(April 28, 2016 at 3:24 pm)SteveII Wrote: I posted this way back in this thread:And I posted this rebuttal 'way back in the thread' which negates your conclusions regarding Vilenkin in his own words...
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For reference, the BVG paper was 2003.
Vilenkin also agrees with Hawking that, "the most promising approach appears to be the Quantum nucleation of the universe from nothing." ~35:15 Furthermore, when asked "Does your theorem prove that the universe must have had a beginning?" by Victor Stenger, Vilenkin replied, "No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time. [emphasis mine]" Vilenkin then goes on to quote the work of Gratton, Carroll and Chen who propose that the universe could very well have been contracting before it started expanding. (Stenger, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, p.128).
Clearly Vilenkin doesn't draw the same conclusions about God you do.
And you ignore Jehanne's post on Velinkin:
You should quit trying to quote Vilenkin, because his actual stance on these matters is NOT what you want it to be!
I also posed this question, which you have not answered...
(April 28, 2016 at 3:24 pm)SteveII Wrote: God could have decided to exist timelessly in the past and then decide to create the universe and in doing so became temporal.When exactly did God decide to exist timelessly?
Perhaps this is better rephrased, "when exactly in the past prior to creating the universe did God decide to exist "timelessly"?
I addressed the absurdities of a "timeless" deity creating a universe out of nothing here...
http://atheistforums.org/thread-42746.html
and here...
http://atheistforums.org/thread-42797.html