Big Bang: Is there room for God?

[Gerald]

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]

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]

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]

@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


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
Deicide ain't murder if you're already dead, right?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Sammi79

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!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sammi79

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.

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

[Sammi79]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

"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.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I understand that concept, but what evidence is there for what went (or didn't go) before?

Everything that came after.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

And as for "Deicide"? well, my God can beat up your God! How do I know this? Because I believe it, so there!

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]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

[Oberon]

*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.

Originally Posted by Sammi79

Oh smeggin hell this is getting like Red Dwarf!

Regards,
Sam.

Fixed that for you

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Betonov

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...

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Hottentot

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]

Originally Posted by Oberon

On turn 3 God moved that settler into a nearby village...

*YOU HAVE UNLEASHED A HORDE OF BARBARIANS*

On turn 4 God rage-quit

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Oberon

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

[Oberon]

We've all been there: