Reba said:
In other words, the scientists don't know how creation of the universe began. They have some theories (unproven) but they don't know. Each time that they think they resolve one question, the next one pops up. What was the catalyst behind that level of creation, then the next, then the next, etc.? The truth is, one Designer and Creator did it all.
The proper name that scientists use for ideas that haven't been tested yet is
hypothesis The ideas about branes is a hypothesis now. Scientists use the word
theory for ideas that had stood up to tests, like quantum electrodynamics that is accurate to many decimal places. If you say that the one creator did it, you must back it up with evidence.
Reba said:
God is eternal, without beginning or end. God was not "created".
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1)
God was already in existance to create the heaven and earth.
God is "the King eternal" (I Tim. 1:17), which is time eternally past and future.
Those verses are the evidence for the Judeo-Christian god being the one who created the universe. Scientists say that our universe's space and time were created in the Big Bang. How could the god be eternal? Maybe if "eternal" meant all of time, it could cover only the time since the Big Bang since there was no time before it. Or it could be said that god exists outside of the universe's own time and in another kind of in level above this universe, maybe in the same kind of time the branes could exist in.
This makes the assumption that the verse is right and is good evidence. Scientists check their measuring instruments and compare results from different measurement methods to see if the measurements and the methods match up. It's also important to have the measurements be repeatable with different people getting similiar results. What else out there could imply the same thing as that verse does and therefore support it? The bible and quotes from it must be compared with other things outside the bible to see if everything support each other.
Just giving bible quotes and saying that they are right is as valid as just giving them and saying that they are wrong. That's why outside support is needed.
Reba said:
Even the branes would need creation. Someone would need to create the branes.
That assumes that everything had to be created. Since the verses claiming that god was around forever had not yet been supported by things outside the bible, one could say that if god made the branes, what made god? And what made the maker of god?
Reba said:
There is no need to "put in a god." The God already told us what happened. His is the original story. It is the evolutionists who want to "multiply entities". The six days of Creation requires "the least number of assumptions possible." The theory of evolution is chock full of assumptions.
It is also important to show that the assumptions are reasonable. The six days of creation requires assuming that there is a god and that the bible story about it is valid. I have not seen evidence to support the existence of such a being and evidence that the creation story is an actual account rather than a myth from ancient days. Creation involves god and the physical world and the processes that can happen in it. Evolution only requires the physical world and the processes in it. That's one less assumption. What are some examples of the assumptions that you say evolution is full of?
God also is an accommodation. That means saying that since things need to be created, it has to have a creator. Here's a quote about this from
talk.origins:
Accommodation is very different from explanation. An explanation tells why something is one way and not another. A theory that accommodates anything explains nothing, because it does not rule out any possibilities. Accommodating all possibilities also makes a theory exactly useless. Since creationism accommodates all possibilities, it is not explanatory.
Reba said:
Creation was a unique one-time event, so there are no "testable predictions" possible except by God. God has predicted the end of the current world and the beginning of the new world to come, so I guess He is one ahead of the scientists on that one, too.
Theories about creation predict what aspects of the outcome would look like. That is how those theories had been tested. For example, Big Bang theories made predictions about the ratios of helium-4, helium-3, deuterium and lithium-7 to the usual hydrogen, hydrogen-1. Those predictions match what we see out there very well. The Big Bang theories also predicted that there would be cosmic microwave background radiation. This microwave light comes from all over the sky. This light
had been seen with its properties matching the predicted properties very well. The predicted large scale structure of the universe matches the distribution of galaxies and quasars that we see. The Big Bang also has the universe expand. We can see this expansion by measuring how light from faraway galaxies, quasars and type Ia supernove is redshifted.
Scientists also can make predictions about the end of the world. Their models of how stars work predict that the Sun will get hotter and become a red giant in about five billion years and destroy the Earth. Some of them say that the Earth will already be too hot within a billion years. Those models are supported by looking at many stars in a similar way we could get an idea of what the life cycles of long lived trees are like by looking at many trees of different ages. They also make computer models using the known behaviors of the particles.
The also predict that the red giant sun would shed its outer layers. Stars like that had been seen. The material, which could include particles from the destroyed Earth and some of the carbon that red giants create with the triple alpha fusion reaction, could be incorporated into forming stars and planets in the future. This had to happen in the past because the heavier elements Earth is made of were created by stars and supernove.
Reba said:
Honestly, until you accept the spiritual aspect of creation, you truly can't understand the evidence. Without the Holy Spirit to give you understanding of God's Word, it will not make full sense to you. Suppose you had a science book in front of you that was written in a language that you didn't know. Some of the words might look familiar, and you could maybe guess some of the phrases. But really, you can't understand the text content until someone translates it for you. Well, the Holy Spirit is the "translator" for the Holy Bible. Yes, non-believers can "read" and "study" the Bible, but they will never have full understanding of the words until the presence of the Holy Spirit gives illumination of the meaning.
How do believers know that the Holy Spirit is the right translator for the bible? For all we know, it could be another being like Allah, Thor, Osiris or Quaoar. People in other religions could say that the Christian one is not right and those statements would be as valid as the Christians saying that they're wrong. The Holy Spirit had not given nonbelievers any reason to choose the Holy Spirit to be the translator over other beings or no being. The Holy Spirit should advertise that it is the right translator to choose and give good reasons.
Reba said:
A person blind from birth can say, "Nobody has shown me evidence that various colors exist." The colors do exist; but that person just can't see them.
I know what you mean because I don't know what it's like to hear. But we can give measurements of different wavelengths of light to blind people in a form they can read. And they could take a vision and psychophysics class like I did that explains how those different wavelengths of light are detected by photoreceptors and how the vision system is wired to deal with the signals. They could also be given the results of tests of how the photorecptors react to different wavelengths of light. That would be evidence.
For deaf people, use charts and graphs that show measured pitch and volume and show how the nerve cells in the ears react and measurements of those reactions.
Actually, we don't have to be able to detect things with just our senses to have evidence they exist, we can measure things like sound that are too high pitched for anybody to hear and light we can't see like x rays and radio waves.
Believers claim that there is a spiritual world. I have not seen evidence for this spiritual world that could not be explained with only things in the physical world. Saying that there is a spiritual world and not explaining how the spiritual world works and interacts with the physical world in ways that anybody could repeatly test and verify, when there are explanations that only need the physical world, is unnecessary multiplying of entites. Therefore, Occam's razor cuts off the spiritual world until evidence is brought forth that it is necessary to explain things that can be repeatly verified.
