The very latest in cosmogony, or so we are told at the popular science level as promulgated by atheist scientists, is that the universe came about from nothing.
Biblical creation implies that which has long been known as creation ex nihilo, literally creation from or out of nothing. However, while atheist cosmogonists assert creation from nothing and by nothing or by no one, creationists assert creation from nothing by someone as extraordinary fine tuning requires an extraordinary fine tuner.
Two of the main atheist proponents of the universe from nothing and by nothing and no one are two theoretical physicists and cosmologists namely, University of Cambridge’s Stephen Hawking and Arizona State University’s Lawrence Krauss. Under consideration are not cosmogony or cosmology but rather, what claims atheist scientists are making and what they are really uncovering.
Traditionally, nothing has been understood as a lack of anything. Within various contexts and according to various definitions it is generally understood that nothing is a lack of something, a void, etc. Thus, nothing is not an object, not a being, has no mind, no volition, no potential, etc.
Yet, atheists such as Hawking and Krauss have decided to redefine nothing to mean something. For example, another atheist, astrophysicist and cosmologist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote the following in a review of Krauss’s book “A Universe from Nothing”:
Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is something. That’s how a cosmos can be spawned from the void—a profound idea conveyed in A Universe From Nothing that unsettles some yet enlightens others.
Of course, if nothing is something then why not claim that ours is “A Universe from Something” rather than from nothing?
Lawrence Krauss knows nothing—or, at least, he claims to know nothing; quite a bit about it, in fact.
He made the following statements during an interview with National Public Radio’s Ira Flatow:
If we live in a universe full of stuff, how did it get here? And many people think that very question implies the need for a creator. But what’s truly been amazing, and what the book’s about is the revolutionary developments in both cosmology and particle physics over the past 30 or 40 years that have not only changed completely the way we think about the universe but made it clear that there’s a plausible case for understanding precisely how a universe full of stuff, like the universe we live in, could result literally from nothing by natural processes…
the question why is there something rather than nothing is really a scientific question, not a religious or philosophical question, because both nothing and something are scientific concepts, and our discoveries over the past 30 years have completely changed what we mean by nothing. In particular, nothing is unstable. Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and it’s – it’s fascinatingly interesting….
literally whole universes can pop out of nothing by the laws of quantum mechanics…nothing is unstable. It will always produce something…
Nothing is heading towards us as fast as it can. So another answer to the question why is there something rather than nothing is just wait…1
To review, Lawrence Krauss claims to know, to conclude based upon science, that “the universe…could result literally from nothing by natural processes…nothing is unstable. Nothing can create something all the time…literally whole universes can pop out of nothing…It will always produce something.”
However, after making such statements and writing a book which supposedly sought to scientifically explain how we could end up with “A Universe From Nothing,” Krauss stated the following during the same interview:
…I don’t want to claim that we know the universe came from nothing. What is amazing is that we can see plausible mechanisms by which that happened.
Krauss touches upon a main premise of Hawking’s when Krauss stated the following during the interview:
It sounds like it would violate the conservation of energy for you to start with nothing and end up with lots of stuff, but the great thing about gravity is it’s a little trickier.
Gravity allows positive energy and negative energy, and out of nothing you can create positive energy particles, and as long as a gravitational attraction produces enough negative energy, the sum of their energy can be zero. And in fact when we look out at the universe and try and measure its total energy, we come up with zero.
Stephen Hawking wrote:
Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.2
Our context is to ask whether atheist scientists have found God and not to debate cosmogenesis or thermodynamics. Following, we will momentarily grant these interpretations of the latest science by atheists, with which creationists disagree (not solely based on theological but also on scientific bases), and discern that which they are, in reality though apparently unbeknownst to them, concluding from it.
Let us note that Hawking states that “the universe can and will create itself” and yet, in order for the universe to create itself it would have to preexist its own existence, its own self creation. In other words, the universe would have to already exist so as to create itself and yet, if it preexisted its own existence then it not only did not create itself but it would not have to as it would have already existed. Perhaps Hawkins was too quick to proclaim that “philosophy is dead” within the same book.
As per Lawrence Krauss, nothing preexists the universe and “can create something all the time” and to Hawking “Because there is a law such as gravity” which preexists the universe, then the universe “can and will create itself from nothing.”
Yet, what has any of this to do with whether atheist scientists have found God?
When we look beyond the scientific façade, which is, in reality, worldview-based philosophizing disguised as science, we begin to discern the reality behind the claim and what it has to do with finding God.
Note the bottom line of that which Krauss, Hawking, et al., are claiming. Regardless of whether they employ the term nothing, law, gravity, thermodynamics, etc., that to which they are appealing preexisted the universe and thus, does not necessitate it. That is to say that it had the ability to exist without reliance upon it.
The universe is a time, matter, space continuum. Since the whatever it is, the nothing-something, is outside of, beyond, transcends, the universe it seems at least reasonable to conclude that not being subjected to the universe’s time dimension it is timeless, it is eternal.
It is not composed of matter and is thus, immaterial (or, spirit).
It is omnipotent as it would appear to possess the power, the potency, whereby to produce the universe.
It is omnipresent as whatever locality may mean outside of the universe, the point is that without the universe’s size restrictions the nothing-something was “everywhere.”
It may even be omniscient as it produced a fine tuned universe.
Moreover, for all of Lawrence Krauss’ supposed knowledge of nothing the fact is that it is intangible, invisible (unobservable), inaccessible via our senses of touch, smell, sight or smell.
By now you may discern that a nothing-something which transcends the universe and brought it into being whilst itself being eternal, immaterial, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, intangible, invisible, inaccessible via our senses is that which we call God.
Thus, matters appear to be such as was described by the late agnostic astronomer, physicist and cosmologist, Robert Jastrow:
For the scientist that has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance. He is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.3
At least partly, one reason for rightly concluding that scientists scale the mountain of ignorance only to be met by a band of theologians is that scientists are coming to conclusions which agree with, specifically, the same conclusion to which Biblical theologians have come.
For example, consider that Genesis 1:1 reads:
“In the beginning God created the heavens of and the earth.”
Now, reread it within the context of the universe being a time, matter, space continuum.
“In the beginning [time] God created the heavens [space] of and the earth [matter].”
Moreover:
“In the beginning God [a preexisting being] created [potently and volitionally brought about] the heavens of and the earth.”
As reviewed above, the fact that God brought about the creation of the beginning/time, the heavens/space and the earth/matter leads to the conclusion that God transcends the universe and brought it into being whilst Himself being eternal, immaterial, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, intangible, invisible, inaccessible via our senses.
Therefore, atheist scientists have ‘found God’—by any other name.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing,
seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things…
—Act 17:23- 25
For a related topics, see Big Mind Theory.
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