Big Bang front-loading?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Are the following options complete and consistent? Which do you favour and why?

  1. The creator encodes all information for all lifeforms, including humans, at the Big Bang, such that no subsequent overriding of the operation of natural laws is required.

  2. The creator adds information post-Big Bang, e.g. by overriding random mutations to cause evolution to proceed in a certain direction.

  3. The creator front-loads incomplete information at the Big Bang, and with no further intervention, formation and evolution of life is partially open-ended.

  4. Special creation (YEC, ID, etc).

  5. No supernatural creator.

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  1. God, if anything, grounds being from eternity, instantiates instability in absolute nothingness; being does the rest. The laws of physics are intrinsic, innate to, prevenient of, emergent in existence, creation. There is no choice whatsoever.
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A. We have no clue

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  1. We can’t really know, but what seems the best fit is that God created a universe, via the Big Bang, that he guides to produce life, including humans, in such a way that it doesn’t violate any natural laws he set up. He occasionally makes exceptions to those natural laws, and those are what is known as miracles.
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So He only ever did one universe? What other things was He doing for forever? Guiding is violation. Apart from around Jesus, what exceptions?

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We have nothing but. Nature, reality, existence - from eternity of course - looks like 5 in every way. So much so it doesn’t need to be said, except we evolved the idea of supernatural agents first.

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  1. God created the universe via the big bang (not ex nihilo – I like the suggestion that QM is hinting that the fundamental reality of the universe is information, the Mind of God). He can and does providentially (and personally) intervene without breaking any natural laws, and we have evidence of his M.O. Miracles are allowed.
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That sounds like option 1.

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Does this expect that God has intervened to cause certain mutations and prevent others?

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5, I see no reason for God to be responsible for assembling atoms, galaxies and cells. It seems like an unnecessary obsession and a distraction.

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It would have to, but certainly nothing detectable scientifically, pretty much by definition.

12

Distraction from what?

The God of the Bible is revealed as one who is intimately and fundamentally involved with his creation—to sustain its existence moment by moment, and to redeem it:

“He [Jesus the Son] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3)

All the same, I recognise that you believe otherwise. Your comment touches on deep questions (well, for me anyway :slight_smile:): how could God be interested and involved in the material world, which by definition he transcends? Why did this God create at all?

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Actually, fishing around on this topic, I note that William Dembski comments specifically on this:

“There are many thinkers who are sympathetic to design but who prefer that all the design in the world be front-loaded. The advantage of putting all the design in the world at, say, the initial moment of the Big Bang is that it minimizes the conflict between design and science as currently practiced.”

He seems to assume this is necessarily my option 1—i.e. a mechanistic, deistic model “which always served as an unsatisfactory halfway house between theism (with its informationally open universe) and naturalism (which insists the universe remain informationally closed).”

Option 2 may—or may not—avoid the pitfalls of deism, while still harmonising with methodological naturalism.

He goes on to claim that “The only legitimate reason to limit all design to front-loaded design is if there could be no empirical grounds for preferring interactive design to front-loaded design.”

I’ve followed Dembski over the years and even briefly corresponded with him, and appreciate his writing and personal journey with ID. Happy to discuss this further with anyone who’s interested…

Intelligent Design Topic: Must All the Design in the Natural World Be Front-Loaded? .

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Why do you post here if that’s what you really believe?

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Given the premiss of God, there is no evidence of design whatsoever in eternal creation. God does not have, need to design. The concept of design is unnecessary, meaningless in and with God let alone without. He has designs on us nonetheless. And they are nothing but good.

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No evidence of design, or of the hand of a designer? How then do you read this passage from Romans?

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20)

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Nice rhetoric. An excellent fallacy. What has that got to do with the obvious? With the elephant not in the room?

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image

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Ah, but the elephant is negative, an anti-elephant. Theism puts God in the already full room. Nothing about the infinite, eternal room requires it to be on or in the elephant either. And nothing about the proposition of incarnation requires design of any aspect of the room.

God, if anything, instantiates the prevenient (of Him) laws of physics (as for morality, Love) by stirring absolute nothingness, and-or stoking the fires of creation; infinite negentropy below the nothingness. Or it does it itself. Either explains nothing, neither explains anything.

Paul either encountered the risen Christ or had a psychotic break. Everything he wrote was done in context, in good will, in the ignorance of the time as the result of that. His only intellectual equal was Junia. And, of course, the context of the quote is not homophobic.

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I think it is a distraction because it covers up why what supports God belief really matters to us. How that operates in our human lives is what really matters. Even the Genesis story can be seen as ordering the world as setting the stage of our perception and understanding of the world. In other words I think ordering our awareness of the world and it’s potentialities is what really matters. Most mammals perceive the world essentially the same way we do but they attend to it differently. That we are able to recognize and ponder the value of various hypothetical courses of action is what sets us apart; it is what role God plays in this we should wonder about, not why he weighted the atoms or flung the gaxaies as He is supposed to have done. When the Bible was written people lacked the insights into consciousness we have now. We should stop talking of the ‘supernatural’.