Atheists and the Big Bang

KingMerv00

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I am so tired of fundies telling me that the Big Bang proves God because everything spontaneously sprang from nothing.

The ignorance of this argument is amazing and I'm ready to set things straight. The latest research into the Big Bang has coalesced the scientific community's opinion on the matter. Are you ready for the truth?

They don't know much.

That's it. Notice that "They don't know much" is NOT the same as "God did it".

Anyway, anybody hear any interesting theories about the BB and how it all this fun got started?
 
The Great Green Arkleseizure sneezed it out.<p.

Beware the coming of the Great White Hanky!
 
KingMerv00 said:
Anyway, anybody hear any interesting theories about the BB and how it all this fun got started?
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Quantum fluctuation and cosmic inflation are the currect hypotheses.
 
Brane theory also has some supporters (big hyper-dimensional membranes crashing into each other to produce big bangs). Personally I don't understand most cosmological big bang origins theories well enough to know if they have any merit. For the time being, I think the "They don't know much" response is pretty accurate. This may of course change in the future.
 
KingMerv00 said:
Anyone hear anything recently on the "Big Bounce" theory?
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< bad joke >

"Baywatch" had nothing to do with the origin of the universe, although theories on David Hasslehoff's age may conflict that.

< /bad joke >
 
KingMerv00 said:
I am so tired of fundies telling me that the Big Bang proves God because everything spontaneously sprang from nothing.
Click to expand...

I'm not really into the philosphy of knowledge, but the Big Bang is evidence neither for, nor against their being a creating entity because we simply cannot ever know what happened before the very first Plank time at the beginning.

Any speculation is more in the realm of philosphy than Cosmology.
 
KingMerv00 said:
I am so tired of fundies telling me that the Big Bang proves God because everything spontaneously sprang from nothing.

The ignorance of this argument is amazing and I'm ready to set things straight. The latest research into the Big Bang has coalesced the scientific community's opinion on the matter. Are you ready for the truth?

They don't know much.

That's it. Notice that "They don't know much" is NOT the same as "God did it".

Anyway, anybody hear any interesting theories about the BB and how it all this fun got started?
Click to expand...

I am so tired of fundies claiming the Big Bang never happened.

Ugh... either way they answer, they always manage to be wrong. I don't know how that's possible, but they've done it.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
I'm not really into the philosphy of knowledge, but the Big Bang is evidence neither for, nor against their being a creating entity because we simply cannot ever know what happened before the very first Plank time at the beginning.

Any speculation is more in the realm of philosphy than Cosmology.
Click to expand...

I don't think that will necessarily be true in the future. Perhaps some clever guy will come up with a new theory that shows the Big Bang wasn't really the beginning at all.

I don't think there is a need to doom it to philosophy just yet.
 
Hello,

I'm always a little hesitant to post about stuff that I admittedly know very little about but I'm very curious about this matter and was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.
Theists claim that God created the universe but when asked who created God they always fall back on the old alpha and omega / divine mystery type of argument. My question is: Instead of some starting point like The Big Bang Theory couldn't the universe just have "always been?" I know we can't comprehend this but has there been any scientific arguments for this? Scientifically, does there have to be a beginning to the universe? After all, there is no end, right? Sorry if I'm just being ignorant here.
 
aargh57 said:
Hello,

I'm always a little hesitant to post about stuff that I admittedly know very little about but I'm very curious about this matter and was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.
Theists claim that God created the universe but when asked who created God they always fall back on the old alpha and omega / divine mystery type of argument. My question is: Instead of some starting point like The Big Bang Theory couldn't the universe just have "always been?" I know we can't comprehend this but has there been any scientific arguments for this? Scientifically, does there have to be a beginning to the universe? After all, there is no end, right? Sorry if I'm just being ignorant here.
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I'm no expert either but I'll try to help you out here.

Yes, that used to be a way around God before people like Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding. If you reverse that expansion of billions of years, everything is crunched into a single point. That is why Big Bang theory is popular.

The toughest part of Big Bang theory is that, at the beginning of time, classical physics goes right out the window. The energies of such a compact system are so high they make no sense. String theory helps resolve some of these issues but I won't get into that because I am not expert on string theory.

Now what happened before the Big Bang? Was there time before the Big Bang? The simple answer is this: We just don't know.

Will we ever know? We don't know.

Was God the cause of the Big Bang? He isn't needed but that sort of thing cannot be proven or disproven anyway.

Was Uranus (the god not the planet) the cause of the Big Bang? He isn't needed but that sort of thing cannot be proven or disproven anyway.

My point here is that the Big Bang and the Christian God are basically unrelated unless you want to read the Bible literally in which case, the Bible is wrong.
 
KingMerv00 said:
Yes, that used to be a way around God before people like Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding. If you reverse that expansion of billions of years, everything is crunched into a single point. That is why Big Bang theory is popular.

The toughest part of Big Bang theory is that, at the beginning of time, classical physics goes right out the window. The energies of such a compact system are so high they make no sense. String theory helps resolve some of these issues but I won't get into that because I am not expert on string theory.

Now what happened before the Big Bang? Was there time before the Big Bang? The simple answer is this: We just don't know.

Will we ever know? We don't know.

Was God the cause of the Big Bang? He isn't needed but that sort of thing cannot be proven or disproven anyway.
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Just to add to the above, relativity actually requires the Universe to be non-static (a result that Einstein hated). In fact, Newtonian gravity pretty much requires it too!

Also we have no idea whether or not the Universe will end. There are three possibilities;
1. Closed Universe - the Big Crunch, the Universe contains enough mass to halt and reverse the expansion with the result that everything comes back to the point singularity from whence it came.
2. Open Universe - The Universe does not contain enough mass to stop the expansion and continues forever, resulting in the heat death of the Universe (the Universe slowly cools to a nice even temperature - serve with fries and a side salad :p ).
3. Flat Universe - The Universe has exactly the right amount of mass to halt the expansion at an infinite amount of time in the future. Also results in heat death and seems utterly nonsensical to me, but is the favoured scenario for almost all cosmologists (partly because it makes the maths a little easier :D ).
 
From Iacchus's link:

"Time is wholy contingent upon the fact that a material Universe exists. Meaning, if there is no physical distance by which to measure the rate of change, there would be no time. However, that isn't to say there wasn't an immaterial universe that existed prior to this, otherwise where would the pre-existing structure (blueprint) exist to give rise to the Big Bang and set the whole material Universe into motion? And what would be the difference between that and say, "rolling out the carpet" (so to speak) with its inherent design? Isn't that in effect what DNA does, the inherent blueprint or code that tells the body what to do? So, if all we have is the immaterial dimension -- ever wonder where we go in our dreams? which, are merely an extension of thought and of the same dimension -- then the only possible thing we can have in the physical sense is stillness which, is an expression of the moment and, extended unto Eternity."

I don't think I understand this entirely but isn't an "immaterial universe" an oxymoron?

Our senses observe the universe. If there is an afterlife we would merely be sensing a universe with different rules.

If there was a time before what we call the material universe, that just means the universe was different before the Big Bang.
 
KingMerv00 said:

I don't think I understand this entirely but isn't an "immaterial universe" an oxymoron?
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Well, if something exists in another dimesion, how could it be viewed as material, at least in our dimension? And, while it may have influx into our dimension, it doesn't manifest itself into our dimension.


Our senses observe the universe. If there is an afterlife we would merely be sensing a universe with different rules.
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Yes.


If there was a time before what we call the material universe, that just means the universe was different before the Big Bang.
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Essentially yes ... that the material universe pre-existed in another dimension.
 
As I understand it, "What was before the Big Bang?" makes about as much sense, in Einstein's concept of spacetime, as asking "What's due north of the North Pole?"
 
Interesting that most fundies that try to explain the origin of the universe probably don't even know how many planets there are in the solar system.
 
Dr Adequate said:

As I understand it, "What was before the Big Bang?" makes about as much sense, in Einstein's concept of spacetime, as asking "What's due north of the North Pole?"
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Believe what you want to believe. ;)
 
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