Ken: If that’s the standard you want to use, Einstein and a long and diverse list of widely renowned physicists, Nobel Prize winners, astronomers, etc. will acknowledge there is no evidence where an intelligent being has lived eternally outside of any type of environment, (all intelligent beings require a suitable environment in order to live) then for whatever reason decides to start creating stuff; not creating using pre-existing materials, but creating from nothing at all IOW bringing things into existence.
Ken, again you morph what should be two questions into one. Einstein and his fellow theist-believing scientist did and DO believe in and an intelligent Cause or Being for the universe, precisely BECAUSE of the exhaustive list of incredible scientific evidences. But as for the nature of God - or whatever such theist-believing scientists believe that intelligent Cause to be - that is an Entity that both originated and stands outside of time and the physical universe - an eternal Entity that is beyond their tools and intelligence, and One that cannot be explained by their physical knowledge or tools. And THAT aspect of the Cause is why they do not try to explain it scientifically, as science cannot measure that. Again, however, it's like a black hole - while it cannot be directly seen, we know it's there because of how objects nearby react to it. Something incredible is doing this - which is how we know the black hole exists - just like why these theist-believing scientist believe a creative Intelligence is behind the universe - because we can see how the universe, world and its systems inexplicably otherwise function.
Ken: And BTW Quantum Fluctuations prove things can spring into existence without cause.
Ken, quit googling around because you clearly don't understand some key things about Quantum mechanics and what they are all about. They do NOT produce things from nothing, but their existence and functionality DID require an intelligent cause themselves.
Rich Deem wrote: "Quantum mechanics states that quantum events occur according to finite probabilities within finite time intervals. The larger the time interval, the greater the probability that a quantum event will occur. Outside of time, however, no quantum event is possible. Since time originated at the moment of the creation of the universe, quantum tunneling could not be its "creator." In addition, quantum events are extremely short-lived. As a quantum event, the existence of the universe is many orders of magnitude longer than any described quantum event. Therefore, cosmologists who propose such theories must appeal to unknown laws of physics to describe the reality of the universe."
And here is a great overview of the impossibility that anything can be produced from nothing - as quantum mechanics itself had to have a cause. Here is a great overview to help you better understand what you clearly do not:
http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.a ... ticle=4584
Outtakes from the above link:
Even if one were to irrationally accept the premise that quantum theory allows for the possibility that Universes could pop into existence, in the words of astrophysicist Marcus Chown:
"If the universe owes its origins to quantum theory, then quantum theory must have existed before the universe. So the next question is surely:
where did the laws of quantum theory come from? “We do not know,” admits Vilenkin. “I consider that an entirely different question.”
(Much like Ken should!) When it comes to the beginning of the universe, in many ways we’re still at the beginning (2012, p. 35, emp. added)."
Martin Gardner said, "Imagine that physicists finally discover all the basic waves and their particles, and all the basic laws, and unite everything in one equation. We can then ask, “Why that equation?” It is fashionable now to conjecture that the big bang was caused by a random quantum fluctuation in a vacuum devoid of space and time. But of course such a vacuum is a far cry from nothing.
There had to be quantum laws to fluctuate. And why are there quantum laws?... There is no escape from the superultimate questions: Why is there something rather than nothing, and why is the something structured the way it is? (2000, p. 303, emp. added)."
In “Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe?” Stephen Hawking boldly claimed that everything in the Universe can be accounted for through atheistic evolution without the need of God. This is untrue, as we have discussed elsewhere (e.g., Miller, 2011), but it seems that Hawking does not even believe that assertion himself.
He asked the question, “Did God create the quantum laws that allowed the Big Bang to occur? In a nutshell, did we need a god to set it all up so that the Big Bang could bang?” (“Curiosity…,” emp. added).
He then proceeded to offer no answer to the question. In his critique of Hawking, Paul Davies highlighted this very fact, saying,
“You need to know where those laws come from. That’s where the mystery lies—the laws” (“The Creation Question…,” 2011). Quantum mechanics, with its governing laws, simply do not leave room for the spontaneous generation of Universes."