(February 12, 2014 at 8:42 am)Alex K Wrote: Stop right there. First of all you don't know that it had a beginning.
The universe is 13.7 billion years old it has an age it had a point of creation. Yes there may well be other universes but they all had a beginning as well so that's moot.
Quote: Even if it had a clear temporal beginning
It did if it has a definite age or time in which it existed. No-one puts the age of the universe at infinity.
Quote:this does not mean that something beyond the universe exists eternally
Something will have to be eternal in itself and it isn't this universe if it has a definite age and so has an actual starting point. If something starts to happen then something else made it start to happen.
Quote:: the word "eternal" isn't even defined in the slightest sense if you don't have a timeline independent of what you call our universe.
God exists outside and beyond time as he is eternal without a starting point or an end point, this would be necessary to cause time to begin to exist.
Quote:If you have one, then the Big Bang isn't the beginning of that timeline and your argument has gone away.
The big bang is where God causes space/time to exist when it otherwise would not exist. Creation out of nothing or ex nihilo. If the the theory fits the facts.
Quote:It is true that there is no faith involved. Merely stringing together words that do not mean anything in the context in which you use them
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God isn't a concept that can't be supported by logic and reason whether or not you disagree with the logic. But if you don't have a logical alternative that would be better than God then the argument in favor of Gods existence is going to win out on that criteria. The only real alternative is a beginningless universe but this wouldn't have an age/start and everything that could ever happen would only happen once an infinite amount of time has passed which is the same thing as never happening. You will ideally need something that does not exist within the time and is not in itself subject to the passage of time having had no begining to set-up the passage of time into which all events will then occur. Setting up the passage of time is an act of creation of something that otherwise would not exist.
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I've said it ten times now and I'll tell you again: causality is a meaninless concept outside a universe with a timelike dimension and low entropy
What you just said there is meaningless from what I can tell. Using words like low entropy doesn't help you in this context. Any scientific term you want to use is confined to description of a process that occurs within the universe as we observe it. The universe as we observe it exists for some other reason and there are no scientific terms for it.
Quote:No, your analogy does not work because time and space exist outside the pitch, and because we *know* the football pitch is human design.
We would know something had to exist outside the pitch in order to have brought the pitch into being even if it was impossible to ever observe anything outside the pitch. You could observe how the the pitch was built and whats it's made from and that's what science does.
Come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant.
