I think in the Hebrew Bible is says God CREATED - בָּרָ֣א - the heavens and earth. The full statement is: א בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ
There does seem to be some debate on the issue... א. בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ 1. To begin with, God fashioned the heavens and the earth. Lost in Translation: Genesis, chapter 1 (hebrewtranslations.blogspot.com) -also "Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew. She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world—and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals. [ . . . ] She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb “bara”, which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate” The first sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth” " Breaking News: God Didn’t Create the Heavens and Earth | Joe Carter | First Things -but then again "The first sentence of the Bible reads in Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ B’raysheet ba-RA Eh-lo-HEEM ayt ha-sha-MA-yim v’-ayt ha-A-retz Ayt is made up of the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph/tav. In fact, the Hebrew alphabet is referred to as aleph/tav. Therefore, the literal translation of the first sentence in the Bible can be understood as, “In the beginning, God created the Hebrew alphabet and then He created the heavens and the earth.” From this, the sages understood that the the Hebrew alphabet was used as building blocks to create the heavens and the earth." -but then again, again "The Hebrew word ברא (bara) literally means to fatten but with the extended idea of filling up. In context, the first chapter of Genesis is about importance of the filling up of the heavens and the earth, not its creation within a span of time (an abstract idea that is foreign to Hebraic thinking)." The Ancient Hebrew Language | MT Project (mechanical-translation.org) -So, ya, its not definitive by any means. One may wonder how Hebrew speaking peoples are able to communicate with eachother at all... (kidding! mostly...) I base my understanding of the Bible from Young's Literal Translation - Wikipedia, an attempt at providing the most literal translation from the original text (often at the cost of clarity) to leave the subjective aspects of interpretation up to the individual reader. Young concluded that the most literal translation of Gensis 1 was "In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth -- the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters, and God saith, `Let light be;' and light is." ... I consider this version the best alternative to actually becoming fluent in ancient hebrew and ancient greek, which I am not.
Before the Big Bang, there was nothing! Kidding aside, I read the posts of @AboveAlpha who had his own ideas about the multiverse based on the Many Worlds Theory, but larger than that. I just wish he had done something with it besides posting about it here. He stopped posting years ago, so I guess that knowledge is lost to us. But, AboveAlpha would say that the universe started with a black hole in another universe that had swallowed up its universe, and, because all black holes are attached to a white hole (look it up), the black hole tore up its spacetime and created a new universe (ours) with the existing matter pouring out into the universe from the white hole. Or something.
What existed before the universe? Something else. Our inability to conceive of 'before time' is just that. Our mammalian limitations. A cat can't conceive of theoretical physics either .. but he'll still die/not die when Schrodinger pulls the trigger.
God and the Big Bang are compatible. God exists outside of time and space, created all there is and the laws by which it functions. That’s the best we can do since God is ineffable. We literally cannot conceive of the nature of God, His form or essence. So we describe Him in terms our minds CAN conceive, the way we experience him in nature and in our lives: as father, as creator, as judge and ruler of the universe.
This is exactly the double standard I posted about previously. You can't just make these statements as if they're definitive fact. If we're incapable of "conceiving the nature of God", you couldn't know that we can't "conceive the nature of God". Significantly, it would also mean that was can't conceive whether God actually exits or not. There is zero rational reason to assume that if there is (or was) some kind of creator god or that we must be incapable of understanding it. This entire idea is a purely religious invention to prevent religious leaders having to address all the difficult questions that could pose a threat to their authority. In general terms, if we're declaring that the cause of the universe is beyond our understanding, it doesn't need to be God (or any kind of god in general). We could equally declare that a singularity was the cause of the universe but that the singularity is ineffable and that we can't conceive the nature of the singularity. There is no need to introduce the concept of a god (and certainly not any specifically defined God) to address these questions about the origin of the universe and no reason to introduce the concept without any specific evidence indicating one.
This is the usual answer we get from non-believers. It’s unfortunate that you assume the only things that count as evidence are things that can be proven with the scientific method. You understand only the material world.
Hmmm...Genesis is in the Old Testament and the god there is the god of the three Abrahamic faiths...Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Christianity never redefined God as "the creator" , but did suggest a new MORAL interpretation of him.
OK...for fun I offer this. The end of the article mentions that the origin of the Big Bang might be that before it, there was ultimate heat and ultimate cold. This set up vibrations which moved the stasis (balance) of the duality and began to create waves (of energy) which disturbed the stasis. So "in the beginning" there was duality...heat and cold. Opposites without which one could not exist without the other because they define " comparative context". If there is no cold, there is no heat by definition. When waves of energy/force started to disturb the energy stasis, some parts of the duality started to change and you got "hotter/colder" states of being, even though there was no matter, just energy. These started to set up vibrations/areas of unbalanced energy which caused changes in the energy fields and caused further imbalances. (the string theory). Eventually the imbalances exploded. and out of the violent mixing of forces, matter was created. After all matter i just a huge range of different components all containing just two stats of being...Positive and negative. Light came later as a result of further combinations of matter becoming photons. That is what I took from the article and TBH it makes some sense to me. Everything is fundamentally, atomically and further back, (quarks etc) either positive or negative. Scientists fire protons or electron at each other to create matter. We split matter into the two forces. IMO due to the huge forces in the BB, this is what happened. Positives and negatives were being forced to join up or split and eventually form the matter we se today, and the gravity that this created. The rest we think we know. I have no idea if this can happen again. However IMO (for what it is worth), why not, given infinite time. and why can't time be infinite? As for duality, IMO it is the fundamental essence of existence because without one, there cannot be the other...if you cancel out positive, then negative becomes the only thing in existence and as I said, has no reference point. ie nothing can be "good" without "bad". "Better" defines "worse". One thing defines the other. It is just all there is and has no moral meaning. There you go. That's my take on it.
It's possible in mathematics, for example by the set-theoretic definition of Natural Numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-theoretic_definition_of_natural_numbers ... and some say that math is God's language.
I bow to your knowledge but it sounds interesting. Is the key in the word "theoretic" as in modelling with few constraints?
In the Christian Bible God is defined as a creator God. " Let there be light" could possibly be interpreted as the big bang. The Christian Bible has 2 parts, old and new.
Apologies, but this is another"the Bible doesn't say this, but what it really says is this". God is supposed to be all powerful. You don't think he can keep his word clean to the people he loves enough to give his own life? If there is a God he would be insulted.
I didn't actually say anything about scientific method but anyway, evidence is literally scientific. There can certainly be things for which there is no evidence and loads of things for which we don't currently have access to the evidence but if you don't use science (even if you don't realise you're using it), you can't have evidence. Anyway, you presented no evidence of any kind for your definitive statements about the nature of God (including that we can't make definitive statements about the nature of God ). If you're going to dismiss science out of hand, you still need to offer a viable alternative. Also, there is absolutely nothing about science that limits it to the "material world" (whatever you mean by that fuzzy term). Science is a process which could be used by any sentient entity in relation to anything that entity can reliably observe. If there is something "non material" which can be reliably observed somehow, scientific method could be applied to it. Any limitations in this context aren't a function or science, they're a function of human beings. For example, we're (currently) incapable of measuring rocks on the surface of Pluto but science could still be used to measure those rocks.
I said nothing about ruling out science, I said there is more to understanding our world than just science. Science is a powerful way to investigate God’s world, but by itself is half blind. If you claim to have faith in science you should already know that many scientists have admitted the more that is learned about the mysteries of the universe the more it’s obvious there is intelligence behind the design and creation.
Correct. I'm admittedly confused about what you're saying here... maybe you could elaborate. As a Christian, I believe God to be "the creator" (preparer/overseer) of the universe, as described in the beginning of Genesis.
There is a barrier between the world of thought and what we call reality. I think humanity still has a lot of work to do. Evolution never ends.
Correct. It doesn't need to be. Claiming that God (or a singularity) "caused the universe to come into existence" leads to a logic problem, exposed by the question: "Where is God (or a singularity) existing if there is no universe for him (it) to exist in? Correct. There's no need for it. --- What if the universe doesn't have an origin (iow, it has always existed and always will exist)? There's specific evidence supporting the existence of God. It is all around you. Yet, the same can be said about the non-existence of God. In the end, it's all a matter of faith (during this lifetime anyway).
You've not said what that is though, nor have you presented anything to support your very specific assertions about the existence and nature of God. What are you basing that claim about the limitation of science though? Note the distinction between limitations of science and limitations in our ability to apply it. Some do indeed suggest that, sometimes even with (scientific) evidential basis, but "some kind of intelligence behind creation" is a long, long way from the very specifically defined God that you have asserted. Proposing a hypothesis based on physical observations is entirely different from unilaterally declaring the truth without any stated basis (scientific or otherwise).
To be clear, "the scientific method" (I'm not a fan of that terminology, as what many people understand that to be is not actually science at all) does not prove anything. Science does not make use of proofs. Science, at its core, is simply a set of falsifiable theories (it can also be described as a set of falsifiable models that predict nature). Science "predicts nature" via the formalization of theories into laws, typically via mathematics (which is where proofs come into play). An example of this is the laws of thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics (which are some falsifiable models that predict nature) ARE science, as are any other falsifiable models that have yet to be falsified (iow, they continue to survive null hypothesis testing, both internally and externally). Science only makes use of conflicting evidence (which leads to theories being falsified)... it does NOT make use of supporting evidence (as that is what religions do). What unbelievers like him typically do is conflate religion and science, acting as if their own religious beliefs are somehow "science" when they are nothing of the sort. Members of the Global Warming cult LOOOOOOVE to do this (in fact, they have to do that to continue holding onto their belief that the Earth is somehow increasing in temperature even though there isn't any change in the environment (i.e. the sun isn't getting hotter).
I do. I conclude that God is not particularly concerned about whether He 'created' or 'prepared' earth for us. Its not a critical part of His message.
I don’t mind people treating science as a religion, as their faith system. What I DO mind is when people react with angry rhetoric when hearing a dissenting opinion.
My issue with this is that the word "cold" is a word that is used to describe what we call temperature (which is the average thermal energy of a substance), not the flow of that thermal energy ("heat"). Those two words are used to describe two completely different things. Average thermal energy (temperature) is not the flow of thermal energy (heat).
