Re: Big Bang as evidence of God

Eduardo G. Moros (moros_eg@rophys.wustl.edu)
Wed, 17 Sep 97 13:21:56 -0600

>In other words, I reject the claim that a finite age of the
>universe helps the cosmological argument that there is a Creator. And I
>certainly do not accept the statement that "If the universe were eternally
>past, then God would be useless."

Yes but, the B.B. is more biblically correct, a nice temptation .........

>(However, I would not, and do not, accept the cosmological argument
>as a PROOF of the existence of God, since it seems logically possible, even
>if perhaps implausible, that this universe could exist even if God did not,
>whether or not this universe has a finite age.)

Yes but it would be biblically incorrect................

> Besides its logical incorrectness (at least as I see it), the view that
>God is needed if and only if the universe has finite age has the danger of
>suggesting that God does not exist if and when a scientific theory is
>accepted that says that after all the universe has infinite age.

Good point.............

> Another danger is the possibility of the correctness of theories such
>as the Hartle-Hawking `no-boundary' proposal for the quantum state of the
>universe, in which the quantum state is obtained by a path integral over
>`Euclidean' four-geometries (in which time is taken to be imaginary in the
>mathematical sense of having a negative square, so that all four dimensions
>are effectively spatial) that have no boundary (other than the three-space,
>e.g.,
>the universe configuration today, that is the argument of the quantum-theory
>wavefunctional). As described at a popular level in _A Brief History of
>Time_,
>these four-geometries, or Euclidean histories of the universe that make up
the
>path integral, have no precise initial times, so in a certain sense they have
>no beginning (though they do not have an infinite age either, but rather time
>loses its usually assumed character of being a real variable that runs along
>the real line either from minus infinity or from a finite beginning). If the
>creation of the universe is claimed to imply a beginning in time, then the
>Hartle-Hawking proposal could be claimed to imply that the universe was not
>created.

But many have pointed out that time is, after all, *real* .............

> As Hawking himself put it at the end of Chapter 8 of _A Brief History
>of Time_, "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a
>creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no
>boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply
be.
>What place, then, for a creator?"

To give "being" to "simply be"..............

>Whether or not the Universe has a beginning
>has no relavance to the question of its creation, just as whether an artist's
>line has a beginning and and end, or instead forms a circle with no end, has
>no relevance to the question of its being drawn.

But how are you going to explain the first verse in scripture "In the begining
........."? I am following your reasoning and you are not constraining it
with any theological presupposition, which is ok for the sake of argument, but
for the judeo-christian is fundamental revelation that must be "worked in" in
to his/her universe-view.

> "Of course, if the no-boundary proposal is correct ..........

Is this biblically possible?

> Don Page
> CIAR Cosmology and Gravitation Program and Department of Physics
> University of Alberta

Thanks for your inpu and forgive my annoying comments .........

Salu2