My question arises as to whose definition should we adhere to and for that matter does Islam even need reformation? That is rhetorical question, which means you want it to be answered the way you wish.....

^^^^

^^^ :confused: are you okay? Callypso the standard Big Bang theory is philosophically and scientifically corrupt on a multitude of levels. It is an attempt to integrate a broad variety of empirical data, data which, by itself, is a monument to the science and technology which has collected such voluminous physical evidence about the cosmos. The problem lies in the proper interpretation of such, and it is there that Big Bang theory fails, miserably, you might ask what in my opinion is the correct intepretation. In cosmology I do not have an integrated theory as I do with quantum and relativistic phenomena. Cosmology is the study of the large-scale structure and dynamics of the universe, and to some degree that study is described by general relativity. However, it has become clear that general relativity is not sufficient to account alone for the current glut of observational data. When we observe -- as was done not long ago -- a coherent structure some 600 million light years across, and some 6.5 billion light years away, and realize that its existence cannot be accounted for so early in the cosmic history of the supposed Big Bang, then we know we are in trouble. The dynamics of individual galactic structures are better understood, but even there we have the fanciful crutch of so-called dark matter and dark energy which was invented in an attempt to account for what the theory failed to do. Of course, we realize that the notion of the origin of the universe is absurd, but the first and foremost cosmological issue which needs to be unambiguously understood is that of cosmological redshift. There is nothing inherent in the nature of reality that would prohibit galaxies to be receding from each other at high speed, but the explanation of such is certainly something other than spatial expansion. There is a connection between the interpretation of redshift as the recessional speed of galaxies, and the expanding universe. Regardless of the direction we observe, the shift in the spectrum is essentially the same, so if all galaxies have this same increasing recessional speed with distance, that would imply that we -- the Earth -- were at the center of the entire cosmos, with everything spreading out from us. To counter this Earth-centered "explosion" the notion of expanding space was posited, so that the expansion would appear uniform for any observer in the universe. The analogy used is that of an inflating balloon marked with dots on its surface to represent galaxies, and as the balloon surface expands the distance between dots (galaxies) increases uniformly for all dots. Each dot (galaxy) would see expansion outward from itself. So, the recessional velocity inference of spectral shifts led to the notion of an expanding universe. For philosophers and scientists who reject such a universal expansion of space, as I do, it is difficult to accept the recessional velocity inference unless we assume that some sort of explosion caused all of this matter to recede from us, with us at the center of the universe. But it is important to distinguish between observational fact, and theory. The observational fact is that there exists certain shifts in the spectral lines as measured in the light from the galaxies. That these shifts are interpreted as velocities is an inference based upon a specific theory. There are other (lesser known) theories which interpret the observed red-shift to imply something else other than increasing velocity. Anyway, there is a great deal of theoretical work yet to be done in cosmology, and, since it is (literally) the furthest removed from out daily experience, it will probably be the last to be addressed, at least from a thoroughly proper perspective.

Thank you viking, although my approach was diffrent I came to the same conclusion as the astronomer, streaching of space between spatial points is diffrent from the misconception on expansion.we know, philosophically, that "nothing" cannot actually exist, that the universe is full -- that there are no gaps or places where existence is not -- then this imagined universe, one "without matter and energy forces" either cannot be, or there are other things that exist which are do not fall in the category of that which you banished from the universe. The biggest problem people make with the notion of "space" is its reification, attempting to make what is essentially a relational concept, into a "thing." In a certain way it is similar to the mathematical idea of a coordinate system. As a mathematical abstraction we can locate objects in a coordinate system that we impose, but that does not imply that the coordinate system is itself a physical existent imposed on physical reality. Reason deduces that the universe is full, that there are no gaps, no empty places, no spot where there is literally nothing. If you abstract away all of existence, you are left with nothing, and nothing does not actually exist since nothing is simply the absence of something. So, where does such an "imagining" get you? . Space is not a thing that expands or contracts, it is a spatial relation between objects which exist. What about the big bang bro.

Alright viking I did not mean to be obnoxious, I will accept the connection between the somalis and the egyptians even the somalis and the sumerian's where do the mayans come in... Firstly, and My memories are hazy they was nothing called the mayans, that is the word builders in the word of the local population that the spaniards found on site.... I am trying to be serious Manya oh my goodness

Scientists say there is directly observable evidence of galaxies moving farther and farther away from each other Many people take this to mean that the universe is expanding which has not ever rang true to me, my contention has been that: the universe--being all that exists--wouldn't have anything to "expand" into; because nothing exists outside the universe. Making it clearer i mean the question is a bit more complicated than that. "The universe" is an abstraction; it's a sum concept, it's not one single entity, consequently Space is somewhat like time; where time has motion, a perceptually-given fact, as its basic referent, space has distance, which is also perceptually-given. To say that "space is expanding", per se, is like saying "time is slowing down." Neither of them mean anything. It's only particular distances that can become greater or lesser, just as it's only particular motions that can speed up or slow down. like to hear your views...

Oh my goodness , hahahahahaha :eek: What is this wishfull thinking? :eek: so the mayans used to refer to themselfs as mayans, and manya.... oh god I can not continue :eek:

P.S: I liked The Point’s articulacy. Good job, saaxiib. a lot better than Atlas’s unintelligible piece, to be sure, but still a second grade thinking of sort.

Dont bring arsenal into it

Warning long post Back in 1997, George Soros, a multibillionaire stock and commodities speculator, wrote an essay titled "The Capitalist Threat" (The Atlantic Monthly, February1997. The essential substance of this essay is the claim that the main contemporary threat to a free society is a fully free society--i.e., a society of laissez-faire capitalism. It is a claim that has grown more prominent in the years since his article first appeared. The obviously self-contradictory nature of this claim may have escaped Soros because he does not use the term "free society," but the ambiguous expression "open society." Yet is clear that insofar as the "open society" is to be considered as something desirable, it represents a free society, as when Soros writes: "The Declaration of Independence may be taken as a pretty good approximation of the principles of an open society...." Soros presents two lines of argument to try to prove his claim. The first can be described as epistemological; the second, as economic. Soros's Epistemological Argument In his epistemological argument, Soros claims that there is an essential common denominator between laissez-faire capitalism and communism and Nazism. He writes: "Although laissez-faire doctrines do not contradict the principles of the open society the way Marxism-Leninism or Nazi ideas of racial purity did, all these doctrines have an important feature in common: they all try to justify their claim to ultimate truth with an appeal to science." Soros has already announced the principle that: "Since the ultimate truth is beyond the reach of humankind, these ideologies [ideologies that claim to possess it] have to resort to oppression in order to impose their vision on society." Soros appears to understand that "fascism and communism... both relied on the power of the state to repress the freedom of the individual." Since laissez-faire capitalism constitutes the absolute freedom of the individual from the state in all areas of life other than the initiation of physical force, it may, indeed, seem nothing less than amazing that he places it in the same category as those doctrines. In sharpest contrast to the present system of massive government intervention, under laissez-faire capitalism the activities of the state are confined to the protection of the individual against acts of aggression, such as, for example, murder, robbery, rape, and fraud, and attack by foreign aggressor governments. The state does not go beyond this strictly limited function. It does not intrude in people's economic activities; nor does it intrude in their beliefs, sex lives, or any other aspect of their lives. Perhaps because he is somewhat embarrassed by the nature of his claim about laissez-faire capitalism, Soros tries more than once to soften it. In addition to the modest, nonessential, qualification quoted above, in introducing the alleged important feature in common," he writes: "I want to emphasize, however, that I am not putting laissez-faire capitalism in the same category as Nazism or communism. Totalitarian ideologies deliberately seek to destroy the open society; laissez-faire policies may endanger it, but only inadvertently." Yet just two sentences later, he declares, "Nevertheless, because communism and even socialism have been thoroughly discredited, I consider the threat from the laissez-faire side more potent today than the threat from totalitarian ideologies." In this sentence, Soros very clearly does once again put laissez-faire capitalism in the same category as Nazism and communism, however much he may deny doing so. For the mere discrediting of communism and socialism is not sufficient to make laissez-faire capitalism into a greater threat than totalitarian ideologies unless there is something comparably evil about it. To take an analogy from the field of health, the development of cures or preventives for heart disease and cancer could result in another life-threatening illness, such as stroke, being elevated to the status of the major medical threat to human life. But this would be the case only because stroke is extremely damaging and life threatening in the first place. As to the alleged evil that laissez-faire capitalism is supposed to share with communism and Nazism, namely, its claim to "ultimate truth," Soros appears to be unaware of the fact that communism and Nazism were philosophically incompatible with claims to truth of any kind, ultimate or otherwise. Both rested on variants of the doctrine of determinism and denied the universal validity of the laws of logic. According to Marxism, an individual's ideas were not the result of his consideration of matters of true or false, but were automatically determined by his membership in an economic class and reflected the economic interests of that class. Thus, proletarians allegedly had one set of ideas based on alleged proletarian logic and the alleged class interests of proletarians, and their class enemies, the bourgeoisie, allegedly had another set of ideas based on alleged bourgeois logic and the alleged class interests of the bourgeoisie. According to Nazism, the "interests" and "logics" were along the lines of racial membership rather than membership in an economic class. Thus, the Nazis held that the ideas of an Aryan were based on "Aryan logic" and the interests of the Aryan Race, while the ideas of their enemies, such as the Jews, were based on "Jewish logic" and the interests of the Jewish Race. Obviously, the alleged science of Marxism is without any rational basis. Along with, and underlying, its doctrines of polylogism and class warfare is the labor theory of value carried to the point of utter absurdity, including the notion that the value of labor itself is determined by the quantity of labor required to produce it--i.e., by the quantity of labor required to produce the wage earner's minimum subsistence. It is on this nonsensical basis that Marxism develops the substance of its claim that profits are based on the exploitation of labor and that the impoverishment of the masses grows progressively worse under capitalism. So too any alleged scientific basis of Nazism is without rational foundation. This is the case not only because of Nazism's polylogism and doctrine of irreconcilable racial and national conflicts, and its viewing the human race from the perspective of an animal breeder, but also because of its socialism (effected through price and wage controls) and accompanying claims to be able to practice national economic planning, which would require the direction of the economic system by nothing less than an omniscient deity. (Nazism, it should never be forgotten stands for Nazional Sozialismus.) Soros seems to be unaware of almost all of the serious, fundamental criticisms to be made of Marxism and Nazism. In fact, beyond his negative reference to doctrines of racial purity, the only other thing he says on the subject is, "One of Popper's accomplishments was to show that a theory like Marxism does not qualify as science"--as though Popper, rather than von Mises and Böhm-Bawerk had demonstrated this. (Karl Popper is Soros's main philosophical influence.) Soros appears almost entirely lacking in familiarity with procapitalist, antisocialist economic theory and political philosophy subsequent to Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The closest he comes to displaying any such familiarity is his characterization of F.A. Hayek as "one of the apostles of laissez-faire," which, unfortunately, is mistaken, inasmuch as Hayek was an advocate of major aspects of the welfare state, such as social security. Nowhere does Soros give evidence of having read anything by Ludwig von Mises or Ayn Rand, by far the two most important advocates of laissez-faire capitalism in the twentieth century. His lack of knowledge concerning the subject of his essay is made further evident in his attempt to deny the scientific basis of laissez-faire capitalism, which he correctly recognizes as economic theory. He writes: "One cannot simply equate market economics with Marxist economics." But in his very next sentence, he does so equate it: "Yet laissez-faire ideology, I contend, is just as much a perversion of supposedly scientific verities as Marxism-Leninism is." His basis for this outlandish claim is his assumption that what underlies the laissez-faire ideology is economic theory insofar as it is based on the doctrine of pure competition and perfect knowledge--a doctrine that the leading advocates of laissez-faire capitalism not only do not hold, but regard as utterly nonsensical. For example, a leading conclusion of the doctrine of pure competition is that rivalry is the opposite of competition. (For a full exposition and critique of this doctrine, see my book Capitalism, pp. 425-437.) He also argues the fallaciousness of treating states of equilibrium as really existing, which, he claims, is essential to economics as a science. He is not aware of the fact that at least as early as 1940, von Mises demonstrated that economics does not at all depend on the actual existence of such states--that they are merely tools of thought, helpful in understanding the way things would develop in the absence of further changes in the basic data of the market, which changes are in fact incessant. Closely connected with this, Soros claims that economic theory is invalidated by the fact that mistakes made in financial markets, which are supposed to discount the future, can themselves contribute to changing the future. It does not occur to him that economic theory provides the means of understanding the effects of such mistakes (mistakes which it shows, incidentally, are the result of government-sponsored credit expansion, when they are made on a large scale). For example, as the result of such mistakes, the wealth and income of various investors will be different. The size of various industries may be different. The result will be some prices that are higher and other prices that are lower, depending on whether the effect of the mistakes has been to increase the demand or decrease the supply of the good in question, or to decrease the demand or increase the supply of the good in question. In essence, Soros attempts to dispose of the scientific basis of laissez-faire capitalism by breaking down open doors and refuting strawmen. Like the words "open society," the words "ultimate truth" are ambiguous. They are used by Soros as a pejorative that embraces both knowledge that is held with certainty, because it is based on fact and logic, and assertions that are arbitrarily but forcefully declared to be true without evidence or in contradiction of the evidence. It is only in this way that Soros can bring under one epistemological umbrella the scientifically supported doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism and the irrationalist doctrines of Nazism and communism. He does so, simply by using the words "ultimate truth" as a description of the claims of all three doctrines. Soros appears to believe that rational certainty is simply impossible. This is implicit in his view that the essential element of the "open society" is recognition of human fallibility: "I envisage the open society as a society open to improvement. We start with the recognition of our own fallibility.... instead of claiming that those principles [the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence] are self-evident, we ought to say that they are consistent with our fallibility... Could the recognition of our imperfect understanding serve to establish the open society as a desirable form of social organization? ... We must promote a belief in our own fallibility to the status that we normally confer on a belief in ultimate truth." At one point, Soros even goes so far as to say: "Why does nobody have access to the ultimate truth? The answer became clear: We live in the same universe that we are trying to understand, and our perceptions can influence the events in which we participate. If our thoughts belonged to one universe and their subject matter to another, the truth might be within our grasp: we could formulate statements corresponding to the facts, and the facts would serve as reliable criteria for deciding whether the statements were true." This statement, which suggests an element of Platonism, appears to imply that we are in a better position to acquire knowledge concerning conditions in a remote galaxy than we are to acquire knowledge concerning conditions here on earth. In the very next paragraph, Soros claims that "There is a realm where these conditions [i.e., two universes, one for the observer, the other for the observed] prevail: natural science. But. . . in social and political affairs the participants' perceptions help to determine reality. In these situations facts do not necessarily constitute reliable criteria for judging the truth of statements." Later, he seems to argue that the so-called social sciences, such as economics, are chronically in the same position as physics in the realm of quantum mechanics, where the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is operative. He declares: "The theories of social science relate to their subject matter in a reflexive manner. That is to say, they can influence events in a way that the theories of natural science cannot. Heisenberg's famous uncertainty principle implies that the act of observation may interfere with the behavior of quantum particles; but it is the observation that creates the effect, not the uncertainty principle itself. In the social sphere, theories have the capacity to alter the subject matter to which they relate." The truth here is that economics and every other subject whose ideas influence the world in which man lives, such as, above all, philosophy, are no different in their most basic epistemology than physics and the other natural sciences. Economics and philosophy are in a position to understand the effects of human actions on reality and to distinguish between the different effects of different human actions operating as causes. That is to say, they are able to distinguish between the world as man has made it up to now, and the world that man could make in the future if he were guided by different ideas that produced different effects. Sound economics, for example, distinguishes between the effects of wrong ideas, such as those which result in economic stagnation, mass unemployment, inflation, price controls, and socialism, and the effects of right ideas, such as those which result in the existence of economic progress, free labor and product markets, sound money, and private ownership of the means of production, all of which preclude the effects of the corresponding wrong ideas. It is simply absurd to argue that the fact that man's own ideas and actions change the world prevents him in any way from understanding the world. He observes differences in his external conditions and differences in his beliefs and logically connects them on the basis of principles derived from a combination of experience and introspection, such as, in economics, the principle that other things being equal, individuals prefer to earn a higher income rather than a lower income and to pay lower prices rather than higher prices. In physics and natural science in general, the only way that knowledge can be gained is precisely on the basis of man's interaction with the world, ranging from a baby's banging his spoon on the counter of his high chair to the most complex controlled laboratory experiment. Man always learns by discovering connections between his actions and their effects on the external world and by a process of generalizing from the particular to the universal. Man's physical actions in the world do not change physical laws, nor do his economic actions change economic laws. For example, a price control that obliges suppliers to provide a good without profit or with a less-than-competitive rate of profit, is a comparable affront to natural law as a legislative demand that the producers make the good out of physically impossible materials, such as produce gasoline out of sand instead of crude oil or construct buildings out of air and water instead of steel and concrete. Economic law shows that the good will not continue to be voluntarily supplied under such a price control, just as physical law shows that it cannot physically be produced from such materials. Contrary to Soros, it is precisely man's ability to be rationally certain that is essential to the freedom of the individual. The reliability of reason underlies the value of reason and, in so doing, it underlies the distinctive value of Man, whose fundamental distinguishing characteristic is, of course, his possession of reason. And since reason is possessed by the individual human being, the reliability of reason is what establishes both the value and the competence of the individual human being. The value and competence of the individual is the foundation of his possession of individual rights. It is symbolized by the rattlesnake flag of the American Revolution, with its warning to arbitrary government: "Don't Tread on Me"--because, as a rational being I am a being of the highest value and competence and a force to be reckoned with when my rights are violated. The principle that the government must respect the rights of the individual is, of course, what underlies the individual's freedom from the government. The fact that reason enables Man to know truth reliably--with certainty--is what establishes freedom as the ally of reason. Because reason gives Man the power to understand truth, truth needs no support from the use of physical force. It has the power of reason on its side. As a leading historical example, Galileo did not need the use of force to establish the truth that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He established it by means of fact and logic. But those who wished to go on maintaining that the Sun revolves around the Earth, did need the use of physical force, because they had no other means of upholding their proposition. The rational certainty of the advocates of laissez-faire capitalism in the truth of their cause only serves to reinforce their dedication to respecting the rights and freedom of the individual that is demanded by the very nature of their ideas and program. So much for Soros's epistemological argument against laissez-faire capitalism. The "Open Society" Versus the Free Society Before I turn to his economic arguments, I want to point out that the use Soros makes of the concepts of "fallibility"and "ultimate truth" are instances of an epistemological fallacy. That is, both of these concepts are secondary, derivative concepts. They both presuppose the more fundamental concept of truth--truth that is known as truth, with certainty. They would not be possible without the underlying concept of truth. Yet, at the same time, they are used by Soros to deny and negate the concept of truth. No one would be able to recognize an instance of fallibility, that is, an instance in which he had mistakenly believed he was right but in fact was wrong, if he could not know the truth and distinguish it from error. For example, I can incorrectly add a column of figures without realizing it. In this instance I have been fallible. But the only way I can possibly identify my error is that I am able to add the column of figures correctly. Only by establishing and recognizing the correct answer, can I recognize that my previous answer was wrong. If I could not establish and recognize the correct answer, I could never know when I was wrong. There would be no standard of what constituted error, if not for the existence of truth and Man's ability to recognize it with certainty. Soros's concept of "the open society" is another instance of the same fallacy. By means of its use, he not only commits the contradiction I described earlier of claiming that the main threat to a free society is a fully free society, but he seeks to negate the existence of all freedom. He writes that in the open society, "People must be free to think and act, subject only to limits imposed by the common interests. Where the limits are must also be determined by trial and error." (Italics mine.) Thus, he openly argues that the freedom of the individual is to be abridged out of deference to unspecified common interests, whose nature, according to him cannot even be reliably known, and that the limits to the abridgment of freedom are to be set by trial and error. The standard Soros offers for judging the process of trial and error is this: "Unfortunately, in human affairs the facts do not provide reliable criteria of truth, yet we need some generally agreed-upon standards by which the process of trial and error can be judged. All cultures and religions offer such standards; the open society cannot do without them. The innovation in an open society is that whereas most cultures and religions regard their own values as absolute, an open society, which is aware of many cultures and religions, must regard its own shared values as a matter of debate and choice. To make the debate possible, there must be general agreement on at least one point: that the open society is a desirable form of social organization." It follows from this statement that unless our standard for judging the process of trial and error is to be that "the open society is a desirable form of social organization," which provides no standard at all, all we are left with as providing such a standard is "cultures and religions," whose various standards and shared values are to be "a matter of debate and choice," to be decided by no known principle. What all this means is that in Soros's vision of the "open society," the freedom of the individual can be violated for any reason, if enough people can be found willing to claim that their unprovable, undefined, subjective common interests require it. Ironically, Soros seems prepared to apply the same collectivist moral-political principle for abridging the freedom of the individual as the Nazis. The Nazis' principle was: "Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz (The common interest comes before self-interest)." Soros's virtually identical principle is contained in the words: "Unless it is tempered by the recognition of a common interest that ought to take precedence over particular interests, our present system--which, however imperfect, qualifies as an open society--is liable to break down." Soros's Economic Arguments I turn now to the various economic arguments Soros puts forward against laissez-faire capitalism. Apart from those I have already considered in the course of dealing with his epistemological argument, namely those concerning "perfect competition," the absence of equilibrium, and the mistakes made in financial markets, there are four others that I can discern. These concern the alleged conflict between economic competition and social cooperation, the alleged need for the redistribution of wealth because of the existence of economic inequality, advertising and the alleged corruption of values by money, and financial crises. Competition The argument concerning competition is simply the entirely unsupported assertion that "Too much competition and too little cooperation can cause intolerable inequities and instability." This statement, indeed, is the immediate basis, prior to his use of the epistemological argument, that Soros gives for extending the threat to the "open society" from fascism and communism to include laissez-faire capitalism. It is introduced with the sentence, "I contend that an open society may also be threatened from the opposite direction--from excessive individualism." Soros appears to think that the truth of his statement about competition and cooperation is self-evident. This is because, like the immense majority of contemporary intellectuals, he takes for granted that the nature of economic competition is essentially the same as that of competition in the animal kingdom, namely, the law of the jungle and survival of the fittest. In fact, in his later discussion of redistribution, he writes: "The laissez-faire argument against income redistribution invokes the doctrine of the survival of the fittest." His utter confusion on this subject is shown by the fact that in the very next sentence he appears positively to endorse the concept of survival of the fittest. He writes: "The argument [for survival of the fittest] is undercut by the fact that wealth is passed on by inheritance, and the second generation is rarely as fit as the first." The implication, of course, is that what is wrong with the principle of survival of the fittest is that it cannot be practiced sufficiently, because the heirs are not fit enough. In the sentence after this one, however, Soros once again reverses field and declares: "In any case, there is something wrong with making the survival of the fittest a guiding principle of civilized society." The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. First of all, it is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth. Unlike the lions in the jungle, who must compete for a limited supply of nature-given necessities, such as zebras and other game animals, which they have no power to enlarge, competition among business firms is competition in the creation of new and improved products and more efficient methods of production. For example, General Motors and Toyota do not at all compete in the grabbing off of a limited supply of nature-given automobiles from automobile herds or automobile trees. On the contrary, they compete in the development of newer, better automobiles produced by progressively more efficient methods of production. Their action, and the action of business firms in general, thus serves to enlarge the supply of products. As the result of its basic nature, so far from being a process of survival of the fittest, economic competition is the foundation of the survival of practically everyone, including those who from a purely biological point of view are not at all very "fit." Just think of the effect of competition among pharmaceutical manufacturers, the makers of eye glasses and hearing aids, and so forth, on the sick and on people who suffer from poor eyesight or poor hearing. Think of the effect of competition among farmers and farm equipment manufacturers on the hungry. Think of the effect of the competition among of all kinds of machinery makers on the condition of all those people who would otherwise be fatigued and exhausted. Furthermore, as Ricardo and von Mises have shown, because of the law of comparative advantage there is room for all in the competition of a capitalist society, including those whose productive abilities are modest in every respect. There is room for such people provided only that they concentrate on those areas in which the degree of their lesser capability is least, leaving the more capable people to concentrate on those areas in which the degree of their greater capability is greatest. For example, we may assume that Bill Gates, in addition to his outstanding capability in leading and developing a major industry, is so gifted that he would be capable of doing almost any job more efficiently than anyone else could do it. Even so, Gates does not attempt even remotely to do all such jobs. Rather he concentrates on the one job in which his productive superiority is greatest. Although he might do the work of his vice presidents better and more efficiently than they, not to mention the work of his secretary and even that of the janitors at Microsoft, he does not do any of these jobs. It pays him to leave such jobs to others, because it frees his time to concentrate on his area of greatest advantage, which is running Microsoft. Indeed, Gates is actually outcompeted by these less capable people for the jobs that they succeed in doing. He is outcompeted even by his janitors--for the job of janitor. For example, the fact that he might be able to sweep a floor in half the time of any of his janitors, counts as nothing alongside the fact that running Microsoft enables him to earn an income that is many thousands of times greater than that of a janitor. In effect, a janitor is capable of accomplishing half the work in a given period of time, but at a cost that is thousands of times less than what Gates would have to ask in order to earn as much as he does in running Microsoft. Even though it takes the janitor twice as long to do the same job as it would take Gates to do it, he does it for vastly less money, and thus easily outcompetes Gates, and everyone else between himself and Gates, for the job of janitor. Going still further, because Gates and numerous other productive geniuses are able to concentrate on the continuous improvement of production, it becomes possible for the janitors of the world to own such things as computers and automobiles, and practically all the other goods that make up a modern standard of living, including, of course, a growing abundance of food, clothing, and housing. As von Mises showed, economic competition, so far from being in conflict with social cooperation, is precisely the mechanism that organizes the system of social cooperation. It organizes the social division of labor, which is the essence and core of social cooperation, by selecting the right individuals for the right jobs, in accordance with the principle of comparative advantage. At the same time, it determines to what extent which products will serve which markets, and to what extent which methods of production are used in the production of the various products. The only element of "survival of the fittest" that is present is survival of the best products and best methods of production, for the sake of the survival and well-being of all human beings. Whoever claims that economic competition represents "survival of the fittest" in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economic science. Economic Inequality and the Redistribution of Wealth Such lack of knowledge, unfortunately, is equally manifest in Soros's views on economic inequality and the allegedly resulting need for the redistribution of wealth. On this subject, he writes: "Wealth does accumulate in the hands of its owners, and if there is no mechanism for redistribution, the inequities can become intolerable. `Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.' Francis Bacon was a profound economist." Whoever holds such views is unaware of the fact that in a division-of-labor, capitalist society, privately owned wealth in the form of capital, works to the benefit of all--the nonowners as well as the owners. For example, the physical beneficiaries of the automobile factories are not the owners of those factories but the buyers of the cars. Indeed, this principle applies to all privately owned means of production that serve the market--e.g., to stores and warehouses, farms and mines, as well as to factories. The physical beneficiaries are the buyers of the products, who need not own so much as a single share of stock in the firms that produce the goods they buy. Indeed, the extent to which consumers' goods are purchased by the owners and creditors of business firms, such as stockholders and bondholders, out of profits, interest, and dividends, is quite small relative to the proportion that is purchased out of wages and salaries--on the order of about ten percent of total consumption. Closely related to this benefit to the buyers of the products is the benefit of privately owned capital to the sellers of labor. The capital of the automobile companies, and of all other business firms, is the foundation of the demand for labor. The greater is that capital, the greater is the demand for labor and thus wage rates. Thus there is a twofold benefit that nonowners of the means of production obtain from the capital owned by others: namely, such capital is the source both of the supply of the products that they buy and of the demand for the labor that they sell. Soros and the other redistributors are apparently thinking of privately owned means of production as though they were consumers' goods or as though they existed outside of the context of a division-of-labor society. Only if all wealth were of the character of such consumers' goods as a giant bowl of spaghetti, say, or if the means of production were not used to produce for the market, but only for the personal consumption of their owners and their families, would wealth be of no use to others "except as it be spread." In the context of a division-of-labor, capitalist society the overwhelmingly greater part of the wealth of the capitalists is in the form of means of production that serve the market. Redistributing such wealth would only serve to cause the consumption of capital and to prevent its further accumulation. These results would be profoundly against the interests of everyone, including the great mass of nonowners of the means of production. For practical purposes, I can view myself as a nonowner of means of production, in that practically all of my consumption is supported out of a salary that I earn, rather than out of profits, dividends, or interest. Despite my being a nonowner of the means of production I would lose very substantially if, for example, the government were to attempt to make me an owner of the means of production by nationalizing them and declaring every citizen thereafter to be an equal owner. Even apart from the utter economic chaos that would result from the loss of the price system that would be entailed, the effect would be that instead of having the benefit of profit-and-loss incentives and the freedoms of competition and individual initiative operating on my behalf in the activities of my suppliers, I would henceforth have only disinterested government monopolists and bureaucrats as my suppliers. I would also lose if the government were to increase the taxes it levies on business firms--or on wealthy individuals who heavily save and invest in business firms--and distribute the proceeds to the average citizen. If, for example, the government were to raise taxes on corporate profits, or on personal incomes that would otherwise be heavily saved and invested, by, say, $100 billion a year and then distribute $1,000 a year to me and to each of 99,999,999 other nonowners of the means of production, I would lose substantially. True enough, I would gain something from the $1,000 I personally received. But I would gain virtually nothing from the $1,000 received by each of all of the other nonowners of the means of production--i.e., from the $99,999,999,000 that they collectively received. For they, like me, would almost certainly consume practically all of what they received. At the same time, I would lose greatly by the withdrawal of $100 billion from the production of the goods I buy and from the support of the demand for the labor I sell. The withdrawal of these funds would reduce the demand both for labor and for capital goods. In reducing the demand for labor, it would cause wage rates to be less or unemployment to be greater. In reducing the demand for capital goods, while the expenditure of the recipients of the money raised the demand for consumers' goods, it would cause the demand for capital goods relative to the demand for consumers' goods to fall and thus reduce the production of capital goods relative to that of consumers' goods. This would reduce the rate at which the economic system would be able to accumulate capital goods. The further result would be a reduction in the rate at which the productivity of labor and thus real wages could be increased, for these vitally depend on the supply of capital goods per worker. These results would be reinforced by the reduction in the incentives to improve production that such taxation entails. If carried far enough, the process of redistribution results in economic stagnation and economic retrogression. It is tantamount to eating the seed corn. So much for Soros's argument for the need for redistribution to address the allegedly intolerable situation of rich owners of means of production having too much wealth invested in the production of goods that are sold overwhelmingly to nonowners of the means of production and in supporting the demand for the labor that the nonowners of the means of production sell. Advertising and the Alleged Corruption of Values by Money Soros declares that "Advertising, marketing, even packaging, aim at shaping people's preferences rather than, as laissez-faire theory holds, merely responding to them. Unsure of what they stand for, people increasingly rely on money as the criterion of value. What is more expensive is considered better. The value of a work of art can be judged by the price it fetches. People deserve respect and admiration because they are rich. What used to be a medium of exchange has usurped the place of fundamental values, reversing the relationship postulated by economic theory." Soros's statement about advertising, however widely accepted it may be, is fundamentally mistaken. True enough, the advertiser wants to induce people to buy the advertised product. But successful advertising usually requires that when the customer does buy the product, the product is such that the customer will like it, will buy it again, and will recommend it to others. Advertising of such products is almost certain to be economically worthwhile. On the other hand, advertising products that people do not like after they buy them, which they won't buy again, and which they will tell others not to buy, is almost certain to be an economic failure. In other words, the key to successful advertising is to be able to offer and advertise products that effectively meet the customer's actual needs and wants. Soros is certainly right about many people being unsure of what they stand for. How could they be sure of anything in the face of a constant cultural drumbeat that proclaims precisely Soros's own apparent leading principle of fallibility and thus of self-doubt? Nevertheless, however true this may be today in connection with matters such as philosophical and moral principles, it is still the case that in the area of personal material satisfactions, people almost always know very well what it is that they like and what it is that they do not like. No amount of advertising on behalf of the culinary virtues of steamed vegetables could succeed in making very many people prefer their taste to that of chocolate bars or ice cream. No amount of advertising on behalf of candles and lanterns could succeed in inducing many people to give up the use of electric light. No amount of advertising on behalf of horses or bicycles could succeed in convincing many people to give up their automobiles. Understandably, people do and should attach an important measure of respect and admiration to those who are rich. To the extent that people become rich by means of production and exchange, they accomplish genuine good on a large scale, good both for themselves and for those with whom they deal. To be sure, there can be cases in which esteem for financial success may be carried to excess and lead one to overlook otherwise glaring deficiencies. The great wealth of Mr. Soros, for example, may lead people to apply a more lenient standard than usual to the opinions he expresses about matters such as economic theory and political philosophy. Financial Crises Soros writes: "History has shown that financial markets do break down, causing economic depression and social unrest. The breakdowns have led to the evolution of central banking and other forms of regulation. Laissez-faire ideologues like to argue that the breakdowns were caused by faulty regulations, not by unstable markets. There is some validity in their argument, because if our understanding is inherently imperfect, regulations are bound to be defective. But their argument rings hollow, because it fails to explain why the regulations were imposed in the first place. It sidesteps the issue by using a different argument, which goes like this: since regulations are faulty, unregulated markets are perfect." In this passage, Soros argues that depressions and mass unemployment are the result of laissez-faire capitalism and that it is in response to this fact that government intervention in money and banking has taken place. He appears to believe that originally there was laissez-faire capitalism, but, nevertheless, depressions occurred, which necessitated government intervention. The same alleged sequence of events is present in many of the arguments commonly made against capitalism: For example, there is poverty; thus the government must intervene. People cannot afford their rent; the government must impose rent controls. Wages are low and hours are long; the government must enact labor and social legislation and encourage labor unions. And so on and on. Strangely, it does not seem to occur to Soros, who has stressed the influence of people's ideas on the social reality in which they live, that the actual basis of government intervention is never the facts themselves but always the ideas that people hold about the causes of their problems and their belief that the government has the ability to solve them. The fundamental reason that the advocates of laissez-faire capitalism oppose government intervention in money and banking, and everywhere else, is their basic conviction that the individual's pursuit of his material self-interest under freedom is the one and only way that people can actually achieve their self-interests. Each individual is motivated to achieve his self-interest, and, if he thinks about the means, can actually succeed in doing so, provided that he is free to do so, that is, is free of the initiation of physical force by others, including, above all, by the government. At the same time, precisely because freedom means the absence of the initiation of physical force, the pursuit of self-interest by any individual means that insofar as he is to obtain the cooperation of others, whether as workers or suppliers, or as customers, he must simultaneously serve their self-interests. For he too is precluded from using force, and thus can obtain their cooperation only by voluntary means, which requires that he make their cooperation with him beneficial to them, indeed, more beneficial than any alternative they may have available for the sale of their labor or goods or for the expenditure of their money. The violation of freedom, on the other hand, prevents the individual from accomplishing the good he would otherwise have accomplished both for himself and for others. The result is that to the extent that freedom is violated, the achievement of good is prevented. It is precisely for these reasons that the freest societies are the most prosperous ones, and that unfree societies are, or are in process of becoming, poor societies. Consistent with the above foundation of basic principle, the advocates of laissez-faire capitalism argue that depressions are not the result of anything inherent in the economic system. They are the result of credit expansion, that is, the manufacture of new and additional money out of thin air and its injection into the market in the form of new and additional loans. This process leads businessmen to become financially illiquid, as they come to substitute the prospect of borrowing easily and profitably for the holding of actual cash balances, and as they further run down cash balances in the conviction that rising sales revenues, generated by the new and additional money, will enable them easily and profitably to turn inventories into cash as and when they made need it. Whenever the process of credit expansion comes to an end, substantially slows, or, indeed, fails to accelerate as rapidly as the market may have assumed it would, a "credit crunch" and liquidity crisis break out. This constitutes the onset of the depression. In the depression, banks that have created substantial quantities of new and additional money in the granting of loans, find that the value of those loans becomes less than the money that they have created. When their customers find out, bank runs begin and much of such money is simply wiped out. Historically, credit expansion is a practice that originated with private banks that accepted money in exchange either for paper banknotes that they issued or for checking deposits that they created. To the extent that the banks then used the money thus turned over to them, to lend out, or to support the issuance of further banknotes or the creation of further checking deposits which were loaned out, they engaged in a process of money creation and credit expansion. For the bank notes and checking deposits that they had issued in exchange for that money, could be spent as the full equivalent of that money. As a result, making it possible to spend both the equivalent of that money and the money itself, or the original equivalent plus still further equivalents, represented an increase in the quantity of money. Advocates of laissez-faire capitalism hold that credit expansion would long ago have been reduced to insignificance if not protected and fostered by a centuries-old policy of government intervention in money and banking. This intervention has included such measures as restrictions on competition among banks, thereby preventing the growth of better managed, more conservative banks; allowing insolvent banks to suspend payments, thereby enabling them to escape the consequences of their actions and thus perpetuating and encouraging the practice of credit expansion; using periodic bank examinations to create the illusion of financial soundness on the part of banks practicing credit expansion, thus promoting public confidence in such banks and thereby enabling them to remain in existence. More recently, government intervention has taken the form of the provision of deposit insurance, and, above all, the establishment of central banking and the use of the central bank again and again to maintain and promote credit expansion through the provision of additional monetary reserves to the banks. Indeed, the promotion of credit expansion has been a leading policy of almost all governments ever since they learned of the practice. Thus government intervention is what has been responsible for the perpetuation of financial crises and for the continuing potential of such crises to occur in the future. To the extent that the recurrence of major financial crises has been avoided in the present era, it has been at the price of continuous inflation of the money supply, which has been made possible only by placing the government in a position in which it stands outside the economic system and above the citizenry, with the power to create its own money. This situation is what has led to the delusion that the government financially supports the people and is capable both of showering free benefits upon them and, at the same time, making them all prosperous by means of increasing the amount of money that everyone can earn. The problem of financial crises confirms the fact that what is necessary is precisely laissez-faire capitalism, not any form of "mixed economy." Attempting to address the problem of financial crises through government intervention is what has led to the government's having the awesome powers, monetary, financial, and otherwise, that it presently possesses. The government's ability to create money out of thin air and to support an inflationist banking system, is what has led to the tremendous growth in its size and power. For this is what has allowed the government to appear in the guise of Santa Claus. Laissez Faire and the Future Soros describes the power and influence of the laissez-faire ideology in a way that, at first at least, seems extremely puzzling. He depicts it as a presently existing, major cultural force. For example, he writes, "Insofar as there is a dominant belief in our society today, it is a belief in the magic of the marketplace. The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest." The truth, of course, is that few ideas have less influence in today's society than that of laissez-faire capitalism. Its lack of influence is obvious when one considers such leading facts as these: There are currently over 19 million government employees in the United States, enforcing over forty thousand pages of federal regulations, tens of thousand of pages of state and local government regulations, and countless volumes of federal, state, and local statutes, with the number of laws and regulations growing by thousands of pages annually. Recent [2004] data show that total government spending in the United States, including transfer payments under programs such as social security and medicare, amounts to $3.7 trillion out of total incomes of $9.3 trillion, i.e., about 40 percent. A successful individual is subject, directly and indirectly, to combined federal and state corporate and personal income taxes at a total, cumulative rate of approximately 70 percent. On top of all this, the extent of the fall in the long-term future purchasing power of all contracts denominated in a fixed number of dollars, and thus of the possible future impoverishment of tens of millions of citizens, is anybody's guess, given the government's power to increase the quantity of money without any fixed, externally imposed limit. Such facts, of course, stand in the most forceful, direct contradiction of any actually existing, present influence of the laissez-faire ideology. The only way that I can understand Soros's belief in the influence of the laissez-faire ideology is by assuming that he is focused on its potential future influence much more than on its present, actual influence. This would be consistent with his record of success as a speculator. An essential requirement of such success is becoming aware sooner than almost anyone else of essential facts indicating the course of future events. I believe that the essential facts that he is concerned with in this instance are not only that "communism and even socialism have been thoroughly discredited," but also that, as a result, laissez-faire capitalism is now the logical alternative and is thus the wave of the future. The prospect frightens him, and his article is an effort to prevent it from coming to pass, by means of finding another alternative. What Soros has realized, I believe, is that, given the profound failure of socialism, caused by its fatally flawed nature, and the growing recognition that the problems experienced in basically capitalistic societies are the result of the socialistic elements that have been grafted onto them, people should now, in all reason, be turning to the consideration of laissez-faire capitalism. For it is the logically consistent opposite of the system they know to have failed, and the logically consistent positive application of the system they now know to have been successful--capitalism. Contrary to Soros's intention, the inference that laissez-faire capitalism is the wave of the future is significantly reinforced by his essay and by the favorable reception it has received among the enemies of laissez-faire capitalism. This is because what his essay and its favorable reception reveal is that the opponents of laissez-faire capitalism have nothing of substance to say in support of their opposition. I have certainly proved this in the case of Soros's essay itself. It is seriously confused and devoid of effective argument. That despite this, it is popular, implies that the admirers of Soros's essay have no more knowledge concerning the actual nature of laissez-faire capitalism than he does. They know so little, that they believe his arguments actually have merit. In addition, they take the fact that Soros is a highly successful capitalist to mean that he speaks with the authority of one who knows the system from the inside, so to speak. Thus, if his appraisal of laissez-faire capitalism agrees with their appraisal, then, they believe, they must surely be right in their appraisal, for he must surely know what is wrong with laissez-faire capitalism. Unfortunately for them, he doesn't know. What all this implies is that when and if a sufficient number of intelligent people choose to gain actual knowledge of laissez-faire capitalism, there will be nothing to resist its advance--certainly not the arguments of Mr. Soros and those who believe in them. Choosing to gain knowledge is, of course, a very big "if." People, even the most intelligent people, can choose not to think and not to make the effort required to gain knowledge. Indeed, such a negative choice is encouraged by the epistemological doctrine that Mr. Soros champions, namely, that our primary intellectual attribute is that we are fallible and thus incapable of ever arriving at reliable knowledge in the first place. Nevertheless, if even Mr. Soros, and those who agree with his essay, were to make a serious effort to learn about laissez-faire capitalism, by reading and studying the books of its leading advocates, they might find that they should welcome rather than fear its establishment, and that they should join in the work of helping to establish a society of laissez-faire capitalism.

Xiin said: That it is not mutable now is indeed the point! That is the distinction between science and the revealed knowledge! The point calypso is making is simple, the quran is not mutable because it is known and accepted as it is, and so does the law of gravity, or in his exact words You can say that once science finds the truth, then science is never wrong about that truth again. Calypso said: The Bible actually represent two instances in which Divine Revelation was altered by people. That's two instances too many. Actually much more..... how do you determine the legitimacy of a particular example of divine revelation? You cannot I would like to see who does, who does attempt uses his own particular scripture to supporrt his argument, presenting conjecture in place of fact and raising the spectre of eternal damnation to who ever sees the diffrence, it is old and it is the usuall a separate topic should be started just to see what will happen Xiin said: That extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence is a reasonable benchmark. But what you consider evidence may not be the evidence I have ev·i·dence (ĕv'ĭ-dəns) n. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment: The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weigh the evidence for and against a hypothesis. Something indicative; an outward sign: evidence of grief on a mourner's face. Law. The documentary or oral statements and the material objects admissible as testimony in a court of law. tr.v., -denced, -denc·ing, -denc·es. To indicate clearly; exemplify or prove. To support by testimony; attest. idiom: in evidence Plainly visible; to be seen: It was early, and few pedestrians were in evidence on the city streets. Law. As legal evidence: submitted the photograph in evidence. [Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin ēvidentia, from Latin ēvidēns, ēvident-, obvious. See evident.] Any of the above will be most usefull How one would determine what the correct path is? I don’t really know. Strive and aim to find the truth, saaxiib, and with Allahs help you will(IA). What sort of individual are you who awaits guidance from a figment of collective hysteria, why not ask for callypso to use that which he is obviously over-endowed personaly or as a member of the human race which is reason, the same reason that allows us to debate on the creation of men that is the net rather than marvelling at fire. With reasons help maybe we will.

Calypso said: You think the burden of proof for a claim is on the skeptic? Well, there's a little green man living in my refrigerator. He eats all the moldy cheese and ocasionally turns my eggs into pots of gold. Or that there is an invisible dragon in your garage that breathes heatless fire.......

What a book...you should try it sometimes

He insists she and he both aren't anarchist, but her works point she is, in fact, bordering being one. Really is that so, thats an intreasting statement to be throwing around with out substantiating it! 4 MAIN POINTS OF OBJECTIVISM Reality exists as an objective absolute —facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality , his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life. The ideal political-economic system is capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. Tell me where the above borders on anarchisim? really do you see no daylight between liberterianism and minarchism?

burden of proof is on the believer in the existence of God, and not the denier who’s equally resolved in believing in God, not in His presence, but ironically in His absence. That is a patent absurdity indeed. hahahaha So have we reached an understanding or does disscusion hurt people's reason d'etre.

Well using the yardstick of islamic thought which is what i think you are expecting from calypso and me, I would think that both are on the same level the atheist through faith or knowledge beleives theres is no god where as the agnostic says that the use of logic cannot ascertain to him either way, which is to say he does not beilieve through knowldge and cannot through faith. In the end you can rest assured they are all going to burn in hell.

Khayr why dont you contribute the book that does it for you. I just finished a project on tuesday about objective reasoning and am not really in the mood.... but your up... But yes why does it amuse you that I find the book so intreasting? If I had meant to pull peoples legs i would have posted in the jokes section yes?

This thread is not about which is your favourite book, but rather the book that seemed was written just for you, maybe it was your situation or maybe it expressed something that intanjible that you always felt, at some moment you read it and felt like you could mouth the next words....... you get me no I like animal farm because I always thought that pigs were evil, as much as that is intreasting it is not enlightening. For me the book [suprise, suprise] was the fountain head by Ayn rand, at the age of 16 my life was set before me and I turned to my own destiny, through my own reasoning I understood that my purpose, was my existence, I had not been wrong my ego was not my enemy, i did not need to bury it, under neurosis or faith, but allowed my reason to guide me, it has never failed me and at my age I feel content...... And you?

why is it not all? If a man or a woman cannot support a child to the minimum of financial security, what right have they to bring an individual into this world? I read in the economist recently of the suprising results of a survey, in this survey the reaserchers showed that the correlation between the abortion rate in high crime areas led to an almost porpotionate decrease in crime rates rather than any increase in policing. The long and short of it economically deprived people having abortion guaranteed less ill provided for young offenders. What other argument is there?

I have no time so I will just make a statement and hope we can discuss it more openly i would like to learn more about the arguments: Abortion is a question of who can afford to raise up a child to be a responsible member of society Give me time and i will expand until then please jump in

The idea that the big bang theory allows us to infer that the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago has attracted the attention of many theists. This theory seemed to confirm or at least lend support to the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Indeed, the suggestion of a divine creation seemed so compelling that the notion that 'God created the big bang' has taken a hold on popular consciousness and become a staple in the theistic component of 'educated common sense'. By contrast, the response of atheists and agnostics to this development has been comparatively lame. Whereas the theistic interpretation of the big bang has received both popular endorsement and serious philosophical defence (most notably by William Lane Craig and John Leslie1), the nontheistic interpretation remains largely undeveloped and unpromulgated. The task of this article is to fill this lacuna and develop a nontheistic interpretation of the big bang. I shall argue that the nontheistic interpretation is not merely an alternative candidate to the theistic interpretation, but is better justified than the theistic interpretation. In fact, I will argue for the strong claim that big bang cosmology is actually inconsistent with theism. The cosmological theory that has been endowed with the theistic interpretation is the classic big bang theory (also known as 'the standard hot big bang theory'), which is based on the Friedmann models with their prediction of an original big bang singularity. In this paper I shall also work with this theory, as supplemented (as is now standard practice) with the singularity theorems and Hawking's principle of ignorance. But we must be careful about how we view the significance of this classical theory. We cannot say that it is 'the final truth' about the universe, since it is thought by many cosmologists that this classical theory will one day be replaced by a quantum cosmology that is based on a fully developed quantum theory of gravity. Accordingly, my argument in this paper cannot be 'If the classical big bang theory is true, God does not exist; the classical theory is true, therefore God does not exist'. Rather, my argument is simply that the existence of God is inconsistent with the classical big bang theory. I aim to produce a valid argument for God's nonexistence, not a sound one. There is also a second reason why the classical big bang theory cannot be viewed as the definitive theory of the universe. There are many other competing theories of the universe currently being considered, and some of these have at least as good a claim as the classical theory to be regarded as 'the best currently available theory' end 'the theory we should provisionally accept until the complete quantum cosmology is developed'. These competitors2 include (a) Guth's original inflationary theory, (b) Linde's, Albrecht's and Steinhardt's new inflationary theory, © Linde's theory of chaotic inflation, (d) Tryon's, Gott's and others' theories that there are many universes (one of which is ours) that emerged as 'vacuum fluctuations' from a background empty space, (e) Hartle's and Hawking's theory that the universe's wave function is a function of three dimensional spatial geometries but not of a fourth temporal dimension, (f) Everett's theory of branching universes, and many other theories of current interest. In order to keep this paper within manageable limits, I shall not consider these competing theories but shall confine myself to the classical big bang theory. This confinement is consistent with my limited aim of counteracting the theistic interpretation of this classical theory. In section II, I set forth, in a relatively nontechnical manner, the pertinent cosmological concepts. In section III, I offer an argument that these concepts are inconsistent with theism. In section IV-VII, I state and respond to some objections to this argument. II. The Big Bang Cosmological Theory The big bang theory is largely based on Friedmann's solutions to the so-called 'Einstein equation' that lies at the heart of the General Theory of Relativity. The details may be found in many textbooks and need only be mentioned in passing3 The ideas I wish to emphasise are the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems and especially Hawking's principle of ignorance. The singularity theorems are needed to show that the universe in fact began to exist in a big bang, for this conclusion cannot be derived from Friedmann's solutions and observation statements alone. Friedmann's solutions show that if the universe is perfectly homogeneous (matter is perfectly evenly distributed) and expanding, then the universe must have expanded from an initial state in the past when its radius was zero and the density of matter, temperature and curvature of the universe were all infinite. This initial state was a singularity, which implies that it was a beginning-point to spacetime; there is no earlier time than the instant of the singularity since the instant of the singularity is (by definition4) the first instant of time. The singularity exists for an instant and then explodes in the big bang, at which time the universe acquires a non-zero radius and a finite temperature, matter density and curvature. Now Friedmann's prediction of a big bang singularity required, as I emphasized, the assumption of a perfectly homogeneous universe. Since our universe is not perfectly homogeneous, the prediction of a singularity in our past seems unwarranted and the reasonable assumption seems to be that our universe began expanding after a prior phase of contraction. This assumption was adopted by many cosmologists until the mid and late 1960s, when Hawking and Penrose developed their singularity theorems, which were put forth as demonstrating that our universe even if imperfectly homogeneous began from a singularity. The theorems state that a big bang singularity is inevitable given the following five conditions, all of which were argued to hold true of the universe: 1. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity holds true of the universe. 2. There are no closed timelike curves (i.e. time travel into one's past is impossible and the principle of causality is not violated). 3. Gravity is always attractive.5 4. The spacetime manifold is not too highly symmetric; i.e., every spacetime path of a particle or light ray encounters some matter or randomly oriented curvature.6 5. There is some point p such that all the past directed (or future directed) spacetime paths from p start converging again. This condition implies that there is enough matter present in the universe to focus every past directed (or future directed) spacetime path from some point p. The solutions for the Hawking-Penrose theorems in the general case show that there is a singularity that intersects every past-directed spacetime path and constitutes the beginning of time. Thus these solutions demonstrate, in Hawking's words, that even for imperfectly homogeneous universes 'general relativity predicts a beginning of time'.7 The singularity theorems are the pan of big bang cosmology that support the claim that there is a big bang singularity. But the part of big bang cosmology that shall be crucial to my atheistic argument is the conception of the nature of this singularity This conception is embodied in Hawking's principle of ignorance, which states that singularities are inherently chaotic and unpredictable. In Hawking's words, A singularity is a place where the classical concepts of space and time break down as do all the known laws of physics because they are all formulated on a classical space-time background. In this paper it is claimed that this breakdown is not merely a result of our ignorance of the correct theory but that it represents a fundamental limitation to our ability to predict the future, a limitation that is analogous but additional to the limitation imposed by the normal quantum-mechanical uncertainty principle.8 One of the quantum-mechanical uncertainty relations is (delta p)*(delta q) >= h/(4*pi), which implies that if the position q of a particle is definitely predictable then the momentum p of the particle is not, and vice versa. The principle of ignorance implies that one can definitely predict neither the position nor the momentum of any particle emitted from a singularity.9 All possible values of the particle's position and momentum that are compatible with the limited information (if any) available about the interaction region are equally probable. But the principle of ignorance has further consequences. It implies that none of the physical values of the emitted particles are definitely predictable. The big bang singularity 'would thus emit all configurations of particles with equal probability'.10 If the singularity's emissions are completely unpredictable, then we should expect a totally chaotic outpouring from it. This expectation is consistent with big bang cosmologists' understanding of the early universe, for the early universe is thought to be in a state of maximal chaos (complete entropy). Particles were emitted in random microstates, which resulted in an overall macrostate of thermal equilibrium.11 It is important to understand the full significance of the principle of ignorance. If the big bang singularity behaves in a completely unpredictable manner, then no physical laws govern its behaviour. There is no law to place restrictions on what it can emit. As Paul Davies aptly comments, 'anything can come out of a naked singularity�in the case of the big bang the universe came out. Its creation represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden, abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing.'12 Here 'nothing' should be understood metaphorically as referring to something not a part of the four-dimensional spacetime continuum; the singularity is not a part of this continuum since it occupies less than three spatial dimensions. But Davies is literally correct in implying that the singularity entails an instantaneous state of lawlessness. The singularity exists for an instant and during this instant no physical law obtains that could connect the singularity to later instants. Given the initial conditions of the singularity, nothing can be predicted about the future state of the universe. Each possible configuration of particles has the same probability of being emitted by the singularity. (If there are uncountably infinite possible configurations, then we must speak instead of the probability density of each possible configuration and assign probabilities to each of the countable number of intervals of possible configurations, given an appropriate partition.) At any instant arbitrarily close to the instant at which the singularity exists, physical laws do obtain and they govern the particles actually emitted from the singularity. This means that for any physical configuration C that occupies an instant arbitrarily close to the instant occupied by the singularity from which C was emitted, there obtain laws connecting C to the configurations occupying later instants but there obtains no law connecting C to the earlier singularity. C adopts a lawful evolution but has its ultimate origin in primordial lawlessness. III. The Atheistic Argument I shall use the aspects of big bang cosmology explicated in the last section as the scientific premises of my atheistic argument. In this section I will add two theological premises and deduce the statement that God does not exist. Following the construction of this argument, I will state and respond to several objections to it (sections IV-VII). The real force of the argument will not become apparent until the responses to these objections are given. The two theological premises I need are (1) If God exists and there is an earliest state E of the universe, then God created E, (2) If God created E, then E is ensured to either contain animate creatures or lead to a subsequent state of the universe that contains animate creatures. Premise (2) is entailed by two more basic theological premises, viz., (3) God is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly benevolent. (4) An animate universe is better than an inanimate universe. Given (4), if God created a universe that was not ensured to be animate, then he would have created a universe not ensured to be of the better sort and thereby would be limited in his benevolence, power or wisdom. But this contradicts (3). Therefore, (2) is true. Some of the scientific ideas articulated in the last section, mainly the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems, provide us with the summary premise (5) There is an earliest state of the universe and it is the big bang singularity. (5) requires a terminological clarification regarding 'the universe'. By this phrase I mean the 4D spacetime continuum and any n-dimensional physical state that is earlier or later than the 4D continuum. Since the universe has a zero radius at the singularity, it is not then 4D, but since the singularity is a physical state earlier than the 4D continuum it can be considered to be the first state of the universe (this is discussed further in section VI). The scientific ideas also give us the premise (6) The earliest state of the universe is inanimate since the singularity involves the life-hostile conditions of infinite temperature, infinite curvature and infinite density. Another scientific idea enunciated in the last section, the principle of ignorance, gives us the summary premise (7) The big bang singularity is inherently unpredictable and lawless and consequently there is no guarantee that it will emit a maximal configuration of particles that will evolve into an animate state of the universe. (A maximal configuration of particulars is a complete state of the universe, the universe as a whole at one time.) (5) and (7) entail (8) The earliest state of the universe is not ensured to lead to an animate state of the universe. We now come to the crux of our argument. Given (2), (6) and (8), we can infer that God could not have created the earliest state of the universe. It then follows, by (1), that God does not exist. I will now state and respond to four objections to this atheistic argument. IV. The First Objection: Animate Universes Are Not Required by God This objection is based on the principle that there is no universe that is the best of all possible universes. For each universe U1 there is a better universe U2. Consequently, the fact that there is some universe better than whatever universe is the actual one is not only compatible with divine creation but is entailed by it. Therefore, the objection goes, the fact that an animate universe is better than an inanimate one is compatible with God creating as the earliest state something that by chance leads to an inanimate universe. Premises (3) and (4) do not entail (2) and the atheistic argument therefore fails. In response, I note first that many theists claim that there is a best of all possible universes and that God ensures that the one he creates is the best one. My argument implies at least that these theologies are mistaken. But it also tells against theologies that entail there is no best possible universe. These theologies, if they are at all consistent with what is ordinarily meant by 'God' and what most philosophers and theologians mean by 'God', must impose some minimal constraint on the value of the universe God creates. I believe the overwhelming majority of theists explicitly or implicitly accept the minimal constraint that the universe contain living creatures. The idea that God has no more reason to create an animate universe than an inanimate one is inconsistent with the kind of person we normally conceive God to be. The God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is obviously a God who ensures that there be life in the universe he creates. This requirement conforms to the theism of Swinburne, Craig, Leslie, Plantinga, Adams, Morris, and all or virtually all other contemporary theists. Swinburne, for example, defines 'orderly universes' as the ones required by animate creatures and affirms that 'God has overriding reason to make an orderly universe if he makes a universe at all'.13 According to this standard conception of God, premises (3) and (4) come with the suppressed premise (4A) If God chooses to create a universe, he will choose to create an animate rather than an inanimate universe. Given (4A), (3) and (4) do entail (2) and the atheistic argument is valid. V. Second Objection: God Can Intervene to Ensure an Animate Universe The second objection is that the lawlessness of the big bang singularity is not logically incompatible with its being ensured by God to emit a life-producing maximal configuration of particles. For God could intervene at the instant of the singularity and supernaturally constrain the singularity to emit a life-producing configuration. I believe this objection is incompatible with the rationality of God. If God intends to create a universe that contains living beings at some stage in its history, then there is no reason for him to begin the universe with an inherently unpredictable singularity. Indeed, it is positively irrational. It is a sign of incompetent planning to create as the first natural state something that requires immediate supernatural intervention to ensure that it leads to the desired result. The rational thing to do is to create some state that by its own lawful nature leads to a life-producing universe. This response to the second objection can be developed in the context of a discussion of John Leslie's interpretation of big bang cosmology. Leslie points to data or figures (the 'anthropic coincidences') that suggest it is highly improbable that an animate universe would result from a big bang singularity.14 There are many possible maximal configurations of particles that might be emitted from the singularity and only an extremely small number of these, Leslie suggests, lead towards animate states. But Leslie argues that this improbability tells for rather than against the hypothesis of divine creation. (I should note that Leslie works with a 'Neoplatonic' conception of God15 but that makes no substantive difference to the validity of the arguments I shall examine.) He implies that if we suppose that God constrained the singularity's explosion to be directed away from the more probable alternatives of lifelessness and towards the very narrow range of alternatives that lead to life, then we can 'explain away' the apparent improbability of an animate universe evolving from the singularity. The alleged simplicity of this explanation, the distinctive value of life, and other relevant premises, are regarded as making this explanation a credible one. But this fails to take into account the above-mentioned problem regarding God's rationality and competence, which appears here in an aggravated form. It seems to me that Leslie's premise that it is highly improbable that the big bang singularity would (if left to evolve naturally) lead to an animate universe is inconsistent with the conclusion that God created the singularity. If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states. It does not agree with the idea of an efficient creation of an animate universe that life is brought about through the first state being created with a natural tendency towards lifelessness and through this tendency being counteracted and overridden by the very agency that endowed it with this tendency. The following two propositions appear to be logically incompatible: (1) God is a rational and competent creator and he intends to create an animate universe, (2) God creates as the first state of the universe a singularity whose natural tendency is towards lifelessness. The problem involved here is essentially a problem of divine interference in or 'correction of' the divine creations. Leslie is 'opposed'16 to the idea of 'divine interference' with natural processes and is unsympathetic to the idea that 'God occasionally intervenes [in the natural universe] with a helpful shove'17 so as to ensure that life evolves. Leslie states that the hypothesis of such intervention involves an unsimple theory and for this reason is to be dispreferred. But such intervention is precisely what is required by his own account of the evolution of the early universe. His account supposes that God not only interferes with the singularity's explosion but also interferes with the subsequent evolution of the maximal configuration of particles that was emitted from the singularity. For example, Leslie mentions the theory that the early universe underwent a number of 'spontaneous symmetry breaking phases' during the first 10-4second after the big bang singularity and that during these phases the four forces (gravitational, strong, weak and electromagnetic) became separated. In the GUT era (from 10-43second after the singularity to 10-35second) the gravitational force is separated from the strong-electroweak force. During the electroweak era (from 10-35second to 10-10second) the strong force is separated from the electroweak force. During the free quark era (from 10-10second to 10-4second) the electromagnetic force is separated from the weak force. Each of these separations is a breaking of a symmetry (the unification of two or more forces) and each symmetry is broken in a random way. This means, in effect, that the strengths of the four forces are determined in random ways at the time they become separated. This is significant, Leslie indicates, since only a small range of the values these forces may possess are consistent with a life-supporting universe. For example, if the actual value of the weak fine structure constant (aw~10-11) were slightly larger, supernovae would have been unable to eject the heavy materials that are necessary for organisms. If this value were slightly smaller, no hydrogen would have formed and consequently no stars and planets would have evolved. Similar considerations hold for the gravitational, electromagnetic and strong forces. Given this, Leslie continues, it is 'exceedingly improbable'18 that these symmetry breaking phases would have resulted in the very narrow range of values required by a life-supporting universe. This improbability could be eliminated if we supposed that these values were not selected by natural random processes but were 'selected by God'. But this requires divine interference on a grand scale in the evolution of the universe. God would have to intervene in his creation at the big bang singularity to ensure that it emitted a maximal configuration of particles capable of undergoing the symmetry breaking phases, then again during the GUT era to ensure that the separating gravitational force acquires the right value, and then once again during the electroweak era to ensure that the separating strong force acquires the right value, and then once more during the free quark era to ensure that the separating electromagnetic and weak forces acquire the right value. And these are only some of the interventions required (I have not even mentioned, for example, the interventions required to ensure that the elementary particles acquire the right masses). But why does Leslie think his theory avoids the implausibly complex theory of repeated divine interventions in natural processes? Because he stipulates that God's fixing of the values of the constants are not instances of such interventions. Interventions he defines as applying to less basic aspects of nature (such as creations of individual animal organisms).19 But this stipulation seems arbitrary and implausible. If God's interference with the singularity's emission of particles and with the several symmetry breaking phases are not examples of God interfering with natural states and processes, then I don't know what is. Leslie suggests that the notion of divine interference with the processes of nature is implausible because it is less simple than the idea that God lets nature evolve on its own. But it seems to me there is a more fundamental problem with this notion, at least as it applies to Leslie's scenario. This notion, in the context of Leslie's scenario, implies that the universe God created was so bungled that it needed his repeated intervention to steer it away from disaster and towards the desired life-producing states. God created a universe that time and again was probably headed towards the very opposite result than the one he wanted and only through interfering with its natural evolution could he ensure that it would lead to the result he desired. But this contradicts the principle that God is not a bungler ('a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright'). I should make explicit that the key idea in my argument is not that God is incompetent if he creates a universe whose laws he must violate if his intentions are to be realised, but that he is incompetent if he creates a universe requiring his intervention if his intentions are to be realised. A divine intervention in natural events is entailed by, but does not entail, a divine violation of natural laws, since God may intervene in an event (e.g. the explosion of the singularity) not governed by laws. Thus, the possible objection to my argument that 'if physical laws under-constrain the evolution of the universe, then God can constrain the universe to evolve into animate states without violating his physical laws' misses the point, that intervention, not violation, is the problem. However, if we assume Leslie's scenario, then we can say there are not only interventions but also violations, since in his scenario there are probabilistic laws governing the early evolution of the universe (which includes the symmetry breaking phases) and God suspends (violates) these laws to ensure that the improbable life-producing outcomes result. My conclusion is this. There are countless logically possible initial states of the universe that lead by a natural and lawlike evolution to animate states and if God had created the universe he would have selected one of these states. Given that the initial state posited by big bang cosmology is not one of these states, it follows that big bang cosmology is inconsistent with the hypothesis of divine creation.20 VI. Third Objection: The Singularity is a Theoretical Fiction The theist may attempt to avoid the difficulties of an unpredictable initial state and a divine intervention by supposing that the initial state of the universe is not an unpredictable singularity. The theist may continue to accept big bang cosmology except that she adopts rules for the interpretation of this theory that forbid reality to the singularity. These rules are based on a criterion of physical existence that the singularity fails to meet but which is met by the big bang explosion. These rules allow the theist to regard the big bang explosion, not the singularity, as the earliest state of the universe. (But now 'state' must be understood as a temporally extended state of a certain length rather than as an instantaneous one since the explosion is extended.) The big bang explosion is governed by physical laws and this explosion leads by a natural and lawful evolution to a state of the universe that contains animate creatures. The problem of God creating as the first state some totally unpredictable state is thereby avoided and the theist is able to ascribe a rational behaviour to God in creating as the first state something that naturally evolves into an animate universe. In dealing with this third objection I shall ignore the problem of the unpredictable symmetry breaking phases that Leslie introduces into his scenario and that would seem to vitiate the hypothesis that the big bang explosion predictably evolves into animate states. Although it is widely� but not universally�accepted today that such phases occur, these phases are not entailed by classical big bang cosmology and accordingly it is not appropriate to introduce them when criticising theistic interpretations of this cosmology that do not themselves introduce the phases. Thus, in responding to the third objection I will not argue that there remain unpredictabilities even if the singularity is omitted but will argue instead that there is no justification for rejecting the singularity with its unpredictability. Let me begin by noting that the description or definition of the big bang singularity as a mere idealisation does not belong to big bang cosmology itself and thus that if this view of the singularity is to be justified some strong and independent philosophical arguments will be needed. Big bang cosmology represents the singularity as a unique sort of reality, a physical singularity, but it is represented as real nonetheless. This is evinced by the fact that past-directed spacetime paths in the early universe are not modeled on half-open intervals that approach arbitrarily close to but never reach the ideal limit, but on closed intervals one of the endpoints of which is the singularity. In the words of Penrose, 'the essential feature of a past spacelike singularity [the big bang singularity] is that it supplies a past singular end-point to the otherwise past-endless timelike curve'.21 (A timelike curve is a spacetime path of a particle.) In the words of Geroch and Horowitz, converging past-directed spacetime paths are not commonly thought to merely approach with arbitrary closeness the same singular point but are thought to actually 'reach the same singular point',22 which requires the actual physical existence of the singular point. Furthermore, this point is thought by physicists to be earlier in time than the big bang explosion. Penrose articulates the common view that in the case of a finite universe 'we think of the initial singularity as a single point. . . [which] gives rise to an infinity of causally disconnected regions at the next instant',23 a conception that clearly entails the physical and temporal reality of the initial singularity. Given this realist representation of the singularity, the theists must have strong reasons indeed to support the interpretation of the singularity as a mere idealisation. They must establish some convincing criterion of physical existence and show that the singularity fails to meet this criterion. This has been attempted by William Lane Craig. Craig argues that no infinitely complex object can be real and the singularity cannot be real since it has infinite values, such as infinite density; 'there can be no object in the real world that possesses infinite density, for if it had any mass at all, it would not be infinitely dense'.24 Craig's arguments against infinite realities in his book are aimed at showing that no reality can be mapped onto a Cantorian transfinite set. I have elsewhere25 countered Craig's arguments but I would like to show here that even if his arguments were sound they would not count against the reality of the big bang singularity. When it is said that the big bang singularity has an infinite density, infinite temperature, and infinite curvature, it is not being said that the singularity has parts or properties that map onto a set with an aleph-zero or aleph-one cardinality. Rather, three things are implied and each of them is compatible with Craig's rejection of Cantorian realities: The theory that there is an infinite singularity implies, first of all, that at any instant arbitrarily close to the big bang singularity the density, temperature and curvature of the universe have arbitrarily high finite values. The values become higher and higher as we regress closer and closer to the singularity, such that for any arbitrarily high finite value there is an instant at which the density, temperature and curvature of the universe possess that value. The theory of the infinite singularity implies, secondly, that when the singularity is reached the values become infinite. But this does not mean that the density, temperature and curvature of the universe have values involving the numbers N0 or N1. Consider the phenomenon of density, which is the ratio of mass to unit volume (density=mass/volume). If the universe is finite and the big bang singularity a single point, then at the first instant the entire mass of the universe is compressed into a space with zero volume. The density of the point is n/0, where n is the extremely high but finite number of kilograms of mass in the universe. Since it is impermissible to divide by zero, the ratio of mass to unit volume has no meaningful and measurable value and in this sense is infinite. Although philosophers frequently misunderstand this use of the word 'infinite' by physicists, this usage has been clearly grasped by Milton Munitz in his recent discussion of the big bang theory. He notes that� the density of a homogeneous material is mass per unit volume�for example, grams per cubic centimeter. Given both a zero value and the conservation of the mass-energy of the universe [at the big bang singularity], no finite value can be given to the ratio of the latter to the former (it is forbidden to divide by zero). This is normally expressed by saying that the density becomes infinite. It would be more accurate to say the standard meaning of 'density' cannot be employed in this situation. The density cannot be assigned a finite measurable value, as is the case in all standard applications of the concept.26 The theory of the infinite singularity implies, thirdly, that the space of the singularity topologically transforms into the three dimensional space of the universe at the big bang explosion. It is a familiar notion in the mathematical discipline of topology that a space with a topology of a point can assume the topology of a finite 3D space. The topological transformation of the 0D space to the 3D space is precisely the big bang explosion. But I am not saying here that the 0D space is homeomorphic to the 3D space, where x is homeomorphic to y if there exists a continuous bijective map f of x onto y such that the inverse map f-1 is also continuous. Rather, I am saying that a space with the topology of a point assumes, at a subsequent time, the topology of a finite 3D space. Such topological transformations are possible but it is not possible, for instance, for a space with the topology of a point to assume, at a subsequent time, the topology of an infinite 3D space (where 'infinite' is used in the Cantorian sense). If our universe is infinite, then the big bang singularity must have consisted of an infinite number of points and must have been at least 1D, with each of the points 'topologically exploding' into a different finite 3D region. Paul Davies comments that if the universe is finite� one can really suppose that the entire universe began compressed into one point. On the other hand, if space is infinite, we have the mathematically delicate issue of conflicting infinities, because infinitely extended space becomes infinitely compressed at the beginning of the big bang. This means that any given finite volume of the present universe, however large one chooses it to be, was compressed to a single point at the beginning. Nevertheless, it would not be correct to say all the universe was at one place then, for there is no way that a space with the topology of a point can suddenly assume the topology of a space with infinite extent.27 It might be conceded that the notion that the singularity is real escapes Craig's criticism, since it is not 'infinite' in a Cantorian sense, but argued that the concept of the singularity is defective for other reasons. For example how can the entire mass of a finite universe be compressed into a point? The mass is 3D and the point is 0D, which involves a contradiction. But this is a misunderstanding. The mass as compressed into the point is not ordinary mass, 3D mass, but infinitely compressed mass, which means that it has lost its three dimensionality and assumed the dimensionality of the point it occupies. The assertion that at the instant of the singularity, n kilograms of mass is infinitely compressed in a zero volume, implies in part that (i) at this instant there exists no 3D mass, (ii) at this instant there exists only one 0D point, that (iii) this point subsequently assumes the typology of a 3D space, and that (iv) this subsequent 3D space is occupied by n kilograms of mass. Of course this singular point can assume the typology of a 3D space that contains any finite number of kilograms of mass�the actual number, n, is randomly 'selected' from the range of possibilities�and this is one of the reasons the singularity is wholly unpredictable. I believe, therefore, that there is no good reason for rejecting the reality of the big bang singularity and the attendant unpredictability. If Craig is to justify his claim that the assumption that it is real it is an illegitimate 'ontologising' of a mathematical construct, he must provide some reason to support this claim other than his arguments against Cantorian infinities. His recent and related claim that 'a physical state in which all spatial and temporal dimensions are zero is a mathematical idealisation whose ontological counterpart is nothing'28 is made with no effort to support it and should be rejected as an unjustified scepticism about a widely held scientific thesis. VII. Fourth Objection: Unpredictability Does not Entail There is no Divine Knowledge I have said the big bang singularity is unpredictable. It might be objected that the fact that we cannot predict what comes out of the singularity is consistent with God being able to predict what will emerge from it. God is omniscient, which implies he can know things that are unknowable by humans. But this objection is based on several questionable assumptions, one of which concerns the meaning of the word 'unpredictable' as it is used in the formulation of Hawking's principle of ignorance. What is meant is unpredictability in principle, which entails but is different from unpredictability by us. The qualifier 'in principle' is added to indicate that the unpredictability is due to the fact that no natural laws govern the state(s). If something is merely unpredictable by us, that is consistent with saying that it is governed by a natural law that is not knowable by humans. But if there is an 'in principle' unpredictability, then there is no natural law to be known, by God or any other knower. Since there is no natural law governing the singularity, God has no basis on which to compute what will emerge from the singularity. As Davies says, the instantaneous existence of the singularity and the subsequent explosion is an 'abrupt flash of lawlessness'. Some might claim that 'unpredictability in principle' as used in quantum mechanics (and thus in Hawking's theory, which is partly based on quantum mechanics) should be interpreted as meaning the same as 'unpredictability by us' since the most plausible interpretations of quantum mechanics (e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation) are anti-realist. But this claim, while perhaps justified on the old assumption that the Everett interpretation is the only realist one consistent with quantum mechanics, is not justified today, given that some plausible realist interpretations have been recently developed. such as, for example, Storrs McCall's 'branched model' interpretation.29 But this reference to a realist interpretation of the singularity's unpredictability does not do full justice to the objection that 'unpredictability does not entail there is no divine knowledge'. For the objector might claim that God can 'know in advance' the result of the singularity's explosion even if there is no law on the basis of which he can form a prediction. It might be said that just as God knows, logically prior to creation, the free decisions humans would make if they were in certain circumstances, so he knows, logically prior to creation, the way the singularity would explode if it were to be the first state of the universe. The theist may allege that in addition to the familiar sorts of counterfactuals, we may introduce a new sort, 'counterfactuals of singularities', one of which is the counterfactual (1) If a big bang singularity were to be the earliest state of the universe, this singularity would emit a life-producing configuration of particles. The theist may allege that (1) is true logically prior to creation and that God's pre-creation knowledge of (1) serves as his reason for his creation of a universe with a big bang singularity. But this argument is unsound, since the supposition that (1) is true logically prior to creation is inconsistent with the semantic properties of counterfactuals. As Jonathan Bennett and Wayne Davies have argued,30 counterfactuals are true iff the antecedent and consequent are both true in the possible world most similar to the actual world before the time specified in the antecedent. This entails that there are no possible conditions in which (1) is true, since the time specified in its antecedent is the earliest time. But the theist need not accept the Bennett-Davies theory of counterfactuals. He may accept one of the theories of Robert Stalnaker, Richmond Thomason and Frank Jackson,31 according to which a counterfactual is true iff its antecedent and consequent are both true in a possible world whose total history is most similar to that of the actual world. Or the theist may accept David Lewis's theory,32 that counterfactuals are true iff some world in which the antecedent and consequent are both true is more similar in its overall history to the actual world than any world in which the antecedent is true and the consequent false. But these theories of counterfactuals are of no avail since they one and all entail that a counterfactual is true only if there is an actual world that serves as a relatum of the similarity relation. According to the Bennett-Davies theories, the relatum is all the states of the actual world up to a certain time and according to the theories of Stalnaker, Lewis and others, the relatum is all the states of the actual world. Since (1) is supposed to be true logically prior to creation, its truth-conditions cannot include all the states (or all the states up to a time) of the actual world, which contradicts the truth-condition requirements of counterfactuals. But a theist familiar with the corpus of William Lane Craig might be able to come up with a response to this argument. Craig does not discuss 'counterfactuals of singularities' but he does discuss counterfactuals of freedom and some of his arguments may be borrowed by a defender of the truth of (1). In response to the objection that there is no actual world logically prior to creation in relation to which counterfactuals of freedom could be evaluated as true, Craig maintains that a part of our world is actual prior to creation, namely the part consisting of logically necessary states of affairs and counterfactual states of affairs concerning the free decisions of creatures. 'Since the relevant states of affairs are actual, one can hold to both the doctrine of divine middle knowledge [i.e. that God knows counterfactuals of freedom prior to creation] and the current explanation of what it means for a counterfactual to be true: in those possible worlds which are most similar to the actual world (insofar as it exists at [this logical] moment [prior to creation]) and in which the antecedent is true, the consequent is also true.'33 But this response in untenable, since the current explanation of counterfactuals is that their truth conditions include either all the states of the actual world or all the states of the actual world earlier than a certain time, and the counterfactuals that are allegedly objects of God's middle knowledge meet neither of these two requirements. They are supposed to be true logically prior to the creation of the earliest state and therefore cannot include in their truth conditions all the states of the actual world or all the states earlier than a certain time. Of course, the theist may reject the current explanation of counterfactuals. He may hold that counterfactuals of freedom (or of singularities) are true iff their antecedents and consequents are both true in the possible world most similar to the actual world insofar as the actual world exists at the moment logically prior to creation. This seems to be Craig's position, although he mistakenly claims it is consistent with 'the current explanation of what it means for a counterfactual to be true'. Now Craig holds, as we have seen, that at this logically prior moment there obtain all logically necessary states of affairs and all counterfactual states of affairs concerning free decisions of creatures. In response to the objection that counterfactuals of freedom cannot be true at this logically prior moment, since the actual world is not then actual, he claims that it is partly actual, since it includes in part the counterfactual states of affairs, i.e. the 'states of affairs corresponding to true counterfactuals concerning creaturely freedom.'34 But this argument is viciously circular. In order to demonstrate that counterfactuals of freedom are true logically prior to creation, it is assumed that counterfactuals of freedom are true logically prior to creation, i.e. that prior to creation there are 'states of affairs corresponding to true counterfactuals concerning creaturely freedom'. To avoid this vicious circle, we must allow only the premise that there obtain logically necessary states of affairs prior to creation. But this premise is insufficient to establish the desired conclusion, since these states of affairs cannot ground the relations of trans-world similarity required by logically contingent counterfactuals, the counterfactuals of freedom. It follows, then, that no sound argument can be constructed, in analogy to Craig's argument about counterfactuals of freedom, for the thesis that the 'counterfactual of singularity' (1) is true logically prior to creation. It is logically incoherent to suppose that (1) is true logically prior to creation and therefore the fact that God is omniscient does not entail that he knows, logically prior to creation, that the big bang singularity would evolve into an animate universe. VIII. Conclusion If the arguments in this post are sound, then God does not exist if big bang cosmology, or some relevantly similar theory, is true. If this cosmology is true, our universe exists without cause and without explanation.35 There are numerous possible universes, and there is possibly no universe at all, and there is no reason why this one is actual rather than some other one or none at all. Now the theistically inclined person might think this grounds for despair, in that the alleged human need for a reason for existence, and other alleged needs, are unsatisfied. But I suggest that humans do or can possess a deeper level of experience than such anthropocentric despairs. We can forget about ourselves for a moment and open ourselves up to the startling impingement of reality itself. We can let ourselves become profoundly astonished by the fact that this universe exists at all. It is arguably a truth of the 'metaphysics of feeling' that this fact is indeed 'stupefying' and is most fully appreciated in such experiences as the one evoked in the following passage:36

The point dont sulk off thank you for participating my two cents: OK, so if you found a watch lying in the desert, would you assume that it "spontaneously assembled" itself from the desert sand and rocks? Of course not! You would assume that it was made, or created, by a skilled watchmaker, and dropped there by him or someone else. The watch was clearly designed for a very specific purpose, by someone with great expertise, who knew exactly what he wanted ahead of time. Therefore, when we find something as perfectly designed as a living animal, it is utterly foolish to assume that it "spontaneously assembled itself" either. It had to be designed, in all its perfection, by some Great Designer. The mere existence of well-designed watches and animals is all the proof we should need that both were created by someone with infinitely more wisdom than the creations. Both, by their existence alone, imply the existence of a great designer or creator. Watches don't "just evolve," and neither do animals (or people); ergo, evolution is logically absurd (and, by extension, anyone who believes in it is an illogical ***** ). Anyway, that's sort of how the analogy usually goes. And it looks pretty good at first glance. I imagine a few evolution-minded folks have been taken aback by this one, the first time they heard it, not knowing quite how to answer it at the time. I'll also bet that some creationists see this as an irrefutable gem of logic that utterly destroys evolution and all its works. Hold on a minute, though. Since this argument is presented in the form of an analogy, let's hold the creationist to his own logic, and see if the analogy holds up. For an analogy to make any logical sense at all, the two things being compared have to have a LOT in common, not just one salient feature. For instance, when we're considering the functioning of a living thing (like a person), an analogy is often drawn with a complex machine of some sort (like a watch, but a car works even better). Both need fuel, both produce heat and waste products, both wear out eventually, both turn chemical energy into mechanical energy, both have many small but critical parts, etc. But the watch-in-the-desert analogy is not about how the things work.It's about where they came from --or really, how they came to be. And when you think about that, you come to some interesting conclusions. Remember, it's supposed to work this way: because a watch doesn't spontaneously assemble and has to have a maker who made it just the way it is, therefore an animal can't spontaneously assemble either, and it, too, must have a maker who made it just the way it presently is. Let's start with this: watches DIDN'T just appear in the world as they presently are! As a matter of very obvious fact, they evolved . The first timepieces were very primitive, clumsy, and inaccurate. They improved over the years. If we can refer to really old time-keeping devices as "fossils," then we can show a fossil sequence of the evolution of watches from some dim time in the past up to our present electronic wonders. Nowadays they evolve visibly from one year to the next. The watchmakers went through a whole, evolving series of clocks and watches before someone carelessly dropped one in that desert. So is this supposed to prove that the animal we find in the desert was made in its present form, with no significant changes over many generations? Am I missing something here? Remember, the debate is really about whether evolution occurs , not about whether there's a creator behind it. A watchmaker (mankind) slowly developed (evolved) the sequence of timepieces. Maybe a Watchmaker slowly developed (evolved) the sequence of living things--you'll get no argument about that here. But the evolution happened in both cases. The message of that lost watch is NOT "I sprang up in my present perfection, with no primitive ancestors before me." It's more like "I'm at the end of a long chain of slowly evolving ancestors, and my descendants will continue to change." Is finding a man-made watch in the desert supposed to somehow show that animals were created in their present forms by magic (or miracle) some few thousand years ago? What on Earth would lead us to that conclusion? The watch wasn't created by magic. In fact it was created by purely natural processes (as opposed to supernatural). If the creation of the watch really is analogous to the creation of living things, then what the analogy shows us is that the origin of both can be explained by natural processes. Supernatural intervention could have been responsible for either or both, but that explanation certainly isn't necessary for the watch. If we hold the creationist to the logic of his own analogy, then what the analogy "proves," if it proves anything, is that well-designed "creations" can be produced naturally, in small, incremental steps: no magic required, thank you very much. "But, but, but..." the creationist insists, "the point of the analogy is that things like watches and animals don't spontaneously assemble!" Well, that's half right, and here's where the analogy breaks down. Any analogy can only be stretched so far. The car stops being analogous to the human body when you start talking about thought or emotions. And watches stop being analogous to animals when you start talking about how the individual item is assembled. Watches, after all, never have little baby watches! An individual watch is, of course, always assembled by something outside itself (a human watchmaker, although nowadays it's more likely to be industrial robots). All the animals I've ever seen have assembled themselves , quite literally! They take in (usually) nonliving material from their environments, chemically process it, and turn it into parts of the living animal. In the case of mammals like us, the only parts of us that are directly made by someone else are the sperm and egg cells that unite and subdivide into our first few cells. After that, for the rest of our lives, we take in material from the outside, and assemble it ourselves into parts of us. Early on, that material is supplied by our mother, but she doesn't make us: she just supplies the raw material. We absorb it, manipulate it, build ourselves , and get rid of what we don't need. OK, I know, the point is the first animal. How could it get started? All presently living animals are started off with bits of already-living matter created by their parents. Nonliving chemicals don't spontaneously assemble, don't create orderly, complex molecules out of simple elements... Don't they? If the creationist gets to this point, he has revealed his basic ignorance of the simplest chemistry. Elements and simple molecules combine spontaneously all the time to form more complex molecules. When was the last time you found any loose hydrogen on the Earth, or fluorine? All of it has spontaneously combined with other elements to form more complex molecules. If you turn some loose, it won't stay uncombined for long. Carbon atoms, especially, have a tendency to form spontaneously into all kinds of complex molecules, which in turn often combine to form very complicated polymers and mega-molecules. Some of those combinations are even self-replicating , if the raw materials are available. We don't commonly see molecules assembling themselves into living systems, but then it only had to happen once--from then on the natural tendency of life has been to keep itself going, spread out, and evolve. When you get down to the level of molecules, or small collections of them, the dividing line between living and nonliving gets pretty fuzzy. As a matter of fact, one of the basic criteria used in modern biology to distinguish living from nonliving complex systems, is that truly living systems are capable of evolving as they reproduce. And, if we are committed to the idea of a Creator, He certainly could have been the one to arrange that first unlikely combination. He could have even directed all the evolution since then. Again, the point of the tired, old watch-in-the-desert analogy was supposed to be that evolution does not and could not occur. But watches have evolved; they aren't created miraculously, ex nihilo ; and their inability to self-assemble has nothing to do with the obvious ability of chemical compounds and living things to assemble themselves out of available materials.