Dovina12 Nov 2008

If your first paragraph is correct then nothing existed before the universe. If you say no, the universe emerged; then you include whatever it emerged from in a new definition of the universe. You go beyond Stephen Hawking when he says we can never know what existed before the Bang. You say “The properties of the Universe are what determine the Laws and Initial Conditions.”

John Fowles asks, “What is easier to believe? That there was always something or that there was once nothing?” Not that the easier thing to believe is more likely true, but the more reasonable thing is.

A Model is like a worldview; a framework for testing predictions, an adjustable framework. Blaise Pascal, mathematician in the seventeenth century was testing the wager: Is it reasonable to believe in God. Either God exists or he does not, and we cannot use reason to determine which alternative is true. However, our lives may be affected by the alternative we choose. Since choosing to believe that God exists may lead to greater overall happiness, and nothing is lost if we are wrong, Pascal decided it is better to accept the theistic alternative. Since then, science has revealed much. I think that between then and now, it has pulled more in the direction of god than no-god.