Logic and evolution: Plantinga project. God is Back? (Introduction)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Thursday, December 24, 2020, 11:34 (1429 days ago) @ dhw

It is a pity that Rasmussen's website "necessarybeing.com" mentioned in the article does not seem to exist any more, if it ever did. I found other material by him however, which all seems pretty conventional theology.

DHW says: "The big bang theory is irrelevant, since we cannot know what preceded it, if it happened." and "It is irrelevant because we do not know what preceded it! You say your eternal, thinking, first-cause God preceded it and caused it; I say maybe a first-cause eternal universe of constantly changing matter and energy preceded it and caused it."

DT says: "The BB is directly estimated at 13.78 bya. The science community in general accepts something started this current universe at that time, and it is not irrelevant."

I'm sure we have discussed this before. If the big bang happened then it created TIME as well as Space, Energy and Matter all at the same zero instant of time. There was no time "before". Of course there are theories such as Roger Penrose's cyclic universe that imagine something before, so that the creation from nothing is replaced by a phase change, but as far as I know there is no evidence for this yet, and in any case it just puts the origin further back. The alternative is an infinite regress that seems to explain nothing.

On another point
DT says: "If human thought emerged in a universe without a wise and benevolent creator, then our thought would be, at best, well adjusted for survival and reproduction, but not for truth. In particular, our knowledge of the norms of reason depend on God’s wise benevolence.”

I don't see how this follows. The principles of two-valued logic, which is the basis of reason, follow from the idea that any proposition is either true or false. To survive we need to know what is true and what is false in the world about us. Thus our ability to reason can evolve, it does not need to be pre-programmed by a creator.

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GPJ