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Subject: THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE Author: Pahu [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 11:43:10 11/06/08 Thu THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE There are two views of origins. One says that everything came about by natural causes; the other looks to a supernatural cause. In the case of the origin of the universe, either the universe had a beginning or it did not. If it did have a beginning, then it was either caused or uncaused. If it was caused, then what kind of cause could be responsible for bringing all things into being? Evolutionary scientists have told us that the universe either came from nothing by nothing or that it was always here. One such theory is called the steady state theory and also calls for the universe to be constantly generating hydrogen atoms from nothing. In either case, holding to such beliefs has a high cost for the scientist, for both of these violate a fundamental law of science: the law of causality. Both views require that the scientist believe in events happening without a cause. Even the great skeptic David Hume said, "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.” [David Hume, Letters ed. by J.Y.T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), vol. I, p. 187. Yet this absurd proposition is accepted by men who make their living by the law of causality. If the whole universe is uncaused, why should we believe that the parts are caused? If the parts are all caused, then what evidence could suggest that the whole is uncaused? Nothing in the principle of causality supports this conclusion. The evidence is just not there. Rather, a great deal of evidence now supports the option that the universe had a beginning. Robert Jastrow, founder and former director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has summarized the evidence in his book God and the Astronomers, saying, "Now three lines of evidence—the motions of the galaxies, the laws of thermodynamics, and the life story of the stars—pointed to one conclusion: all indicated that the Universe had a beginning." [Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Warner Books, 1978), p. Ill.] Now if we are speaking of a beginning of the universe—a movement from no matter to matter—then we are clearly in the realm of unrepeatable events covered by origin science. [From When Skeptics Ask by Geisler & Brooks] [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]