Can We Determine the Age of the Universe and Earth Biblically?

[makesends]

It didn't cause itself to go bang out of nothingness, something very powerful was obviously behind it.

THAT's what I'm saying...

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

THAT's what I'm saying...

Why do you assume that it takes something "very powerful" to destabilize a singularity?

 

[makesends]

Why do you assume that it takes something "very powerful" to destabilize a singularity?

The "very powerful" was not the point; in fact, the destabilizing of a singularity is not the point. The point is that something made the singularity (if there even was one). It did not cause itself. Turtles all the way down.

 

[Josheb]

Can we determine the age of the universe and earth biblically?

That depends on what you mean by "biblically?"

All truth is biblical. Science, when done correctly, is biblical. If the question asked is meant to inquire, "Can we determine the age of the universe solely by reading scripture?" the answer is "No, probably not, because the Bible is not a cosmological textbook on astronomical physics. Trying to use the Bible for that task would be akin to using sledgehammer to paint the scales on a butterfly's wings or milk a bull with a circular saw." If, on another hand, the question asked is intended to inquire is, "Has God provided any means by which humans can understand the age of the universe?" the answer to that question is, "Possibly, because God has made the universe knowable and made creatures (us) to know the knowable."

If and when an accurate age of the universe is known, then whatever that number is will be biblical. The truth is always biblical.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

The "very powerful" was not the point. In fact, the destabilizing of a singularity is not the point.

It seemed to be the point that Musician was making: "It didn't cause itself to go bang out of nothingness, something very powerful was obviously behind it" (emphasis added). And you replied, "That's what I'm saying." The math added up for me.

The point is that something made the singularity (if there even was one). It did not cause itself.

And there are "scientific descriptions and pursuits" that are indeed "interested in looking further back" and finding answers to questions like that one, contrary to what you had said. (For example, the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary proposal coupled with loop quantum gravity doesn't have a singularity at the beginning.)

 

[EarlyActs]

I understand that. But his summary didn't logically follow. There is nothing inherent in the premise ("the universe had no external cause") that necessitates the Big Bang produced exactly equal amounts of matter and antimatter. That is what's required to result in a universe that is smooth and uniform. Even the absolute slightest asymmetry between matter and antimatter results in particular, individualized structures.

That's interesting, although I'm missing the definition of anti-matter, if you could provide.

 

[EarlyActs]

I'm not going there. I have more 'opportunities' than I can deal with now, even about this very subject.

And I don't like the sound of "opportunity". Sounds like sales and self-promotion or something of that sort prohibited by the rules.

I'm confused. How do you prohibit something that is not mentioned/identified here? I won't be mentioning it here. It won't surface here. It is its own site/operation. But "here" is the only place I know to contact you.