View Full Version : Big Bang: Is there room for God?
http://imageshack.us/a/img844/8584/6359960863408907.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/844/6359960863408907.jpg/)
The discovery of the Higgs boson is so fresh that the exhibit in Cern's museum has not yet been updated.
In the exhibit - a short film that projects images of the birth of the Universe onto a huge screen - the narrator poses the question: "Will we find the Higgs boson"?
Now that the Higgs has finally been spotted - a scientific discovery that takes us closer than ever to the first moments after the Big Bang - Cern has opened its doors to scholars that take a very different approach to the question of how the Universe came to exist.
On 15 October, a group of theologians, philosophers and physicists came together for two days in Geneva to talk about the Big Bang.
So what happened when people of such different - very different - views of the Universe came together to discuss how it all began?
"I realised there was a need to discuss this," says Rolf Heuer, Cern's director general.
"There's a need for us, as naive scientists, to discuss with philosophers of theologians the time before or around the Big Bang." Cern's co-organiser of this unusual meeting of minds was Wilton Park - a global forum set up by Winston Churchill.
It is an organisation usually associated with high level discussions about global policy and even confidential exchanges on matters of international security, which perhaps emphasises how seriously Cern is taking this exchange.
But even the idea of a "time before the Big Bang" is impossible territory for physicists.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19997789
Note: 19 October 2012 Last updated at 23:33 GMT
Betonov
10-20-12, 06:08 AM
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move
Skybird
10-20-12, 07:48 AM
Big Bang is a theory. A well-founded theory, but just a theory, and it brings new questions:
When there was a Big Bang and before it there was nothing, why did it happen then, and where? Saying it created its own time and place, explains nothing. Why isn't there simply nothing?
The fluctuating universe - again is a construction with new questions. If it is moving from one Big Bang to the next - what should it mean then to think of this as an eternal chain of events without start, without ending? Why this all?
Our very thinking only works in schemes and constructions that in themselves already create new structural problems.
But still we seem to be in need to bring this variable into the formula that we all too often ignore: our witnessing mind. This mind inside which all we perceive and think about, reflect over and conclude on takes place. We do not have direct contact to the things we believe to see. We have their representation inside our brain'S ways of functioning only. And why it works the way it does, we also do not know. Our eyes' lenses are too bad as if they would be able to create sharp images, in fact they project images not sharped than what a guy with around 3-3.5 dioptrines would see if not using glasses. How comes our mind twists and manipulates this input to give us the idea of a sharp, crispy image?
Our mind dances with the images and forms it creates all by itself, it seems. More questions. The cosmos remains silent.
To discuss this, is nice and well, and certainly entertaining, but why to discuss this with theologicans, I do not see. Where science admits to bot know, they also do not know, but claim to know without reason, without evidence. That is no open discussion. That is propaganda. It is not even 20 years ago that the church formally admitted that Galileo was right.
In the end I tend to think the only thing really being a reality, is mind. And maybe the only thing that really makes life worthwhile to live despite its obvious vainness and transitoriness, is love.
Sammi79
10-20-12, 10:38 AM
@Vendor
Thanks for the article, I must disagree with the suggestion that time before the big bang is off limits to physicists. Most now are confident that there was a sort of something before from which the big bang manifested. That something is generally expected to have had some kind of time dimension(s) M-theory or Brane theory and String theory have some interesting ideas about this - ideas only you understand, not facts or theories.
The Higgs particle has been found yes. But this is actually quite disappointing for scientists as it is the last piece of the standard model puzzle. It implies that the standard model is correct, which leaves us with currently insurmountable problems regarding uncertainty and accessible information. It is like coming to the end of a long corridor only to find the door at the end was simply painted on solid rock.
@Skybird
Be careful not to misuse the word theory. In this context, theory is the best possible current explanation of the evidence. Also the questions regarding everything from nothing have no meaning without first defining nothing, which is a nothing that we have no evidence for at all. As far as we can see, the closest thing to ultimate nothing we can observe is a complete vacuum, but this sort of nothing still has dimensions and can still contain energy as light passes through it, amongst other quantum processes that cause various quanta to appear and disappear seemingly at random, even occasionally forming into baryonic matter, which is either quickly disassembled by the inverse pressure of the vacuum or through a wave function suddenly teleports somewhere outside of the vacuum.
So this complete vacuum nothing certainly appears to be a something that other somethings can and do spontaneously spring from. Did ultimate nothing ever exist? if it did wouldn't that imply that nothing is actually a kind of something? will we ever create this ultimate nothing so we can test it? wouldn't that also define it as something? Oh no I've gone cross eyed...
@Betonov
:har:
If I'm wrong and god exists, he/she/it won't exist for long after I die and catch hold of him/her/it. I am happily looking forward to my deathly oblivion, and if I don't get it there is going to be hell to pay, seriously :stare:
Deicide ain't murder if you're already dead, right?
Sailor Steve
10-20-12, 10:50 AM
I must disagree with the suggestion that time before the big bang is off limits to physicists. Most now are confident that there was a sort of something before from which the big bang manifested.
"Confident" in what regard? On what do they base their confidence? Anybody can have an idea, and their ideas are certainly more educated than mine, but from where I stand it still looks like pure guesswork.
Be careful not to misuse the word theory. In this context, theory is the best possible current explanation of the evidence.
I understand that concept, but what evidence is there for what went (or didn't go) before?
Also the questions regarding everything from nothing have no meaning without first defining nothing, which is a nothing that we have no evidence for at all.
Which puts it back into the realm of guessing, not theory.
As far as we can see, the closest thing to ultimate nothing we can observe is a complete vacuum, but this sort of nothing still has dimensions and can still contain energy as light passes through it, amongst other quantum processes that cause various quanta to appear and disappear seemingly at random, even occasionally forming into baryonic matter, which is either quickly disassembled by the inverse pressure of the vacuum or through a wave function suddenly teleports somewhere outside of the vacuum.
But is there any clue at all to what the "nothing" was like before the universe existed? If not, then again all the speculation in the world still means...well, nothing.
So this complete vacuum nothing certainly appears to be a something that other somethings can and do spontaneously spring from. Did ultimate nothing ever exist? if it did wouldn't that imply that nothing is actually a kind of something? will we ever create this ultimate nothing so we can test it? wouldn't that also define it as something? Oh no I've gone cross eyed...
You and me both, brother.
And as for "Deicide"? well, my God can beat up your God! How do I know this? Because I believe it, so there! :O:
Skybird
10-20-12, 11:25 AM
But this is actually quite disappointing for scientists as it is the last piece of the standard model puzzle. It implies that the standard model is correct, which leaves us with currently insurmountable problems regarding uncertainty and accessible information. It is like coming to the end of a long corridor only to find the door at the end was simply painted on solid rock.
OIh, give it some time. I am very confident that this will not remain to be the last word spoken. You indicated it yourself when naming it the "standard model". Standard means there may be alternatives, model means it is not the real thing itself. ;)
Be careful not to misuse the word theory. In this context, theory is the best possible current explanation of the evidence.
Yes, that is the nature of all and every scientific explanation. It is a temporary arrangement in which to sort observations to make them match best way we can currently imagine, and to explain things in the most embracing and easiest way currently possible. But it remains to be an artificial order that is not discovered as a reality existing, but is thought out. By us. It's a convention. That does not lower its value. Actually, I am a great fan of it. But one has to understand the rules by which it runs, and its limitations. And its nothing that has made the object it cannot deal with literally unthinkable.
To quote Mr. Spock, one of my favourite ST quotes: "Logic is the beginning of all wisdom, but not its ending."
) Also the questions regarding everything from nothing have no meaning without first defining nothing, which is a nothing that we have no evidence for at all. As far as we can see, the closest thing to ultimate nothing we can observe is a complete vacuum, but this sort of nothing still has dimensions and can still contain energy as light passes through it, amongst other quantum processes that cause various quanta to appear and disappear seemingly at random, even occasionally forming into baryonic matter, which is either quickly disassembled by the inverse pressure of the vacuum or through a wave function suddenly teleports somewhere outside of the vacuum.
Sorry, no, you are wrong there. The nothingness referred to when saying "Big Bang and before things existed", and before even space-time existed, is the absence of things and the absence of all and anything. Even the absence of vacuum. A nothingness that is so total and complete in meaning and span of "nothing", that about this nothingness cannot even be said it existed. A double negation, if you want. It is impossible to attach qualities, features or descriptions to this, and it is even impossible to say what it is not , because dpoing so would result in efforts and temrs being part of the existing universe and space-time that we experience. Human mind just cannot embrace the total lack of any conception like this. Even the laws of maths as we know and understand them, mean nothing there anymore. Nothing=absence of anything, even the meaning of the words "absense", "of" and "anything". Not even calling nothingness a nothingness makes sense anymore. We do not talk of a physical vacuum - a vacuum actually would be something. ;)
So this complete vacuum nothing certainly appears to be a something that other somethings can and do spontaneously spring from. Did ultimate nothing ever exist? if it did wouldn't that imply that nothing is actually a kind of something? will we ever create this ultimate nothing so we can test it? wouldn't that also define it as something? Oh no I've gone cross eyed...
Metaphysically, one maybe would say that the all-referring absence of anything means unlimited potential for realization of infinite things in infinite combinations, where nothing is, there is still room for everything becoming possible. But that is already thinkling - our thinking, and thus a thing of limited scale and tpyoliy: human brain's typology. Our linear thinking still must ask - and cannot avoid doing so! - why in such a nothingness as I explained anything should and could suddenly spring into existence at all.
All human thinking, reasoning, yearning, learning, researchging, trying, culminates int his simple question that I have understood to have become the unsolvable koan, the Zen riddle at the centre of my own life: Why? And I am perfectly aware that logical thinking and reason will not help me one bit in this, at best only let me understand the limited scope of these methods. That's what koans are there for.
Tribesman
10-20-12, 11:51 AM
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move
42:salute:
Sammi79
10-20-12, 11:57 AM
"Confident" in what regard? On what do they base their confidence? Anybody can have an idea, and their ideas are certainly more educated than mine, but from where I stand it still looks like pure guesswork.
Mainly advanced mathematical models I believe. And I did state they are simply ideas, but they are the only working models so far. Recent evidence regarding dark matter/energy are pointing away from a singularity. Consider the universe is not only expanding (which logically led us into the big bang concept), but we know now the rate at which it is expanding is increasing. Logically if you reverse time and follow it backward, there is now plausibly a point at which the universe was not expanding. So possibly no big bang at all.
I understand that concept, but what evidence is there for what went (or didn't go) before?
Everything that came after.
Which puts it back into the realm of guessing, not theory.
Quite. String theory and M-theory etc. although very educated are exactly that. The standard model, however is a Theory that explains the evidence gathered from several billion proton/proton collisions. No test designed to falsify it has ever succeeded, and there have been nearly as many tests as collisions. I'd like to see a religious person seriously attempt to falsify their belief because It is very rare and the result is normally atheism. It starts like this - if god doesn't exist then x should logically happen/not happen/be observed/etc then perform the test, record the result and repeat a million times. Take your results and pass the experiment on to an objective third party and have them repeat another million times. At all times you must be prepared to accept the evidence rather than cling on to your desired outcome. publish the method, results etc. and let other folks read and repeat it, find flaws in method or not, add more results. That's the first test done, now think of another one and repeat, then another and repeat etc. a million times. By that time you should have a level of certainty about the evidence for or against god that barely approaches the certainty of the standard model.
And I will take any assertions you make about god seriously.
But is there any clue at all to what the "nothing" was like before the universe existed? If not, then again all the speculation in the world still means...well, nothing.
The universe is the only albeit massive clue.
And as for "Deicide"? well, my God can beat up your God! How do I know this? Because I believe it, so there! :O:
:D Oh, I won't be bringing a god. It'll just be little dead me, but I fight dirty, and I fight to kill. Your god will give me oblivion immediately upon the point of my death or receive his own after I've spent eternity catching hold of him, that's a promise. He's got it coming.
YOU HEARIN' THIS YOU OMNIPOTENT WIMP?
Sammi79
10-20-12, 12:12 PM
sorry, no, you are wrong there. The nothingness referred to when saying "Big Bang and before things existed", and before even space-time existed, is the absence of things and the absence of all and anything. Even the absence of vacuum. A nothingness that is so total and complete in meaning and span of "nothing", that about this nothingness cannot even be said it existed. A double negation, if you want. It is impossible to attach qualities, features or descriptions to this, and it is even impossible to say what it is not , because dpoing so would result in efforts and temrs being part of the existing universe and space-time that we experience. Human mind just cannot embrace the total lack of any conception like this. Even the laws of maths as we know and understand them, mean nothing there anymore. Nothing=absence of anything, even the meaning of the words "absense", "of" and "anything". Not even calling nothingness a nothingness makes sense anymore. We do not talk of a physical vacuum - a vacuum actually would be something. ;)
That's my point exactly - this absolute nothing cannot be defined nor analysed in any way due to its nature or absence of it. And like god, there is no evidence this absolute nothing ever existed. And if it did, well it would be something by virtue of its existence, thus defying its own nature or absence of it.
Or to put it another way if it does exist, it might exist all around us at once but as it is actually nothing at all, it is not detectable and we are distracted by the somethings, even were the somethings not there we still would not be able to find nothing.
So the questions about why or how everything from nothing are meaningless unless you attribute something to that nothing first.
If absolute nothing could exist, then it would be all that there isn't, no?
Oh smeggin' hell this is getting like Red Dwarf!
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be home for breakfast.
Regards,
Sam.
*zap*
Personally, my stance is that this universe was created by the collapse of the one before it, and eventually this one will stop expanding and collapse to form another universe.
Of course, that brings up the chicken and egg question of what was there before the first Big Bang and what caused that? That is a question that I think will be struggled to be answered for a very long time. That is where my belief in something a bit beyond what is physically tangible comes in, but that's another kettle of fish altogether.
Oh smeggin hell this is getting like Red Dwarf!
Regards,
Sam.
Fixed that for you ;)
Hottentot
10-20-12, 12:14 PM
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move
On turn 2, God created a settler...
On turn 2, God created a settler...
On turn 3 God moved that settler into a nearby village...
*YOU HAVE UNLEASHED A HORDE OF BARBARIANS*
On turn 4 God rage-quit
Hottentot
10-20-12, 12:24 PM
On turn 3 God moved that settler into a nearby village...
*YOU HAVE UNLEASHED A HORDE OF BARBARIANS*
On turn 4 God rage-quit
:har:
Betonov
10-20-12, 12:26 PM
On turn 3 God moved that settler into a nearby village...
*YOU HAVE UNLEASHED A HORDE OF BARBARIANS*
On turn 4 God rage-quit
God did not end the game, only exited, and the barbarians discovered pottery and banged two rocks together and subsim was invented
We've all been there:
http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/696/001726310001.gif
So how something could pop out from absolute nothing?:wah:....:doh:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/AdvenTurer/Humor/StressReliever.gif
I have learned many things, when it comes to the origin of our world
There are those that believe God created us
There are those that believe we are created by nature-no God
But what if the truth is somewhere in between?
Here are a link to a online book, that I found very fascinating
I'm not saying that this book is telling us the truth
Read from page 57 to 62
http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-57-origin-urantia
I read that book like I read the bible-with a suspicious mind
Markus
Skybird
10-20-12, 12:41 PM
If absolute nothing could exist, then it would be all that there isn't, no?
No. It has no non-existence. Nor has it not a non-existence. Nor has it an existence, nor has it not an existence.
In the very moment you try to dress it in words then already springs to life what exists, and so it is no nothingness anymore.
In the beginning there was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him.
Don't worry, I have not turned into a bible-swinger suddenly. I just like the poetry in this wording. It illustrates also the point I try to make: that the word already is enough to make any conception of "non-existence" or "nothingness" void, misleading, pointless, and unimaginable.
Armistead
10-20-12, 01:48 PM
There is no such thing as nothing, nothing is something and scientist agree what they refer to as "nothing" still contains unseen particles and energy.
The problem will always be, when they do figure out an energy source, they're always left with another energy source to figure out.
The issue for me still remains cause and effect, yet for cause and effect to work, a first cause must exist, which will never be found within physical laws, which does open up the possibility for a cause outside our physical understanding.
Course, if God exist, I'm still not sure how we would define him or that religion should define him. Seems if God wanted to express
himself, he would've made himself clear, instead of numerous religions that have caused nothing but harm.
CaptainMattJ.
10-20-12, 03:56 PM
There is no such thing as nothing, nothing is something and scientist agree what they refer to as "nothing" still contains unseen particles and energy.
The problem will always be, when they do figure out an energy source, they're always left with another energy source to figure out.
The issue for me still remains cause and effect, yet for cause and effect to work, a first cause must exist, which will never be found within physical laws, which does open up the possibility for a cause outside our physical understanding.
Course, if God exist, I'm still not sure how we would define him or that religion should define him. Seems if God wanted to express
himself, he would've made himself clear, instead of numerous religions that have caused nothing but harm.
Im afraid that truly thinking about the universe will result in severe mind-imploding effects.
I watched an episode of "through the wormhole" with Morgan Freeman and it confirmed something id been thinking about lately. Quantum theory and mechanics hasp proven (or at least explained) not only that one thing can be in two places at once, but that things can appear from nothing, or at least what we understand to be nothing. The number of these ghost particles flashing in and out of existence number beyond true comprehension and the speed at which they appear and vanish boggles the mind too. So does the Big Bang and the mind stretching forces behind it. It really is very hard to comprehend absolute nothingness. Its hard to understand theoretical physics, too. And because we cant hope to explain everything about the universe, god still lives on. I believe that you dont need some Divine being to create anything. If anything the divine being is the universe itself. The belief in God complicates things immensely. it has held back scientific theory for thousands of years, and still does so today with the creationist theories attempting to be taught in schools.
Reality tends to be a hundred times weirder than science fiction, and its hopeless to explain everything. In fact, The Universe is so vast, So powerful, so odd, that we can barely comprehend its scale. but we come up with these numbers, like septillions, google, a googleplex, infinity, but we dont comprehend it because its so enormous. Try to comprehend even a googleplex. A google is a 1 followed by a million zeroes. That number represents something, a quantity. A trillion is a 1 followed by only 15 zeroes. now imagine a googleplex, a googleplex is a one followed by a GOOGLE zeroes. a 1 followed by a trillino zeroes is almost impossible to understand, but a 1 followed by a GOOGLE zeroes, no way. my mind died out at imagining anything that could represent a google, and now theyre trying to make me imagine a googleplex, a number that i cant possibly comprehend the scale of. Simply writing it down would take gargantuan amounts of space. Infinity is easy to understand because it cant be represented by anything real. a googleplex could. it can be written down, assuming we could fit it some where, probably in a computer.
Even just 3,972,789 zeroes on MS word in 12 font (i used copy and paste so it only took me a minute to do this) is 1201 pages. 1201 pages of zeroes (excluding a single 1). were not even remotely close to a fraction of a percent of a googleplex and its already 1201 pages.
So to comprehend what scientists discover is quite a mind trip. But that doesnt necessarily mean it had to be because of an all powerful being.
Takeda Shingen
10-20-12, 04:05 PM
Oh good, another religion bashing thread.
Tribesman
10-20-12, 04:15 PM
Oh god, another religion bashing thread.
Thats a prayer of a quote
42:salute:
Yes but we all know that's the answer to the wrong question.:D
kraznyi_oktjabr
10-20-12, 04:35 PM
Big Bang theory? Am I only one who while reading that remembers "president Sarkozy's" call to then VP candidate Sarah Palin where he praises new "documentary" about her life? :hmmm:
Takeda Shingen
10-20-12, 05:05 PM
I altered your text in my quote, Takeda.
You sure did, squiggy.
Skybird
10-20-12, 05:52 PM
The saying amongst physicists is that if you claim you understood quantum physics, you indeed illustrate by that very claim that you have not understood it at all. Quntum physics are so absurd and alogical and anti-intuitive, that you cannot think of it as something that is understood in the ordinary meaning of the term "understanding". I think our thinking and imagination reach their limits there, and our mathematical descriptions remain to be lifeless abstractions that again have no real meaning for us in the world that we experience.
A universe that fluctuates between two Big Bangs, expands and collapses and there goes Big Bang again, just is a theory that shifts the need to explain what was before the Big Bang, at the infinite. Sorry, I am not sure if I put it into correct words.
Hawkings and others tried to attribute characteristics to a nothingness that actually by being attributed with these feature s is no real nothingness, but is something. They think they have solved a basic dilemma and have shown the omni-valid potence of physical sciences that way. But that is wrong - they still speak about an existing something that way.
You could also try to escape the dilemma by trying theoretic construction moving from the universe to an multiverse, universes that exist in huge or infinite numbers inside an even greater entity that I just labelled multiverse. Like solar system exist inside galaxies exist inside local groups exist inside superclusters exist... Or subatomic particle exist inside electrons and neutrons exists inside atoms exist inside molecules exist...
But two wuresiton remain even then: "Why is all this, why is there this entity I cvall myelf witnessing and reflecting this all?", and "Where does the multiverse exist, what is beyond it, where doe sit come from?"
Theories like entropy and Big Bang all represent structures by which we organise our insights and current observations as best as we can. But we should be always be aware of what I already express in the formulation: "we organise them, we are the ones doing an active act of creation there, we create the structure by which we filter our future perceptions and organise the memory of our past perceptions. Whether these laws are valid in every corner of the universe, whether it even makes sense, in a dimensional meaning, to make a statement like this, we cannot say.
I must admit that by all my sympathy for the scientific method, I think it is too careless and undisciplined in the reach it claims validity for. An intelligence of a totally different kind than ours, able to think in more than three dimensions, may come to totally different models of a functioning science, mathematics, time and cosmos. And we would be unable to recognise it as such.
Arthur C. Clarke once said that a foreign equivalent to what we call technology, from a certain level of superiority on would necessarily appear to us as either pure magic, or would bypass our perception completely, like the ant does not recognise the scientists' intelligence observing it, manipulating it and studying Ant City.
All this is fascinating firework in our minds. Distracting us. excites us, entertains us. But in the end, considering the real questions of our lives, and deaths, it seems to be what in German would be called breadless art. And it does not seem to turn us into better humans. Nor do we know of any other species or intelligence on Earth or elsewhere caring at all for our hobby that we take so serious.
Sailor Steve
10-20-12, 06:30 PM
And I did state they are simply ideas, but they are the only working models so far.
Just to make sure you're clear on my motives, I wasn't challenging anything you said. I don't begin to understand, but I had to ask the question of how they could be sure of anything that may or may not have existed before existence as we know it started existing.
Everything that came after.
I don't get it. But there's a lot I don't get.
And I will take any assertions you make about god seriously.
Why? I don't know any more than anybody else does, and I don't see that anybody else knows anything.
Skybird
10-20-12, 06:36 PM
I don't know any more than anybody else does, and I don't see that anybody else knows anything.
Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?
:D
Armistead
10-20-12, 06:53 PM
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
The answer still eludes us...
u crank
10-20-12, 07:12 PM
I must admit that by all my sympathy for the scientific method, I think it is too careless and undisciplined in the reach it claims validity for. An intelligence of a totally different kind than ours, able to think in more than three dimensions, may come to totally different models of a functioning science, mathematics, time and cosmos. And we would be unable to recognise it as such.
:huh: Dang. Spilled my drink.
Why? I don't know any more than anybody else does, and I don't see that anybody else knows anything.
Well if they do they aren't making it stick. :O:
Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?
:D
I know for sure it's Saturday night.:03:
I know for sure it's Saturday night.:03:
Not here it isn't!
Ha! :O::O::O:
u crank
10-20-12, 07:30 PM
Not here it isn't!
Ha! :O::O::O:
You Brits are different. You drive on the wrong side of the road I hear. :O:
Sammi79
10-20-12, 08:29 PM
Just to make sure you're clear on my motives, I wasn't challenging anything you said. I don't begin to understand, but I had to ask the question of how they could be sure of anything that may or may not have existed before existence as we know it started existing.
No misunderstanding here Sailor Steve :salute: to be honest I saw this thread as a chance for a bit of a laugh is all. You know, science/religion deathmatch kind of thing. So yeah I just replied in my own way, to me it was funny, but then as the saying goes 'I do amuse myself sometimes'
Ahhh but the idea that existence as we know it started existing at any point is yet again another anthropologically hampered idea. We do not know if existence existed before our universe existed or not. If it did it was likely not existence as we know it. but it was still existence, simply of a different kind. Different dimensions curled up, maybe only 2 of space but with an extra time or 3, or maybe no time dimension but 23 of space etc.. who knows? not I. What I do know is that the contemporary mathematical models of the big bang absolutely require a pre-existing state of something, in order for the bang to occur. This is where the mathematical models of Brane or M-Theory and string theory come in, as they deal with these extra dimensions and are capable of describing different states of existence, rather than cheating and inserting the 'singularity' about which there can be no mathematical model, as the singularity is where the equations regarding mass/energy/time/space result in infinity. In maths, infinity is almost certainly an indication that your maths is broken.
I did not intend to tread on anyones sensiblities regarding religion, I have my own views and humour and here in this thread I felt it was on topic to express them. Feel free to ridicule them and have a laugh on me folks. Honestly when science gets this abstracted, I couldn't really blame anyone for looking at it the way I look at religion.
I got to admit talking about nothing presents some interesting grammatical problems. Reminded me of Arnold J Rimmer, 'it may be going to not be happening, but it hasn't not yet happened happened going to be...' *trails off looking confused*
Anyway the best wisdom consists in knowing that which you know amounts to nothing compared to what there is to be known. But you know this already! and I know that you know. Now you know that I know that you know. And still the sum total of all we know is naught.
Regards, Sam.
Sailor Steve
10-20-12, 09:15 PM
Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?
:D
The last time I said I didn't know anything, you said I did know something but I was wrong. :O:
If I know something, but I'm wrong, then am I right when I say I don't know anything? If I'm wrong about not knowing anything then I must know something, but whatever it is eludes me. :doh:
There's an exception to every rule.
Except that one.
CaptainMattJ.
10-20-12, 10:43 PM
Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?
:D
can WE know anything? No. The only thing that is certain is that i exist. Everything else is speculation and perception. of course, if i believed that nothing and no one else but me existed for certainty i probably wouldve died a long time ago. So i accept what i perceive, and i perceive that you guys are the same as i am, living, thinking human beings. Im not being selfish, only speaking from my point of view. It is the same for you guys as well, everything else is based on perception. Everyone views the universe differently, in a very literal sense. Its why paranoid schizophrenics are not crazy, they simply perceive things differently, and whatever they see does exist in their mind, though maybe not in physical form. Its like everyone lives their own universe in a sense, though we come together.
and so i believe that the only thing that is absolutely certain is that you yourself exist in some form. everything else, what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, is perception. Its a little bit like the question "if a tree falls in the woods and nothing is around to hear it, does it make a sound". No, it doesnt, because no one is around to observe it and therefore it doesnt exist. Of course, thinking someone or something who is across the world doesnt exist because you cant hear, smell, taste, touch, or see them is ridiculous, leaving a window open for religion in people's minds. Its a paradox thats not worth wasting alot of time over, because youll drive yourself mad thinking "well, how do i know such and such exists, blah blah blah", and in the end it just ends up making you confused until you accept what you see to be real. on the same episode of "through the wormhole" with Morgan Freeman as i previously mentioned, with the explanation of what came "before", they talked about if you lost all your senses, would the universe exist? its mind boggling to think about, though stimulating. Its also been thought out way too much :D.
Skybird
10-21-12, 04:57 AM
The last time I said I didn't know anything, you said I did know something but I was wrong. :O:
Although their was Einstein and Quantum Physics, Newtonian physics still apply in practical billiards.
In our ordinary everyday lifes, and ordinary day conflicts, all these high-flying thoughts debated here play practically no role, or almost no role. On these levels, we indeed can know the things relevant for them. ;) There is no need to ask existential questions over why that dog bites me when I kick it.
But its high-flying philosophy talked about here, existential questions, metaphysics. That slightly different from the ordinary ground our normal lives' everyday-decisions must be made on.
Skybird
10-21-12, 05:13 AM
can WE know anything? No. The only thing that is certain is that i exist.
Yes, but it seems as if you is not that you that you usally think yourself of, nor is the world what your senses seem to tell you what it is. What your senses tell you only is that they function according to their design. A species with different senses has very different images of what is around. And your idea of world and perception - is created by your brain. And it seems you cannot go beyond your brain that easily.
And whether you go into space and examine astronomical dimensions, or fopcus your attention into the sub-atomic cosmos, you soon realise that you always seem to deal with just this: empty space between solar systems, stellar obecjets, galaxies, or neutrons, electrons and other subnuclear particles. And there is no borderline between the biog space up there and the tiny space in there. It seems to be just one empty space.
And although your body every six years has completely replaced all cells, molecules, atoms that it once cvomns78uted on and physicsally you without doubt are not ther being you have been six years ago, and although you are separated from your past time and are noit ion touch with past times and only imagine memories that tell you what you once have been and experienced but now are no more, you still use to think that "this was me and this is me now and I span all this time and I am all those minds from different ages and I am what I have forgotten as well".
So what is it that exists and thinks of itself as "this is me"?
Time. Another conception so hard to deal with. Time passing with different speeds. Space-time. Time-slices.
Hunger. Espresso. In the kitchen.
http://imageshack.us/a/img577/5618/heic0805c1590x389.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/577/heic0805c1590x389.jpg/)
Long distances...
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