Yeah I tend to think and speak in terms of YEC’s as that was my former sect. But you don’t have to believe in a young earth to want science to “agree” with the Bible, either.
This thread is approaching its end as far what I have to say goes.
But to hammer home the point of how utterly wrong, mistaken and mislead William Lane Craig was and still is about the Hawking - Penrose singularity theorem being scientific ‘proof’ of Genesis 1:1, please take a look at this. It’s an extract from Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time, which was published in 1988. Chapter 3, page 29.
Hawking describes the success of his pioneering work with Penrose on black hole singularities and their prediction in 1970 of an initial singularity as the origin of the universe. He then says this.
So, in the end our work became generally accepted and nowadays nearly everyone assumes that the universe started with a big bang singularity. It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe – as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account.
That was in 1988. Hawking has changed his mind about the singularity theorem he wrote with Penrose in 1970. As we already know from Penrose’s own book, he changed his mind about the theorem after the 1998 discovery of the cosmological constant having a positive value, thus invalidating and refuting the theorem.
This means that by 1998, both scientists had discarded their own work on singularities, but for different reasons. Hawking because the GR equations generated infinities that would disappear once quantum effects were taken into account. Penrose because the theory was invalidated by contradictory evidence.
And yet, what do we see in the early 2000’s from William Lane Craig?
He celebrates Hawking and Penrose for discovering bona fide scientific evidence that the universe sprang into being from nothing and from nowhere, just as Genesis 1:1 says. What? But both scientists had already disowned and discarded their own work as wrong, years beforehand.
NO, BILL ! YOU CAN’T PRETEND THAT SOMETHING CONSIGNED TO THE TRASH CAN ISN’T TRASH! THAT’S EITHER THE HEIGHT OF STUPIDITY OR JUST LIES!
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@Walter, I have to commend your efforts in this thread. It’s double plus good.
Now, to the mods: Is there a way on this forum to pin threads like these for easy access later? Both this and several of @Calilasseia’s articles on e.g. evolution? Or create a special category to collect such threads, without it being swamped by other regular discussion threads? @CyberLN?
Thank you very much, Get_off_my_lawn.
Fyi and for the attention of the Mods I can report that in the now defunct forum Ex-Christian.net there was a special section called Pinned Threads.
This was where a thread with useful content could be placed by the Mods for storage, but where they could also be easily seen and read by both members, visitors, guests and lurkers.
These threads also had the advantage of being easily cited or drawn to someone’s attention. Especially so given that certain topics (free will, the problem of evil, Bible contradictions, various oft-used arguments for the existence of god) cropped upagain and again.
Thank you,
Walter.
You can copy the link to any particular post you have a particular interest in and construct a list to reference at will on your local machine.
Since each poster here would likely have their own choices, trying to set up a list here that would suit everyone would not be possible.
I don’t think that is a good solution. First off, that will not make selected high-value threads/postings easily accessible and easy to find for new readers or for the casual reader. Secondly, when replying to a posting where the reference of such a thread is convenient, they should be easy to find. And pinned threads are easy to find for all readers, not just those who have bookmarked them. Thirdly, it’s a pain finding and referencing bookmarks on your computer when you are on your mobile device. Fourthly, pinned threads and categories with special pinned threads work nicely at other forums, so why not here too? Such a category will make a nice little reference library. And libraries are good things, right?
So any post could be “pinned” by anyone for any reason?
Perhaps this privilege should be reserved for the Moderators? That was how it worked in Ex-Christian.net.
But they were always open to suggestions and opinions from the members. If there was a sufficiently large groundswell of opinion about a certain thread then the Mods might pin it. But they would always have the final say. Pinning wasn’t open to all and sundry.
No, that would of course be counterproductive. One would have to figure out a way to locate and vote for what should be pinned. There is a voting function here:
Select your favourite ice cream flavour:
- Herring
- Licorice
- Brussel sprouts
- Carolina reaper
0
voters
Sorry guys. Couldn’t help myself.
I just love brassicas, is all.
Okay, are you suggesting then, that based on these votes, the link would then need to be pinned into a special area? An area not everyone has edit rights to? And anyone can set up a vote for any post? And parameters would need to be developed to determine how many votes over what period of time qualify a post for pinning?
For example, yes. And/or at the moderator’s discretion. I’m not saying a voting function SHOULD be used, but it COULD be used. And/or one can have an open thread in the pinned threads category for nominations.
We will take it under consideration.
Barring questions that I am happy to answer, this post will probably be my parting shot.
My purpose in this thread was to try and explain why Christian apologists have so often misunderstood Big Bang cosmology and the science underpinning it. I hope that I have succeeded in showing how this has happened. Right now I have perhaps one more thing to say.
The way that Christians have misunderstood the Hawking – Penrose Singularity theorem and the way that certain prominent Christian apologists have mislead their brethren about it has probably led to another of the false arguments regularly presented to us by visiting Christians.
Namely, the Thermodynamic argument for God. As we know all too well, it goes like this.
According to the First Law of Thermodynamics energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted. Christians argue that since the universe cannot create itself, an eternal, non-physical, or supernatural source (God) must have created the initial energy.
According to the Second law of Thermodynamics, in an isolated system, usable energy constantly decreases and entropy (disorder) increases. If the universe is a closed system and has not existed forever, it must have had a starting point with low entropy (a “beginning”)
I suspect the seeds for these spurious arguments can be found in the Hawking – Penrose Singularity theorem. In it the authors are careful to state the following.
The theorem implies that space-time singularities are to be expected if either the universe is spatially CLOSED or there is an ‘objects undergoing relativistic gravitational collapse (existence of a trapped surface) or there is a point p whose past null cone encounters sufficient matter that the divergence of the null rays through p changes sign somewhere to the past of p (i.e. there is a minimum apparent solid angle, as viewed from p for small objects of given size).
…and elsewhere in the theorem…
On the basis of this (and another very minor assumption which merely rules out some highly special models) we deduce that singularities will develop in fully general situations involving a collapsing star, or in a spatially CLOSED universe, or (taking the point in question in the third case to be the earth at the present time) if the apparent solid angle subtended by an object of a given intrinsic size reaches some minimum when the object is at a certain distance from us.
Since the likes of William Lane Craig have gone to great lengths to tout the success of the H – P theorem, albeit in horribly mistaken and incorrect ways, I submit that some details of the theorem have been cherry picked by Christians to suit their apologetic purposes. In this case, where Hawking and Penrose clearly state that the singularities they mathematically proved will appear in CLOSED universes.
Also, what have we seen, time and again, on tv, in literature and on the Net, when it comes to illustrations and videos of the Big Bang? Yes. Exactly. The universe exploding into existence out of nothing and nowhere, then expanding spherically outwards. The conclusion? The universe is a CLOSED sphere that began from an infinitely small point – the initial singularity.
Add these two strong influences together and no wonder almost every uninformed Christian thinks that our universe IS closed and spherical. That being a closed universe, the First and Second laws of Thermodynamics both point to the existence of God.
It then falls to us to, once again, disabuse them of their mistakes and misunderstandings. First by pointing out that the current cosmology does NOT posit that the universe came from nothing. Instead, cosmological models begin with the universe being in a hot and dense state. Second by pointing out that for the universe to be closed it must have a boundary to enclose it. No such boundary has ever been observed and the ‘edge’ of the observable universe is just a visual horizon and not a physical boundary. There could be a physical boundary beyond these visual limits. But nobody can see it and nobody ever will. Thus both thermodynamic arguments are shown to be false.
Thank you,
Walter.
I wondered if something else might come to my mind and sure enough, it did.
If it’s acceptable to the Moderators and is of interest to the members I could create another thread like this one, where I explain about Inflation theorem and how Christian apologists have misunderstood what it is and misuse it in their apologetic arguments. Inflation is a whole different ball game to Singularity theorem and while we wouldn’t be looking at any equations, some of the concepts involved are counter-intuitive and mind-stretching.
Intriguingly, Inflation theorem has a connection to the Fine-Tuned Designed Universe argument that is much favoured by Christian apologists. But I’ve yet to see any such apologist fully grasp the significance of this. That lack of insight will come back to bite them, should they try and use Inflation in any of their arguments for god.
If my suggestion is taken up then as before, I’ll do my best to explain things and to also answers questions arising from the discussion.
Thank you,
Walter.
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@Walter, you are welcome, as are all posters here, to start any thread you like (in the appropriate room) as long as it doesn’t break forum guidelines.
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Thank you CyberLN.
I have no intention of breaking any forum guidelines. Quite the opposite.
My desire is to help the growth of this forum in ways that I can. If one has acquired knowledge and understanding of a given thing and one becomes aware that others share this interest, then it’s a waste of resources not to share this knowledge and understanding with others.
Therefore I will spend a little time marshalling my resources and checking my facts before beginning a new thread, here in the Debate Room.
Thank you,
Walter.
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I’m an uneducated dullard, but this pretty much does it for me:
“Surveys repeatedly show this striking difference: Mathematicians: Around 30–40% express belief in God. Biologists and physicists: Typically under 15%, often closer to 5–10%.”
Either Physicist generally don’t understand physics, or apologists don’t, it’s not a hard question really. Then there was this:
“In a 1998 survey of the US National Academy of Sciences , 93 per cent of the members of the academy claimed they do not believe in a personal god.”
So either:
- These elite scientists don’t understand the science, or….
- The religious apologists who claim science evidences a deity are lying.
Given that even I can often see the flaws in such claims, Occam’s razor would seem to apply.
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That’s interesting, Sheldon.
But when it comes to matters of the human heart (emotions) as opposed to the mind (reason & rationality) I tend to think all bets are off. It seems to me that people are capable of jumping through any number of hoops to satisfy their emotional needs. Even to the point of unknowing self-delusional and beyond, to the point of actually, openly and consciously lying to validate what their heart is telling them it wants.
Fortunately there exists the discipline of science, which if properly carried out, allows people to be more objective professionally than they might otherwise would be privately. As you can see I qualify this argument to avoid accusations of Scientism. No, I’m not saying that science is the be all and end all. I’m simply saying that if done professionally it can lead us to a better knowledge and understanding of reality. Not perfect, but certainly better than an understanding driven purely by our emotions. That’s all.
Thank you,
Walter.
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it isn’t that science is that great; it is just that everything else is so bad imo
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