Big Bang Birthday: gravitational waves; language and logic (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 11, 2014, 12:54 (3879 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: More commentary with an answer to George's and dhw's points about origin of the universe:-"4) Fourthly, a mechanism that generates universes ad infinitum must have stable characteristics that constrain its operation if it is to avoid breaking down and sputtering to a halt. In short, universe-generators have finely tuned design parameters that themselves require explanation. So postulating a universe-generator to explain away the appearance of first-order design in a single universe does not obviate the inference to design, it merely bumps it up to the next level. Avoiding an infinite regress of explanatory demands leads to the recognition of actual design terminating in an Intelligence that transcends spacetime, matter and energy, and which, existing timelessly logically prior to creating any universe or multiverse, must also therefore exist necessarily, and therefore require no further explanation of its own existence.
 
"(5) Fifthly and finally, as demonstrated by Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin in 2003 (see further reading suggestions below), any inflationary multiverse has a beginning in the finite past: while inflationary models can, in theory, be eternal into the future, it is mathematically impossible for them to be eternal into the past. This means that the inflationary multiverse entails creation ex nihilo in precisely the same manner as the Big Bang. ... (David's bold)
 
See more at:
 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04/a_matter_of_con084001.html#sthash.Rf9lFRY8.dpuf-You say this answers the points George and I have made about the origin of the universe. I'm afraid it doesn't. It merely rehashes in rather grandiose style the First Cause argument by claiming that a universe-generator must also have been designed, and so to avoid an infinite regress, we must end the chain in an Intelligence that requires no further explanation. If the generator is the eternal energy you call a universal intelligence, it was NOT designed. But if God as energy doesn't break down, why should energy simply as energy break down? Stable does not have to mean intelligent. A stable but non-conscious first cause universe-generator is no less feasible than a stable conscious first cause universe-generator! Besides, when did intelligence guarantee stability?-As for the section you have bolded, obviously if universes were generated and were not eternal they had beginnings. But they were no more ex nihilo than our own, since every universe would have been preceded by the activity of the "universe-generator" (you and I have called it energy), which may or may not be intelligent.
 
The conclusion to this article is pretty staggering: "What all of this reveals, of course, is that it's intelligent design all the way through and all the way down, and that theophobic scientific materialists, once they get past knee-jerk denials, must come to terms with what is, for them, a worldview-defeating fact."-Fact?