ADN

Aemeth wrote:The theist does not claim to understand the nature of the supernatural...if he did, it would be considered the natural...

I have not moved the problem. I say that it is not necessary/impossible to "know" where "God" came from. It is a supernatural issue. However, w/o supernatural, it is just a natural issue--and not being able to explain it or even understand it is a problem.

There are many things that are not particularly easy to understand, either because they are so extraordinarily far from the realm of human experience and intuition, or because we just don't have enough data. As I've noted before, the fact that something is not intuitive or easy to understand doesn't mean much, much less does it imply the supernatural. Einsteinian time dilation is neither easy to understand, nor intuitive-- yet its observed every day, with no spooky magic involved

The nature of the universe combines both issues. However, if you follow modern science, what is striking is that as we accumulate data from the earliest moments of this universe, we find that it conforms to scientific principles. That's a remarkable statement, when you think about it-- we can observe things which happened billions of years ago, and find that the same physics that operates today was operating then

If you'd like to know more about what's known about these issue, I highly recommend Steven Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes".

http://www.amazon.com/First-Three-Minut ... 0465024378

"The Universe: no spooky magic required"

Does he write that matter is eternal or that it suddenly and spontaneously came into existence?

Aemeth wrote:Does he write that matter is eternal or that it suddenly and spontaneously came into existence?

Matter is created by the interplay of scalar elementary particles which have no mass, in of itself.

Aemeth wrote:Does he write that matter is eternal or that it suddenly and spontaneously came into existence?

Neither of your choices is an accurate understanding of the modern physics.

when Raum says:

raum wrote: Matter is created by the interplay of scalar elementary particles which have no mass, in of itself.

he's quite right, but a little obscure.

You should understand that your idea of what "something" is, is probably wrong.

What's the one physics equation that everyone knows, even if they don't know what it means?

"E=mc^2"

What does that mean? "Energy=(matter)(speed of light)(squared)"

What physical reality does that reflect? That matter can become energy, and vice versa. One can call it "being created and being destroyed", although that's too simple. Think of a hurricane. Is a hurricane "created"? Its a kind of structure of the atmosphere that arises, and then dissipates. Matter is something like that.

Matter can be, and is observed to be, created and destroyed. Matter is being destroyed every second, and you can see it happening-- its a nuclear reaction that powers the sun-- little by little, its total mass is diminishing. Unless you believe that God is making the sun's nuclear reactions run-- and that he makes atomic bombs explode-- then you can't hold that the conversion of matter into energy implies a deity.

No spooky magic required, but not intuitive.