Author: Thomas Lee Abshier
Dr. T., In response to your article, “Physics and Faith”, you are putting words in the mouths of physicists to suit your premise. Here is what Stephen Hawking thinks about the beginning of the universe:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html
Jonathan
Jonathan, thank you for sending the Stephen Hawking article. I enjoyed reading it. My comments about the consensus of physicists come from my interactions with physicists on the Physics Stack Exchange. The rules of the discussion are quite clear and are enforced strongly by correction or criticism, with participants being told that the question or answer was “off topic” if a God-related or non-conventional or metaphysical answer was given as a solution to any physical process. It’s okay to mention God, but not as a serious answer to a question; rather, it’s used as an alternative solution that’s not being considered the primary answer.
The argument about time and space being so entangled that you can’t tell the difference, and heading out in a direction of time, where any direction of time was the same as heading out in any direction of space, is a wonderful imaginary scenario. Still, it doesn’t give us any insight into what time or space actually “is”. And, even this scenario does not solve the problem I was addressing in my essay: we still don’t know what created (or, more specifically, what was the causative origin of) the space-time ball that then expanded, much like leaving the South Pole. That was my major point. There is no possible (or even imaginary) scenario or theory where the beginning of all possibility starts. The theory of God creating the universe does not solve this problem, and analogies about walking north from the South Pole on a space-time ball do not solve this problem. From our perspective, this problem is not soluble. A physicist may believe in South Pole Space-Time balls, and he then feels no pressure to consider the origin of all causes. But, such a man would be shallow indeed if he did not realize that such a solution did not solve the underlying problem of the origin of the space-time ball. Likewise, the man who believes that his belief that God created the universe solves all the logical problems of origins/beginnings – it doesn’t. The origin of the God who created the creation is still unknown – we have merely pushed the mystery back one layer. The infinite regress is encountered by the materialist/natural-law/natural-processes-only believing physicist, as much as it for the man who sincerely believes God created the creation (whether a universe with a history 6000 years ago or by providing the materials for a big bang to explode and inflate, and then expand and accelerate). Regardless of one’s cosmology and belief structure, this problem cannot be resolved. The origin of origins is logically impossible to solve. This is well recognized in the physics community.
The story is often told about the man who inquires of the guru about what holds up the earth. The guru responds that the earth is supported on the back of an elephant. The seeker asks, yes, but what is the elephant supported by? The guru responds, The elephant is standing on the back of a turtle. The seeker then asks, But what is the turtle standing on? The guru responds, “The turtle is standing on the back of a turtle.” The seeker then asks, “But what is that turtle standing on?” The guru responds, “It’s turtles all the way down.” I’m sure you’ve heard that story before. It effectively illustrates the principle of infinite regress. There is no solution to it.
Regarding the issue of gravity waves, it is true that they have been detected, and we can observe the collapse of a binary black hole-star system as a ripple in space. This is an interesting effect, but it is nothing that significantly shakes the universe in terms of importance. It means that we can detect that big things collapsed. Possibly we could get some information about how things moved/collided in the early universe if we could get a lot of these signals and decode the superimposition of all these collisions, and reflections – kind of like taking the blurriness out of a frosted glass or out of focus camera lens. So, I suppose it is possible to learn something about the universe in ages past by using a LIGO gravity sensor (or many of them, with much greater sensitivity than this apparatus) and using the signals to resolve early universe collisions, thereby gaining a better understanding of the originating signal. However, even this will not help us overcome the problem of finding the source of the original turtle. That problem is beyond technology, and strange as it seems, it is also beyond imagination, logic, philosophy, and religion. It cannot be comprehended. So, we are left with the belief in nature as all there is (and we don’t know where that ultimately came from), or believing in God (and we don’t know where He came from) as our creation paradigm. And that’s as good as it gets, and that is where we have to leave it and live in this world.
The reason all this makes any difference is that depending on our concept of the universe as an accidentally created, non-personality-driven place with laws that are pretty much just dictated by feelings, or what you/I/we think is right, then people are pretty much free to experiment, and do whatever they feel is good/right, and works before for them.
The other option is that this universe is/was created and the maker of the universe has rules that make the experience of life better if followed, or worse if not. In the case of the Christian religion, the rules that God gave were revealed in the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, the testimony of His Way, and we can take clues from that to determine what works best in life. My experience has been that the rules that I have derived from the Bible work well in guiding my life. In my counseling experience, I found that people who follow the rules tend to do well, and conversely, choosing other rule-sets often caused problems (which is why they came to see me) that could be rectified by adopting the Biblical rule-set. The success of the interaction was always dependent on choosing the correct rule set to apply, which isn’t always easy. This is why they came to me to help identify the core issue —the core error of action —that they could not identify or change.
Anyway, it all comes down to a very practical consideration, choosing what rule set you are going to follow. My experience has been that many non-Christians, perhaps most, follow the biblical laws because they are the rules of life that work. So, the actual issue is how to make life work well. When there are problems (which is when most people come for help), I’ve found that going back to the Book and checking how the thoughts, speech, and actions around the issue causing problems are due to violating or diverging from the owner’s manual specs. Identifying errors and making changes accordingly usually brings things back into line, and life works better.
So, again, for me, it was just a discussion about deciding which life paradigm worked best – and for me, the Biblical one, where God created it (and we don’t know what created God), and following the rules He published in the Book approach is what has worked best for me.
T.