We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

> "Where's the proof that a universe can't cause itself"

What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.)

The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused.

While atheist philosophers like Bertrand Russel once believed the universe was eternal -- and therefore didn't need to be caused -- it was the Big Bang theory that proved otherwise. The universe had a beginning, therefore it has a cause. My conviction, then, is that God really does exist, and the he caused the universe to exist.

> "Clearly he could prevent that...clearly he can't be [good] with all the shit going on"

You're entering territory that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millenia. I won't pretend to have the real answer for you, but one answer I've found reasonable is that if God prevents evil, He also prevents free choice; free will. It is better to exist in a world with free will -- even if it means some people abuse that for evil -- than to exist in a world where free will doesn't exist.

On the same theme of evil and suffering, what is more problematic is if God doesn't exist, then evil is subjective. Only if God exists and right from wrong are legislated by God do we have a grounded morality, one where we can definitely say what is good and what is evil.

If there was a time were doubting string theory was career suicide, its wasn't in 2000 and certainly not 2010, those where the years when Woit was riding high on his book and "crisis in physics" was a popular phrase.

Honestly I think the biggest problem is that you have the timeline wrong, string theory reached its zenith in the 90's, but already by 2002 Woit could give it a good public kicking and mostly get praise for it (if you trust his own account here: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/arxiv-trackbacks.html I find it deeply funny that of the two of the people he reports as being angry with his beat down, one is the infamous Lubos Motl! ).

As an aside, from the tone with which Woit recounts how people wrote possibly mean things about him in the comments of a blog, I suspect he might simply not be a very nice person to interact with which explains why he might have had trouble in his career.

For example, when reporting that he complained to the arxiv admins, he's careful to note he was polite, which I think sounds like someone who unprompted confirms they were wearing pants to an interview...

>A proper religion with strong scholarly underpinnings like Islam has this issue figured out.

Wow, I'm surprised you went there. To this day many denominations of Islam are still killing each other over the "correct" interpretation.

You call out developed worlds as if they're immoral yet the most religious countries [0] also have a big overlap in having the most militant conflict [1]. Oh but they're happy, right? I wouldn't think so. Many of the least religious countries, such as the Scandinavian countries, often rank higher on happiness as well. Also in the developed world we can criticize our own countries more, generally, and so we have lots of free press that loves to prop up the negatives. Are Islamic countries generally free to criticize themselves so easily? Sorry to speak negatively of those countries but you invite such generalizations when you make such generalizations.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#/media/File:Import...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...

This content is nicely titled: 'Creation isn't what you think it is.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o8mGHN9t10

It gives a nice quick and better overview of the point I was trying to bring out. The video here is produced by the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC.

> I don't think the Pope believes what you are saying.

I can't speak for the Pope, but you can quite confident that the definition of creation expressed in the video is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and very likely identical or essentially identical to the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox church.

> I am only saying that I don't think it is a common understanding of Christianity

You're Right! And I stand by my statement. :^) Common Christians need to do more homework.

  > What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.)

  > The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused.

Inside our observable universe? Yea most likely. We can't deduce that the same hold true outside the universe.

Einstein explained that nothing can move faster than light but the universe seems to be expanding faster than light so clearly the universe itself can follow different rules and of course anything theoretically outside of it could do pretty much anything for all we know (since we don't know anything about it).

  > While atheist philosophers like Bertrand Russel once believed the universe was eternal -- and therefore didn't need to be caused -- it was the Big Bang theory that proved otherwise. The universe had a beginning, therefore it has a cause. My conviction, then, is that God really does exist, and the he caused the universe to exist.

The big bang theory is not proven. That's what the video of the article talks about. It's a hypothesis amongst many about the origin of our universe. If you base your conviction of the existance of god on the big bang theory... I dunno what to say. Why does god follow from big bang? Just because there was a cause? Imagine you are an ant living inside a box. You never see anything outside the box. I've put the ants inside the box. You as an ant might believe something must have created the box. Even if that were true (which you can't prove from inside the box) then clearly that does not mean I am god, right? I couldn't care less about the beliefs of the ants and I have no idea if they worship me or not. But maybe they built a whole faith in me and a system of rules because one ant claims I spoke to it in its dreams. Reality though is that they are simply wrong and just made a whole lot of wrong assumptions.

  > You're entering territory that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millenia.

And they still didn't come up with an answer. Likely never will.

  > I won't pretend to have the real answer for you, but one answer I've found reasonable is that if God prevents evil, He also prevents free choice; free will. It is better to exist in a world with free will -- even if it means some people abuse that for evil -- than to exist in a world where free will doesn't exist.

You can make some interesting thought experiments regarding that. If god created beings with free will then that means he can't be omnipotent because the beings are not bound by his will. If it is not his will but free will and as you said everything must have a cause... then what is the cause for our free decisions? Does that mean it is arbitrary? Random? If so then there is something outside of god and all he created. What is it? Or does free will mean there is no ultimate cause?

You called people doing evil an abuse of free will. But why is it abuse if god wanted it to be like that? Doesn't it mean that god wanted evil to exist? Otherwise he'd create a system with free will but with evil excluded. We would never know about evil being missing since he completely removed it from our reality. In the same line of thinking how would we know if we have true free will? What if there was a third thing next to good and evil? How can we know we have free will? And how can we say it is better to have free will than not? If I gave you the choice of living a life in which 100% of days you are happy or a life in which on random days you will be unhappy, which life would you choose?

  > On the same theme of evil and suffering, what is more problematic is if God doesn't exist, then evil is subjective. Only if God exists and right from wrong are legislated by God do we have a grounded morality, one where we can definitely say what is good and what is evil. 

Nope that is not true. We can have morals and ethics without god. You are accusing me of not having a grounded morality because I am not a theist which I find really offensive. Morals can emerge from simple logical arguments that will strive for the survival of our species and a well working society.

Good and bad are actually subjective. Muslims will find me eating pork as bad. For christians it wouldn't be bad. For christians it would be really bad if I had multiple wifes while muslims would be OK with it. Who is right and who is wrong? If you pick either one then you claim that some religions are correct and others wrong. How did you decide which ones are the correct ones? It also means there can only be one final true religion because if there are two religions then they must differ in something and both can't be right at the same time.

You say god legislates what is good and bad. Ignoring that different religions as outlined above disagree about what is good or bad, how exactly do we know for sure that the claimed laws have been handed by god? That someone pronounces so is not good enough.

Do animals who seem to also have a system of good and bad have religous believes? My dog feels really guilty when he makes a mess. Who told him about god and that he shall not make a mess?