Yes. But there's nothing about the word "literal" that implies "wrong." Science is very literal. Truth is very literal.
The background 3K black body radiation is a fossil of the BB.
Well, the BB had to have a
cause. So the BB is not the start of everything. It's just the start of our current universe. But there are no effects without causes, and this universe is manifestly an effect. It's not eternal, as we know because of things like the red shift effect and entropy...we can see it on every side, that it's strictly temporal. And that which is temporal had a beginning. And that which had a beginning had a cause.
So the BB is no threat at all to Theism. Rather, the big issue is what the First Cause actually was...not whether or not there had to be one. Mathematically, we can be quite certain there
had to be, even if we were not around to see it.
A resurrection would be perfect evidence, if the execution and the headless corpse and its resurrection were all on camera etc, etc.
You know what? I don't think it would be. I think people would say, "photoshop" or "conspiracy," don't you?
But there's no such evidence.
Actually, there is. There were eyewitnesses, and eyewitnesses so convinced of the truth of it that many of them gave up their lives for it...something no sane person would ever do for what they secretly believed was a lie.
Any proof of Love would be welcome.
Well, I think there's plenty of that, but I'm not sure what would appeal to you. What would you accept as such proof?
(c) Nothing new can happen in eternity.
But we're in a temporal universe, operating by linear time. So lots of new things happen.
(d) He knows no such thing.
That's funny. He says he does. He says he knows that Atheism is rationally indefensible, and he says it in his Oxford debate with Rowan Williams et al. He positively fights Williams, when Williams tries to introduce him as "the world's most famous Atheist," and claims to be "Firm Agnostic" instead. But you can look that up, if you've got the time. So you needn't take my word for it.
Atheism just historically follows theism.
In a sense, it does...chronologically, that is. It's much newer than Theism, for sure. But "new" and "true" aren't at all synonyms, anymore that "literal" and "false" are. Truth rests on completely other grounds, of course. I think we can both see the sense of that.
Also, Atheism still has that huge
evil problem. And all it can do is deny the problem exists. And I wonder if that is really good enough for the people in Coventry.
(e) By rationality we have the infinite, eternal multiverse. Or rather multiverses.
Well, I'm afraid there's nothing rational about the multiverse idea. It's actually a permanently untestable speculation, rather than a scientific postulate. If any more universes exist, we could never know about them; because the minute we did, they'd not be
another universe, but merely an extension of this one. So the idea that other, invisible, unknowable universes exist starts to look a great deal harder to accept than belief in a First Cause...or a Creator God.
Are you familiar with the so-called "infinite causal regress" problem? An appeal to an eternal universe of any kind simply fails to beat that one. And we know for certain that the universe was
not eternal, because we can see both the expansion of the universe and the progress of entropy.
Meanwhile, did you not, yourself, already appeal to the BB?
However, am I right in supposing that these intellectual disputes may not be so much what you're interested in, as something to do with "love"? You've used the word at least three times now in your messages, that I can remember. Is there something else on your mind?
