Big Bang: Is there room for God?

[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!

[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?

[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

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Sammi79

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]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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?

[Armistead]

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

The answer still eludes us...

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

Dang. Spilled my drink.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?

I know for sure it's Saturday night.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by u crank

I know for sure it's Saturday night.

Not here it isn't!

Ha!

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Not here it isn't!

Ha!

You Brits are different. You drive on the wrong side of the road I hear.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?

The last time I said I didn't know anything, you said I did know something but I was wrong.

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.


There's an exception to every rule.

Except that one.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The last time I said I didn't know anything, you said I did know something but I was wrong.

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.

[CaptainMattJ.]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Now to the next level: can we even know anything for sure?

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 .

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

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.

[Gerald]

Long distances...

[Sammi79]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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 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.