Quote:
Originally Posted by LucidDream
No, kidding....from nothing came something in a trillionth of a second. That isn't a very scientific explanation for where the universe came from. Would you disagree that by that explanation of things(The Big Bang Theory) that we are all asked to believe in a huuuuuuge miracle to start? Yet, going forward we are supposed to ignore all other miracles and subjective experiences and just focus on the objective world which can't be explained any better than some huge miracle that happened nearly 14 billion years ago.
I don't believe that the Big Bang theory states that the early universe came to be out of nothing. It doesn't say anything at all about the state of the universe "prior" to a certain point, or even whether speaking about a "prior" to a singularity is even meaningful. I think it would be more useful to consider it a theory about the early state of the universe based on what we can observe to today and what meaningful inferences we can draw.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by miracle in this context, because of all the connotations of that word. But I'm reading "miraculous" here as mostly meaning "unexplainable". But it is certainly possible to be a naturalist, agree that the Big Bang does not provide a complete explanation to the problem of Being as such (why is there something rather than nothing?), or even agree that it's impossible to know. But it is of course not impossible to know that the universe exists. There are meaningful distinctions between the supposed inexplicability of the existence of the universe and the supposed inexplicability of (for example) a healing, or other things traditionally called miracles.
There is also the fact that the cosmological argument (which I think all of this is more or less a restatement of), even if accepted, does not demonstrate the existence of some reality that meets the usual theological conceptions of God. You could make the word "God" represent the origin of the universe as an unknown, remain a naturalist, and this concept of God does not bare any resemblance to popular understandings of what God is, excepting deism. And this concept of a Source outside the universe is not particularly more compelling logically than simply to say that the Universe is itself that cause. There is nothing really added by the former over the latter
All of that said, I am probably in more agreement with you than you realize. I am not a naturalist, I am a Christian. I agree that there exist experiences and realities which can't be understood by conceptual or dialectical reasoning. That being is more than what is thinkable, or what is non-contradictory. But I don't think an awareness of those realities is best expressed as an argument against the Big Bang, or that naturalism is inherently contradictory in the way you are suggesting (i.e that BBT requires a belief in the miraculous)