Can science see the exact point the universe started or a part of time just after an event which led to rapid expansion?
This isnt rocket science.
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beginning
noun
- the point in time or space at which something begins.
Hmm, I’m not a physicist of course, or even a scientist, but how can something “begin” when space and time don’t exist? It is almost as if that site is dumbing it down to make it simple for people by using words they’ll understand, but that are clearly insufficiently accurate for any through scientific explanation.
A more accurate term might be that the universe we currently observe had a point of origin that is explained by the scientific theory the big bang, but hell what do I know, uneducated and with a middling intellect. maybe I should just soak up facile explanations Googled from the internet and misrepresented to support unscientific claims, or then again, maybe I shouldn’t…
Does NASA mention inexplicable supernatural magic from a deity? Hmmm…
Yep, he’s spouting bollocks… what he (someone that apparently more scientically literate then the rest of us) is doing is literally finding a quote for what is essentially an ‘idiots guide’.
Its impossible to pin point a beginning because you’d need a fully working theory of quantum gravity to get to timescales shorter then Planc time.
Again, unless Sherlock has some nobel prize and hasnt’t told us, im happy to retract, otherwise its utter bollocks once again.
He does seem reticent to talk about his scientific qualifications in detail… 
Pithy one liners are great of course, but the idea that is how scientific explanations work seems dubious even to a lay person, let alone at the cutting edge of theoretical physics.
However we could just ask if any scientific ideas support the belief a deity created the universe, why is atheism much higher among scientists, and religiosity tapers off to a tiny minority among elite scientists who best understand such evidence…
It’s a puzzler alright… 
I’d say yes to that. Science tells us that the universe is rationally intelligible and embodies laws. These are axiomatic in the natural sciences, we all accept this I think, no major disagreements here.
We also know that all scientific explanations refer to laws and material quantities, we wouldn’t have much of a theory if an explanation did not refer to these - again I regard this as not controversial, we all accept this.
Now an explanation for the presence of the universe must explain the presence of laws and material quantities. I think its pretty obvious that we can’t claim to have explained laws and material if that explanation regards the presence of these as axiomatic. Any argument that uses its axioms to claim it can prove those axioms is fallacious.
So we can see that a scientific explanation must be ruled out, without laws being axiomatic we cannot invoke them and if we cannot invoke laws we can’t have a scientific explanation.
So we have a choice now, 1) We stop and say that’s it there is no more to say, the universe exists and just is, perhaps it always has just been around.
Or 2) We posit an explanation that is not scientific, that is an explanation in which it is not laws that are axiomatic but something else, I refer to it as “will” and “intent” quite unlike deterministic laws.
So there we are, by reasoning about science and the general nature of scientific theories and their axioms we can rationally infer the possibility of a non-material explanation.
This is not a proof nor did I ever say it was, it is a reasonable and rational line of reasoning and is no longer the domain of science, it is philosophical, metaphysics.
That might be because most scientists aren’t encouraged to examine philosophy and have been misled by the erroneous view that atheism is somehow a scientific position when it isn’t it is a philosophical one, not the domain of the natural sciences.
Or more likely, there is no evidence or good reason to believe in a god hypothesis.
Get back to me on the working theory of quantum gravity and measures smaller then planc time, ill give you time to find another William Lane Craig video on youtube.
But it’s perfectly sound for a deity? That didn’t take long.
Like your claim that a deity has always existed and always will.
False dichotomy fallacy, we are not limited to science or god, and you would need to demonstrate a deity is even possible then establish it exists before asserting it created anything.
Nope, in order for it to be rational it cannot contain known logical fallacies, and “there we are” that gets you no closer to the Christian deity, than it does posting an enormously powerful and transcendent Leprechaun.
That isn’t a very plausible explanation, as those scientists would understand the scientific evidence best, evidence you claim supports an extant deity. The emboldened part is simply risible sorry. Do you really imagine most scientists don’t know what a scientific position is?
Indeed, and this is not only supported by the facts, scientists being best placed to understand that evidence, we don’t need to violate Occam’s razor with risible conspiracy theories that posit most scientists somehow being hoodwinked into non-belief in any deity is a more scientific position, they’d surely know what the evidence does and does not support,
Why? what has physics (laws and matter and fields) go to say about the origin of physics (laws and matter and fields)?
I don’t need time, you do.
This is poor debating, clutching at juvenile strawmen all the time. Do you or do you not agree with what I said:
If your too scared to agree or disagree then you have no place in a debate.
- Reworded: we shrug our shoulders and walk away
- Reworded: we make shit up.
- We say we don’t know if the known universe began or always existed.
- We say we don’t yet know if the known universe began or always existed.
- We continue using the tools we’ve created to arrive at testable, repeatable results about the environment in which we exist.
I’m sure there are more choices. You provided only two that are, well I think, quite silly. I wonder if that was by design. If not, then that would be sad.
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That’s not a choice you have if you accept the premises I listed because it leads to a contradiction.
I do not accept all the premises you’ve listed.
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It’s not a straw man, it is an obvious contradiction in your reasoning. here are the contradictory claims:
NB that is where you earlier made the claim you have reworded here regarding the origins of natural processes and the universe.
If a deity can always exist why can’t the universe, and if you can make the claim, as you did there, without any pretence of evidence or explanation, why does anyone need anything beyond a similar claim that the universe has always existed in some form.
You seem to have missed these questions about your earlier assertion as well.
Would it help you if i bullet pointed them?
Your is a possessive pronoun, and it is intellectual integrity and not fear than motivates me not to leap to options in a false dichotomy fallacy. The laws as we know are manmade, ,what they explain are natural phenomena that are characteristic of the material universe, you are assuming that science and scientific laws and theories cannot explain what existed before the universe we currently observe existed, you can’t know this nor is the inference a rational one, see false dichotomy fallacy. None of this remotely evidences any deity.
No you believe it leads to a contradiction, but since you no more know what was or was not possible prior to the big bang than anyone else, this is just a strident claim based on a false dichotomy fallacy.
Because you are making incorrect claims, then when caught out, you try to weasel out of it.
Congrats, ive yet to have a theist on here use the child line of, “i know you are, you said you are… nerr nerrr!”
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Very well which do you disagree with?
We don’t yet know, it is you and you alone who are making assertions about that. In order to insert a deity which you can neither explain the origins of or evidence objectively, and of course which can violate with impunity the very rules you’re stridently applying to the origin of the universe as if they are absolutes.
But we do know, it has nothing to do with it. A thing cannot serve to facilitate its own explanation, you cannot explain X in terms of X. The very things you need to construct a scientific explanation are the things that we want to explain.
Yes of course because I am a theist and most here are not. I recognize the contradiction inherent in believing science can explain science whereas many of you do not.
Yes, I do justify my claim for a deity on the basis if these philosophical considerations, I make no apologies for that, these profound epistemological problems are the reason I hold a belief in God when in the past I did not.
We don’t know what existed prior to the big bang, ipso facto we don;t know what if anything science can explain about it, that is axiomatic.
It already does, we already have explanations about the universe that are derived from a species that evolved in it.
Yes I agree theists do seem to think they can make assertions based on appeals to mystery, as your posts attest, but these are argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies.
No you are making strident assertions about what science can explain about the origins of the universe, when you don’t know what existed prior to the big bang, or what was possible and what not. Even were your strident claims that science cannot explain the origins of the universe accepted for the sake of argument, it still would not evidence any deity, that is a false dichotomy.
To stridently claim the universe cannot always have existed but in some other state, alongside the claim a deity has, is a special pleading fallacy.
It is not sound to create arguments that violate a basic principle of logic, by using known logical fallacies, and labelling them philosophical is meaningless.
Why can’t the universe always have existed in some state?
You again using a special pleading fallacy, and we know the existence of the universe is possible, we do not know that any deity is.
Indeed but we also do know that X cannot play a role an explanation for the presence of X, try to focus on what I actually say rather than what you wish I had said Sheldon.
No you don’t, we only have explanations for what happens within the universe and that’s not contested, science does that, it’s what science is all about.
We must appeal to something, we can’t appeal to laws and fields and energy though, hence the argument, it’s pretty simple, I can’t understand why you struggle so much with this.
My claim is trivially simple and not controversial to those with an awareness of philosophy and metaphysics, you cannot explain X by recourse to X - if you know of an example please present it, don’t keep bleating on, just show us evidence, one example will prove me false, just one example of an explanation for some X that uses X as part of the explanation.
No it is not special pleading. These are only the two options - the universe never began or it did, pick whichever you want.
I don’t think that a person who believes X can explain the presence of X is in a position to call out anyone else’s abilities with logic.
You don’t understand special pleading then. I CHOOSE to believe that the universe exists because of some agency. I reason that said agency cannot be the universe or the things that comprise the universe. Therefore that agency must be something fundamentally different to laws, fields, causality and so on. Any agency capable of producing laws, causality, matter, fields must possess some other capacity, I call that “will” or “intent” or “creativity”.
I said I don’t accept them. I did not say I disagree with them.
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