A clearer case of a horrible event in nature, a natural evil, has never been presented to me. It seemed to me self evident that the natural law that animals must savagely kill and devour each other in order to survive was an evil natural law and that the obtaining of this law was sufficient evidence that God did not exist. If I held a certain epistemological theory about "basic beliefs", I might conclude from this experience that my intuition that (...) there is no God co existing with th is horror was a "basic belief" and thus that I am epistemically entitled to be an atheist without needing to justify this intuition, But I do not hold such an epistemological theory and believe that intuitive atheological beliefs, such as the one I experienced (and the corresponding intuitive theological beliefs, such as that God is providentially watching over this gruesome event) require justification if they are to be epistemically warranted. The following sections of this article present a justification for the atheological intuition I experienced that dark night. My justification will consist mostly in providing reasons to believe premise (3) in the following probabilistic argument.. (shrink)

The paper discusses Hilbert mathematics, a kind of Pythagorean mathematics, to which the physical world is a particular case. The parameter of the “distance between finiteness and infinity” is crucial. Any nonzero finite value of it features the particular case in the frameworks of Hilbert mathematics where the physical world appears “ex nihilo” by virtue of an only mathematical necessity or quantum information conservation physically. One does not need the mythical Big Bang which serves to concentrate all the violations of (...) energy conservation in a “safe”, maximally remote point in the alleged “beginning of the universe”. On the contrary, an omnipresent and omnitemporal medium obeying quantum information conservation rather than energy conservation permanently generates action and thus the physical world. The utilization of that creation “ex nihilo” is accessible to humankind, at least theoretically, as long as one observes the physical laws, which admit it in their new and wider generalization. One can oppose Hilbert mathematics to Gödel mathematics, which can be identified as all the standard mathematics until now featureable by the Gödel dichotomy of arithmetic to set theory: and then, “dialectic”, “intuitionistic”, and “Gödelian” mathematics within the former, according to a negative, positive, or zero value of the distance between finiteness and infinity. A mapping of Hilbert mathematics into pseudo-Riemannian space corresponds, therefore allowing for gravitation to be interpreted purely mathematically and ontologically in a Pythagorean sense. Information and quantum information can be involved in the foundations of mathematics and linked to the axiom of choice or alternatively, to the field of all rational numbers, from which the pair of both dual and anti-isometric Peano arithmetics featuring Hilbert arithmetic are immediately inferable. Noether’s theorems (1918) imply quantum information conservation as the maximally possible generalization of the pair of the conservation of a physical quantity and the corresponding Lie group of its conjugate. Hilbert mathematics can be interpreted from their viewpoint also after an algebraic generalization of them. Following the ideas of Noether’s theorem (1918), locality and nonlocality can be realized both physically and mathematically. The “light phase of the universe” can be linked to the gap of mathematics and physics in the Cartesian organization of cognition in Modernity and then opposed to its “dark phase”, in which physics and mathematics are merged. All physical quantities can be deduced from only mathematical premises by the mediation of the most fundamental physical constants such as the speed of light in a vacuum, the Planck and gravitational constants once they have been interpreted by the relation of locality and nonlocality. (shrink)

The cosmic singularity provides negligible evidence for creation in the finite past, and hence theism. A physical theory might have no metric or multiple metrics, so a ‘beginning’ must involve a first moment, not just finite age. Whether one dismisses singularities or takes them seriously, physics licenses no first moment. The analogy between the Big Bang and stellar gravitational collapse indicates that a Creator is required in the first case only if a Destroyer is needed in the second. The need (...) for and progress in quantum gravity and the underdetermination of theories by data make it difficult to take singularities seriously. The singularity exemplifies the sort of gap that is likely to be closed by scientific progress, obviating special divine action. The apparent irrelevance of cardinality to practices of counting infinite sets in classical field theory and Fourier analysis is noted. Introduction The Doctrine of Creation and Its Warrant Cardinality and Sizes of Infinity Modern Cosmology and Creation Tolerance or Intolerance toward Singularities? Leibniz against Incompetent Watchmaker? Induction from Earlier Theories' Breakdown? Stellar Collapse Implies Theistic Destroyer Stacking the Deck for GTR Quantum Gravity Tends to Resolve Singularities Vicious God-of-the-Gaps Character Fluctuating or Inaccessible Warrant Big Bang Cosmology Not Especially Congenial to Faith CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)