How Did the World Begin?

New piece from John Walton, where he uses the illustration of a theater to talk about the context of Genesis.

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After work I want to read this. I really enjoy his work. Though I don’t completely buy into all of it it’s overall extremely beneficial.

Makes a lot of sense to me but of course I don’t have to give up a former cherished paradigm. But the cosmos has been becoming, we’ve been becoming and I would even say that whatever it is that God is has also been becoming. I think the idea that God is an eternally existing finished product who is sitting on a clutch of galaxies in order to hatch out a few image bearers needs re-imagining.

You’re still having problems with the implications of eternity Mark.

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…And you’re still having trouble accepting that the reality of evidence just doesn’t go your way on this one, Martin?

I’m recalling that you think [are certain] there has been a steady-state universe rather than a “big-bang” beginning of sorts. But maybe I’m mis-remembering that about you.

Close. He thinks an eternal sequence of bangs preceded ours which is also my speculation … the only difference being I’m unwilling to bet a dime on it.

You are Mervin. Hoyle’s steady state universe fought a losing battle for 20 years and then for another 30 after the CMBR consensus.

I am merely being rational Mervin. I know that can’t fly here. It’s a pond thing. Nature is eternal.

Sequence?! . . .

What If the Big Bang Wasn’t the Beginning? New Study Proposes Alternative

By Tereza Pultarova December 05, 2017

Uhh … maybe? I should know better than to speak for someone else. But I thought you might think it was funny. :flushed:

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I would put all that on the same shelf as the multiverse: very interesting … but beyond any empirically verifiable reach we’re ever likely to have. The horizon for our own cosmic development reaches back to the big bang and no farther. You, @Klax, can call it a mere cosmic reset if you want, but whether it was a “cold-boot” or umpteenth reset doesn’t change the fact that this particular universe with all its space-time-energy content had its ultimate beginnings with that event. You can claim all the “certainty” about your eternality that you want, but that only shows me how low your bar is for what you call “certainty”. Everybody else who uses words according to their more common meanings will recognize that your “certainties” might, for the rest of us, rise to the level of interesting plausibility, if even that.

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Here is where I would say the evidence that the singularity event/Big Bang we call home is a once only affair is on the same footing as the multiverse idea. We are so tiny as to almost guarantee the answer is beyond us and frankly of very little value … but then I’d be repeating myself.

Thanks for sharing this. I really enjoyed reading that. It is a nice way of getting meaning out of the accounts in early Genesis and many Bible stories without worrying about whether they actually happened like that or not.

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Mervin, we can never have empirical evidence of what is rationally certain in this instance. Handwaving doesn’t cut it. Please supply a superior antithesis to the simplicity of eternal, uniform nature.

How does one actually get an eternal sequence of anything in the past? Does that require an infinite number of past events?

I tend to view all speculation of what happened before the big bang as just that, speculation. I have to ask if the question is even meaningful to begin with. I just watched a video by Neil deGrasse Tyson who wondered if we are smart enough to ever answer these questions. He mentioned how we think we are smart but our only comparison is animals. We have no idea if there are other beings or species monumentally smarter than us. We may not even have the intellectual capacity to understand how the universe ultimately are to be. We may be the equivalent of flatlanders (two-dimensional beings) trying to understand a three-dimensional world. The idea of extra dimensions seems to be at the forefront of scientific speculation today and given all the absurdly odd behaviors we’ve discovered in the the quantum realm, its difficult to imagine that we don’t actually see in part, as if in a mirror dimly lit.

That video is probably worth sticking through until the end.

Vinnie

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Simplicity is mind blowing isn’t it? If you can think of something simpler, let me know.

Er, that would be the greatest polarized opposite ends of an infinite footing from an end possible.

I’d say the laws of physics break down at Planck time and nothing more can be said scientifically. We can only say that the entire known universe, as we know of it, including the fabric of spacetime itself, came from a tiny point in space 13.8 billion years ago. We hit a wall at 10^-43 seconds.

A lot of speculation occurs about what happened in that first 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001s, none of which is remotely scientific or intelligible. Regardless of multiverses or never ending cycles, this is certainly a creation type event for our neck of the woods.

Vinnie

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Infinitely more of the same can be said rationally.

What cycle are we in?

In what capacity are you asking that question since there is absolutely zero scientific evidence of Big Bang cycles.