Stump the Christian?

[Esquilax]

It is obvious that you have spent far more time on this topic than I care to or need to. And you are right to a degree, it IS all beyond my grasp...not because I couldn't sit down and plow through it all, but because I have not sought to grasp it. However, there are knowledgeable theists who have and do stay current on these issues, and thankfully, I can read their responses. I've not come across anything yet which suggests that anyone is terribly nervous about these points.

Oh, theists aren't terribly nervous? So what? Unearned, unabashed confidence that has nothing to do with the facts and everything to do with faith is a hallmark of christian apologia.

However, I know my limitations, and I am neither a cosmologist nor a philosopher. So, while it's all very impressive that you HAVE read the paper which I have not read, so what? The fact that I am not able to respond to you on a subject about which I freely admit little or no expertise does not mean that NO ONE could. You can find such discussions on YouTube readily enough.

So I should ignore the trained physicists and just listen to Youtube apologists?

Now, you have taken quite a bit of time addressing the paper, but you have not really addressed the point behind my reason for quoting it in the first place: science points to the beginning of the universe, and this can be more helpful to the theologian than Vilenkin cares to admit perhaps in the passage you quoted.

So, despite the fact that I very specifically quoted areas of the paper demonstrating that it does not point to a beginning of all universes, period, just a beginning to our current expansion model, despite the fact that actually, the scientific consensus tends to agree with me, that we aren't equipped to properly measure beyond that point yet, you're still going to insist, on the basis of Youtube apologists and a scientific paper that has been demonstrated not to say what you think it says, that actually the science says something totally opposite to that?

You delete huge chunks of what I actually wrote, ignore the major points entirely, and then respond with another fiat assertion. Why does anyone bother responding to you when you have no interest in honestly engaging with us?