ikester7579 said:
moniker said:
One of the thoughts is that the universe expands and contracts producing big bangs once every [large number] of years. It's one of the fundamental questions that theoretical physics is working on but in the end it's essentially an impossible question to know. Particularly since Einstein and Newtonian understanding breaks down as you enter the infinitely small, for instance in a singularity, or why quantum mechanics has its own set of rules. String theory kind of approaches this but it's way out there and most physicists don't accept is as an actual theory and view it as more of a religion of sorts.
If you have no problem with God being His own first cause I don't see how the universe being its own first cause is that difficult to accept.
Then the actual written theories need to be re-written to show that things always was. Problem for science is that no one likes to admit they were wrong. And this is more so when the replacement brings up more questions than it has answers for.
I do not really follow this reasoning. It appears (as I think Moniker is saying) that
any view of the origin of the universe will run into the "first cause" problem. So all models are on the same footing in this regard - in terms of providing a neat explanation with all loose ends tied, the "theistic" view and the "atheistic" view have the exact same status.
So the Christian has no more justification to ask the atheist to "rewrite the theories to show that things always was" than does the atheist to ask the Christian to give an account of how God comes to be.
I was quite surprised to read the claim that "Problem for science is that no one likes to admit they were wrong". If anything, the scientific method entails a willingness to let nature dictate truth to us. And if new facts suggest a need to rework our models, so be it. This is a better approach that applying a "religious" worldview to the world and forcing evidence to fit, no matter how awkward things get. It is a
strength of science that there is all this reworking of theories. The scientific method is only responding to the fact that the real world is complex and subtle.