Did God Create From Nothing? --William Lane Craig

[@pnarf]

"...space and time themselves have been brought into being by god in a certain point in time" Time was created in a certain point in time before time was created? WOW, doesn't that just blow your mind?

[@sirdelrio]

An advise to all those who are interested in these topics: GET YOUR FACTS ABOUT SCIENCE FROM SCIENTISTS, DONT GET YOUR FACTS ABOUT SCIENCE FROM APOLOGISTS.

[@tombapilot04]

WLC cannot have it both ways. Either it is the case that "Out of nothing, nothing comes" or it is not the case. WLC argues simultaneously that this is the case and that God creates out of nothing. That is a contradiction, whether you distinguish between efficient cause and material cause or not. Atheists are right in pointing out that the universe could have arisen from a zero-point field (quantum vacuum) without the need for a god. And when you get into the philosophy and science of it, it is far more plausible than a personal cause.

[@kdkn92]

Not in the slightest. First, the quantum vacuum isn't nothing, and first, God is the necessary cause. You simply subplanted His name. You've done nothing but push the first cause argument back one step on a fallacious premise. Seriously though, the Kalam argument has been scrutinized for years now, and the greater secular scholars have been unable to dent it's argument. You're grasping for straws.

[@tombapilot04]

The Random Page I never said that the quantum vacuum is nothing. You're the one grasping at straws. God is not "the necessary cause" when the universe could have arisen from a zero-point field without the need for a god - that's the point.

[@kdkn92]

tombapilot04 Sorry, I gave you more credit than was due. A "zero point field" doesn't have any causal relations.

[@tombapilot04]

The Random Page Please explain; or are you just stating hearsay?

[@kdkn92]

tombapilot04 you made the assertion that a zero point field stands in causal relations. Yours is the burden of proof. I happen to agree with Dr. Craig's evidence for the cause of the universe to be personal.

[@bluesrockfan36]

@CarmineFragione How and where in those articles (about cold spots) are they, suddently voids, empty of everyting a bubble outside space-time?.

[@raoskaos]

What do you mean when you say that something had a beginning???

[@AllOtherNamesUsed]

Not "nothing," but through God's Will. Will makes all things happen.

[@TMMx]

@tskasa1 ... No. I don't believe anything could have been formed out of nothing. Nor do I believe that anything can be formed out of nothing.

[@drcraigvideos]

You couldn't find a better person to answer this question.

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi I agree the beginning doesn't necessarily translate into creation ex nihilo or that God caused it. I was simply representing the positions of the cosmologists I cited. It was you (and some others) who objected to their equivocation of the word "nothing". And what cosmologist believe DOES MATTER, since they are the ones who do the scholarly work on what happened in our cosmic past. Therefore you can't simply brush aside their consensus when it comes to the beginning of the Universe.

[@TMMx]

How is the idea that god created the universe out of nothing any more coherent than the idea that it spontaneously arose from nothing? If it's impossible for something to come from nothing, it is impossible for an entity of any kind to produce something from nothing.

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi I think you're confused as to what I'm talking about. I wasn't talking about the Big Bang creating some event. I was talking about the creation of the Big Bang itself from nothing, as some cosmologists have said. Vilenkin argues that quantum tunneling led to the creation of the entire multiverse and subsequently the Big Bang event that characterizes our own Universe. It's not just Vilenkin who argues like this. Other cosmologists employ similar models based on quantum mechanics.

[@Christianjr4]

@notnilccm Craig doesn't disable comments on KZbin. He doesn't even own a channel. All the videos of Craig on KZbin are uploaded by other independent users. As for the reason why they disable comments, it's probably because there are so many users who resort to childish insults rather than engaging in a respectful and substantive discussion of the arguments. I can't say I haven't considered disabling comments on my video as well considering all of the immature nonsense that is posted.

[@chebob2009]

@CarmineFragione And how is calculus about the value of the numbers 0 and 1??

[@sameer137]

Many people believe Bible is the literal word of God. They also say Jesus was his son. That he rose from the dead. That he converted wine to water, so on and so forth. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

[@TMMx]

@tskasa1 Example?

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi Nowhere did I say or equivocate that the cyclic model of the Universe is established. If anything, I said the complete opposite. What I did say was that the Big Bang model of the universe is established by and large. It enjoys the most evidential support and it enjoys the support of most professional cosmologists. And the "point OF" the Big Bang is where everything begins, hence why time, matter and energy can be said to begin to exist there. It certainly tends to imply it.

[@CarmineFragione]

the fact the Universe is not slowing down but appears "appears" to be accelerating has caused many scientists to think we are not seeing correctly and that time and space is actually falling into a collapsed situation, such as an object falling into a black hole, appears to one observer to fall in ,but to another , to not fall in and appear stationary forever. It cannot be explained with a mind set that is "Materialistic" and set on having matter as some eternal expectation of reality.

[@roohif]

Lawrence Kuhn started talking about the Planck time, and how matter and energy existed at that time ... and then somehow WLC took that, and started claiming that universe was created out of nothing. As far as I know, the consensus of modern cosmology does NOT claim that the universe was created out of nothing. Does anyone have any information to the contrary?

[@josephchoi]

@Christianjr4 source?

[@PsychedelicShamanism]

On a philosophical scale, I have nothing against anybody. You can never say for sure that God does not exist, just like you cannot say for sure Wotan, Thor or Imhotep do not exist. It is the political power of religion that I have a problem with. Debating stuff like this with William Lane Craig would be great and I would respect him, just like I would respect any Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or Wotanist. As long as they keep their hands of me and my children with ''their' Gods.

[@RetSquid]

Would it make more sense to say that before God created anything there was nothing, that nothing did not create anything, God caused everything that exists (matter, energy, time) to begin existing and that replaced the nothing?

[@DeceptionOfTheState]

Bear in mind that if he does have that data he does not have the time in this interview to present all of it. However I would ask you to show me evidence for the contrary. I think he did address the subject matter, he was not trying to confound listeners but rather using terminology that he is comfortable with and describes the ideas he is talking about without having to go into long descriptions of each one. It is not hard to pause the video and google the things he talks about.

[@mtdeezy]

so whats the material or efficient cause of god?

[@geoffreyefloyd]

Dr.Craig doesn't just claim he knows, he gives arguments. He does make a distinction between how someone knows their belief is true, and how someone shows that their belief is true. Dr.Craig believes not only on the basis of his arguments but also takes gods existence to be "properly basic"

[@roohif]

I'm really trying not to ask you to do my homework for me, it's just that all I can find is that the BGV only establishes that every inflationary universe "must have a space-time boundary in the past". That's a very different thing to saying that matter and energy did not exist. I've actually tried to contact a number of cosmologists with that very question, but have yet to receive a reply.

[@TMMx]

@tskasa1 Why? No matter how complex god is, nothing is still nothing. Unless god made the universe out of himself (which would make him some kind of pantheist god), I don't see how his complexity makes any difference.

[@RetSquid]

By your definition time is NOT eternal, it had a starting point. Before the start of the Universe there was no time, nothing moved, nothing 'happened', no time.

[@timothyosborn637]

Read the bible. It says god created the earth out of something that was already there. Gen 1:2

[@CarmineFragione]

When we say "Nothing" it means with respect to our senses, materially or in any tangible way , there is nothing to report back to the senses. If there is any instrument ever to be made to sense what is outside time and space to report what exists before in some eternal past or eternal future, or if past and future is irrelevant or equally the same , we have nothing. "Access Denied" The fact there is a limit, gives rise to the sense there is an intelligent cause to have limited it.

[@RetSquid]

I was trying to make a translation of the idea, not a proof of the idea.

[@CarmineFragione]

The Universe is an exercise of God acting upon His own Nature, His own Eternal Being, to give a stream of information serving sufficiently to act as certain and substantive, as the world, until God ceases the stream of data that supports the world. But the origins of the world do not come of nothing, unless you say nothing other than God's own personal, intimate, eternal BEING . So God has some sort of primal eternal property nature as God. So God is a Giver of Himself that the world is

[@TheMindaeva]

Interesting view

[@Christianjr4]

@thrasharoony I already responded to the points about "nothing not existing before the Big Bang". The fact of the matter is that there are many physicists who believe that nothing existed prior to the big bang (ie. Vilenkin, Davies, Stenger, Borde etc). And I wasn't restricting it to our universe. I was more talking more about an absolute cosmic big bang beginning. Please familiarize yourself with the relevant literature.

[@army103]

I appreciate what you were trying to do, but the point I was originally making was that Craig loves to push the idea that logically, nothing can come from nothing. But immediately he makes a single exception to that rule - that lots of something CAN come from nothing...as long as God performs some inconceivable act. Although phrased differently your revision appears to support that idea, which I would argue is still contradictory to Craig's pet statement that "out of nothing, nothing comes."

[@CarmineFragione]

@bluesrockfan36 I did not use the term "created" in the rigid definition you assumed. I let the term speak loosely and then come to a logical priori that God is the better conclusion of all the things possible and probable, considering the evidence that we are alive and have the propensity to be intelligent, without being aliens in this world.

[@bluesrockfan36]

@CarmineFragione On Rudnick's OWN page there's a FAQ... one of the question is as follow: Is the void really empty? Probably not. It is "mostly" empty of both normal and dark matter. It is filled with radiation and dark energy. If it had small amounts of matter, we would not be able to tell. We simply calculated the size of void needed to creat the WMAP "cold spot" if the void were empty of all matter. If you start putting matter back in, we would have to increase the size of the void.

[@Christianjr4]

Once again, I wasn't talking to you. I'm talking to crosshairjack (ie. stay out of our conversation) My point was to show that some Atheists like to claim they know nothing when it suits them but then claim they do know when it comes to God. In the traditional sense of "not knowing", it means you don't know the cause either way, as in an agnostic position. I've already resolved crosshairjack's interpretation of what he meant by not knowing. Your extra input is not needed. Please drop it now.

[@franklinb81]

Can we stop hurling insults and have some sensible comments please.

[@chebob2009]

@CarmineFragione And what does the number 1 mean in set theory? As far as I'm aware, it still means the same.

[@Christianjr4]

Do you really think you made a point with that statement. If you were to listen carefully you would have noticed that Craig defined the term nothing in the beginning of this video. He said it meant, in this context, that there was no material cause. See 1:24 of this video. Hopefully you'll get the point this time.

[@CarmineFragione]

If one observes the Cosmos and attempts to be "objective" and remove one's passions and one's being, from the rest of the Universe, of course it will always appear random and meaningless. But the question is, does the Universe or God permit anyone to be objective and speculate that the balance of the reality, minus yourself, is a proper approach to understanding the whole value of the World. You are a part of the world and you count as the intelligent factor that supports the theory of God

[@Gassebol]

Has a solid particle yet been found?

[@CarmineFragione]

@chebob2009 I find it difficult you are a math major and do not understand the idea of the Limit. If you accept that the Universe is a Singularity, then it's absolute value of One is ranged with the antithetical value of it , which is Zero. And so the shape of the Universe as it materializes is ranged on a graph between the two absolute values of the Limit. Now a mathematical Equation has two sides to solve, but the sign of equivocations, the = sign is a third gesture , what to do

[@jinxy72able]

Modern cosmology does not say that before the universe came to exist, there was nothing. That is WLC's misunderstanding of what cosmology says. Science doesn't claim to know what was before the big bang, or even if there was a "before" the big bang. Science says "We don't know" regarding those questions. They have formed hypothesis that are inferred, based on mathematics that pertain to what we do know about physics and quantum physics (such as the multiverse hypothesis). But Cosmologists do not say there was nothing before the universe. Either WLC is just misunderstanding the science, or he is purposely misrepresenting it.

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi You're absolutely wrong. Guth and most other cosmologists do think that time began with the Big Bang. There is nothing in that paper that talks about Turok/Steinhardt's model of the Universe. As for Hawking, time still begins on the Hawking-Hartle model. The model is meant to get rid of the singularity, it does not deny the beginning of the Universe. In fact Hawking has explicitly stated that the universe still begins to exist on his and Hartle's model.

[@regelemihai]

He pulverized Hitchens. Many atheistic bloggers have enough integrity admitting that. He's the only one who backed up his claims, while Hitchens relied, as always, on fancy rhetorics. If you're gonna call this guy out have an argument prepared. Calling him an asshole won't do.

[@Christianjr4]

@tskasa1 This is not quantum theory. Particles can arise from the sub atomic vacuum (or quantum vacuum), but this is not nothing. It has a rich physical dimension. For the Universe to absolutely come from nothing you would have to explain where the positive and negative energy itself comes from, regardless of whether it balances to 0 or not. Cosmologists like Hawking, Vilenkin etc do not make any mention of this "net energy" having any effect on the Universe's origination.

[@ThePresident001]

@Christianjr4 I am well aware what this video is about. I am not belittling anyone, simply voicing an opinion. Why can you not see this? I agree or disagree with people, and this one I disagree with. This makes me wonder, why are you posting comments to me? What is your question?

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi I'm not sure what you're trying to prove with this Alan Guth quote. It's interesting that you quote him when he, along with two other cosmologists (Borde and Vilenkin) developed a theorem effectively proving that the Universe (multiverse or not) had a cosmic beginning. And as far as sounding condescending, I apologize if it came across that way, but I do think you're somewhat egregiously misrepresenting the positions of certain cosmologists and their ideas.

[@CarmineFragione]

@bluesrockfan36 okay one more thing, the Bible never said the days were consecutive days, they were just special days in which times God did create. It is always in the interpretations, not your assumptions of the interpretations. Six days of Creation implies the Verb to Create something , And if days in between are uneventful ,they do not meet the criteria as Creation Days. Some days you just can't win.

[@BingGeaux]

Bill discredits his work by holding to this belief of a creation from nothing. Because God states that it is out of love that God creates all things. God is love.

[@TMMx]

@tskasa1 Things arising from quantum fluctuations aren't arising from nothing. They are just matter converted from energy. That's merely a change of form, not something popping into existence from non-existence.

[@RetSquid]

" you cant believe in god...since there is no before' God exists outside of time, 'before' is the closest I can come to decribing that 'place'

[@Christianjr4]

Alright, thanks for clearing it up. By knowing I didn't mean 100% certainty though. Sorry for the confusion. I just meant knowing within reason or probability. Hardly anything can be known with 100% certainty, even for generally accepted things. I was differentiating between that kind of 100% knowledge and the traditional agnostic position, which states you don't know either way at all, or aren't leaning toward any position on God's existence.

[@CarmineFragione]

So you spin a top on the floor. It rotates in a fast spin, and then a wobble shows up by it's swaying axis doing a jig, then it all travels around the floor in a circle. Basically the single object possesses the power of Three Motions. Why not one or two or four or five ? Thus a Set Notation of things which rotate, wobble and revolve all fall into the Oneness of One Set of Elements that behave the same way as the spinning top. The collection of the same elements with three behaviors =1

[@CarmineFragione]

Just as a baby's first sign of awareness, it cries out. The Universe had no behavior and then it cried out with a primal event of behavior and it said "Let there be light" That would make sense if we agree to define intelligence, down below the commonly accepted threshold of the sophisticated human level of apparatus, to the first tangible instrument of a single chord of event that is sentient and aware. The Universe being an Entity that is born and has all the same process as we have.

[@Animal_lives_matter]

Why must the cause of the universe be sentient? Any arguments for this besides affirmation of the consequent fallacy?

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi "Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes" -- Alexander Vilenkin. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006 See also the quote below: "The coming-into-being of the universe as discussed in modern scienceis not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization or structure upon a previous incoherent state, but LITTERALLY the coming-into-being of all physical things from NOTHING" --PCW Davies; ABC Science Online, "The Big Questions: In the Beginning"

[@UtubeJKZ]

the example given with michaelangelo and the block of marble are examples of efficient and material causes in the PHYSICAL world, but how can u assume this holds true in the non-physical realm that is the beginning of the universe?

[@roohif]

(You mean "infinitely high density", yeah?) In any case, I think I understand what you mean ... I need to do some more research :P At first glance there seems to be some tension between the ideas of "infinite density" and "no volume", since one entails the other ... ?

[@roohif]

@DigitalDecadence - Can you back it up with anything more than your say-so? Wikipedia, at least, does not seem to back you up.

[@boblackey1]

@Abgef Do you know anything about the late Sir Fred Hoyle or his student Chandra Wickramashgie, PhD, ScD? Chandra did his PhD and later ScD at Cambridge in England under Hoyle. Both Fred and Chandra believe in an intelligence creating life as we know it and insist life came to earth via comets and space rocks from outerspace, that life is actually older than the earth itself. But interestingly, they don't believe high intelligence created the universe. Hoyle's Wiki page is interesting to me.

[@wood9670]

This is what I am talking about, the inability to distinguish between books of allegory and poetry which are meant to primarily convey a spiritual message and books like Exodus, Deuteronomy or the Gospels which are meant to convey history. I recognize that you don't believe in God so maybe the stumbling block for you perceive it all as fantasy. But I am a religious studies minor and know for a fact that secular scholars are able to make these distinctions, so why can't you?

[@regelemihai]

Well, the only way a timeless cause could give rise to a temporal effect is if that cause freely chooses to bring that effect with time. God fits that criterion while others don't. If he has the freedom, then use questioning why he didn't do it before or after is pointless IMO.

[@Godisthebest9]

God is good, God is enternal, God is life, God is the creator, God is well God, there is no limit to God no bounds on God. When it comes to God you just can't use human reasone alone to figure Him out. God doesn't use He creats. He is the begining He is the end we move and take our being in Him. He is.

[@ammar6842]

WLC says, "God is the efficient cause of the world and everything in it. All matter and energy, space and time themselves, have been brought into being by God at a certain point in time". This is a self-refuting statement. If God created "space and time" at a certain point, then they were not brought into being "at a certain point in time". It would be like saying your mom gave birth to you and you're your own father. God created the universe "time, space, matter" simultaneously.

[@sirdelrio]

i love the fact that here he admits clearly that christians support CREATION EX NIHILO. out of nothing! then they say that atheists thinking the universe came from nothing is absurd.

[@Christianjr4]

"to say that God did it is to provide a non-answer" But don't you see. By saying that God is a non-answer you're essentially saying you know the answer is not the God answer (which is still an answer regardless of how weak it is as an explanation). But before you said you don't know. Either you don't know, or you do. If you don't, then you can't say it's not God. Your position is best taken as knowing only natural explanations as viable explanations but not knowing the actual explanation itself

[@pobanmanu]

"This fella is saying that time and space was created by JudaoChristian god." Now I remember a guy named Christopher Hitchens who said " What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Atoms for peace.

[@Christianjr4]

No, you didn't get it right. As Knowtje and I already said, nothing in this context means no material cause. You're taking the doctrine of creation out of nothing literally, which it's not meant to be taken as. Taking the doctrine literally would render it incoherent. Take a look at the first two minutes of the video again. Craig explains exactly what creation out of nothing means. Notice carefully his distinction between efficient causes and material causes.

[@gravymorales4762]

were did the marble come from

[@forkspoonwater]

my butt

[@drchaffee]

I understand your distinction. But it is beside the point. Saying God did it doesn't address how it was done. I don't understand why one would preferentially select magic to be the correct answer. It makes more sense to conclude the universe is a product or development of God ... from the only substance he had available to him ... which is himself (to avoid a non-parsimonious metaphysical dualism).

[@josephchoi]

@Christianjr4 What Guth is actually talking about is that the mathematics at the bounce in the Turok/Steinhardt 'brane-worlds' hypothesis is incomplete, and that there are problems with it. Guth does not think that time began at the big bang, and indeed neither does any other cosmologist that I am aware of. Hawking toyed with the idea for a while, but eventually even came up with his own model that has no past boundary, known as the Hawking-Hartle 'no boundary' model.

[@prodprod]

There's the key nonsensical phrase -- "exterior to himself" -- if one proposes a being that is all powerful, all knowing and omnipresent -- then the totality of his power and knowledge occupies every point *in existence* -- by any conceivable definition of that term. The term "exterior to himself" -- meaning exterior to a being so defined could not possibly exist.

[@DeceptionOfTheState]

@bbrr9 I think he is referring to the notion that God brought space and time into being at a point in God's concept of time, he is not backing himself into a corner. Bear in mind that WLC is one of the world's leading current philosophers of time, so I think you have simply misunderstood him.

[@ricomajestic]

creatiion out of nothing based on what philosophical argument Craig? What is the evidence for this?

[@Plopkap]

I always find it amazing how anybody can present something they believe is the truth present as if they know it's the truth. Is it so hard to understand that no one can actually know how the cosmos came into existence, and even if that is what happened? Or can religion do that to you: make you no longer see the difference with what is real and what you believe that is real? Is it that much of a problem to say that you don't know because you simply can not know?

[@davidcoleman5860]

How is this relevant to the discussion? The fact is that the Judeo/Christian theological project has insisted prior to the modern era _creatio ex nihilo_ against the prevailing opinions of the world. What Craig is saying is that modern science has come around to the same idea. Thus, the Christian position cannot be dismissed out of hand. That's the point.

[@prodprod]

The point is, Michelangelo is, himself, *material.* He is a kind of material that acts on other material. He may form thoughts, but his thoughts are simply qualities of his brain, which is also material, and materials have *qualities* - just as the marble has weight, and texture and shape, which have no existence independent of the marble, his brain has qualities, like perception and intentionality which have no existence independent of his brain. So, in fact we only know of material causes.

[@Christianjr4]

@singring76 What exactly about Craig's cosmology is outdated? Everything he says is quite current. Please, by all means, enlighten us. Or are you, like pretty much everyone on KZbin, just full of assertions but without any substance to back it up?

[@Christianjr4]

"but neither do believers they just assume they do because it makes them feel good." And you're assuming all believers believe in God because it makes them feel good. Maybe there's other people (like myself) who actually believe in God based on rational arguments. Other people believe in God based on experiences they claim to have had. It's not all fuzzy feelings inside. Besides, I'm sure this equally applies to Atheists as well. Many just disbelieve because they hate the idea of religion. Cont

[@CarmineFragione]

@bluesrockfan36 so you add "Order out of Chaos" to your short list ? But the idea of the Chaos Theory is very complex, too much to simply say it is a better theory than God. When you put the two theories together and view them, Chaos and God they are just ancient arguments of philosophers, more famous than we would ever be, who knows. When you have to explain "complex theories" you have to reduce your short list by some method of Negatives ,what it cannot be, reduces the list

[@godriczimmerman]

how can god have made the universe from nothing if he himself has always existed? why bother saying god made the universe from nothing if he made it from himself? to say "through him all things were made and without him nothing was made that has been made"is not saying the universe came from nothing but from god. isn't that right?

[@army103]

Not really - the concept of creation ex nihilo via god would still be haunted by the same logical problems as before, and it still has Craig changing his "out of nothing, nothing comes" rule to "out of nothing, an entire universe comes" when it suits his argument.

[@ialvarez357]

I dont like the fact that WLC seems to imply that physicists try to find theories to which the universe is infinite.

[@DeceptionOfTheState]

@bbrr9 Bear in mind that you are assuming that all Christians believe in the literal 6 day creation story, that simply is not the case. Also, who is to say that we were not simply eternally within the thought process of God? He then created us within the concept of time which he created.

[@noelmelbourne8275]

To say that God created the world from nothing, is to say God is nothing. God who is the I AM i. E. the eternal presence, the Alpha the begining ,and the omega the end. He was before the beginingand will be after the end. He spoke creation into being, and He formed man from the dust of the earth and He breathed into man and he became a living soul!

[@Blackspidy619]

you can save yourself 9 minutes, all he says is "the big bang proved us right, god willed everything into existence" to see william lane craig summerice every single one of the arguments for god go to 5:06, and it ends in 5:26

[@Christianjr4]

This may surprise you, but everything you just said Craig would 100% agree with, as would all other Christians no doubt. The doctrine of creation out of nothing doesn't mean literally nothing. Obviously if God created the Universe then it wasn't created literally from nothing, but rather from God, who is, as you correctly point out, something. The word nothing in this context here means no material cause.

[@UnusAbsqueDeus]

@TheTruthGardian You spelled guardian wrong. =]

[@sameer137]

@skinnerMTB : Which is not the definition of scientific method at all. The method has following steps : 1. Observation 2. Hypothesis 3. Prediction 4. Experiment 5. Accepting/rejecting the hypothesis. Religion has got NOTHING to do with this process which evolved over time all over the world in places like Greece, Egypt, India,China et al. In fact, religious beliefs are exactly opposite to it. No one in their right mind would say that an "outside force" created the universe.

[@CarmineFragione]

All things being equal, Nothing and Something is the same powerlessness in any set collection of things to emerge as anything appearing. Throw water into the Ocean and the water loses it's definition as a "something" and becomes a "nothing" visible. So, before Creation , what was the uniformity of all things the same, such as if all places were a thick dark cloud of mist and even if there was an observer, the observer is also made of thick mist, and so it equates to a state of Nothingness.

[@sonic8005]

Alright, you got me on the Vilenkin part, though a bit skipping on the major to minor details. Though what about Hawking's works? The problem I have with Craig's arguments is that he's asserting that the laws of physics as they apply to the universe supposedly all have exceptions simply because an entity is capable of doing and undoing matter at any given point in time

[@Mentat1231]

@eyeammi I have read those authors and more on these topics, and I'm fully aware of what they mean by the quantum vacuum state. But, if the vacuum isn't really nothing (it has energy and quantum potential) then you've only pushed the question back; you have no addressed the question directly. Where did that energy come from? And, even more problematic, if Universe's can spring up of their own accord at random, why aren't there random things popping up within the Universe right now?

[@Christianjr4]

@trueleroix Craig doesn't say he "knows" (as if 100% certain) what existed before the big bang. He says that it's probable that an intelligent designer existed before the big bang and who caused it.

[@geoffreyefloyd]

"It is the CERTAINTY, I stress, CERTAINTY, of ppl who claim to KNOW these unknowable worlds, and to suggest that a single consciousness created everything we know AND DON'T KNOW....why aren't u suscipious of ppl who claim that?" all of that is adhominem, what you need to do is deal with craigs arguments. Craig is a very reasonable guy with reasonable arguments if you're willing to listen. He's not one of those weirdo cult guys, he's a very well respected scholar.

[@RetSquid]

1) God exists outside of time, when He created the Universe is when time 'began'. 2). The Big Bang theory is that all matter and energy in the Universe was, at one time, an single extremely dense and extremely hot point. At time zero it began to expand rapidly and started to cool and lose density. At least that is what I remember from my Astronomy course in college, did I miss something?

[@Christianjr4]

@josephchoi There's nothing Alan Guth said that contradicts what I have stated already. Inflationary universes have an ultimate cosmic beginning, whether it's on a multiverse scenario or not. That's what Guth, Borde and Vilenkin proved in 2003 with their paper on inflationary models of the Universe. As for cyclic models, they are in the minority, as previously stated. Regardless of whether the time began with our Big Bang, it most certainly had a singular beginning sometime in the past.

[@CarmineFragione]

@bluesrockfan36 let's take a closer look at the short list, You say it is some kind of a "What" a blind watchmaker, or mechanism or thingamajig ? And I say it is a "Who" an intelligent cognizant character of the whole functioning system. So we have two things on the short list. We are not talking the "Process" as you suggest, we are talking the "Reason" for whatever process may unfold to cause a design to occur. So we have a short list of "Who" or "What" what else ???

[@RetSquid]

"may never be able to see "beyond our big-bang" The laws of physic as we know them tell us that there is no "beyond our big-bang"

[@bertschmert]

This type of belief in god is very different from what most people actually believe: a personal god that hears ours prayers and occasionally answers them. Although I disagree with his point of view of god and creation, even if someone were to agree with him (which I am sure there are many of you) this provides zero evidence for any miracles in the religious books we read or the divinity of any prophets. I'm afraid most people bridge that logical gap without realising it.

[@CarmineFragione]

@bluesrockfan36 "time" is a metaphysical reality, it is not tangible, and so if you say "Space Time" then time is the non-physical determinative power, that begs the question, that nothing Material can ever be "eternal" because it depends on the time and so "time" becomes a type of supernatural aspect or a substitute for God in explaining how something and nothing is a duality in a single mystery solved only by "Time" But what is "Time" except a matter for gods to speak about ?