Starting at the Beginning - How Did the Universe Begin?

Christians believe that God has always existed, and that he spoke everything else into existence.  This would suggest that intelligence, law, love, and some form of spiritual world existed prior to the creation of stuff, and probably outside of any space/time continuum. 

What do atheists believe exactly?  Not big bang, but how big bang?  Would you consider any such theory to be anything but raw conjecture?  Does anything about such an explanation provide us with an understanding of how immutable laws, evil, intellect, music came into existence?

Science and Belief in God - Can These Two Coexist?

 There is much discussion about the percentages of scientists that are atheists vs the general public and/or whether it is possible to be both a Christian and a scientist.  I found this speech by Henry F Schaefer III to be quite dispositive.  Here was his concluding paragraph and following that the link.

There is a tremendous tradition of distinguished scientists who were and are Christians. I hope that my work is considered sufficiently outstanding to fall into the distinguished among that category. I also hope I have given you enough evidence that you will never again believe that it is impossible to be a scientist and a Christian.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/docs/scientists.html


By the way, he cites one study showing the same % of PHD scientists in church each week as the general public.  (about 43%)

Is There Objective Truth?

If there is no objective truth, why seek it?
If there is objective truth, where did it come from, and why is it static?
If there is objective truth, those who hold that my truth can be different than yours would be following folly. 
If there is no objective truth, what can we know?  Wouldn't the very statement be self defeating.  In other words we couldn't know whether or not there was no objective truth.

Why Do Top Atheistic Scientists Encourage Us to Ignore Objective Reality

It appears that humans are wired to tell the difference between created objects and things that are random.  If I see a rock that is shaped a bit like something familiar, I'm likely to think it is random and amusing that it looks "something like" something else.  But, if the rock looks very much like the face of a human, there is generally a good chance I will know if it is by some other human's hand that it has become quite like a face.

So we look at flowers, eyeballs, humming birds, and universal laws like gravity, and our mind naturally thinks these are designed.  The starting point for science is to observe and then hypothesize.  But many scientists today specifically admonish us to turn our back on observation and ignore first principles.  Somehow in this one instance, we should suspend orr rational minds in order to come up with more complex solutions for how things happened to come into existence looking like design, but actually the result of random chance over millions of years. 

What is the Source of Energy for the Universe?

After a couple of years or so of struggling with personal matters, I am ready to revive the conversation.  Two new ideas (new to me anyway) have been brought to my attention while watching a series called "The Truth Project."  The first is this.  Assuming that one makes the leap of faith that the universe was created from nothing or from some very small compact bundle of matter and energy that exploded at the Big Bang, what source of energy is sustaining what was started?  Or will the universe wind down at some point?  If in fact the universe has been around for millions or billions of years, how is it possible that this massive amount of energy came into being?  Or is there some as yet undetermined energy production furnace that is refueling all of the billion star systems to keep them all in place and spinning and such?

I guess Hawking thinks that the Universe always existed.  If that is the case, one would pretty much have to assume that there is a generator somewhere producing an endless supply of energy.  Amazing to think about.

Planeseatreclineology

Obviously I haven't had time to blog on this subject lately, but I couldn't pass this one up. Your comments, please?

Another View of the Cave by Brian Kirk

While Plato's allegory of the cave caused me to think about things deeper,
I have also begun to ponder what may be considered the converse.

Say that, there were a bunch of free men, examining the perfect world
around them. One day, because of a horrible choice to commit a crime,
they were forced into a cave, and into bondage, shackles around the
neck and legs, much like Plato's cave.

Would not these men try to explain everything they saw in the cave as
a comparison to what they saw in the perfect world? And wouldn't they,
for a period of time at least, long for the world which they had been
cast out of?

Would they not attempt to make discoveries about this cave, all the
while coming to false conclusions because all they have known is the
perfection of the world above?

Would a few generations pass and the discoveries of the world around
would be even further from the truth just like the children's game of
telephone? The meanings of the objects would be blurred and distorted.

Perhaps not though. Perhaps they will begin to adjust to the light of
the fire and "figure out" all that there is to know. But all the
while, the memory of the perfect world would slowly fade.

The children's children of the original few men placed into bondage
might even find the "theory" or the idea of a perfect world to be
ridiculous, and dismiss it as a myth. Of course, it wouldn't be a
myth, but they might believe it was.

More and more, those who still believe in such a world would be the
outcasts of the society, viewed as weak and ignorant. However, in
truth, they would be the only ones that had an inkling of what life
really was.

And it would be these people, the ones that had faith, that the
keepers of the cave and the world in which it is contained would find
a redeemable quality.

Eventually, they would be allowed out of the cave into the perfect
world that they spent their entire life preparing for.

Placebo Effect and Mesmer by Bernardo

Recently I listened to an interesting radio show, which added some substance to my views on people's religious experiences. I thought I should share this with you and get your impression. Randy, if you would like to publish the text below as a guest post on your God Vs No God blog, feel free.

New York's NPR station, WNYC, produces an excellent weekly show called "Radio Lab". The two hosts chat with each other, and with diverse experts (typically scientists and historians and doctors and psychologists, but sometimes people who just have unusual jobs or experiences), about interesting topics such as what time is, where the sense of self comes from, how memories are formed and recalled (or forgotten), how stress works, morality, mortality, etc. You can listen to it online and I strongly recommend it.

Anyways, they had one episode about the placebo effect. The show was introduced with the real-life story of a Native American who became skeptical of the healing powers claimed by the tribe's shaman. The young man simply could not believe that all that chanting and ritual had any effect on disease. So he "went undercover" and asked to become an apprentice shaman. As well as how to make certain remedies using plants and other substances, he learned many theatrical "tricks", such as putting some feathers in his mouth, biting the inside of his cheek to draw blood, then pretending to "suck" out the disease from the patient and then spitting out the bloody feathers. Knowing that the theatrics involved were just that, he started his shaman work, faking it just like the shaman who taught him. But, to his amazement, the "tricks" worked, even though sometimes he wasn't really doing anything (as far as giving them substances that might help them).

From there, the first half of the show is spent talking with scientists about how the placebo effect works. In case you're curious: Say you take a substance, be it aspirin or caffeine or ecstasy or an antidepressant, and it has some effect on you. The fact that it had an effect indicates that your cells have receptors for this substance (or for one very much like it), molecular "locks" that are triggered when a certain kind of "key" molecule snaps into them. But if your cell already has those receptors, then human cells have always had those receptors, and this means that your body can already manufacture that substance (or one very much like it). Somewhere in your body - maybe in one specific gland, maybe in every cell - you have the power to manufacture most of the kinds of "medicines" and "mind-altering substances" you need. The hard part is triggering that production. Mysteriously, thinking that you have ingested a substance that has a certain effect, can often somehow trigger the production of whatever substance the body can make which comes closest to having that effect, at least for a little while. Yes, this is an incomplete explanation but it contains some elegant and powerful insights I did not have until I heard it.

The second half of that show is what I really want to talk about. It talked about faith healers, and about a German guy in the 1700s named Mesmer (from whom we get the word "mesmerized") who claimed to "magnetize" things and to cure diseases using "animal magnetism", a ether-like substance that connects all living things. For example, he would rub magnetized iron rods against a tree, and claim that the tree now channeled "animal magnetism". His patients would then touch the tree, start shaking and moaning and convulsing and screaming... and after a while, many of them got better. But real doctors were losing patients to this, and scientists were understanding magnetism well enough at the time to know that this Mesmer was probably making this stuff up. So a commission of scientists (including Ben Franklin, the US's ambassador to France at the time) was formed, not to investigate whether Mesmer's magnetism worked (because, in many cases, it did) but to investigate whether it involved any real phenomenon external to the people treated by it, any kind of fluid or field that had real effects on the world. They performed a simple test: One of five trees was "magnetized" by Mesmer (or one of his followers, since he franchised this practice), and a patient being treated this way was asked to identify which of the 5 trees was "magnetized". As you may guess, few patients got it right. Still, the effects of mesmerism could not be denied, since a lot of people got better from what ailed them. The commission concluded that the effects of Mesmer's "Animal Magnetism" were not caused by any real ether-like fluid or field, but by the imaginations of the patients.

Many people today claim to have religious experiences, to see lights and speak in tongues, to be taken over by the Holy Spirit, etc. This is most noticeable in Pentecostals who are famous for this kind of stuff, and in Christian Scientists who claim that all disease is really just problems in one's relationship with God, but most Christians will claim to have perceived ( i.e. been affected by) the divine supernatural in some way. Listening to the story about mesmerism, about what it was like and the effects it had, made me think that these things can be easily explained as being induced by the person experiencing it, a kind of placebo effect, which makes sense since these people are the ones who believe that the Holy Spirit could actually come and make itself felt.

So, I ask: What is the difference between the Holy Spirit and Animal Magnetism?

Both have real observable effects. Neither can be shown to be triggered by anything outside the mind of the person experiencing it. I think that experiencing the divine is either a placebo effect, or the assigning of supernatural causes to phenomena that are naturally caused (like they used to with the weather, disease, etc).

Here is the MP3 of this show I am talking about. The part about mesmerism is from 42:35 to 50:20.

http://feeds.wnyc.org/~r/radiolab/~5/118525705/radiolab051807pod.mp3

And some more links for reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesmer#The_advent_of_animal_magnetism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism

What do you think?

- Bernardo

A Few Personal Notes

I know that I have been well short of prolific in these spaces lately. One could hope that the content has been of greater quality while declining in quantity. I actually have been concentrating a bit more on my writing and style. Did anyone notice?

The last few months have been filled with substantial turmoil. My partner and I started a business over 26 years which grew to be very substantial. However, due to conditions within and outside of our control, we were forced to sell the business to the highest bidder last month. This process has been extremely time consuming and draining. It has made it very hard to be "up" for blogging or any other creative endeavor.

To make matters even more interesting (to me at least), I am now in the process of deciding what to do for a living. Part of the sale includes continuing on as an employee for the next 8 months, but there is no guarantee of work beyond that. So I am currently flexing my writing skills, and attempting to sell three book ideas, several freelance column ideas, a couple of freelance articles, check into adjunct professoring, consulting, and expert witnessing.

If anyone has any thoughts on any of those career paths or can be of any help, please comment or email.

The good news is that now that the deal is closed, and the day-to-day management of the company is behind me, I am full of creative vigor and am writing 1000's of words per day. Some for the job. Lots for publication.

Alas, it is unclear to me how much time I can devote to this blog, in that I need to be writing for dollars. However, it is my intent to do at least a post or two per week and stay up with the comments. I could sure use some guest posts. (I admit that Bernardo sent me a good one that I haven't even had time to make ready, but I will.)

Thanks to all who visit and contribute here. I do intend to keep trying to be a good host.

Odds of No Catastrophic End to Life

Much has been written, even a well argued post here, about the question of the precise aspects needed to sustain life on this planet. More to the point, I have argued here that it is beyond comprehension that this status has been maintained for billions of years without intelligent intervention to keep the systems within a life-sustaining range.

Those arguing against such a proposition say that it is just so. Others suggest that this is flawed logic. One commentor said that we have had a least 4 near wipe-outs of life, but life came back.

Call the following a falacy if you like. However:

1. With so many mindless species having lived and gone extinct, how is it that none has ever been so successful at destroying other life that all but its own species was destroyed, leaving it with no food supply?

2. How is it that nature has such balance that even in the most inhospitable places, life finds a way?

3. How is it that life did recover from the 4 great catastrophes that we believe may have destroyed up to 96% of life?

4. Why life at all? Doesn't it appear that there is something about life which has a huge drive to survive? What is that about? In humans, we have self awareness that might cause us to want to keep living for the things we desire, even in the face of great difficulty. But why does a cockroach have that built into him? What is the source of that drive?

If I was playing serious money poker with you, and you were dealt two straight flushes in a row with no draw, I would want to find out what "magic" you possessed. You could tell me until the end of time that you just got lucky, but I'd never quite believe it, no matter how much evidence there was to back up your claim.

Free Will and Indoctrination

Re: My earlier post about the LA Times religious editor who lost his faith. My last thought in the post elicited the most comments. Do we need indoctrination to hold onto closely held beliefs. Add to this stew the issue of free will vs some form of cause-and-effect only thinking, and it would at least seem to offer new opportunities for contemplation of the human condition.

If "I" and "my actions" are but the sum total of various data inputs, then, he who controls the inputs should be able to finally claim the crown of Emperor of the World. Hitler and Osama think information and oppression alone will do it, but what with chemicals and other biomethods, surely we could turn humans into robots.

Then we will be faced with the question I think I posted about here a while back regarding folks who are mentally imbalanced: "How will we know?" Has it already happened? Enter the Matrix.

The "First Cause" Concept

Picture the three of us (my son-in-law with his Masters in apologetics from Biola, working on a second Masters in spirituality; my son, currently reading John McArthur (the leading US proponent of Calvinism; and me working on this issue around the pool overlooking the Pacific in Hawaii. We tend to agree with the conclusions of the previous post:

Most concepts of a Christian God make the concept of free will pretty hard to consistently consider.

In general, it is hard to imagine any effect, including any human decision that is not informed 100% by previous causality.

Defining Free Will is fraught with peril.

In the midst of this brainstorming session, an original thought (whatever that is) presented itself. There had to be at least one first cause in history. Why only one? Thus humans (and who knows who else) might have the capacity to being completely creative and generate first causes. This doesn't require a spiritual side or a soul. However, it does go to the matter as first presented, who am "I" if I'm not capable of free will decisions. Now it is proposed that I am an agent of first causes.

Free Will Fantasy

I just needed some time to think it through. Now what was so confusing has become simple at last. I just need to pretend that I actually can make choices. After all, up until now I have been pretending that there is a God and that Jesus is His Son. With all that practice, it should be a no brainer to pretend like the decisions I make have consequences over which I need to concern myself.

Come to think of it, I have been pretending just that all my life. Since I have never considered seriously such contentions from philosophy like "everything being in my head" as being something to seriously ponder, the pile of such discards has included no free will.

I really need to pretend these things, because our entire Western way of thinking is based on volition. The jurisprudence system is based on intent and reasonable man. Our constitution set out the idea of the peons ruling the rulers by making and informed decision. Our commerce is based on consumer choice.

Wonder if there are other aspects of what we think we know scientifically that will require us to pretend to accept the unscientific? First God. Then free will. What next?

Free Will, or at least Cheap Will

Got up this morning, and I am sooooo confused. I don't want to do what God preordained me to do. Even if it is the absolute best thing for me to do, I don't want to do it, just because. Call me a child of the '60's. A real rebel.

Moreover, I certainly don't want to do anything that is simply the result of random occurrences in my genetics, experiences, and bodily chemical reactions. Yuk. So, my first thought was to do the opposite of what I was going to do. Unfortunately, that would be exactly what my predispositions would cause me to do. I considered doing the opposite of the opposite. I put my options into a random generator. Surely God knew I would do that. Besides, my reading of an article on a new random number generator last week surely caused me to think of that option.

Now my thoughts turned diabolical. If I can't make any real choices about my actions, then I really need to consider why I fret so much over making choices. I have read many places, including the Bible, that we should take care of today, and let tomorrow take care of itself. Coooool! In the case of the Bible, this had to do with not worrying or being anxious. But many, many self help books and pundits seem to mean something far more nihilistic.

So, if I choose not to believe in God, this is because I wasn't intended to anyway. If I choose to maximize my own power, wealth, consumption, and personal enjoyment, regardless of how it effects others, this would merely be the result of previous causes in my life. I can disregard the little voice in my head telling me to be unselfish, kind, loving, and such, since that voice is not the Holy Spirit, and the part of my make-up that can turn off that voice is just as much a part of me that turns it on.

Sure, I have to weigh consequences of my actions. But, lets face it, I'm 59. If I could get in 10 years of living large, there won't be that much time left for paying those consequences. And that's assuming I ever get caught or drive away the friendship of someone who really matters to me.

Need to think a bit more about all this. I'm off to church. Not because I choose to go in the face of all this, but because my Great, great, great grandparents went to church every week.

Calvinists vs Arminians

It might seem strange that I would offer up an internecine squabble on these pages, but the Kirk house is currently debating the issue, and it gave rise to a couple of appropriate thoughts regarding the debate herein.

Calvinists and Arminians disagree on several things, but the meaty part is over predestination vs free will. "Did God decide 'in the beginning' which of us humans would be saved and which condemned to hell." If he made such a decision, and there is plenty of solid scripture to back up that POV, then how can there be such a thing as free will. If no free will, then how can we ascribe personal responsibility to any act or person. If no free will, why even contemplate the issues of good vs evil or God vs no God? Last element of the set up: Both sides of the C vs A debate pretty much agree that there is no way to resolve the scriptural conflict this side of heaven. You pretty much select free to choose or God already chose by faith.

By now you are probably miles ahead of me in thinking how this applies more broadly to question posed here. Hopefully, however, I will surprise at least 10% of the faithful readers of this blog with my main epiphany. The Bible stands alone among all resources produced by humans in that it claims to provide us with Truth. Other religious texts might come close, but none make the audacious claims about being a depository of all Truth that the Bible does. As a result, the OT has proclaimed Truth for 4000 or so years with the NT now adding to (but not subtracting from) OT Truth for over 2000 years.

One of my other blogs is humbly titled "The Truth About Everything." I intended that to be audacious, over the top, intentionally rediculous, etc. Having named the blog thus, it would be fair for everyone and anyone who visits there to challenge every assertion, including the name. Some might say that I have created a lightening rod. If I had entitled it "Randy's Musings," it wouldn't have been such a direct challenge to visitors.

Fast forward 1 year or 20 years or 50 years, my postings of the Truth would likely seem silly, off kilter, or even have proven to be the opposite of truth. If I were still writing Truth, readers would and should point to my past error in evaluating my current assertions.

Back to the Bible. It is an easy mark for those who wish to comment on its postings. There are so many postings written by so many people that many deem it remarkable that there are no contradictions (or at least none that can't be overcome by sometimes tortuous means.) But on the whole, I think a fair jurist would say that the lack of (whoops) significant contradictions is rare for a work of this magnitude, scope, authorship, etc.

When compared to any other source of truth claims, the Bible is the only one who doesn't have the option of changing its words or statements. We humans may change our interpretation, and like any observable thing, humans will have different takes on what they see, hear, read, smell, taste, etc.

Which brings us back to Calvin and Armin, and to free will and predestination (insert also omniscience and determinism.) We either choose one or the other by faith, or we have been predisposed to our destiny regarding these issues by God or by wiring. And if this isn't the most complex philosophical question facing humans that has real consequences for living, I don't know what would be more so.

Religion Editor Dumps Religion

Trying to be fair and balanced here, so I report on the LA Times religion editor, who as a self-described "serious Christian," lost his faith while writing about religion in Southern California. He seems to have been most troubled by the Priest scandals and the excesses of the leadership at Trinity Broadcasting Network.

At the time, I never imagined Catholic leaders would engage in a widespread practice that protected alleged child molesters and belittled the victims. I latched onto the explanation that was least damaging to my belief in the Catholic Church — that this was an isolated case of a morally corrupt administration.

and

I understood that I was witnessing the failure of humans, not God. But in a way, that was the point. I didn't see these institutions drenched in God's spirit. Shouldn't religious organizations, if they were God-inspired and -driven, reflect higher standards than government, corporations and other groups in society?

and regarding TBN

I tried unsuccessfully to get several prominent mainstream pastors who appeared on TBN to comment on the prosperity gospel, Hinn's "faith healing" or the Crouches' lifestyle. Like the Catholic bishops, I assumed, they didn't want to risk what they had. AS the stories piled up, I began to pray with renewed vigor, but it felt like I wasn't connecting to God. I started to feel silly even trying.

You will recognize the major issues that William Lobdell struggled against

The questions that I thought I had come to peace with started to bubble up again. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God get credit for answered prayers but no blame for unanswered ones? Why do we believe in the miraculous healing power of God when he's never been able to regenerate a limb or heal a severed spinal chord?

In one e-mail, I asked John, who had lost a daughter to cancer, why an atheist businessman prospers and the child of devout Christian parents dies. Why would a loving God make this impossible for us to understand?

One can only suspect that there were many among his peers at the Times who were only too happy to encourage his steps away from faith. Without the balance of a Christian fellowship, scripture reading, or prayer, it was easy to slip away.

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up. Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don't. It's not a choice. It can't be willed into existence. And there's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul.

Many questions for both sides of the debate. Was he ever saved? Did his lack of centering in one doctrinal area get in the way of establishing a set of core beliefs (Catholic, presbyterian, TBN, Mormon?) Do we, as humans, need continuous indoctrination to maintain our core beliefs, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, humanist, or atheist?

Read the entire article here

Seeing Beyond the Big Bang

A few weeks ago, I wondered aloud whether or not we would be able to see beyond the Big Bang. It would appear that at least some scientists think it is possible.

It may be possible to glimpse before the supposed beginning of time into the universe prior to the Big Bang, researchers now say.

Unfortunately, any such picture will always be fuzzy at best due to a kind of "cosmic forgetfulness."

The Big Bang is often thought as the start of everything, including time, making any questions about what happened during it or beforehand nonsensical. Recently scientists have instead suggested the Big Bang might have just been the explosive beginning of the current era of the universe, hinting at a mysterious past.

To see how far into history one might gaze, theoretical physicist Martin Bojowald at Pennsylvania State University ran calculations based on loop quantum gravity, one of a number of competing theories seeking to explain how the underlying structure of the universe works.

Past research suggested the Big Bang was preceded by infinite energies and space-time warping where existing scientific theories break down, making it impossible to peer beforehand. The new findings suggest that although the levels of energy and space-time warping before the Big Bang were both incredibly high, they were finite.

Scientists could spot clues in the present day of what the cosmos looked like previously. If evidence of the past persisted after the Big Bang, its influence could be spotted in astronomical observations and computational models, Bojowald explained.

However, Bojowald also figures some knowledge of the past was irrevocably lost. For instance, the sheer size of the present universe would suppress precise knowledge of how the universe changed in size before the Big Bang, he said.

Why Not Nothing?

Chief skeptic, Michael Shermer, says this might be the most important article ever to appear in Skeptic Mag.

DOWNLOAD Why This Universe article by Robert Kuhn (PDF)

I agree that it is a nice single source for almost every permutation of believe about what is and how it might have come to be.

Next From Apple

Surely, Steve and his pals must be busy working on this new item. If you'd like to see more zany ideas of what the MacMakers might be up to, go here.

Hugh Hewitt Takes Up This Debate

Hugh Hewitt, syndicated radio talk show host, political pundit, and one of the fathers of blogging, has a 15 week debate taking place on his radio show. Titled "the Great God Debate" with authors Christopher Hitchens and Mark D. Roberts, you can find the audio here for part one. I intend to provide links to the rest later.

In addition, Mark D. Roberts is critiquing specific facts and assumptions of Hitchens' new book, "god Is Not Great," in his blog.

A commentor bring up a variation on a theme long debated:

Hitchens would have us believe that the first century church not only followed a man who never existed, but they constructed from the hearts of fishermen and tax collectors a collection of proverbs and stories that turned the world upside down. If so, then Jesus’ disciples are more clever in death than they were in life and the greatest miracle of all is that those common people not only corporately imagined Jesus’ life, but they went to their deaths by the tens of thousands for their collective dream; for a man who never lived. Hitchens’ contribution to history is his claim that the fire which consumed the Roman Empire was never struck…

Your thoughts?