Posted by Rachel | Posted in Tea and Accessories | Posted on 17-01-2010
Tags: alessi, chantal personal tea kettle, furniture, home, kitchen, personal tea kettle, personal tea kettle electric, shopping
Since the Big Bang could not have had a physical cause, could God be the personal cause?
A personal cause occurs when an intelligent agent acts to bring about something new. If a tea kettle whistles, we could identify a physical cause (expanding water vapor forced through a narrow opening) or a personal cause (Sally put the kettle on to make tea).
We know the Big Bang could not have been caused by preexisting conditions because not only did nothing exist until the Big Bang, there was no time before the Big Bang. Ruling out any physical cause, but maintaining the necessity of a cause, doesn’t this point to the action of an omnipotent creator who acted as a personal cause?
A scientific explanation describes how preexisting conditions and natural laws cause something. A personal explanation, on the other hand, describes how an agent or that agent’s will causes something. Thus, there can’t be a scientific explanation of the first state of the universe.
Just as you walk into the kitchen and saw the kettle boiling on the stove you ask, “Why is the kettle boiling?” Your mom might say, “Well, because the kinetic energy of the flame is conducted by the metal bottom of the kettle to the water, causing the water molecules to vibrate faster and faster until they’re thrown off in the form of steam.” That would be a scientific explanation.
Or she might say, “I put it on to make a cup of tea.” That would be a personal explanation. It describes the situation in terms of your mom and her decision to make tea. Both explanations are legitimate, but they explain the event in different ways.
In the end, there cannot be a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe. Because it’s the first state, it can’t be explained in terms of earlier initial conditions and natural laws leading up to it. So if there is an explanation of the first state of the universe, it has to be a personal explanation, that is, an agent who has the will to create it.
@Space Wasp, two points:
1. The physicist Edmund Whittaker said, “There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and were suddenly galvanized into action. It is simpler to postulate creation ‘ex nihilo’…Divine will constituting nature from nothingness.”
2. From that evidence alone, we can know the First Cause must be self-existent, timeless, non-spatial, and immaterial, since the First Cause created time, space, and matter, the First Cause must be outside of time, space, and matter. In other words, it is without limits, or infinite. These characteristics of the First Cause are exactly the characteristics theists ascribe to God.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/beginning.html#gqVvuqK73Lwr
@Nerdlinger ~, remember, not that ‘everything’ has a cause, but that everything ‘that begins to exist’ has a cause. If God is eternal, as many theist believe, then he had no beginning and thus no cause. This sounds suspiciously like making a special exception for God.
However, atheist themselves used to be very comfortable in maintaining that the universe is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that they can no longer hold that position because of modern evidence that the universe started with the Big Bang: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/beginning.html#gqVvuqK73Lwr So they can’t legitimately object when I make the same claim about God, he is eternal and he is uncaused.
Bobby Brown Hawaii Nei I’ll Miss You
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