Believers must always insist that there is a “first cause” and a “prime mover”. Naturally, they must rely on these ideas to bring their god into the picture. It really is more of a philosophical idea but sometimes they always stem out of the line of science to make their claim…eh…realistic.
The idea of a “prime mover” is base on a person’s worldview. If you believe that everything started static, well then you will have a pre-conditioned belief about the Prime Mover – just like Aristotle.
It is considered that the Big Bang is the starting point of matters, space and time - that the Big Bang is space itself, as well as everything contained therein, sprang from a single point of infinite density and temperature, and grew to the volume observed today. (Note: Notice that the Big Bang does not say that energy started before or after it – You have to remember this one.)
Mind stretchers (that is what I called theorists) have some new ideas about the Big Bang. I heard one that says this present BB is just one of an infinite number of BB that has occurred. Yet on its present state, cosmologists can now say with confidence that the universe started out in a very hot and very dense state somewhere between 8 billion and 25 billion years ago (whew! And believers says that the universe is just 6 thousand years old. Shame on them!).
Speaking of believers, they think that the law of conservation of energy and the laws governing molecular physics is a contradiction with the Big Bang. Since the BB is the starting point of matters, space and time, matter was created in the BB. Therefore, it is erroneous to say that it needs no “Prime Mover” since movements of matter have started after the BB. Therefore, a Prime Mover started the ball rolling.
According to believers (especially Christian believers) matter had a beginning since matter cannot cause itself. Therefore, the material universe has a cause. Other than this, God (the Prime Mover) just hit everything with a cue stick to start it moving. That is ancient physics. Thanks to modern physics and quantum mechanics, we are now looking at things in sub-atomic levels. Today we now know that there are probabilistic causes. Atomic decay and molecular movements are good example of causeless effects. Probabilistic causes are now the talk of the science town. In fact, the Christian god idea is a good example of probabilistic cause and if probabilistic causes are impossible, then that is synonymous to the impossibility of a God that is consider as a “causeless first cause”.
Going back to the issue of a “Prime Mover”…since matter is created it is now…eh…wait a minute…So do I believe that matter was created? I once believe that matter, can be neither created nor destroyed (Conservation of mass), yet the special theory of relativity of Albert Einstein have demonstrated that matter can be eh… created for instance, by the materialization of a photon (quantum of electromagnetic energy) into an electron-positron pair; or it may be destroyed, by the annihilation of this pair of elementary particles to produce a pair of photons. Matter can be created out of energy and can disappear into energy.
So therefore, there is a first cause and a prime mover. Viola God exist!
Eh not exactly. So it seems to appear that matter emerge after energy. That matter is just a by-product of energy. The principle of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, although it can be changed from one form to another. If so, then there no reason to conclude a so-called “first cause”, since energy in infinite (without beginning nor end).
In the issue regarding the so-called “Prime Mover”. , since matter can be created via the materialization of a photon into an electron-positron pair – then why would I believe that matter started in a non-moving position? According to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, particles behave in some respects like waves: they do not have a definite position but are “smeared out” with a certain probability distribution. Protons are positively charged particle, right? They are always spinning around. If mater developed in these moving particles, then they started as moving particles. We do not need someone to push the strings.
But where does all that energy comes from? The First Law of Thermodynamics states energy must come somewhere.
The first law allows energy to convert from one type to another as long as the total for a close system remained fixed. According to Prof. Stephen Hawkins, [i]“In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that the negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero. Now twice zero is also zero. Thus the universe can double the amount of positive matter energy and also double the negative gravitational energy without violation of the conservation of energy. This does not happen in the normal expansion of the universe in which the matter energy density goes down as the universe gets bigger. It does happen, however, in the inflationary expansion because the energy density of the supercooled state remains constant while the universe expands: when the universe doubles in size, the positive matter energy and the negative gravitational energy both double, so the total energy remains zero. ”[/i] (A Brief History of Time p, 129).
So if quantum mechanics have counteracted the premise of the First cause and the Prime Mover argument, they what is the need to posit the god question?
That wraps it up.
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Aight, I find it funny how theists have jumped all-over Hawkins’ proposal that “time had a beginning”. Unknown to the theistic apologist (probably they have not read Hawkins but rather apologetic interpretations of Hawkins), accepting Hawkins’ cosmological model entails also accepting his wave function of the universe theory.
The wave function is Psi[h sub ij,Phi], wherein Phi = the matter field of the initial state of the universe, h sub ij = the metrical structure of the initial state of the universe, and Psi = amplitude. The square of the modulus of the amplitude |Psi[h sub ij,Phi]|^2 gives us the probability that the universe will begin to exist with the metric h sub ij and the matter field Phi. In crude terms, if one assigned numbers to all possible universes, one would find that all of the numbers cancel each other out, except for the universe with the characteristics that our universe possesses. That universe has a very high probability of coming into existence uncaused.
This simply spits in the eye of classical theism, as supernatural causation of the universe by a perfect omnipotent being would mean that the universe should have had a sufficient condition of its existence, not a probabilistic one - there should have been a 100% probability of the universe coming into existence!