The Universe created itself from nothing

[abelisle]

That's what Stephen Hawking is now saying in his new book, The Grand Design.

I thought God created everything from nothing - "creatio ex nihilo"

And gravity plays a major role in this unique view of creation. The problem for me is who created gravity and for that matter, matter and energy?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/02/hawking.god.universe/?hpt=T2

Too bad all of this in predicated on faith and since we worship God in "spirit and truth", I guess the truth truly makes us free. But everyone must remember, all of this is all about faith.

We can't prove it to be or not to be. But that always was the question, right Willy?

Alex

[Doug]

It takes a lot of faith to believe something came from nothing.

[SivartM]

It takes a lot of faith to believe something came from nothing.

Yes... Christians must have a lot of faith.

[Bravus]

So yeah, apparently *everyone* believes in 'ex nihilo'.

Professor Hawking had said in his earlier book something that might have suggested God was the First Cause of the Big Bang. In his latest book he said that this idea is not 'necessary', in that the physics can explain the origin of the Big Bang without recourse to a miracle.

He *still* leaves open the possibility of calling these laws and processes 'God' (as I believe someone posted an attempt to do here recently), but notes that such a God would not be a personal being with whom we could have a relationship.

My own (tentative) position is that looking for God in the physics is thinking too small, and that God transcends the universe. God caused the laws of physics, caused the quantum conditions required for the universe to be created ex nihilo, and therefore is not detectable 'jogging the elbow' of the physical processes with one-off miracles, but rather is the far more fundamental underlying cause of them all.

Twilight will cry 'naturalism', and I won't resist the characterisation, but with the caveat that nature IS God and God IS nature... not in a pantheistic sense, but in the sense that (as C S Lewis has said) God is far more real and concrete and fundamental than this ephemera we call the universe.

By way of analogy most of us (even the estimable Professor) are looking for God with a microscope when we should be using a super-telescope... because he's infinitely bigger than the whole universe.

[Dr. Shane]

Believing that God created the universe ex nihilo is not the same as believing that something came from nothing because God is SOMETHING. Of course, creation begs the question "where did God come from?" and creationists do not have a satisfying answer for them. Likewise the naturalist cannot answer where the first matter came from.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,"

So what caused this spontaneous creation?

[Bravus]

I've answered that question in some detail over many pages in the 'not really a Christian' thread, but that answer seems not to have satisfied anyone, so I won't bother repeating it here: check it out there if you're interested. There *is* an answer, and it's what Professor Hawking's book is all about.

In response to your first sentence, Shane, I think the point is 'nothing material'. God is not material, or at least not in the same sense as the universe, and before the universe there was nothing material, whether we believe that then God created the universe or whether we believe the universe arose spontaneously from fluctuations in the quantum foam...

[BobRyan]

Some have wondered just how much of the junk-science religion of the old alchemists is still at the core of evolutionism.

Recall that Alchemy taught "spontaneous generation" fictions of various forms. And now comes a more recent chapter in that ancient alchemist religion.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/02/hawking.god.universe/?hpt=T2

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he writes in the excerpt.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going," he writes.

Today's alchemist relies on a fiction much more expansive than the ancient form of this religion ever thought of doing.

Notice that confident statement that imagines that creating the universe does not really need God because what? "you create universes all the time in the lab?" -- err.. ummm "no" comes the sheepish answer back.

Well then is it because "you finally found a tested system where the four forces of nature are all collapsed into one and you can demonstrate the entirely new physics for such a condition?" -- err... umm... "no" comes the sheepish answer back.

We must remember that pure alchemy is an expression of the deepest form of atheism - becuase it simply "imagines" what it cannot show in the lab - and carries that imagination to the extreme limit of "all of space and time and life in the universe" such that bold sweeping alchemist by-faith-alone claims of "spontaneous generation of the universe itself" are authored by the high priests of that religious system.

But getting down to "real science" - we have the glaringly obvious "elephant in the living room" telling all that dark matter and dark energy are "needed" as fudge factors to indicate that 94% (plus) of all that we see must be derived from matter or energy described primarily by the term "manna" as in "what is it" because we have never seen it or tested it in the lab. So starting with the "I don't know" for 95% of everything we see in the universe today - the faithful devotee Hawking - goes on to make by faith alone affirmations about "creating the universe".

I guess if your clueless about 95% of something you can be equally as confident that that "thing" just popped into being all by itself even if no physics today demonstrates that to be true.

in Christ,

Bob

[BobRyan]

Hawking illustrates the point that our atheist friends find it difficult to express their by-faith-alone belief system in terms other than pure tautoloty and circular reasoning.

When facing the challenge of their daunting pile of "just-so stories" needed to "just so happen to come up with life" - the CNN article says Hawking raises this less than insightful circular argument to solve the problem pile of just-so storytelling.

Quote:

And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it.

Then since that imaginative 'say nothing' is so easily swallowed by the non-critical reader - Hawking apparently feels inclinded to go further into peter-pan world by "speculating" an almost infinite number of dead universes so that the "probability" of the just-so storytelling can be aleviated just a tad.

Quote:

From there he introduces the idea of multiple universes, saying that if there are many universes, one will have laws of physics like ours -- and in such a universe, something not only can, but must, arise from nothing

The reader is being told that the very thing we CANNOT even artifically manufacture in the lab - "MUST happen FROM NOTHING" outside of it!!

Where does the creative storytelling end with atheism?? Apparently there is "no limit".

in Christ,

Bob

[BobRyan]

Believing that God created the universe ex nihilo is not the same as believing that something came from nothing because God is SOMETHING.

Indeed - that would be the "grand equivocation" to claim that What infinite God does - is the same as "it happens on its own - no design, Power, purpose or wisdom needed".

Of course maybe this is a case of "frame of reference" -- since infinite God needs nothing from the atheist Hawking, when He (God) creates an entire universe... then Hawking sees it as "needing nothing" to happen.

Along that "Hawking line of thought" then - the Russian space program "happens out of nothing" all on its own (from my POV in the U.S).

in Christ,

Bob

[abelisle]

I think we as Christians have to be more humble in our beliefs. For many the Bible is also a "just-so story", a mythological construct written to explain what we do not understand.

The subtle arrogance that some of us express in our rhetoric belies the tremendous leap of faith that is required by many of us as believers to believe what we believe.

As EGW has said - love expressed as courtesy has won the day when all other arguments have failed to impress.

Remember - love trumps faith.

Alex

[doug yowell]

Originally Posted By: Doug

It takes a lot of faith to believe something came from nothing.

Yes... Christians must have a lot of faith.

Jesus demonstrated the ability to control all the elements of matter with His spoken word.Unless one believes that these stories are fiction,this is the foundation of our faith.So it is not so hard to accept that everything materiel came from His word(nothing??).It is the demonstration of the supernatural that should impress humanity, not the theories of the supernatural.I wonder how Dr. Hawking would have answered the disciples question"What manner of man is this that even the wind and the seas obey Him"? Or how he would respond to the man who observed,"Whether or not the theories of origins are true I do not know. One thing I know:that though I was blind,now I see"?

[Dr. Shane]

God is not material, or at least not in the same sense as the universe, and before the universe there was nothing material

I don't think anyone can make that conclusion. Jesus said if we saw Him, we have seen the Father. I am not exactly sure what to do with that statement but it is intriguing for sure.

[Aliensanctuary]

Of course we do not know where the Creator of Life on our world came from, or how this being came into existance or operates, but if "he" has access to unlimited amounts of energy and the technology to compress it, or otherwise transform it into matter and the resulting elements, we, in our ignorance, might think that the "universe" came from nothing by the hand or voice of this Life-Creator, unless we believe energy and matter created themselves out of nothing, truly, a scientific miracle of unimaginable proportions.

Our Creator may have even developed different ways of putting matter together that defy our understanding of the universe that we see.

[Dr. Shane]

I think we as Christians have to be more humble in our beliefs.

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Gal. 6:14)

Are we, as Christians, afraid of offending those that have rejected Christianity?

"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, as ye go forth out of that house or that city, shake off the dust of your feet." (Matthew 10:14)

I think there is a certain class of Christians that refuses to shake the dust off their feet. They seem to think if the Church just changes its methods, then those that have rejected Christ will change their mind. I have my doubts about that. I think there is a time we need to dust off our feet and continue onward looking for those hungry for the gospel.

[SivartM]

I don't think anyone can make that conclusion. Jesus said if we saw Him, we have seen the Father. I am not exactly sure what to do with that statement but it is intriguing for sure.

If God is matter, he cannot be omnipresent.

You don't actually see matter; you see light.

[abelisle]

It's not our methods - it's our love that will change their minds.

I think you missed that piece that I mentioned that EGW emphasized in her writings.

Alex

[Bravus]

Yes, my conclusion that God is non-material is a logical consequence of His omnipresence. I believe that it was exactly that quality that Jesus chose to sacrifice in being incarnated - he went from universe-spanning God to tired, hungry human man for us.

[Dr. Shane]

If God is matter, he cannot be omnipresent.

I think only the Holy Spirit is omnipresent. We have no reason to believe that God the Father or God the Son are, or have been, omnipresent. I am certainly interested in the Bible verses that teach God the Father or/and God the Son are also omnipresent.

[Dr. Shane]

It's not our methods - it's our love that will change their minds.

I think you missed that piece that I mentioned that EGW emphasized in her writings.

Alex

No, I didn't miss that. There is a difference between trying to convert the undecided and trying to convert those who have openly rejected the gospel.

[SivartM]

Aren't they all God?

I'm interested in Bible verses that say that the Father is made of matter. Sometimes I think it's funny how much people think they know about him.

[doug yowell]

Aren't they all God?

I'm interested in Bible verses that say that the Father is made of matter. Sometimes I think it's funny how much people think they know about him.

Given your previous observation on matter,SM,and the above question(?), how would you explain Rev.5:6,7? Or Gen.1:26&27? Matter or not matter (or,does it matter?)?

[SivartM]

I don't think I should have to defend the belief that God is not smaller than the universe... which he would have to be if he was matter.

[Dr. Shane]

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26)

"Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know mM, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’" (John 14:9)

"I stated that a cloud of glorious light covered the Father and that His person could not be seen. I also stated that I saw the Father rise from the throne. The Father was enshrouded with a body of light and glory, so that His person could not be seen; yet I knew that it was the Father and that from His person emanated this light and glory. When I saw this body of light and glory rise from the throne, I knew it was because the Father moved, therefore said, I saw the Father rise. The glory, or excellency, of His form I never saw; no one could behold it and live; yet the body of light and glory that enshrouded His person could be seen." (EW p.55)

[Bravus]

We could argue that the image of God in both us and Jesus is about character - the weightier matter - not about physical appearance, but if you do think the Father is humanoid there are certainly enough texts that will bolster that position if interpreted that way.

[Dr. Shane]

I don't think I should have to defend the belief that God is not smaller than the universe... which he would have to be if he was matter.

Well, we don't have to defend anything. I think we are just sharing and exchanging ideas here. Because of the Holy Spirit, God is not smaller than the universe. We believe in the triune God. I don't think any of us can fully understand the mysteries of who God is.