Where did Matter/Energy come from?

[Isaiah 6:8]

The simple answer is it's unknown if energy has always existed. From a science perspective, M-theory is probably the most likely model for answering the question -- I think most of the solutions for it would "say" that the multiverse is eternal so energy has always existed.

Why do people try to over complicate such an easy statement, it would seem as if you do not want to face the truth of your own belief system.

I knew that someone would try to fall back into matter or energy alone always existed. this is why I said Matter/Energy. As you know they are the same per the theory of Relativity.

So you choose that matter/energy has always existed. A Faith based statement. You have to say this by faith as you admit it is an unknown.

No, I didn't choose "matter/energy has always existed." I didn't choose any of your options because none of them fit my view. "I don't know" is my view. I mentioned a popular scientific view which may turn out to be correct. It may not. I simply don't have a belief concerning your question in this instance. What I do have is some notion of some of the scientific ideas related to your survey.

then why did you not say that. Not only did you not say that but you tried to prove it, not just point it out but even argued the point again. Strange way to say you don't know.

So if you say you don't know, that means as well that you must think that God is an option.

[LuftWaffle]

So you both go to the illogical but yet, somehow provable, notion that everything came from nothing. Because you would rather do this wild leap then admit that there is a God.

You are misunderstanding what both of us are saying. In quantum mechanics something can come from "nothing" as long there is zero energy change. This has been observed so it's not a "wild leap."

How do you observe something coming from nothing?

If you observe nothing and then you observe a particle, then the first state ('nothing') is a non-observation. At best you can say that you haven't observed where the particle came from, because saying you've observed nothing, is saying you didn't observe anything.

Which makes the claim quite illogical, and once again seems to be grand claims based on nothing more than an interpretation.

Also quantum vacuums aren't nothing. 'Nothing' has no properties thus no thing can be predicated of it. If "nothing's" energy needs to remain zero, then energy is predicated of it, and it cannot be "nothing" in the real sence. Which is precisely the case, what is called "nothing" in the popular magazines with regard to quamtum vacuum fluctuations (and which atheists desperate for an uncaused effect lap up because it's what they want to hear), is an energy rich environment, not nothing.

In otherwords you guys fell for a misuse of the word "nothing" and believe on faith something which you yourself have never actually observed (something coming from nothing with no cause and for no reason)

Edited April 5, 2011 by LuftWaffle

[LuftWaffle]

'Nothing' has no properties thus no thing can be predicated of it.

Therefore the quality "existence" cannot be applied to "nothing", and, consequently "nothing"

cannot exist, not even before the creation of the universe. In other words, there has always been a

"something". You might call it God, I called it a quantum field.

But if the quantum field existed eternally then an efficient cause for the universe existed eternally, which means the universe would have been infinitely old, yet it isn't.

I'm sure you're aware that actual infinites cause serious problems.

This, by the way is the opposite of what you said in a previous post. First you argued that the laws of causality break down prior to matter and energy(implying no matter or energy before the big bang) and now your saying the quantum field (i.e. energy) existed eternally and that caused the universe.

So basically you have no clue what it is you actually believe and you contradict yourself frequently, but you're sure there is no God?

This is the funny thing about atheists, their entire cosmology changes drastically (from nothing, to an eternal quantum field, to a multiverse) depending on which argument for God they're trying to dodge at that particular moment.

Regardless, there is no evidence whatsoever for a quantum field producing universes, so your statement about "believing" a quantum field producing the universe is indeed based on incredible faith.

Edited April 5, 2011 by LuftWaffle

[LuftWaffle]

Doesn't God already know the events that will characterize our past life and future life (incl. Heaven/Hell)?

Isn't this set (already available in His mind) an actual infinite?

My past life isn't infinite, I was born at a set point in the past. My future life is infinite either, I will die on a set day in the future. Thereafter I will spent an eternity with God, which will be a potential infinite, not an actual infinite. Will God know every event of my spiritual life hereafter, I don't know. The Bible says God knows our earthly lives, though.

In other words: Isn't God actually infinite?

And if not (either potentially infinite, or finite), would He be able to become actually infinite?

How do you get from God's knowlegde of infinite events to God Himself being an actual infinite ontologically? That like saying you know about books, therefore you must be a book.

This is a non sequitur. The quantum field is not the observable universe (which is not eternal, at least in the past).

No, it's not. If the quantum field is an efficient cause of the universe then it would have created THE UNIVERSE an infinity ago because all the necessary and sufficient conditions would have been met.

I'm not talking about the theorical world you've dreamt up before the big bang, but the universe itself would have happened an infinity ago.

And words like "eternal" assume that time (like space) were already available. The problem is that time and space are dimensions that split "after" the creation of our bubble. Time and space are not absolute and external but must be considered as physical entities that can be expanded, compressed, bent, etc. The quantum field transcends our parochial view of space and time.

Well according to Sam Vimes the quantum field producing something out of nothing has been observed. But you're telling me it's beyond matter and beyond the grasp of our intellect?

Or Sam talking about a different quantum field. Is the quantum fields that produce particles observable, but the ones that produces universes are mysterious, undetectable, unfathomable, illogical, unscientific, timeless, causally undeterministic things that just happen. Kind of like a miracle, yes?

In which case one has to wonder then what relevance the particle producing quantum field has to this discussion?

Face it Viole, you're rambling off fanciful fairytales using theorical-mathematic terminology. You're packing all the absudities of your atheist position into this quantum disneyworld that you've imagined *must* exist prior to the Big Bang. There your illogical ideas become logical. You don't have to account for causation or time or logic, because hey, "things don't work like that there"

Why don't you skip the pretenses and just say, "Quantum weirdness did it". None of what you postulate is observable. You've even admitted that it's unfathomable, so why bother acting as though your position is based on science or reason? It's materialist mythology, plain and simple, and all things being equal I'll side with Occam's razor and pick the least clunky, least fiddly, least complicated and least ad hoc option. God, who revealed His existence through nature and revelation throughout the ages, who claims to have built the universe, built the universe.

But if God existed eternally then an efficient cause for the universe existed eternally, which means the universe would have been infinitely old, yet it isn't.

No, it's not the same, God being a person can exercise His will at anytime.

For instance I (being an agent with freewill like God) can arbitrality decide when to click the "Add Reply" button to submit this post. It is within my will to wait 10 seconds or to wait a year. But in a determinist realm, when the necessary and sufficient conditions for a state of affairs are met, that state of affairs will be actuated that instant. It may be like a Rube-Goldberg machine that takes 17 trillion years to complete it's task, but even given that highly unlikely case, this universe would have already actualised an infinity ago, and thus would have died a heat death by now.

[nebula]

4) God is bigger than our intellect and our imaginations, and we can't box Him into our nice neat little description packages.

[LuftWaffle]

Will God know every event of my spiritual life hereafter, I don't know. The Bible says God knows our earthly lives, though.

He does, if He is omniscent.

So we have the following alternatives:

1) your eternal life will consist of a finite amount of events (you do the same things for all eternity) and God knows all these events already

2) your eternal life will consist of an infinite amount of events and God knows all these events already

3) God is not omniscent

I agree with Nebula, there's a fourth option.

You're assuming a certain mode of knowledge, namely that omniscience means knowing each and every proposition. But there's another type of knowledge which is qualitative and not quantitative called intuition. For example if you had to play against a world class poker player, that poker player would put you on a hand virtually every time. How does he do it? By going through a list of possible propositions and working out the odds of you having each of those? No, the poker player, through playing hundreds of thousands of hands against many many players and intimate knowledge of the game have developed a sort of intuition about the game. All those individual hands, games, odds and plays have fused into a single fluid glob of knowledge, which they access.

This is the traditional view of God's omniscience. It's not a quantitive list of possible outcomes, but as William Lane Craig puts it, "a singular undivided intuition about reality."

[LuftWaffle]

I am sorry but your analogy does not hold. The poker player, being finite, is not in the position to calculate all the possible outcomes

of a certain play, therefore she uses experience and intuition (which seems to be unconscious knowledge, anyway). The same can be said of chess players; but if they play against a computer that has no intuition but a deeper knowledge of all outcomes, they will lose.

I could use the ontological argument here to prove that a being that has full knowledge is more perfect than a being that

just have an intuition of reality, and therefore this being exists and must have full knowledge.

Mr. Craig is climbing on mirrors here (Italian expression ) just to save his proposition that actual infinities cannot exist.

Just because you don't like an answer doesn't make it invalid, and just because you say intuition is inferior to a rigid mechanical way of thinking doesn't make it so either. That fluid sort of thinking is precisely where artificial intelligence programs fall short, they may be succesful in a limited sphere, thats why we use computers in our day to day lives. AI systems can learn to associate certain words with certain other words and run through probability scenarios and sort-of mimick intelligence, but they don't have the higher mental functions that a true mind does.

My analogy was meant to demonstrate intuitive thinking not whether a poker bot, which specialises in poker could beat a poker champion. You forget, that it is humans that build poker bots, not the other way around. So good luck arguing the inferiority of real minds vs computers.

God is far more than just a finite human poker player so commenting on the shortcomings of the analogy is rather petty, because any analogy about God will fall short in many senses. Intuition exists and even human beings' limited intuition is very powerful, that's all I needed to do to split your false dilemma.

With regard to you using the ontological argument, if you believed the ontological argument is valid you'd believe in God, so your proof would be your position's undoing. Either way the ontological argument deals with greatest possibilities, if actual infinites are impossible then the ontological argument will not help you.

As for your statement about Craig climbing mirrors, sure, you're more than welcome to your own opinion. Opinions are cheap, I got lots too.

Edited April 6, 2011 by LuftWaffle

[Isaiah 6:8]

I did...read my initial post on this topic...note my first sentence.

okay I read what you said, you did say unknown. I did miss that and I am sorry.

Now comes the question since everything is an unknown, then would you allow for the Possibility of God as well, as since all of the above options, must be chosen by faith, as there is no way to test any of them scientifically.

[Isaiah 6:8]

'Nothing' has no properties thus no thing can be predicated of it.

Therefore the quality "existence" cannot be applied to "nothing", and, consequently "nothing"

cannot exist, not even before the creation of the universe. In other words, there has always been a

"something". You might call it God, I called it a quantum field.

Wait so you admit, that SOMETHING must have always ways existed? You were sitting there trying to argue that NOTHING existed then SOMETHING as if by magic popped into existence. Now you say that no, something must have existed and that something is a Quantum Field.

You have proved my point. You have no evidence and no clue as to what was around at the start. You are making faith biased statements. So You are trying to argue that your faith based idea because in your emotions you have decided that another faith based idea is wrong.

This is evidenced as you are not trying to deflect the original post and start attacking who God is, and how he cannot do A,B, and C. You are now trying to attack our Faith based Ideal, not because it is not right, but because you happen not to agree with it, as it does not line up with your personal, emotional image of what God should be.

[nebula]

4) God is bigger than our intellect and our imaginations, and we can't box Him into our nice neat little description packages.

This is also a legitimate point of view. But isn't that what believers do all the time?

Yes, we believers are quite often guilty of putting God in a box. I've heard many a sermon where this is pointed out. It is a part of our human condition to categorize and label. We don't like that which we cannot tie down. But it takes getting to know the Lord to realize you can't do this. The Bible is full of incidences where God acted counter to wat the conventional theology thought He should do (but we often do not see this because we've been so indoctrinated). This is one reason why the religious leaders could not understand Jesus - He would not fit into a box, nor would He let Himself be put into one.

You can reply that all we need is the Bible and our personal experience with Him (which is BTW the main essence of reformation), but this would make the discipline of theology completely irrelevant.

Yes we need those, but we also need the fellowship of believers. We also learn from each other. Often the Lord will teach us about Himself through others.

Does this make the discipline of theology irrelevant? No. There are certain principles you can learn. But this is only the beginning. The problem is too many rely on their knowledge over spending time with the Lord, and too many focus on what they can know rather than how they can love. Both mistakes are squelchers.