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Permalink Reply by Nelson on May 4, 2009 at 8:58pm

the idea of such a god, essentially the deist god, is fraught with less difficulties- no virgin births, no walking on water, no water into wine, no feeding the 5000, no resurrection, no ascension, no reading your mind- but it's just as unevidenced. the big bang requires no sentient creator, all good or not.

"I picture perhaps a sentient being that might have caused the big bang or something else that shaped the universe..."- how is this not the same as "a wizard did it"?

as i said, this god is easier to believe in because there are less things that set off your bullshit detector but to try to differentiate the omnibenevolent transcendent creator of the Abrahamic faiths from the Deist god by saying that one is "a wizard did it" and the other isn't is just not true. they're both non-answers. they both are simply a replacement for the answers we don't have yet. the danger there is that we live our lives as if we know the truth, that either Yahweh or the deist god kick started the big bang, then we won't look for the real answers. they're both "a wizard did it". the only difference is regarding what the wizard's motivations were and what the wizard did afterward.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on May 4, 2009 at 9:27pm

Sounds like deism (as Nelson pointed out). If you like short stories, and want something that plays along these lines: The Last Question by Isaac Asimov and Talking to God... by Harry Stottle.

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Permalink Reply by Serotonin Wraith on May 5, 2009 at 6:27pm

Deism is less irrational than theism, but not rational enough. Nobody knows what was before the big bang, if indeed there was a 'before'. Which means there are any number of possibilities.

It *could* have been a god. But it could also have been one of these, or something else-

The universe is expanding. It will then shrink to nothing, and emerge in another space/time dimension as that universe's big bang. All of this universe's matter will be transferred to that one.

There are other universes on the other side of black holes. This universe is on the other side of another universe's black hole.

Maybe saying before the big bang is like saying north of the north pole. You can't get beyond that point, yet the north pole still exists.

Scientists are trying to make their own big bangs. It's possible that our universe is the result of a scientist who succeeded in another universe.

A magic invisible haffalit belched and out popped the universe.

So, if someone thinks it's rational to believe that a deistic god started off the big bang, they'd have to admit it's just as rational to believe a mad scientist started off the big bang in his lab. Just as much proof for either.

The answer is - we don't know... yet. I tend to think the deism idea is less credible because in every single gap we used to insert a god (thunder, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc), a natural explanation came to light eventually. Can't ignore that pattern.

Thinking about why a deistic god would start the big bang off makes me wonder too - wanting to create is a rather human emotion. This being had the same feelings as a species that happened to evolve 14 billion years later on a speck of dust - how would a deistic god be anything like us?

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on May 5, 2009 at 7:18pm

Unfortunately, the Oscillating Universe theory seems to have petered out. The most recent observations show that our universe is not only still expanding, but accelerating so that its rate of expansion keeps increasing. This means that it'll never contract into a Big Crunch, and thus into another Big Bang. On the other hand, the continued expansion makes the odds of another brane collision more likely, I suppose..

I recommend picking up Michio Kaku's books Parallel Worlds and Hyperspace for some really good reading on the subject.

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