If there is a creator God, why did it take him 13 billion years to create humans?

[TooBusyByHalf]

Thinking a lot about God. I'm an atheist, but sometimes unwillingly. But the idea of God just makes no sense to me. If there was a (Christian for the sake of argument) God, it would seem (from the Bible) that it's all about us (mankind). In which case what were the 13 billion years before Moses / Jesus for? Or you could ask the same question of all the time that the earth existed before there was life, or from life to Homo sapiens etc etc. I've been reading stuff people have written about why they believe in God, but no-one ever addresses that question.

Quantum physics bloody fascinates me more than religion

Bohm's ideas provides one possible rationalisation of Alain Aspect's experimental work on quantum entanglement, that might otherwise be thought to show a signal travelling faster than the speed of light.

His My List on Netflix was very long so he had a bit of a sesh before knuckling down. Haven't you ever procrastinated before?

Bohm's ideas are just that...ideas. No evidence provided whatsoever. And virtually all physicists disagree with him.

And I'd beware of touting Bohm too much. He had some very odd ideas along with his very brilliant ones.

I agree that David Bohm's ideas are not mainstream. I do not agree that they are rubbish. He provides a way of looking at quantum mechanics - it is a model of reality that provides a rationalisation of something seemingly paradoxical. I think there is much work still to be done in that area.

If you are interested more mainstream ideas on space and time, might I suggest The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. It is a 'popular' work but very thorough.

And I think you are mistaken re: quantum entanglement. Very mysterious, but not sending a "signal faster than light". There's no exchange or transmission of information like "signals".

Bohm's book on Quantum Mechanics was excellent. His later ideas are controversial but I don't dismiss them as out of hand. I find it philosophically unsatisfying to go along completely with Bohr who thought that we could not speak of what lay beyond what was observable.

The question is based on an assumption that god should have created people. .. when? Sooner? Why?

And also, you can't apply logic to the bible.

I am pretty well read already. Although your attempts at patronising me are noted.

As is your inability to actually contradict anything in my post.

Are you a "witch" by any chance?

Of course no faster than light signal!
It is a non-local interaction between particles - these are the sorts of ideas Bohm was talking about.

Funnily enough, I have been accused of being a witch.

You can't apply logic to the Bible

You should apply logic and reason to everything. Otherwise, we are left wading through nonsense.

I was certainly not trying to patronise you.

The Fabric of the Cosmos is one of my favourite books and I wanted to share that with you as you may not have read it but might like it too.

I studied biochemistry at university.

All the beauty of nature including human beings was created in entirety by the language encoded in DNA that has only a 4 letter code. That is awesome. I believe in god because of that fact alone. God created the code that created everything. I have looked down a microscope and seen the work of god at first hand. I regard that as an enormous privilege.

You described it as a "faster than light signal"!

Lots of people are talking about that. No one has any answers...yet. Maybe they never will.

That's why you really need to be careful about making assertions and then supporting them with "evidence" that turns out to be nothing of the kind.

So, after all that...you took issue with me to tell me that a) if god exists he exists outside of space and time and b) we don't know what we don't know.

Oh....and you should know that science doesn't actually say that time "began" with the BB. Not really. That's shorthand for "we can't measure beyond that". Measurable time began then. What was and wasn't created with the BB is anybody's guess currently.

HTH.

Your belief in god has nothing to do with your science, MoreBeta. Plenty of other biologists and chemists have peered down a microscope and not seen a creating god, so there's something more at work, surely.

Out It wasn't the book recommendation, it was the "if you want to know about this stuff, read this". I used to have that book. It sat on a shelf for years collecting dust and I never got round to reading it. Sent to a charity shop a while ago I think.

That wasn't a dismissal of the book, by the way. Just explaining that I know of it, but haven't read it.

I said that without the explanation of quantum entanglement - a correlation between the particles - it would look like a signal passing between the two particles at a speed faster than light.

The Fabric of the Cosmos is a better read, in my opinion, than the Elegant Universe, Brian Greene's popular book on string theory.

Outside of space and time, what would something that was outside of space and time look like? How can you decided that god is outside of space and time when there is nothing to test? You might as well say 'leprechauns are outside of space and time' and demand that one nods along sagely when reading such a vacuous statement.

because of that fact alone

Which god did you decide made that code?

If MoreBeta comes back (doubtful) I would really like to know if she was a Christian before she saw God through the microscope and why she thinks that so few other scientists arrive at the same conclusion she has when looking at the exact same data.

Yes, and how does she know that Zeus didn't create the code.

Not unreasonable questions.

Café, that's what I meant, the bible is illogical, i.e. not worth trying to reason out.

I do not think the idea of dimensions outside those of common experience is so outlandish since it is in accord with current ideas in theoretical physics. I am not arguing for the existence of God here, only of the possibility of dimensions outside of the familiar (3space +1time) spacetime.

We are embedded in a (3space + 1time) spacetime – that is what we perceive.

Current fundamental theories – string/M – of physics suggest a spacetime of higher dimensions. It seems that 10 or 11 dimensions are required – so how do we rationalise that we live in an apparent 4-dimensional universe?

One solution posited is that the extra dimensions are compactified (curled in on themselves) and exist on such a small scale that we do not normally perceive them. There are experiments currently going on at CERN to try to investigate the existence of possible extra dimensions scientifically.

The other possible solution is that we are confined to a 4 dimensional subspace of reality.

In addition, the flow of time in which we perceive ourselves to be trapped – and our perception of movement from one ‘now’ to the next ‘now’ - appears to be an illusion.

We are limited by our minds and domain of experience in our attempts to ‘know’ reality.