very reach people if you wait long enough (and meteorites behave).

I think I have sufficiently explained why there is so much more to fine tuning than what you have in mind so I won't bother repeating it here.

Ciao

- viole

Is Ciao pronounced like "chow"? Are you non-English?

 

[1robin]

Was it William Murray?

I am not sure I would remember if I heard it again at this point.

With the lottery, it's beneficial to hold the winning ticket. With evolution, though, the ticket is drawn successfully because it's beneficial. Different game.

You misunderstood what I meant by fine tuning. Not fine tuned results but fined tuned initial conditions and necessary and timely conditions along the way which enabled any evolution to occur at all.

To explain lets start with the first thing we need to have evolution. We need a universe of some kind. If as cosmology so strongly suggests nothing existed, then what probability is it that, that nothing, will produce a universe of any kind or anything of any type at any time? It is 0.00%, but I will consider any counter claim you make. If successful you only have about a trillion more hurdles to go just to get to the first cell, but we have to start somewhere. That is the type of lottery I was referring to and it does not stop with the cell but just keeps piling improbability onto improbability.

 

[1robin]

So, are you suggesting that there can only be one state in which things can evolve - and that this state cannot be even slightly altered without rendering evolution impossible? How did you work this out?

Of course not and I have tried to illustrate that, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that the pie of possible universes contains a sliver so thin in comparison where anything could evolve as to be almost unnoticeable, and the range where intelligent life could has evolved to be invisibly small.

How is this worked out? In what way is the Universe objectively or measurably "structured"? How "structured" does the Universe have to be before its existence becomes likely?

I will let Hawking answer you. He said that if you changed the cosmological constant by 1 part in billions of trillions (I actually think he used larger numbers) the universe would either have collapsed without permitting anything to evolve or flew apart so fast that nothing would exist to evolve upon. I might have a word or two wrong in there but the scale is accurate.

Here is another: Smolin concludes that the chances that a universe created by randomly choosing the parameters contains stars that are suitable to sustain life are ridiculously small. He calculates it to be infinitesimally smaller than one against the sum of all neutrons and protons in all the stars of the observable universe combined, which is 1E80. The number he comes up with, one chance in 1E229 *), comes from a straightforward calculation, explained in the notes to the chapter of his book. A common objection against this sort of calculations is that it is fallacious to vary only one parameter while holding all the rest constant, and probability space would be considerably widened were several parameters allowed to co-vary. Yet as cosmologist Luke Barnes shows in his in his article from p. 19 onward, with impressive graphs for a number of cases, this objection does not generally hold.

*) that is one chance in 10 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. No, this is not a joke. (You can do the math yourself: a trillion is 1E12, a trillion trillion (or a trillion times trillion) is 1E24, and so on.)
Cosmological arguments for the existence of God

There are potentially billions of these.

I am out of time. I will try and pick up as soon as I can.

Later,

 

[Willamena]

I am not sure I would remember if I heard it again at this point.

I was just kidding. Bill Murray starred in the movie, "The Razor's Edge."

You misunderstood what I meant by fine tuning. Not fine tuned results but fined tuned initial conditions and necessary and timely conditions along the way which enabled any evolution to occur at all.

To explain lets start with the first thing we need to have evolution. We need a universe of some kind. If as cosmology so strongly suggests nothing existed, then what probability is it that, that nothing, will produce a universe of any kind or anything of any type at any time? It is 0.00%, but I will consider any counter claim you make. If successful you only have about a trillion more hurdles to go just to get to the first cell, but we have to start somewhere. That is the type of lottery I was referring to and it does not stop with the cell but just keeps piling improbability onto improbability.

Evolution is a biological theory, so it really doesn't begin at the (alleged) start of the universe. And it's not linear, it's more a circular image: it begins with each generation of animal born and ends with each death of a last individual.

Edit: It would seem you're setting up the conditions for anything, not just evolution, to occur. So everything in the universe would have an equal improbability, which makes the improbability of any one thing meaningless.

 

[Ouroboros]

Note: improbable ≠ impossible.

Even if the probability for a universe with life is 1 in fantazillions gazillions googaplexaillions... it's still is 1 of x, not 0 of x.

 

[Thief]

In the large perspective, the term evolution means change. It really means "to turn" or something like that and has been used for similar uses before it was chosen to represent biological/physical evolution. We all change. We all go trials and modify our behavior, so in a sense we all evolve through our life in actions, knowledge, behavior, personality, etc. Like a metaphysical evolution. When (and if) God created the universe, the universe had to spawn from God's existence... God changed, God evolved. It's all about change. That's the power of God. That what and who God is. That's the innate nature of God. It's how chaos becomes order. Evolution of all things.

Not buying that.
Unless you want to speak of the universe as it gelled.
Which is very linear over a great length of time AND the chemistry is coincidental.

The chemistry of this earth did not evolve because God told it to.
God chose the planet.
The chemistry here was already here....in proper proportions.
The evolution of life on this planet was set into motion with intent.
The intent of course would be spirit coming forth from substance.

I sense when you say....power of God.....
you are expressing a means of manipulation at all points at all times.

I don't do that.

God created chemistry and the rules that go with it.
You can say a star evolves.
The chemistry will change.
But the reactions that change a planet happen for cause of life.
and the chemistry need must be in place when that planet formed.
Otherwise all you will ever see is a dead ball of dust.

And because God crated the chemistry......
He doesn't apply life to planets that can't support it.

So does God have limitations?......sure....
Those limitations are self imposed....by the creation He formed.

Is evolution a plan of chemistry?....yes...
Does the plan have rules?....yes...

So then....Genesis Chapter Two is NOT evolution....or creation!
It is manipulation.

 

[Thief]

The 'from something' argument is an infinite regress. If the argument is the universe had to come from a designer simply because its complex, we've constructed a scenario in which the designer, being complex, must also have a designer. If the designer didn't need a designer the argument has been rendered null since it is based on the premise that complex things need designers.

I suspect such logic comes from unwillingness or failure to comprehend evolution.

The design is not complex.

 

[adi2d]

I am not sure I would remember if I heard it again at this point.


You misunderstood what I meant by fine tuning. Not fine tuned results but fined tuned initial conditions and necessary and timely conditions along the way which enabled any evolution to occur at all.

To explain lets start with the first thing we need to have evolution. We need a universe of some kind. If as cosmology so strongly suggests nothing existed, then what probability is it that, that nothing, will produce a universe of any kind or anything of any type at any time? It is 0.00%, but I will consider any counter claim you make. If successful you only have about a trillion more hurdles to go just to get to the first cell, but we have to start somewhere. That is the type of lottery I was referring to and it does not stop with the cell but just keeps piling improbability onto improbability.

I know its probably been asked 100 times before but where does the theory say before the big bang there was nothing?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Of course not and I have tried to illustrate that, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that the pie of possible universes contains a sliver so thin in comparison where anything could evolve as to be almost unnoticeable, and the range where intelligent life could has evolved to be invisibly small.

So, you're saying that there is only a very specific kind (or kinds) of Universe which could have formed in which life could have a evolved? That still has the same problems as I pointed out. How can you demonstrate that life could not have evolved (albeit in an entirely different form) in a Universe with entirely different laws and structure? How can you demonstrate, in your words, that life wouldn't have existed throughout the entire pie, regardless?

I will let Hawking answer you. He said that if you changed the cosmological constant by 1 part in billions of trillions (I actually think he used larger numbers) the universe would either have collapsed without permitting anything to evolve or flew apart so fast that nothing would exist to evolve upon. I might have a word or two wrong in there but the scale is accurate.

Can you provide a source for this?

Here is another: Smolin concludes that the chances that a universe created by randomly choosing the parameters contains stars that are suitable to sustain life are ridiculously small.

But these things don't happen "randomly", they are a result of natural, physical laws. So the calculation is meaningless.

He calculates it to be infinitesimally smaller than one against the sum of all neutrons and protons in all the stars of the observable universe combined, which is 1E80. The number he comes up with, one chance in 1E229 *), comes from a straightforward calculation, explained in the notes to the chapter of his book. A common objection against this sort of calculations is that it is fallacious to vary only one parameter while holding all the rest constant, and probability space would be considerably widened were several parameters allowed to co-vary. Yet as cosmologist Luke Barnes shows in his in his article from p. 19 onward, with impressive graphs for a number of cases, this objection does not generally hold.

*) that is one chance in 10 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. No, this is not a joke. (You can do the math yourself: a trillion is 1E12, a trillion trillion (or a trillion times trillion) is 1E24, and so on.)
Cosmological arguments for the existence of God

That doesn't even remotely address the objection. That entire article is based on the assumption that the Universe is "fine-tuned" for life, rather than the other way around. Again, all of its assertions evaporate when you look at the problem the correct way around: life developed as a consequence, and within the laws, of the Universe that exists. If those laws would have been different, there is nothing to say that life wouldn't have simply developed differently, nor is there any means by which an individual can claim that there is a specific set of laws or events that have to exist in order for life to exist, because we are currently unaware of any specific set parameters required for "life" to exist in ANY form, nor are we currently aware of what limits the forms life can take. It is therefore fallacious to assert that life cannot occur given specific parameters, and it is utterly groundless to attach a mathematical probability to the event of life forming.

 

[gnostic]

I know its probably been asked 100 times before but where does the theory say before the big bang there was nothing?

It doesn't. It just creationists continually don't understand the theory...or worse still, make up something they don't understand.

1robin is in the later group. He is pulling magical number out of thin air or from the top of his head: eg "0.00%" and "a trillion hurdles".

I would ask 1robin where he is getting these numbers (like cite his "scientific" sources), but I know from experiences that answers will not be forthcoming from any creationist; I won't get any valid or satisfactory answer, or just get evasive ramblings about something else.

 

[Thief]

I rarely get a good answer to Spirit first?.....or substance?

Seems a number of people are willing to say.....substance first.
but then the consequence plays to the grave with no resolve of Man's spirit.

Dead things don't just move.
The Source of the universe might not fit in a petri dish....
but to say anything other than spirit.....is terminal.

We might have our beginnings here in this world.
Born in flesh and we die that way.
But to end the discussion at the last breath is so.....shallow.

Substance doesn't just happen.
And even if you insist?......Something Greater not there to make it happen?

If substance can just pop out of nothing then we are nothing.
A complex puzzle with a Large Piece missing.

If substance can just pop into the universe in such large quantity.....
why then are we such a small part of it?

If substance is the source of spirit.....then spirit is finite and dying.

Not much point is all of this earthly spirit and all of it headed to the grave.

 

[metis]

I know its probably been asked 100 times before but where does the theory say before the big bang there was nothing?

You are correct. Most of the cosmologists that I have read are convinced that our universe was roughly the size of a present-day atom prior to the BB. Brane Theory, for example, has it that our minute universe may have spun off from a couple of energy membranes rubbing against each other, and some have theorized that we may have even started out as a by-product of a black hole in another universe.

 

[McBell]

I rarely get a good answer to Spirit first?.....or substance?

You mean you seldom get the answer you want...

Seems a number of people are willing to say.....substance first.
but then the consequence plays to the grave with no resolve of Man's spirit.

Seems a number of people are not interested in playing your imaginary word games.

You just tend to take it to personally.

I been telling you for years you need a new song and dance....

Not much point is all of this earthly spirit and all of it headed to the grave.

your dislike of the situation has no bearing on the truth of the situation.
Since you offer nothing but rhetoric and word games in support of your song and dance, how can you expect anyone to take it seriously?

 

[1robin]

I'm not aware of any cosmological model that posts the existence of "nothing" at any point.

Ok picking up where I left off. I am very surprised at this question since I must have gone over models and the philosophy that supports this a dozen times just in this thread. I cannot resupply all that stuff every week so I will only mention 1 model and a little philosophy.

Beyond the BBT the next most prevalent and dominant model in cosmology is the BGVT. It agrees with the BBT but goes on to establish some things it does not. I will let one of it's originators speak for it.

Vilenkin’s verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”
Vilenkin’s verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” | Uncommon Descent
Before you try to get out of that with questions about context or meaning please see the sight. That statement is not nearly as strong as the context it is found in. He actually goes on to declare impossible all other major alternatives and even more emphatically deny anything beyond one universe that began to exist a finite time ago.

What is the universe? The totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm.
Universe | Define Universe at Dictionary.com
Basically everything. So if everything had a beginning a finite time ago then nothing existed prior to it.

However even if cosmology did not exist it is logically impossible for anything natural to be eternal. You cannot cross a infinite expanse of anything in nature. You can't have an infinite regress of causation, you cannot cross an infinite number of quantum fluctuations, physical changes, information state changes to arrive at the current one. Any kind of natural infinite is incoherent. So everything natural is finite. That means at one time it did not exist.

If you need more reasons just search my posts in this thread. I have exhaustively covered this in detail.

But isn't God just another fantasy? It's just a simple, undefined answer flown in the face of questions that you're unable to answer.

Lets see if God is a fantasy in the way multiple universe are.

1. There is the potentiality to experience God. There is not currently and maybe forever any way to experience other universes. These are not equalities.
2. Not only that there are hundreds of millions of claims to having experienced God. There is no one who has or should claim to have experienced other universes. These are not equalities.
3. There is evidence which can be evaluated to determine the veracity of God's existence. There is none so far for multiple universes. These are not equivalent. Don't bother giving me a paper that suggests there is evidence for multiple universes, I have tracked down dozens of them and never found anything beyond theory in any of them and have given up the effort.

So no they are not both fantasy. God is on the same grounding as dark matter. Can't be tested for exactly but has enough evidence of it's existence as to consider it likely, actually God has more but I will leave it here.

Not required. How the Universe forms is irrelevant - the only thing that is relevant to evolution is that a Universe DOES form, by whatever means.

I was not asking for you to tell me how it came to be. I was asking you to tell me how it is possible that anything came to be from nothingness. This is not a biological forum. It is a theological one. The only relevance evolution has is a counter argument to God's existence. So you need to show that you can still get a universe to have evolution is without God or the argument is null and void in the cradle.

Question: How do you know that these things are "required"? How do you know that life couldn't have developed, albeit in an wholly different form and fashion, if some or all of those conditions were not met? Are you capable of accepting the possibility that life formed as it is BECAUSE the Universe exists the way it does, not the other way around?

Because life, any kind of life science can dream up requires certain things. You need gravity, structures on which life can arise, densities and energy that allow for chemical evolution, and etc....... That type of universe is very improbable. BTW I get all of these what any type of life would require parameters straight from secular science.

All of these arguments are addressed by my above question. They all assume that the Universe is the way it is in order for life to form, rather than life forming as it is because of the way the Universe is. When you look at it from the other perspective, all of those objections just evaporate into empty, wrong-headed rhetoric.

This is not what I am saying. This is another misguided attempt to set up a sharpshooter fallacy claim. My argument is a probabilistic argument. The type of universe that can support life of any kind compared against the almost infinite range of possible universes is astronomically improbable. I am not finding a arrow 100yards from an archer and drawing a bulls eye around it. I am finding an arrow that came from earth on Pluto and not only are you denying that an archer fired it you seem to suggest that there is a naturalistic explanation for it being found on Pluto. Well what is it?

 

[1robin]

I was just kidding. Bill Murray starred in the movie, "The Razor's Edge."

Never seen that one. Bill Murray is quite the character.

Evolution is a biological theory, so it really doesn't begin at the (alleged) start of the universe. And it's not linear, it's more a circular image: it begins with each generation of animal born and ends with each death of a last individual.

This is not a biological thread. I am not debating evolution in it's own context. The only relevance it has in a theological forum is a counter argument against God's existence. I evaluating it on that background. That may be why my claims seem a little out of the ordinary.

So let's start at the beginning and see if evolution WITHOUT God is a sustainable theory.

1. How do you get a universe to have evolution in out of nothing without God?

Once you answer that we will move on to how do we get the type of universe we need. Then cover the other trillion things that must have happened without God to get the genetic reality we have.

Edit: It would seem you're setting up the conditions for anything, not just evolution, to occur. So everything in the universe would have an equal improbability, which makes the improbability of any one thing meaningless.

I am only asking for what MUST have had to occur to get life without God. You need a universe. You have nothing how do you get one? There are no semantics or technicalities to remove this burden from your position. You have nothing, yet you need a universe.

 

[1robin]

Note: improbable ≠ impossible.

Even if the probability for a universe with life is 1 in fantazillions gazillions googaplexaillions... it's still is 1 of x, not 0 of x.

That is not an argument. It is highly improbable that a specific man would win the lottery. However if that same man won every lottery ever held then no rational human who ever lived would suggest that probability explains it. Everyone would believe a mind had caused that result. However the problem is even worse because nothing's producing something is not improbable it is impossible. Nothing has no potential of any kind.