No Possibility of God

[halbhh]

Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."
Stephen Hawking's Final Book Says There's 'No Possibility' of God in Our Universe | Live Science

So time didn't exist before the Big Bang?
There seems a lot of certainty that prior to the BB time did not exist at least by people certainly smarter than me.

Has science finally provided an answer to the age-old question of God's existence?
Is Hawking wrong about time?
Or, is there some workaround which allows God to exist/create in a timeless state?

In fact, according to Hawking, nothing existed prior to the Big Bang and it is perfectly ok to accept that.

Hawking's theory which I've read at his site first many years ago, and he revised it a little, and I read it again --

The Beginning of TIme -- Hawking's own writing at his own website.

(I think this direct reading is accessible even without a physics degree (I'm guessing, since I do have an engineering physics degree))

Regarding "God", Hawking really has then a substitute, a 'god in the machine' so to speak. For believers though, like me, God isn't affected by time, and not even by our physics. This is pretty obvious if you consider God would not be subject to Nature, if He is understood to be the creator of it. (2 different states of being, subject to Nature vs. being the ruler of Nature)

 

[ratiocinator]

There are solutions to the field equations? Right but those do not predict, or allow, a singularity. They allow inflation because the galaxies are far enough away from each other so the force of gravity is insignificant. Inflation is not the bb.

False. The solutions work right back until we get to the singularity - just as the black hole solution works right until the actual centre. We expect them to actually break down when any quantum theory of gravity would kick in, so back to about 10^-43 s after when the singularity would have been.

And, by the way, "inflation" in the context of cosmology means something quite different from galaxies moving apart, something that is proposed to have happened before about 10^-32 s after when the singularity would have been.

Ever hear of something called GRAVITY? I think you should look it up.

Gravity, oh yes, now you come to mention it, that's something that none of the scientists who study, umm, err, well, gravity, have actually bothered to think about. You must be right...

Gravity is the thing that is best described by the field equations of general relativity. Every single test of the theory has confirmed its predictions.

It's also the case that there is plenty of physical (observational) evidence for the BB model as well, so it isn't just about mathematics. The model makes testable predictions. The cosmic microwave background radiation being the most famous but we can also, for example, make predictions of ratios of hydrogen, helium and other trace elements based on the hot dense conditions that existed in the very early universe.

If you're in a hole, stop digging. It's quite clear that you don't have the first clue what you're talking about.

I do find it both amazing and sad that so many people think they can be taken seriously by telling other people on message boards that all the actual experts have made really obvious and basic mistakes and that they have seen through it all even though they don't seem to have the slightest grasp of the basics.

 

[1213]

Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."
Stephen Hawking's Final Book Says There's 'No Possibility' of God in Our Universe | Live Science
...

It seems Hawking has great faith in himself, even though he has not existed always. If Christians would have that much faith in God, I think they could do many miracles.

But, why should we believe Hawking?

 

[Super Universe]

False. The solutions work right back until we get to the singularity - just as the black hole solution works right until the actual centre. We expect them to actually break down when any quantum theory of gravity would kick in, so back to about 10^-43 s after when the singularity would have been.

And, by the way, "inflation" in the context of cosmology means something quite different from galaxies moving apart, something that is proposed to have happened before about 10^-32 s after when the singularity would have been.



Gravity, oh yes, now you come to mention it, that's something that none of the scientists who study, umm, err, well, gravity, have actually bothered to think about. You must be right...

Gravity is the thing that is best described by the field equations of general relativity. Every single test of the theory has confirmed its predictions.

It's also the case that there is plenty of physical (observational) evidence for the BB model as well, so it isn't just about mathematics. The model makes testable predictions. The cosmic microwave background radiation being the most famous but we can also, for example, make predictions of ratios of hydrogen, helium and other trace elements based on the hot dense conditions that existed in the very early universe.

If you're in a hole, stop digging. It's quite clear that you don't have the first clue what you're talking about.

I do find it both amazing and sad that so many people think they can be taken seriously by telling other people on message boards that all the actual experts have made really obvious and basic mistakes and that they have seen through it all even though they don't seem to have the slightest grasp of the basics.

The equations work if you invent some kind of pressure that overcomes the gravitational force but somehow this pressure doesn't work in black holes. Why not? How come gravity works in black holes, something real that we have evidence for, but gravity somehow does not work in the big bang?

There is plenty of physical evidence for the big bang? Not a single thing. Cosmic background radiation comes from stars. Name one area of space where there are no stars? Just one.

There are predictable ratio's of hydrogen? How about anti-particles? What happened there? Things are predictable when you force the conclusion.

There was no hot dense area of the early universe, except in stars.

***MOD EDIT***

 

[PearlSeeker]

Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."
Stephen Hawking's Final Book Says There's 'No Possibility' of God in Our Universe | Live Science

So time didn't exist before the Big Bang?
There seems a lot of certainty that prior to the BB time did not exist at least by people certainly smarter than me.

Has science finally provided an answer to the age-old question of God's existence?
Is Hawking wrong about time?
Or, is there some workaround which allows God to exist/create in a timeless state?

In fact, according to Hawking, nothing existed prior to the Big Bang and it is perfectly ok to accept that.

Based on what we know about black holes Hawking concluded "time begun at the moment of singularity".

No time - - > no cause.
No cause - - > no creation.

"We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in."

"For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator..." (Hawking)

At first glance it seems science doesn't support creation. But the "cause" Hawking wrote about is not the same as "cause" in philosophy and theology... Hawkins doesn't refute the possibility that God created the laws and singularity. He just thinks "science has a more compelling explanation."

Does Creator have anything with our universe? In Hahwking's view even if God started BB, it has no (further) role in our universe - deism. Seriously? Laws of physics describe the whole of cosmos? I think he pushed this too far.

Particles seem to appear "out of nowhere". I don't see how this leads to BB appeared from nothing. I mean we are now in temporal universe. No time existing before BB doesn't automatically mean nothing at all existed/exists. It can be something atemporal.

 

[Link]

Because.....?



You've posted a few supposed proofs and they all had obvious flaws, do you want another go?

Nah, they are good proofs, it's just some people don't want to grasp it.

 

[stvdv]

New Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because

It's not a fact, he humbly gave his opinion.

 

[ratiocinator]

The equations work if you invent some kind of pressure that overcomes the gravitational force but somehow this pressure doesn't work in black holes. Why not? How come gravity works in black holes, something real that we have evidence for, but gravity somehow does not work in the big bang?

I'm not going to spend more time explaining this because you're obviously not really interested, if you were, you'd already know at least enough not to think the BB would lead to a shell of galaxies.

I will however repeat that the same theory applies in different situations. You're rather like somebody looking at Newton's law of gravitation and saying "how come gravity works for apples falling to earth but not the moon which doesn't fall".

There's also plenty of articles you can find about how the BB differs from a black hole. Here's one example:

According to the big bang theory, all the matter in the universe erupted from a singularity. Why didn't all this matter--cheek by jowl as it was--immediately collapse into a black hole?

There is plenty of physical evidence for the big bang? Not a single thing. Cosmic background radiation comes from stars. Name one area of space where there are no stars? Just one.

If you can explain how the stars produce the CMB, there's a second Nobel prize for you! You seem to imagine that scientists just make hand-wavy stuff up (like you just did) and say something like, "well the BB must have been hot, so there must be some sort of radiation left, oh look there's some radiation!"

It was a precise prediction, using a mathematical model, of the exact characteristics of the radiation we would expect to see. It turned out to exist. That's what scientists call evidence - a theory makes a prediction and an experiment or observation confirms it.

 

[blü 2]

Simply wrong - go find pretty much any textbook on relativity (I have three to hand) and you'll find a section on cosmology.

Both you and @Super Universe are right.

Einstein's original model of the universe (1915) was static. Lemaître's paper (1927) arguing for a beginning and an expanding universe led to Einstein saying to him at the Solway conference that year, "Your calculations are correct but your physics is abominable."

This may not be anyone's fault, since both models emerged from the maths of general relativity and neither was in conflict with what was then the evidence.

Not till he made a personal inspection of Hubble's results did Einstein change his mind; in 1931 February at Mount Wilson observatory he told journalists that he was convinced by Hubble's results, not least those of red-shift, and now preferred the expanding view of the universe, not yet called the Big Bang view, to his earlier static view.

(One result was that his 'cosmological constant' became a problem that hasn't gone away.)

 

[ratiocinator]

Both you and @Super Universe are right.

Einstein's original model of the universe (1915) was static. Lemaître's paper (1927) arguing for a beginning and an expanding universe led to Einstein saying to him at the Solway conference that year, "Your calculations are correct but your physics is abominable."

This may not be anyone's fault, since both models emerged from the maths of general relativity and neither was in conflict with what was then the evidence.

That was actually the point. @Super Universe is trying to claim that there is a conflict between the maths of relativity and the BB, that "gravity" and "Einstein's maths" would make it impossible. (see #97). I mentioned Einstein's introduction of the cosmological constant in #81.

 

[blü 2]

That was actually the point. @Super Universe is trying to claim that there is a conflict between the maths of relativity and the BB, that "gravity" and "Einstein's maths" would make it impossible. (see #97). I mentioned Einstein's introduction of the cosmological constant in #81.

Then I apologize for my misstatement on that point.

We appear to be in substantial agreement on the rest.

 

[ratiocinator]

We appear to be in substantial agreement on the rest.

Indeed. Interestingly I've recently discovered that another motivation for the cosmological term was to conform to Mach's principle in that form "an isolated body in otherwise empty space has no inertia". In the original form, flat (Minkowski) space-time is a solution, which violates that principle. That didn't turn out to work either because of the de Sitter solution. No wonder Einstein considered it a bit of a blunder at the time.

 

[Polymath257]

The equations work if you invent some kind of pressure that overcomes the gravitational force but somehow this pressure doesn't work in black holes. Why not? How come gravity works in black holes, something real that we have evidence for, but gravity somehow does not work in the big bang?

Yes, the cosmological constant is present around black holes. The amount of the pressure isn't enough, though, to stop the formation of the black hole.

Yes, gravity does work at the Big Bang. In fact, it is the equations governing gravity that leads to our understanding of the BB.

There is plenty of physical evidence for the big bang? Not a single thing. Cosmic background radiation comes from stars. Name one area of space where there are no stars? Just one.

Sorry, but this doesn't work. You can't get a consistent, black-body radiation to within 1 part in 100,000 from stars in this way. There are simply too many different temperatures for the different stars, which would lead to a spread in the detected radiation that is contrary to the actual observations.

There are predictable ratio's of hydrogen? How about anti-particles? What happened there? Things are predictable when you force the conclusion.

The matter-antimatter asymmetry happened before the time of nucleogenesis. Since we are still investigating the specifics of CP violation (leading to that matter-antimatter asymmetry), but we know it exists, it is more a matter of the *amount* of matter left matching the observations than anything else.

This is an area of active research in the particle physics community. But the basics is that the symmetry between matter and antimatter isn't perfect. We know this from the differences between the K meson and the anti-K meson. And, just recently, we found CP violations in reactions involving neutrinos (which is far more likely to give the correct amount of remaining matter: 1 part in a billion).

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-t2k-results-restrict.html

There was no hot dense area of the early universe, except in stars.

Not an idea that remotely fits with the observations. Stars alone cannot produce the specifics of the radiation that we observe.

 

[Polymath257]

Einstein's original equations implied and expanding or contracting universe? He was very good at math, not so good at theory.

Black holes are described by a different solution than a singularity? So black holes have completely different gravity?

No. The BB solution is a dynamic solution: it changes over time. The black hole solution is a static solution: it stays the same over time. They are two different types of solutions to the same basic equations.

Every test on relativity confirms it? But relativity is not evidence of the big bang. It's evidence of relativity.

The BB theory is part of General Relativity. it is a consequence of our understanding of gravity.

The scientists are doing everything they can to force everything to fit with this big bang idea but the whole time they are violating the most fundamental physical law of all, gravity. That's not science. You can't violate your own accepted laws.

We don't. The basic equations of gravity are the Einstein field equations for General Relativity.

You get the BB solution by assuming (to a first approximation) a uniform energy distribution at every time, but allowing for things to be dynamic.

You get the black hole solutions (Schwartzchild solution) by assuming spherical symmetry and a static (no change over time).

Both types of solutions have singularities, but they are very different *types* of singularities. In the BB solution, the singularity prevents time from being defined infinitely into the past. In the black hole solution, the singularity is in space and represents a mass.

I would strongly suggest that you pick up a book, like Wald's book on General Relativity, before you say more things which are simply wrong scientifically. If you want, you can then pick a book like Weinberg's book on Cosmology, which gives a LOT of detail about all the stuff you have been saying doesn't make sense.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

If God existed sans creation, he existed outside time.

As the very quote you are responding to is saying: "To exist", requires temporal conditions

So the idea of "existing outside time", is like a "married bachelor".
One excludes the other.


So really, when you tell me "X exists outside of time", then I have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No more North then North pole analogy doesn't make sense with respect to time.

Sure it does.

Absolute north in the analogy is the equivalent of the absolute beginning of time at T = 0

There's no more "north" then absolute north, just like there is no more "before" then at the absolute beginning of time.

He's got to let go of his irrational conjecture and not be stubborn.

Or maybe you should not project your stubborness on others and think the analogy through a little more.

God is proven so many ways to exist.

This, off course, couldn't be further from the truth.

Not only is no god "proven" in any way...
No god is even properly supported by evidence. Not even a little bit.
Which is why gods require faith.

 

[Polymath257]

Nah, they are good proofs, it's just some people don't want to grasp it.

No, the proofs are uniformly poor in logic. It's just that some people want the conclusion so much, they are willing to use poor logic.

 

[Polymath257]

No more North then North pole analogy doesn't make sense with respect to time. He's got to let go of his irrational conjecture and not be stubborn.

Actually, the math involved is almost exactly the same between the BB and the north pole. The actual equations that govern General Relativity (and hence, the BB) are *geometrical* equations, relating the geometry of spacetime to the density of matter and energy.

The actual solutions for the equations give solutions that are similar, in may ways, to the geometry of a sphere at a pole. This comes out of the math.

The analogy is actually quite good.

God is proven so many ways to exist.

Except, of course, this isn't the case.

 

[Polymath257]

There are solutions to the field equations? Right but those do not predict, or allow, a singularity. They allow inflation because the galaxies are far enough away from each other so the force of gravity is insignificant. Inflation is not the bb.

The theory of gravity does disprove the bb. You think inflation means bb. It doesn't. Inflation is inflation. The bb is the bb. One is allowed by Newton/Einstein, the other is not.

Actually, inflation isn't the same as universal expansion. it is a description of the *exponential* expansion in the very early universe prior to nucleosynthesis.

The singularity means the theory breaks down? EXACTLY! Now you are starting to get it. It breaks down because it's IMPOSSIBLE. If you just stick with inflation, you're good. Once you try to take it farther, you violate your own laws.

So, the BB model is a good model once you get into the realm of application of General Relativity. This is fully active by about a second into the expansion.

I didn't understand the pop science version? You mean the bb? That's not even pop science. It's super inflated ego's over riding known physical laws because they think they are soooo smart when they're not. Guys who are good at math, are good at math. Theory should be left up to Philosophy majors, or artists, anyone but a math robot.

Well, maybe you need to learn some math and physics before you make your claims. The laws of physics are written in math. The laws of GR are the ones that directly apply to the BB.

Philosophers are notoriously bad at modern physics.

I should get my Nobel Prize? Oh, a primitive human award. Wow! That would be fantastic. Evolved beings should come from all over the universe just to get primitive human awards named after some guy who invented dynamite.

Where is my evidence? History.

Ever hear of something called GRAVITY? I think you should look it up. Then come back and I will explain it to you. Also, bring some of your math robots with you and I'll explain the real dimensions to them. Nevermind, let them rust.

I probably knew more about gravity when I was 15 than you will ever know. I can recommend a number of books on the subject, but you will need to know a bit of math to even get started. But that is true of any physics since Newton.

 

[Polymath257]

(One result was that his 'cosmological constant' became a problem that hasn't gone away.)

In fact, it is currently viewed as dark energy.