avito009

Stephen Hawking says that "God did not have the time to create the universe".

I had a discussion with a monk. I dont know the reason for this discussion as I am a firm believer of god. But I like physics too. So I was reading about what the physicist Stephen Hawking said. So I tried to scientifically understand. But when it comes to believing in god all these discussions are simply put aside. I believe some people having the luxury and having the motto eat, drink and be merry think from atheistic point of view.


Now here is my interpretation. Whatever has been created has been created in time. Take a house for instance, first you lay the foundation then you build your house. In course of time the house is built. In a similar manner god created the universe in time. Then I move to causality. From the viewpoint of causality, everything that happens or whatever the effect there has to precede a cause and so cause effect relationship implies time as "Cause comes before Effect" in time.

If time is implied then it means there was a beginning. But before the big bang there was no beginning. There was no time before the big bang. So god did not have the time to create anything. This is my interpretation.

benit13

Yes... this line of reasoning is often used to counter certain god claims because if time did indeed start at beginning of the Universe, no event could have been responsible for said creation since every natural process occurs in time over a time interval. The dodge is that it doesn't matter since God is a supernatural being and is unconstrained by natural laws and concepts such as time and space... he/she/it/whatever can just magically 'make it so'.

However, it's silly (in my humble opinion) to consider such options in the context of big bang discussion since the big bang does not constrain whether a cosmogenesis happened or not; it only constrains that if such a cosmogenesis occurred, it had to yield conditions that led to things like the observed cosmic microwave background radiation and the measured expansion rate of the Universe. That means that the big bang leaves plenty of room for a "god of the gaps" argument that some space wizard started a great cosmic stop-watch.

Woody

The relationship between causality and time is an odd one.
In "everyday" usage causality and time are so thoroughly entwined that the terms are used almost interchangeably.
However before the "Big-Bang" there was no time.
Does this also mean that there was no causality?

There are many ideas and beliefs and discussions and arguments and ... over this topic,
but no clear consensus.

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Pmb

Even smart people can say dumb things and that was a dumb thing for Hawking to say. He's assuming that the universe started from a singularity, an assumption based solely on an extrapolation. There are at least two way that I know of for that to be wrong. One theory is called the Pre-Big Bang scenario in which there a time before the big bang. Its all based on string theory of which I'm ignorant so you'll have to look that up. Then there's the theory that if it may be possible to create a universe starting from another disconnected universe. The new universe sprouts out from the new universe creating what is known as a child universe.

But you are correct. No time -> no act of creation -Period!

kiwiheretic

I'm inclined to believe (without proof) that the reciprocal of time is more ontological than time itself. That is the rate at which we experience change. We all agree that 24 hours is one revolution of the earth on its axis. However, in the recesses of deep space and at speeds close to the speed of light we experience the changes in distant objects differently.

I'm a little different and don't believe that God is outside of time (link) but that's my personal take on it.

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Woody

In my previous post on this thread,
I intimated that there may be a causal dimension that is not entirely aligned with the time dimension.

There is a recognised dichotomy between time as defined in the quantum world verses time as defined in the relativistic world.

My suggestion is that the quantum time is aligned with what I will call "causal time"
while the relativistic time is aligned with what I will call "geometric time".

I don't know if this makes any sense to the proper physicists out there...
any comments?

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avito009

What about religious texts that say that creation is eternal. There comes a time where due to natural calamities the world is destroyed and again it starts from primitive age. There could be a flood or earthquake. Is this justified by science? Was there really a beginning?

What about time if you think philosophically? When you think of time you think about time in a certain range say medieval age is time, so when you do so you can think of a time beyond that limit. So after the medieval age came renaissance. Or more appropriately before medieval ages there was post classical age. So before this there was some other period. Whenever you think of time you have something beyond it.

So does that not mean time is eternal?

Woody

If you look at many religions (Mayan, Hindu, ...) they have a belief in the cyclic nature of everything, including the existence of the universe itself.

This idea actually seems quite reasonable,
I would find it hard to identify something that does not exhibit a cyclic nature.

However, in physics it has often been found that the reasonableness of an explanation, cannot be used to judge it's correctness.

Having said that, there are several outlines of ideas being developed by several theoretical physicists that involve cyclic universes.

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avito009

Now I wonder about the theory of evolution. I know it is false. Religion claims it to be false. My reasoning is that "Natural Selection" is a part of the law of survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest applies to animal world. So Natural Selection must be an extention of the same law which would mean natural selection also applies to animal world. But humans are different. So god exists and is the designer of the world. Otherwise how would the animals develop qualities to help them survive? Darwin says it is chance and prabhupada says when anyone says "Chance" he does not have full knowledge.

HallsofIvy

I am confused by this. You say you "know" evolution is false but then later say that you have no problem with evolution of "animals" but don't want to apply it to humans. You say that "religion claims it to be false". What "religion" are you talking about? Many religions, including Catholicism and Hindi have no problem with evolution. Darwin did NOT say evolution is "chance". He said, and it has been pretty decisively shown using DNA evidence that Darwin did not know about, that each individual change is due to chance but that chance is "filtered" through differential selection, "natural selection".