Can't check your links right now 'cause I'm at work.

On that note, do you think God will or can maintain this universe forever?

Do I think God can? Hmmm. Here's the problem I see. As I conceive of God, God is timeless. God's decisions are timeless, even if they have temporal effects.

God, then, imo, timelessly endowed this universe with the nature it has. To me, the idea of God changing his mind about something is incoherent. So I conclude that this universe's nature won't change. Hence its fate won't change. However, we don't know for sure what that nature and hence fate will be. There has been some talk recently among cosmologists of apparent or possible changes in some of the observable cosmic physical parameters. So the nature of the universe that God timelessly wills may be an inherently evolving nature. It may be front-loaded for changes that as yet we can only guess at.

The Christian Creed maintains there will be the 'resurrection of the body'. St Paul speaks of creation groaning with birth-pangs of some reality to come. Et cetera.

One can only speculate about such matters.. So here's my speculation.

One of the great philosophical ironiesis that if materialism is true, no-one will ever know it is. It's a theory of reality which, if correct, is unverifiable, and which is only falsifiable if it is in fact false.

If indeed materialism is false and if persons do continue to exist after the death of their material bodies, then we'll all each of us, discover this to be the case fairly soon.

I don't think we should be surprised by our continuing to exist as persons after death. We have, if we're adults, already continued to exist as persons despite the dissolution of the bodies we had as children. So even in this life the survival of our personal identity appears to be quite independent of the survival of any particular physical body.

Of course, it will be argued that total disembodiment is incompatible with the continued existence of personhood. But that is merely a re-statement of materialism, which is a) to beg the question, and b) to posit an unverifiable theory.

However, Christianity has always preached indeed the doctrine known as 'the resurrection of body', which indeed implies that our post- mortem status will *not* be that of wholly disembodied persons.

Here I believe science is of assistance.

What, after all, is matter? Einstein showed that it is equivalent to, and convertible into, energy. Hence the atomic bomb, which converts a small amount of matter into a large amount of energy.

">Recent science has postulated the real possibility of energy escaping from our universe into a higher-dimensional realm.

In addition, some have speculated about a possible connection between quantum mechanics, consciousness, and immortality: see here, and here.

My own view is that there are deep and ineradicable connections between energy, information, and consciousness, and that energy cannot be destroyed (except by God). Indeed, the conservation of energy is an established scientific` law. Hence, I think that information and consciousness cannot be destroyed either.

I believe that the energy- information-consciousness things that are us will, upon our deaths, be 'resurrected' in another realm governed by 'laws of phyics' that are quite different from those operating in this universe, and that we will know ourselves in that other realm and know others, since our conscious selves will be flooded, as it were, by an eternal inpouring of the infinite field of consciousness-information-energy that we call God.

The reasons against are:

1) It conflicts with the known scientific data. which indicate there is but one universe with but one beginning. Anything beyond that is speculation.

2) It's extremely extravagant, ontologically speaking. As I mentioned in one of my comments somewhere, an infinite past is probably not distinct logically from a multiverse; and as I also mentioned, it entails the existence of an infinity of unobservable entities. If such is posited to avoid theism, one must ask, what's the point?

1- No doubt I missed something, certainly I'm no scientist, but it was my impression that we have absolutely no knowledge that could in any way state whether there was or was not anything prior to the big bang.

2- I don't think it is any more extravagant than one universe! Whether speaking from the atheistic point of view or not. If it can happen once, it of course can happen again. It *should* happen again. In nature we see cycles. So if there is going to be a universe from nothing, there may as well be an endless succession of them. Somehow, to me, this does not seem as strained as the idea that a new universe is born every time a particle makes a decision which way to go.

On that note, do you think God will or can maintain this universe forever?

Let's recap. You believe that the finiteness of our universe logically implies the existence of an infinite rational mind outside of spacetime. There is no evidence at all that anything exists or can exist outside of spacetime, and the whole idea is very controversial to say the least, but as long as a handful of eminent scientists have entertained the notion of spaceless timeless entities, that is enough for you to have great confidence in your claim. Well, good for you. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that. I give up.

raevmo sunshine, you don't seem to be aware that Big Bang cosmological science says there actually was once in the finite past no space or time.

I merely stated that the concept of a spaceless timeless entity is scientifically coherent.

You believe in magic. You believe that something can come into being from absolute nothingness. I believe that being can only come from being.

You believe that a metaphysical state of absolute nothingness gave way to a universe 13.7 billlion years ago for no reason at all (since reason didn't exist then), of which the impersonally determined nature, lo and behold, turns out to be suitable for the emergence of beings like us; but that humans are unintended by this metaphysical transition.

It's magic, not just because it's something from nothing, but because of the ridiculously unlikely odds against the unbelievably special nature of the conditions at our Big Bang: they were precise to 1 part in 10^10^123 the phase space volume.

The only remotedly plausible way you get a spontaneously and impersonally forming our universe is if it is really part of a Multiverse (of which one form is an infinite past)….

Cosmological constant problem

One possible explanation for the small but non-zero value was noted by Steven Weinberg in 1987[2]. Weinberg explains that if the vacuum energy took different values in different domains of the universe, then observers would necessarily measure values similar to that which is observed: the formation of life-supporting structures would be suppressed in domains where the vacuum energy is much larger, and domains where the vacuum energy is much smaller would be comparatively rare. This argument depends crucially on the reality of a spatial distribution in the vacuum energy density. There is no evidence that the vacuum energy does vary, but it may be the case if, for example, the vacuum energy is (even in part) the potential of a scalar field such as the residual inflaton (also see quintessence). Critics argue that anthropic explanations like this (including multiverse theories) commit the inverse gamblers fallacy.

As was only recently seen, by works of 't Hooft, Susskind[3] and others, a positive cosmological constant has surprising consequences, such as a finite maximum entropy of the observable universe. (See the holographic principle.) According to the authors (like many astrophysicists [4]), such a low entropy state would require "an external agent" (external to matter, energy, space, and time) that "intervened"¦for reasons of its own" in some miraculous way. [5]

"And now Uncle Ockham starts flicking his gleaming Razor against the leather"“and on both edges too. And there's a hard, cold glint in that medieval eye of his"¦."

Theism is presented these days as the conclusion of an abductive inference that better explains a wide range of data (reason, consciousness, intentionality, morality, aesthetics, fine-tuning, religious experience, logic/math, intelligible lawfulness of nature, etc) than do competing metaphysical theories.

But if you want to bury your head in the sands of unreason rather than face the obvious, out of an immature fear of anything you can't grasp or control, don't let me stop you.

Look, for my point to hold, I don't have to demonstrate the existence of spaceless timeless entities. I just have to show that the concept of such entities is considered scientifically coherent by the likes of,"¦"¦"¦ oh, a Fields Medalist like Edward Witten.

Let's recap. You believe that the finiteness of our universe logically implies the existence of an infinite rational mind outside of spacetime. There is no evidence at all that anything exists or can exist outside of spacetime, and the whole idea is very controversial to say the least, but as long as a handful of eminent scientists have entertained the notion of spaceless timeless entities, that is enough for you to have great confidence in your claim. Well, good for you. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that. I give up.

Now, I happen to think a universe starting from nothingness is the ultimate in illogic,

Agreed.

but why shouldn't there have been previous universes born and died in the infinite past? So that our universe would be finite, but prior ones arise and fall in cycles.

I considered the hypothesis of an infinite past already in my comments on this thread.

The reasons against are:

1) It conflicts with the known scientific data. which indicate there is but one universe with but one beginning. Anything beyond that is speculation.

2) It's extremely extravagant, ontologically speaking. As I mentioned in one of my comments somewhere, an infinite past is probably not distinct logically from a multiverse; and as I also mentioned, it entails the existence of an infinity of unobservable entities. If such is posited to avoid theism, one must ask, what's the point?

The problem with finite past and eschewing absolute nothingness as a metaphysical starting point, is why didn't the u-generating mechanism"”which has never not existed"”act sooner, and indeed have generated an infinite past. That is, it has always been there outside of spacetime. Why didn't spacetime start expanding in the infinite past.

Now, I happen to think a universe starting from nothingness is the ultimate in illogic, but why shouldn't there have been previous universes born and died in the infinite past? So that our universe would be finite, but prior ones arise and fall in cycles.

Let me repeat: David Gest.

Well, duh. I figured that out even before Julia Roberts decided to marry Lyle Lovett. Of course, the "before my time" Bogey-Bacall situation could have clued me in, not to mention Scarlett and Rhett. Sexy is as sexy does. The Geeks inherit the earth… §;o)

No, I still don't get it.

A Biblical fundamentalist Christian might say of evolution that he 'doesn't get' how it could have produced human beings. A good reply to such a person is to say that the following is an atrociously bad argument:

"I don't get how evolution could do X. Therefore it didn't."

I'll move on…

It seems to me that Greene smoked a bit too much of the good stuff before he wrote this down.

Do you any evidence for this, or are you merely flailing amidst wild speculations of your own?

He talks about the "triumph of string theory", which is nothing but blowing a lot of smoke.

Context is important here. I couldn't type the whole book into a comment. He's not claiming string theory has triumphed.

Pure theoretical speculation. Where is the empirical evidence supporting predictions of string theory that have not been made by standard theory? There is none. I do not intend to publish this in a refereed journal, since this is already well known.

Look, for my point to hold, I don't have to demonstrate the existence of spaceless timeless entities. I just have to show that the concept of such entities is considered scientifically coherent by the likes of,……… oh, a Fields Medalist like Edward Witten.