The Big Bang and Creationism

[Yazata]

"The Big Bang and creationism both require one free miracle for their respective explanations." (Terrence McKenna)

Or if not a miracle in the religious sense, at least a by-its-nature-inexplicable (and hence in that sense transcendant) creation event that accounts for the reality of all of the rest of reality.

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[Magical Realist]

"We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything."---Terrence McKenna

[Syne]

They are one and the same.

[Magical Realist]

They are exact opposites. The Big Bang posits everything coming out of nothing. Creationism posits everything being created by a deity who has always existed.

[Syne]

Both posit everything coming from nothing. God created from nothing (Creatio ex nihilo). So both are equally inexplicable creations from nothing. One just has a self-motivated entity we cannot fully understand and the other has some unmotivated natural process we cannot fully understand.

Very little difference except the story behind either.

[Yazata]

This is a slightly adapted version of something I wrote earlier today on Religious Forums. It seems appropriate here too.

The way I look at it is like this: There are fundamental metaphysical questions, such as what mathematics and logic are, why the physical universe seemingly conforms to them, what the "laws of physics" are, where these "laws" came from and why they are as they seem to be and not something else, and the ultimate and most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does existence exist in the first place?

The idea that the fundamental metaphysical questions even have answers, let alone answers potentially knowable by beings like us, is obviously an assumption. That assumption might be captured by the Principle of Sufficient Reason: For all X, If X exists, then a sufficient reason for X's existence exists. Science typically assumes this principle for physical phenomena, when it assumes that every event or state of affairs (apart from the Big Bang I guess) has an explanation for science to find and isn't just a raw-given, sui generis, to be accepted but not understood. Science's success in finding explanations (whether real or hypothetical) for physical phenomena has led to the widespread faith among much of the general public that science can, at least in principle, explain anything.

Application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason not just to physical events, but to the fundamental metaphysical questions that I outlined above, is more controversial, in part because doing so leads to circularities or infinite regresses.

But historically, dating back to the ancient Greek philosophers, there's been a tradition of assigning the word "God" to whatever the unknown explanation for the fundamental metaphysical questions might be. That idea has survived as "Natural Theology" in the Christian tradition down to today. We see it in Aristotle and in Aquinas' Five Ways, It's found in Islam and the Hindus have their own versions.

Personally I'm an agnostic, but I take these kind of ideas very seriously. It's why I find myself wavering between agnostic atheism and agnostic theism. I don't have a clue what the ultimate answers are, but I just intuitively feel in my gut that there are unknown answers that neither I nor anyone else knows anything about. I feel surrounded by mysteries at every moment. (That's my version of spirituality, perhaps.)

I don't really believe that ancient Hebrew or early medieval Arabic mythology have any of the answers that I seek, so I don't look there. I have little confidence or even interest in what Aquinas called "special revelation". But that said, I don't think that science has the answers either. Science assumes basic principles like the universe being logical and that it necessarily conforms to regularities ("laws") describable in mathematical form. Science isn't much help in explaining or justifying those assumptions except pragmatically (they seem to work in achieving science's very limited ends of identifying empirical variables as mathematical functions of other variables). As to why reality takes this form or behaves in this way, science is silent.

Just saying "nature did it" without providing any fundamental explanation of 'nature', while saying 'we don't ask those questions' and dismissing them as "empty metaphysics" in the manner of the positivists really sounds like willful ignorance to me. It's ignoring precisely the kind of foundational issues that I find most fascinating.

Scientistic hubris might come across as more forceful if scientists were more willing to actually address the nature and explanation of "the cosmos". Describing how one set of variables relates mathematically to another set, doesn't really hide the fact that they are avoiding the more basic questions.

[Magical Realist]

Both posit everything coming from nothing. God created from nothing (Creatio ex nihilo). So both are equally inexplicable creations from nothing. One just has a self-motivated entity we cannot fully understand and the other has some unmotivated natural process we cannot fully understand.

Very little difference except the story behind either.

Saying everything emerged on its own from quantum fluctuations and saying it was poofed into being by a magical man in the sky couldn't be more different. One is actual science based on evidence and complex mathematics and the other is a stupid fable passed down over thousands of years from primitive goatherders.

[Zinjanthropos]

I think religion and science aren’t considering what is necessary. It’s not looking for something from nothing that’s important, rather somewhere from nothing. No creation of something can take place unless there’s somewhere to make it happen.

Question is whether something can exist nowhere? Simultaneous creation of a place or a thing from nothing kind of rules God out because of being part of the same process and then you need to consider intelligence and all its accoutrements appearing as well.

Is it God, a place, stuff or a place followed by everything else?

[C C]

I think religion and science aren’t considering what is necessary. It’s not looking for something from nothing that’s important, rather somewhere from nothing. No creation of something can take place unless there’s somewhere to make it happen.

Question is whether something can exist nowhere? Simultaneous creation of a place or a thing from nothing kind of rules God out because of being part of the same process and then you need to consider intelligence and all its accoutrements appearing as well.

Is it God, a place, stuff or a place followed by everything else?

These supposed problems stem from treating "becoming" (non-permanence, change, time-based causes and origins, etc) as more fundamental than existence. (Four-dimensionalism)

Making "becoming" primal leads to an infinite regress, due to any state of the world (and proposed state before the world) having an ephemeral being of only enduring far less than a second before it is eradicated by the next state that humans experience. That equates to having little actual substantive existence, or ironically contending to be a form of immaterialism (valid material states should actually persist and co-exist, not be short-lived phantoms).

This "real existence" alternative to our everyday norm of "all things are illusory ephemera" doesn't mean eliminating the practical idea of "origins and causes". We can also introduce a kind of hierarchical, stratified or "vertical" version of that -- in contrast to the "horizontal" view of origins and causes we're addicted to, where those relationships are ordered in a time-based sequence.

If, for instance, there is a demand for God to be proclaimed the origin and cause of the universe (its entire developmental existence from Big Bang to heat-death or whatever), then that would be God as origin/cause in the aforementioned atemporal context. Where God is prior-in-rank to the natural world rather than being antecedent to it or the Big Bang in time. An atemporal hierarchical relationship instead of a temporal one (the latter which should be a disparaging view of or demotion of God, to begin with).

That's arguably what Parmenides[1] was trying to get at ages ago -- that existence is more fundamental than becoming (or existence is more fundamental than human and animal experiences or the way that biology and cognition represents be-ing as becoming).

Attempts have been made to rid "becoming" of its infinite regress by proposals like the unmoved mover. But they don't succeed in curing people of that addiction, as perennial silly questions like "Why is there something rather than nothing?" illustrate. Indicating that "no end" is indeed an entailed feature of the becoming/time/causation conceptual complex.

In contrast, "infinite regress" is not entailed in the hierarchical alternative, since it's not a feature of human experience (manipulated by its needs and expectations) and is more or less introduced as a convenience for theists, or whoever. Even the unmoved mover (UM) succeeds there, outside the horizontal constraints of time, because -- again, placing the UM within and at the start of that line of developmental changes will still compel folk to ask what came before the UM, because that is the ceaseless itch that is inherent in the becoming/time/causation concept, or what results from making it more primal than existence.

- - - footnote - - -

[1] Parmenides: Being, for Parmenides, is thus eternal, unchanging, and indivisible spatially or temporally. Heraclitus might have been right to note the way things appear, (as a constant state of becoming) but he was wrong, on Parmenides’ view, to confuse the way things appear with the way things actually are, or with the “steadfast heart of persuasive truth.” Likewise, Parmenides has argued, thought can only genuinely attend to being—what is eternal, unchanging, and indivisible. Whatever it is that Heraclitus has found in the world of impermanence, it is not, Parmenides holds, philosophy. While unenlightened mortals may attend to the transience of everyday life, the path of genuine wisdom lies in the eternal and unchanging. Thus, while Heraclitus had been the first philosopher of difference, Parmenides is the first to assert explicitly that self-identity, and not difference, is the basis of philosophical thought.

[Yazata]

Saying everything emerged on its own from quantum fluctuations

How could "everything" emerge from "quantum fluctuations" unless the 'quantum fluctuations' are somehow transcendent to and not included in 'everything'? The fundamental defect in looking to science to explain the existence of 'everything' is that it leaves science's chosen explanatory principles unexplained and occupying a higher (divine?) state.

and saying it was poofed into being by a magical man in the sky couldn't be more different.

Both accounts suppose that there is some kind of being that explains everything else and doesn't require explanation itself. Both accounts locate that ultimate explanatory being outside physical reality on a higher and more abstract plane. (Where are the laws of physics or the principles of mathematics? They can't be found on a map or in any spatial-temporal place. They don't possess mass or physical extension.)

The tradition of natural theology has historically called that self-explanatory "necessary" being "God". It's what 'first cause' is all about, a cause that doesn't itself require a cause. It's what the design argument is all about, a source of order that doesn't require being ordered externally by something else.

I hope that it's reasonably clear that the 'quantum fluctuation' accounts are placing the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics into precisely the place occupied by "God" in more theistic schemes. (Ultimate explanatory principle that doesn't itself require explanation.)

It's no more enlightening when scientistic atheists do it than when theists do it.

My own skeptical agnosticism suggests to me that both religion and science are generally speaking out of their depths when they address the ultimate metaphysical questions. (Metaphysics itself is much better at posing questions than it is at answering them.)

That's not to say that we can't learn from science and religion. I'm personally fascinated and impressed by fundamental physics, by evolutionary biology and by the more mystical and contemplative strands of all religious traditions. To say nothing of metaphysics as practiced by analytic philosophy and the foundations of both mathematics and philosophical logic. All of them reveal fragmentary glimpses and perspectives of fundamental issues.

But nobody really knows and I'm doubtful that anyone ever will.