The poll is anonymous.
Watched this short documentary on Netflix the other day and was quite disappointed by the quality of argumentation. The documentary is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Hawking's computer and start with a very cool notion: "Although I can not move, and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind, I am free."
The documentary is, I believe, based on Hawking's latest publications. He tries to explain why there is no need for a god to create the universe in a cause and effect train of thought. The purpose is to provide an alternative. There are more than one "plot holes" but two points stuck:
A) Big Bang is when time was created. Without time there can not be a god.
B) The universe was created from nothing as quantum particles can disappear and reappear out of nothing. Hence, no need for a trigger, read god, for Big Bang to happen.
Honorary Mention C: For universe to exist as a positive energy, there needs to be a negative energy. The documentary sort of explains gravity as that negative energy of every single object exerting a pull on each other.
So, what's the problem with these points?
Well, for one thing, I don't see why a god would be tied to concept of time. The idea is that there was no time before Big Bang for a creator to exist. My question, why is there a time requirement? Sure, it's a human concept that we require on our daily lives but we also know that many scientific concepts such as quantum mechanics can exist without what we daily use. To me, it seems like a cop out to require time for a god's existence, a being that seems to be capable of existing at every single point in time simultaneously.
The other thing is that a single particle popping in and out of space doesn't necessarily back up the creation of a whole universe. The documentary suspiciously spends very little time on explaining it. I'm guessing that the phenomenon referred to in the documentary is quantum fluctuations where particles can pop in for a very short amount of time and then pop out again. How do they extrapolate this to mean that an entire universe worth of energy can be created in a single Planck unit space and that it's not happening in any part of the newly created universe is not explained.
For the honorary part, the universe is expanding. The gravitational potential energy changes all the time. If this energy makes up the negative energy, how does it translate for the positive side?
So, what do you think? Are the plot holes merely lost in the attempt to make a documentary out of it? (Assuming you've watched it of course) Or, is scientists themselves try to use cop-out arguments to justify a godless creation?
This thread could perhaps be more suitable for Athenaeum but it's still about god and perhaps there are more people viewing this thread. Please ignore the extra in the second option in the poll. It should say "No, it can't."