(October 8, 2018 at 3:55 pm)SteveII Wrote:(October 8, 2018 at 3:09 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: Moving the goalposts fallacy. You only asked for me to show there were indeed alternative explanations. I have done so, whether you investigate them on your own or not. Plus I already offered short summaries.
With quantum mechanics, scientists have already shown that the physical world can behave in non-intuitive ways. So neither of your arguments, against infinities and against ex nihilo creation, may be correct in reality.
Fine. My point would have been there are problems with those alternate explanations so they might not actually be explanations to the Christian beliefs/worldview. Silly me, I thought you wanted to have a discussion on...well...a discussion forum. Well, I'm not doing both sides of it.
You can have your over-used quantum mechanics red herring--although I have no idea how it get's you around the infinity problem.
The argument "there can't be an infinite regression to the past" is reasonable when discussing the current nature of our universe. Infinite regression can best be disproved by thermodynamics.
However, thermodynamics is a property of the current universe, since the big-bang. Our laws of physics, and even the existence of time itself only has meaning from that moment onward. There have been proposals that the big-bang actually created two universes, moving in opposite directions in time.
As for quantum-mechanics, we have no theory which can model a singularity, but we know it will be something new. Quantum mechanics does away with strict causality, and deals with probabilities. All possibilities are probed, while only one history seems realized in the long-term.
Trying to use common-sense regression ideas to explain the universe fails. We know it fails. We don't know all the answers, but inserting "God" has never increased scientific knowledge,, ever. The big-bang is a better stopping point for infinite regression than any imagined deity, but few scientists think that is the beginning of "existence" itself.