A quick question re the Big Bang

Galvasean

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Don't believe there is a God/are Gods = Atheist. Simple as that.

FWIW, it's not people's fault for not knowing that. There are a lot of *groups* out there who like to purposely attach all sorts of falsehoods to the term 'atheism' in a purposeful attempt to make it seem less reasonable as a position.

Zombrex

Penn wrote: »

Please, it's obviously Bipolar Magnetic Reversal Theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FyUGusdIwE

"... reversal ..." is going to be my new explanation for everything.:p

Dades

Galvasean wrote: »

FWIW, it's not people's fault for not knowing that. There are a lot of *groups* out there who like to purposely attach all sorts of falsehoods to the term 'atheism' in a purposeful attempt to make it seem less reasonable as a position.

There's a few atheist groups guilty of making associations in people's minds too.

:pac: +

TherapyBoy

Something happened then God existed

Or

Something happened then the universe existed

We don't know enough to explain more than that at the moment. I don't believe in God or organised religion.

bnt

But I don't believe in the Big Bang, though. It's an interesting Theory, but if it was proven wrong tomorrow, I would go "that's interesting" and move on to the next theory.

I see this "false equivalence" all the time - talk of science as another "belief system". But how can you believe in it, absolutely, when it's always tentative, always "on probation", never seen as 100% settled? Even scientific "laws" aren't really laws in any absolute sense, they're just called that for convenience because they've been reliable.

I don't belittle people - at least not intentionally. I do belittle their beliefs, though, and that's part of the problem, I think. If you are so strongly wedded to your beliefs that you read an attack on them as an attack on you, that's not my problem - it's yours. The alternative is to censor myself, and keep quiet about your crackpot beliefs and the harm they cause, just because you can't even try to view them objectively. It's not personal, you are not your beliefs - are you?

Draw a cartoon of the "prophet" Mohammed, it can get you killed. Meanwhile, The Big Bang Theory is the name of a popular sitcom in which they make fun of socially-awkward scientists and science - and scientists not only enjoy it, some guest-star on it and make fun of themselves. See the difference? If you can't laugh about these things, you're going to spend your life getting offended for no good reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3DlNZRAlms

Zillah

My favourite comment about the big bang came from, I think, someone on this forum, though I forget who. Along the lines of: Time itself came into being with the big bang, so in essence, the universe has always existed - or, to put it more eloquently; there has never been a point in time in which the universe did not exist.

My own conceit on the topic: "Cause", by definition, is dependent on time: That which preceded and instigated this. If time came into being at the moment of the big bang then there cannot, by definition, be a cause.

kiffer

TheNap wrote: »

If you look closely you will see a full stop between them sentences as they were 2 seperate points about myself. I never said you cant be an Athiest and have an open mind.

*delurk*
I'm sorry... I don't want to be a grammar/punctuation Nazi but you seem to be a bit liberal with how you are using your fullstops.
It's not surprising that people had a little trouble with the post.
Everytime you put a space before a punctuation mark the unknown unknowable prime mover of unknowable intent destroyes a village of gerbils that ride around mounted on chinchillas. They have little saddles and they joust using chopsticks and there's a little gerbil princess.

Anyway... slightly more on topic.
What do we know or can assume with a fair degree of certainty?
The universe exists at the moment.
All our measurements and maths lead us back to some sort of timespace singularity 15 odd billion years ago.
What happened before that?
We don't know.
That doesn't mean you can jam in what ever you like at the start of time.
Why would people assume that they can just make things up and claim they are true and not get called on it?
Assuming your causeless cause, your unmoved prime mover has a conscious mind is just totally arbitrary.
Unless there is a logical reason to assume otherwise... if there is I guess I'd like to hear it.

Banbh

The most insidious trick in the religious brain-washing of our children is the first question posed in religious class: "Who made the world?" From this deceitful question with its build-in answers flows all the ignorance of our society.

Galvasean

Banbh wrote: »

The most insidious trick in the religious brain-washing of our children is the first question posed in religious class: "Who made the world?" From this deceitful question with its build-in answers flows all the ignorance of our society.

Indeed. "Who made the word" clearly alludes to someone making it. "How did the world come to be as it is now?" is a lot less leading.

General Relativity

bnt wrote: »

But I don't believe in the Big Bang, though. It's an interesting Theory, but if it was proven wrong tomorrow, I would go "that's interesting" and move on to the next theory.

This.

Everyone who I've ever heard say 'I don't belive in science' I've asked them; Do you keep your food in the refrigerator? They always say yes...

Galvasean

Pfft, everyone knows refridgerator's are conduits for God's will.

Banbh

I sometimes just look in the fridge and wonder. Who created the mould on last week's leftovers? Who took the eclair I was keeping for my tea? I suppose there are things we are just not meant to know.

Red Pepper

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Therein lies the difference between atheists and believers. An atheist is perfectly happy to say I don't know whereas a believer decides to fill the gap in our knowledge by labelling it God.

That is exactly it. Sums up the 'reason' for religion in one sentence.

Galvasean

Banbh wrote: »

I sometimes just look in the fridge and wonder. Who created the mould on last week's leftovers?

Bread goes in. Mould comes out.

You can't explain that.

General Relativity

Galvasean wrote: »

Bread goes in. Mould comes out.

You can't explain that.

Mould is God's way of punishing us for the gay agenda.

Banbh

On which day of the week did God make the mould? Did he make them before the bread - in which case what were they living on until the wheat came along and the humans to make it into bread?
There's never a theologian around when you need one.

PopePalpatine

Banbh wrote: »

Who took the eclair I was keeping for my tea?

Sorry. :pac:

FISMA

... was reading a few posts and the following made me think. I've cherry picked a few from King Mob and understand that KM is asking questions and the comments do not necessarily reflect opinion.

King Mob wrote: »

Again, why are you assuming everything must have a cause?

And if everything must have a cause, what caused the creator you are positing?

Is he able to exist without a cause?

King Mob wrote: »

If they are claiming that God can exist without a cause, then the next question is: why does this not apply to the universe?

If the universe can exist without the need for a cause, then why do we need God as part of the explanation?

I would say that causality, as we know it, is limited to our Universe.

Another limit to matter in our Universe is the speed of light.

I see no problem with a Universe that obeys causality as we understand and a God that does not.

Actually, let's take God out and just talk Physics.

When you go faster than the speed of light, superluminal, cause and effect break down as we know it. Causality is violated. Albeit has been a while, I do not remember Relativity forbiding superluminal speeds altogether.

During Modern Physics, I remember doing a problem whereby if one could go faster than the speed of light, for example, an arrow hit the target, before it was fired.

Thus, I do not find mutually exclusive a Universe that necessitates cause and effect and superluminal particles that have no effect, but cause. Perhaps, the cause, for the effect, has yet to occur?

Closing thought, a lot of people mistakenly believe that Einstein forbid a superluminal "realm," for the lack of a better word. Not true. In fact, Einstein held out the possibility of a superluminal world.

Einstein, said that no thing, that is no thing that has matter may be accelerated to the speed of light, let alone past it.

King Mob

FISMA wrote: »

Albeit has been a while, I do not remember Relativity forbiding superluminal speeds altogether.

As you said, special and general relativity mean that nothing with mass can reach light speed. Light travels at light speed because it has 0 mass.

If something had negative mass, it would travel at superluminal speeds, but no such thing has been observed (and it's possible that it's unobservable) and negative mass does not gel well with current models.

I was just making a point in response to the the definite assertion that every must have the cause.

Cavehill Red

Knasher wrote: »

My money is on quantum vacuum fluctuations

I know the banks are dodgy but surely there is a safer place to put your cash on deposit?

First reply nailed the answer to the OP's question, incidentally.

kiffer

King Mob wrote: »

As you said, special and general relativity mean that nothing with mass can reach light speed. Light travels at light speed because it has 0 mass.

If something had negative mass, it would travel at superluminal speeds, but no such thing has been observed (and it's possible that it's unobservable) and negative mass does not gel well with current models.

I was just making a point in response to the the definite assertion that every must have the cause.

... I might be wrong but I was of the understanding that its mass would have to be imaginary not just negative.
Which ever way you cut it you end up well outside "sensible to human".
Negative mass particles might be interesting...
Imaginary mass particles, insane.

Edit: not wrong, took a look at tachyon on wikipedia... Anything going faster than light needs an imaginary mass, and when it loses energy through cherenkov radiation, it goes faster, until it's going infinitly fast and has zero energy...
Yeah...

Morbert

robindch wrote: »

When arguing about the "beginning" of the universe, religious people will say "everything needs a cause", but then claim that their particular deity doesn't need one. In a debate, applying a rule to other people that one isn't prepared to apply to oneself isn't just silly, but it's a little bit dishonest too and it's not "belittling" people to point that out.

TheNap wrote:

Again please excuse my ignorance. But if something wasnt created , where did it come from ?

The usual theist response to the counter question "Where did God come from?" is the claim that God, being atemporal, needs no cause, while the physical world, being temporal, needs a cause.

The first thing that must be stressed, which has already been mentioned on this thread, is that we do not have a full understanding of the universe. We cannot understand the Big Bang, because we do not yet have a theory of quantum gravity.

But there are tentative beginnings of a theory of quantum gravity, and they suggest that the universe might exhibit an atemporal existence as well.

When a quantum physicist wants to calculate the probability of a system evolving from state A to state B, they consider all possible ways the system could evolve from A to B, and sum up quantities related to all those paths to calculate relevant probability. When this approach is applied to gravity, an analogous calculation happens. I.e. To calculate the probability of the universe evolving from a state A to a state B, we sum over all the spacetime topologies bounded by A and B.

Here's the relevant/interesting part. Stephen Hawking, in his famous paper "The Wavefunction of the Universe" suggested that, instead of summing over all topologies bounded by an initial and final state, we could simply sum over all topologies bounded by the final state, and not specify an initial state. This gives the probability of the universe arising from "nothing", in the sense of a topology of zero space, time, energy, or matter. In the same way an electron can spontaneously form as an excitation of the dirac field, the universe can spontaneously form as an excitation of a field of topologies.

The notion of this "nothing" is tricky, because it is technically not "nothing" in the creatio ex nihilo sense. You still have some form of topological superspace like structure capable of generating the universe. But the important point is time is generated by this structure. It is atemporal, and is therefore no more beholden to the question "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" than God is.

kiffer

The Excitated Field of Topologies hates fags?