The time it took for God to create existence

I always thought that when God said "Let there be light!" it referred to the Big Bang (the actual thing is closer to Big Expansion, though).

That couldn't be, since Genesis was around long before the Big Bang Theory was formulated.

I know. That was when I first heard of the theory. Back then I imagined it as God giving the order and there is the BOOM!

I can't help but believe that there has to be a supernatural force behind the creation of the world. This is probably a very fallacious argument, but as far as my understanding of physics goes, nothing cannot make anything. So there must be a supernatural entity who can make something out of nothing.

I know, this is very flawed.

I tend to think that it was something even more general than that.

As I read it (but these are difficult matters, obviously, and I am far from certain), "let there be light" does not just create some light, but it creates the very concept of light as a physical phenomenon.

More in general, I like to think of Creation not in terms of objects appearing, but in terms of laws being fixed; and this, I think, fits well with the fact that (as Lawyerdude points out) the Genesis account is an account of Creation through talking.

Perhaps, in modern terms, one could write "let there be light" as "let there be a magnetic field and an electric field, and let their interactions be governed by Maxwell's Equations"

The logical conclusion of that is, if something cannot come from nothing, then where did God come from?

I'm not a physicist, so I'm no expert on the origins of the universe.

Exactly; God has to be the entity that defies the most basic rule of physics. He was just there.

And that's the sound of the rational part of my mind collapsing from aneurysm.

Seriously, I wish I can have more rational arguments on this one.

Why assume that? Unless it's "turtles all the way down", as the saying goes.

Like I said, my argument is faulty so I can't defend it.

The thing is that it's not the same "there". The monotheistic God is transcendent: He is not part of the universe — He is the source of causality, and it does not apply to Him. In fact, if I am not mistaken, some theologians argue that even a statement such as "God exists", taken at face value, is incorrect — God does not exist in the same sense in which a potato does, He is beyond the reach of the very concepts of existence or nonexistence.

I'm OK with "Turtles all the way down", but I don't think that it is an answer to the question "why turtles?"

I mean, let's suppose that the universe spans infinitely in the past — for example, that it is a cyclic universe doing the whole old "big bang - big crunch - big bang" routine, and there never was an original big bang. All right, that does not seem unreasonable, in principle. But still, I could ask why such an universe exists; and the Creation account would still provide an answer — it exists because a transcendent, sapient Entity willed it into existence.

edited 22nd May '12 8:41:48 AM by Carciofus

The assumption is that something can't come from nothing. Which might be in fact not true. The universe at its youngest was a very different place from what it is now, and that in our macroscopic world things don't tend to suddenly come to existence doesn't mean that it couldn't have happened in the alien circumstances surrounding the Big Bang.

But if the need of a cause is a fundamental principle and yet there are entities (like God) that don't need to follow this principle, we would have a super Russell's teapot. A teapot which doesn't only ignore probability but fundamental laws as well.

<puts on silly hat>

Well, if we're going to go "turtles all the way down", I propose paper clips and curtain hooks for proof of sponanious creation on the more modern macro-scale! <coughs> OK... no more Pratchett for me for a good month...

Well, something can't come from literal nothing but it's probable that whatever caused the Big Bang/whatever the Big Bang actually was, was also sufficient enough to create matter from something else.

Maybe the tiniest, most fundamental building blocks of matter that we haven't found yet are held together by the energy released by the Big Bang? Who knows.

The current most fundamental objects have ontological inertia.

@29, This means that the spirit of God floating over the waters right at the very beginning doesn't make sense... because electromagnetism, i.e. light, does not exist yet. Water does not exist without covalent bonds, which don't exist without electric charge.

Also, IMO, the universe exists because it can be described in maths. Basically, a more advanced form of Platoism.

edited 22nd May '12 10:52:36 AM by Yej

Platoism by aleph numbers. That appeals.

"That couldn't be, since Genesis was around long before the Big Bang Theory was formulated."

That's the point. It's similar to what were pretty sure actually happened BEFORE we knew about the big bang.

Also, back a page "The problem is, the idea of humanity as "designed" in God's image doesn't really work when man came into existence through a process that was entirely randomised, and the eons of the universe's existence pre-man strikes me as essentially pointless in a theistic context."

God Guided it. It LOOKS random but actually has a purpose. Think Chaos Theory.

That's not chaos theory and I fail to see how Genesis is very similar to our current understanding of the origins of everything.

You misunderstand me. Chaos theory is theres a pattern to everything, even when it looks random.

The similarity is in response to someone else about the "let there be light" and the big bang. It just happened. I'm not saying overall it's exactly the same of course. It's probably a metaphor.

edited 22nd May '12 1:11:24 PM by Joesolo

Chaos theory means that very similar initial settings will grow to very different systems over time. I get what you are trying to say though, that a seemingly stochastic system might actually be deterministic, and I guess that is similar in a way to chaos theory.

The Big Bang was actually dark, because the universe was too dense for light to escape.

Yea, I know. the light is the explosion, not literal light. If Science is right, Genesis is metaphorical with everything.

It is already metaphorical with everything because people are very creative with their interpretations.

Wait, Bon Scott said that.