In Reply to: Yes, that'd be an interesting debate posted by :c) on October 17, 2005 at 20:10:13:
OK-for starters:
Observable:
-the bending of light from stars by the gravity of planets between the stars and Earth.
-Delta G, or the "free energy" lost in every observed reaction anywhere, ever: potential energy, structural energy, chemical energy, quantum light energy and other radioactive energy--all lost in the irreversible wave equations of the matter & energy exchange of all matter--all "downward" & none "upward" (kind of like "the heavens wax old like a garment, and God shall change them"!).
Hypotheses:
-Immanuel Kant posited that an infinite God could, very simply, have created a universe infinite in dimensionality of space.
-Isaac Newton posited that a "Big T" pre-existed, as in the verse in Isaiah that says that God "inhabits eternity", and that a "littlt t" described created time (Einstein called it the created time within the "C" of E = M x "C squared" as velocity of propogation through space, OVER time). Newton also commented, tongue-in-cheek that, if the universe were infinite it could obviously have no center, but ,if it were infinite, given enough time, all matter would inevitably clump on its center as a big spherical mass--cosmology joke!.
Other theistic analytical philosophers, like today's Alvin Plantinga & R. C. Sproul (Sproul's a little too Calvinistic for my taste in his determinism, although he showed, quite brilliantly, that time and chance are indiscernible constructs of probability math & can have no creative power at any time), have written of the universality of "entropic doom", noting that, as Collosians states, that Christ pre-exists all creation, and holds all matter together in some unsearchable way--like the never-found "unified field theory"; perhaps?
They have noted that created time will end, and that, Biblically, Christ will somewhat "change His grip", so-to-speak, at the renewal of the infinite universe at the Great White Throne judgement, when evil is forever quarantined in its own inaccessible "dimension"--there's the only Biblical "alternate reality!", or dimension, if you will (or even if you don't will--determinism joke for the Calvinists).
Not just recent modernists, but Romans 1-types "desiring to be wise" have consistently feigned philosophical certainty where none was logically available.
The tool of the modernists is differential equations and calulus constructs (ironically, calculus was simultaneously discovered by two theists; a Christian and an Orhtodox Jew--Newton & Leibnitz) who insist that the math construct is a reality in itself, and that modernists' interpretation of the data on the bending of light by the gravity of planets irrefutably indicates that, logical-hop-skip-jump, the universe is finite indeed, and that a "new deity" created it.
This new deity, the much-vaunted "singularity" of the a priori assumed "Big Bang", much like the anthropomorphized cultural delusions of the sophist Greeks about themselves, does not obey known laws of physics, is indiscernible in any way except by its faith precepts contained in its math/logic constructs, which, although observably cirular in their argumentation, cannot be questioned or scientifically tested, and can create the entire, albeit finite, universe, ex nihilo--out of nothing at all!
And, where logical & mathematical vanishing improbabilitites pop up in this grouping of weak hypotheses ripe with evidence of logic-and-reason-violating False Premises, Incomplete Middles, Beggings of the Question & Circular Argumentations, the convenient escape is that alternate UNIVERSES, accessible through the ever-popular "wormholes" (thank you , Sci-Fi Channel!) "exist" to explain away that pesky Judeo-Christian cosmology.
Of, course, "Uni" does mean "One", and that means "the ONE UNIT of EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS OR CAN EXIST", so the midstream introduction of "many universes" into the argumente is a logic cheat, or a "red herring" distraction from the failure of the naturalistic argument.
Foul! Foul! The Emperor has no clothes!
Amazing!
Actually, the "Singularity" weak hypothesis sounds suspiciously like a rip-off of the God of the Bible, if you ask me; except changed a bit, a la "like unto corruptible man".
Comments?
Respectfully,
OT2 (OldtimerToo)