I do love this forum with both camps desperately trying to
convince each side to see their point when in reality the universe
will die of heat death before that happens.
Before the carnage begins, can the people here please refrain
from raising advanced physics concepts like the big bang,
universe-branes and multiverses if you don't have a clear
understanding of them. As a budding physicist, I am fully aware
that these topics are actually way too complex and subtle for the
layman to appreciate and I myself am still a long way from even
beginning to study them. Afterall, as men of science, we must build
on the assumption that we know nothing and assemble the components
of experience and reasoning until we have a clearer picture. If one
starts with a preconceived worldview, one tends to alter their
experience through tinted glasses and corrupt their reason to to
fit what he/she feels must be correct.
It is hard to prove or disprove the existence of a Creator. It
follows that most religions claim that the Creator is omnipotent -
thus one can always make the argument that the omnipotent Creator
is able to hide its presence through whatever magical methods.
However, this is not the realm of science. Remember, science starts
on tiny grounds and then expand to unify grander theories.
Therefore, while science cannot disprove the existance of a Creator
outright, it might limit where and how the creator operates. What
do I mean by that? For those familiar with differential equations,
to generate a function we require an initial point and the gradient
field. This is analogous to the universe where events evolve
according to the initial conditions and the laws of physics. Since
as far as we know, the laws of physics has always been consistent,
this leaves the Creator room to set the initial conditions and the
laws in the first place. No fiddling after that! (Not 100% true, I
left out the possible degree of freedom offered to a creator in the
form of the Heisenberg Uncertainity Principle.)
One can see the problem here. The concept of the Creator being
responsible for only the beginning and the laws is vastly different
from the Creators that were described in the ancient texts. The
most logical explanation is that the texts, written by man of that
era, suffered from vocabulary that is simply insuffiencient to
describe the concept. Yet some religions claim their texts are the
verbatim word of the Creator and not something written by man even
though the anecdotes are suspiciously Human friendly. This begs the
question: is the Creator 'dumbing down' his words so that the
people can understand? Occum's Razor suggests that the more likely
explanation is that such texts, like the others, are really just
stories told from man's point of view.
In conclusion, it seems like all ancient religious texts
described the Creator as an entity they would like to have in the
context of their period.
