Did Dawkins and and Hawking really admit the Big Bang is impossible?

Faith & Science Conversation
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This is a YEC claim I heard from my YEC friend a few years ago, his source was a book called Is God Past His Sell By Date (I don’t think he is, unlike Dawkins and Hawking) by a certain English YEC called John Blanchard. He claimed that Dawkins and Hawking admitted it is impossible because nothing can come from nothing due to the First Law of Thermodynamics. It seems absurd to me that they would really say this (after all, it only rules out an atheistic big bang).

Has anyone else heard this claim? Can someone fact check if this is real?

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I dont know much about this. But since hawking’s death many articles about his multiverse theories etc have been popping up on any scientific paper from belgium. Could it be because of his multiverse theory that he claims the above things? Ive actually not read much about the multiverse so im just guessing.

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No , but it seems short sighted .
Who says the big bang came from nothing ?
I HAVE heard alternative thoughts on this .

  1. Rubber band universe : expands ,then contracts … basically the universe reforming by receding back to 0 and re- banging …

2 . That the bang was caused by a previous universe’s left overs …

3 . It’s is an infinite expansion that reached a critical and spurted out another universe

4 .simulation hypothesis : it is a program being run by " someone else" …

  1. The universe turns inside out

6.plucked string : a universe existing as long as the " string " vibrates .

  1. The universe is from a single atom

Might I suggest , God is not a " nothing" …

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Not really. One type of “atheistic big bang” perhaps (unless you can somehow show that our something coming from anything definitely means a “god” exists). I can’t see that this would unduly trouble them.

I could imagine that they might have said something like it’s impossible for something to come from nothing and the writer has extrapolated that to get to “the Big Bang is impossible”. But it would just be wild speculation :slight_smile:

That often occurs to me.

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This claim seems like the claim that Darwin admitted on his deathbed that he didn’t believe in evolution. Good wishful thinking for opponents of the theory, since if the originator of the idea renounced it, everyone else should do so too
Hawking radiation shows that a black hole will eventually evaporate, and some other mathematics says that the collapse of stars under a certain size will not form a black hole, but this does not rule out the big bang. Since conditions at the time of the big bang do not fit into our modern knowledge of physics, there is some chance that the universe began with something other than a singularity, but if not, we would have to come up with another explanation for the cosmic background radiation that was taken as proof of the big bang.

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  1. The laws of physics (including the laws of Thermodynamics) break at the initial singularity.

  2. For the Laws of Thermodynamics to work you need a thermodynamic system. If you have nothing or something that is not a thermodynamic system, well…

  3. Laws are descriptions of what happens under certain circumstances. In the hypothetical case that there was nothing before the Big Bang, there are no conditions for laws to describe.

I heard an atheist YouTuber some months ago claim that the First Law of Thermodynamics disproves the notion of creation.

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I would call that a bit of a bait and switch since Hawking thinks the Big Bang came from something. It’s like saying that thermodynamics makes cloud formation impossible because clouds can’t come from nothing.

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Not really. Hawking favor models in which according to him, taliking about the begining of the universe “doesn’t make sense”:

Dawkins on the other hands is an enthusiast of the idea that the big bang came from eternal inflation (he wrote the preface to Krauss book about that), so no, neither of them think that the big bang is impossible or even inexplicable. What I’ve seem both of them admit, like many other atheists, is that we don’t know/can’t answer where the laws of physics come from, we must take them as a given. Theists and deists on the other hand can say “the laws came from God”, even though an atheist still can claim that this doesn’t answer the question, but just kicks it a level above.

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Oh boy, don’t mention that one. I lost the count of how many atheists presented it to me as “evidence” there is no God.

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I actually like it, but it still does not answer where the laws of physics came from, moreover, it assumes that a handful of them were present before the big bang, which we can’t confirm at all.

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I think it’s interesting, but you can’t go around waving a theory that hasn’t really been proven (even Crespo, the owner of QuantumFracture, the YT channel where most of them took the info from, said that it hasnt been proven) as evidence that your worldview is correct.

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I think the problem lays in the fact that many atheists, especially younger and more religion-hating ones think that atheism is some kind of inevitable conclusion you draw from learning science, I lost the count of how many times people said to me things like “the reason Stephen Hawking is an atheist is because he knows to much about the universe to believe in God”, which is totally false, Elaine Ecklund’s research has shown that most atheist scientists claim themselves that their atheism pre dated their formal training and knowledge in science, and even today some big names in cosmology like George Ellis and Don Page are devout christians, but you do have this idea in the popular imaginary that knowing more about cosmology and science in general makes you an atheist, even religious people buy it some time and thus become hostile to science. I think that is the real big reason why so many new atheists think that shoving theorys of physics in peoples faces is somehow a form of argument against religion.

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13

The other day I had a discussion on a YouTube comment section with an atheist on the Big Bang and fine tuning. His last comment was “How can you believe in God and know about science?”
I was like “Really?”

Anyways. Most of these people who have a “scientific atheism” can only say one of these as an argument:
-“Believing in magical sky fairies automatically makes you an imbecile” (one of them actually told me that)
-“God did not create man, man created God”
-“Religion was invented to oppress the poor/ignorant”
-“God is just scientific ignorance that gets smaller as science progresses”
-(Any quote by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and their favourite, Neil deGrasse Tyson)

I know. The other day I had a discussion with someone who defended the oscillating universe theory as “evidence” against God. I showed him evidence against the oscillating universe (and we ended up having a 35 comment discussion).

I mentioned the BGV theorem as evidence against eternal space-time, he mentioned Guth when he said he doesn’t know if the universe had a beginning. I responded with Vilenkin’s comments on it. After some comments, he said “Why don’t Vilenkin and Guth believe in a Creator? Because they have better explanations.”

I told him that most atheist scientists (at least those I’ve seen) were already atheists. He replied by saying (prepare to laugh) “They are atheists because they are scientists and they don’t accept anything without evidence.”

I mentioned that study time ago on another discussion.

I know, but they will always quote this.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/

I try telling them that, but all of these “atheists who believe in science” prefer to swallow what a bunch of total nobodies who know nothing about science like Dross and Dalas (two Hispanic YouTubers who used to make content on atheism, but they stopped long ago, and Dross even said the Higgs boson proves there is no God) who say “Atheism is supported by a great amount of scientific evidence (they never mention any) while all religions are just primitive fairy tales that have been debunked again and again,”

I was like that 6 years ago.

They constantly try to turn them into evidence for atheism (and then they are the ones who say theists “hijack” science). The origin of the “inflation argument against theism” (I invented that name) on the Hispanic community goes back to this video, which is now quoted as being 100% accurate.

José L. Crespo (the guy on the video) responds to a priest who tried to show belief in God is rational. The priest uses the cosmological argument on his video, and Crespo responded by saying that inflation “competes with divine action.” Even though he says it has not been proven, his atheist followers don’t hesitate to use this as an argument. I have repeatedly told them that inflation has not been proven, but they are not interested in knowing.

Since that video came out, people keep posting extracts from it as “arguments” and they obviously like to include their biases (“science joins people of everywhere, while religion (here comes something nasty I’m not going to include)”, “inflation competes with divine action”, etc).

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Anyways. Most of these people who have a “scientific atheism” can only say one of these as an argument:
-“Believing in magical sky fairies automatically makes you an imbecile” (one of them actually told me that)

Its funny because I have an atheist friend who firmly believes in ESP and still tells me that even though he doesn’t have any formal knowledge about science, hahaha. That is the point, many of these people don’t even know what they are talking about, they just take for granted that science somehow disproves God.

-“God did not create man, man created God”

That is a circular argument:

God does not actually exist, it is just an idea, therefore man created God, therefore God does not exist.

-“Religion was invented to oppress the poor/ignorant”

Even atheists that work with the evolution/psychology of religion mostly don’t buy this idea.

-“God is just scientific ignorance that gets smaller as science progresses”

God of the gaps strikes again. It is funny how atheists often invoke God of the gaps and Occam’s Razor as arguments against God when the original proponents of these ideas/critiques were people from the church.

-(Any quote by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and their favourite, Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Its funny since Neil deGrasse Tyson himself has declared many times that he is not an atheist, but an agnostic, but people try to force him in that category against his will.

I will take my time and read it. I actually like Carroll a lot, he is a convict atheist but he is usually very polite and respectful when engaging these religion/science debates.

Exactly like my ESP friend (2), haha

Me too, but on the atheist side, although I was not hostile to religious believers.

Even if it was proved, I don’t think it would pose any threat to theism, unless you are too attached to some specific arguments like Kalam’s cosmological argument. I will take my time to see this video as well latter.

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By this time, they would have only repeated the quotes again without paying any attention to what others think.

Most of his quotes are kinda atheistic in nature.

[quote=“BoltzmannBrain, post:14, topic:38472”]
I will take my time and read it. I actually like Carroll a lot, he is a convict atheist but he is usually very polite and respectful when engaging these religion/science debates.

I have to admit he is cool. I may not agree with him on several things, but he knows his stuff.

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A balanced and informative presentation by S Barr is found here:

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Oh, I remember that video. Very good.

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I remember seeing his debate with WLC and i was directly hit by how respectful he was. Also with kevin scharp. I ask myself why some people dont take that stance.

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God is nothing. God is not a thing, but the Source of all Reality. Christians say that God created the universe out of nothing. The Big Bang theory says that the universe came into being “out of nothing.” No matter, no energy, no time, no space. Absolute nothing.

The Big Bang theory is not deny the existence of God. In fact since only God could create the universe out of nothing, it affirm the existence of God. Both Hawking and Dawkins claim that the universe was created out of nothing and thus deny the reality of the Big Bang, even while it has very clearly scientifically verified.

This demonstrates how desperate atheists have become when our best science disproves their beliefs.

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Hmm, Im no highly educated man , but I don’t think that is the only answer …
Hawking’s latest paper seems to conflict that .
It implies , if my understanding is correct , that our universe is from the universe before it , like an infinite progression , it appears he even proposes a method to test it .
This ofcourse doesn’t deny the existence of God , from my humble perspective , but is consistent with other perceptions of God.
Patterns repeating , much like fractals do .
Or for a more poetic thought , the nature of an artist.
The drive to create .I personally feel driven to create , it is in my nature as an artist to not be idle in my creativity .I love to create , it fullfills me .
I have heard many atheist ask " what did God do before the big bang ?" …my simple mind answers " create , a creator creates " …
Jesus said “God is a spirit” , just because we can’t measure something by our standards ,doesn’t negate it’s possibility. We are limited in our ability to percieve time , space , dimensions ,etc …we observe through our limited windows (eyes) ,even among the animals our field of vision is limited .
I hesitate to say consciousness is a nothing ( no thing ) , it may be that we find it is everything .
The simulation hypothesis could hint to this .
The observation factor in the double slit experiment ( wave function collapse) may point to this too ,something is observing on the quantum level .
If the wave function collapse occurs because of observation , then something was observing the big bang ,or matter would not have formed from the energy .
I fully accept that I am only a novice in these concepts , and could be entirely wrong .
These are just my thoughts on it .