How was the Universe created?

valis said:
I agree; this is the reason I decided to switch from a lifetime of atheism to being a Christian.

Since "before spacetime" is totally off limits and outside anything we can possibly relate to saying "I see no proof God set things in motion; therefore I am an atheist" makes no more sense than saying "God created everything".
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"God created everything" is more illogical than "I am an atheist". The theist posits an additional intelligent "thing" without evidence. Occam's Razor does not allow that.
 
Daryl17 said:
I know we wont find out any time soon, but if you had to make an educated guess based upon your current knowledge how would you say the universe was created?
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Boredom. I'm rather convinced we live in a black hole, though. Which means one thing is true about this joint: it sucks.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Because it enters a completely new variable. But nevermind. I agree with our conclusion. And we are far from that. Still, every theory that mankind has sustained regarding the "final question" has been replaced when a better theory is created. I dont see why (or how) we could reach a possition safe enough to be considered as final. Never. The very same methodology we use to "understand" (our language) is clearly not as transparent as we would wish. I do not believe we are able to draw accurate maps, merely functional ones.

Sorry if Im unable to explain this better, english is not my first language and dealing with complex subjects (like this one) puts me in disadvantage ;)
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:o

Perhaps I misinterpreted what you said. I thought by problem you were saying the acceleration provides direct evidence against the BBT. However, you seem to be saying that it introduces yet another variable, which the answer to holds the possibility to show the current theory incorrect. I completely agree, but I wouldn't say these unknown pieces make the theory inaccurate. That seems to imply the theory is wrong, or missed the target, and I wouldn't go quite that far until there is a known contradiction between the evidence and the theory's predictions.

I would probably go with incomplete, but I would consider that a bit redundant. All theories are incomplete, and in my opinion will always be viewed that way. Science is founded in doubt, advanced by wonder, and constrained by the evidence. If we were to ever think we had a complete understanding, the doubt would be removed and science would no longer make any progress.

ETA - Thanks, KingMerv00. That was what I was referring to.
 
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I less than three logic said:
I thought by problem you were saying the acceleration provides direct evidence against the BBT. However, you seem to be saying that it introduces yet another variable, which the answer to holds the possibility to show the current theory incorrect. I completely agree, but I wouldn't say these unknown pieces make the theory inaccurate. That seems to imply the theory is wrong, or missed the target, and I wouldn't go quite that far until there is a known contradiction between the evidence and the theory's predictions.

I would probably go with incomplete, but I would consider that a bit redundant. All theories are incomplete, and in my opinion will always be viewed that way. Science is founded in doubt, advanced by wonder, and constrained by the evidence. If we were to ever think we had a complete understanding, the doubt would be removed and science would no longer make any progress.
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Once more, I have to agree. My believe is that it is incomplete, and based on human theories history (remembering Newtonian gravity for example), I believe that a day will come in which it will render obsolete. Not less "real" but merely limited to a particular perspective.

Oh and let me tell you, I love the phrase about that science is based in... Really good one! :D
 
valis said:
I agree; this is the reason I decided to switch from a lifetime of atheism to being a Christian.

Since "before spacetime" is totally off limits and outside anything we can possibly relate to saying "I see no proof God set things in motion; therefore I am an atheist" makes no more sense than saying "God created everything". There is an area that is beyond science; and I suspect always will be.
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So you went directly from atheism to belief in the Resurrected Christ and the Trinity via the realisation that nobody could prove it wasn't so? Am I reading you correctly here?

That is why arguments about religion that are based on logic or observation in our space time make no sense to me.
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I don't doubt it. So why were you persuaded of the Trinity, given that logic and observation weren't involved in the argument?
 
davidsmith73 said:
There's alot of talk about the question of what was before the BB as being meaningless. But is there necessarily a temporal component implied in the question "How was the universe created?" I've mentioned the physicist Julian Barbour before, who has suggested that time itself does not exist. He explains the BB as just one particular physical state of the universe that isn't at the "beginning" at all. Nothing is at the beginning because time does not exist. If this kind of theory is correct then it would seem to me that the question of the creation of the univserse becomes one of - how did something come from nothing?
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At this point we can't know, we can assume that the universe exists in a matrix that is around it. But like a flatlander in a circle we can not see outside the circle. We can ask what is outside space time but at this point we can't really tell.

So maybe it is not ameaningless question, it could be a question without an answer.

We don't know that something came from nothing, we just don't know what is on the back side of the big bang.
 
Dancing David said:
At this point we can't know, we can assume that the universe exists in a matrix that is around it. But like a flatlander in a circle we can not see outside the circle. We can ask what is outside space time but at this point we can't really tell.

So maybe it is not ameaningless question, it could be a question without an answer.

We don't know that something came from nothing, we just don't know what is on the back side of the big bang.
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See...

Everyone's saying what I've been saying about the limits of our physical knowledge. I think this makes me an agnostic. Others think it makes them atheists. It's been suggested that my agnosticism is a misunderstanding of the atheist position...

:(
 
Important point:

Time is a combination of two kinds of time in modern quantum cosmology and you only run out of one kind at the Big Bang!

The two kinds are the usual forwards/backwards one that everybody knows and talks about and a second kind of "sideways" time that was a well-established part of quantum theory long before it turned up in cosmology and proved to be somewhat helpful.

Those of you who know mathematics might know that a complex number is made up of real and imaginary parts. Well, in quantum cosmology, so is time and you only run out of the real part at the Big Bang!

See that clever Hawking fellow for details.
 
Darth Rotor said:
If time doesn't exist, then all the stuff in the universe is and always was, so there was never nothing, there was only a matter of whatever is, and was, changing form.
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Could there be such a concept as the universe in a state of infinite uniformity?
 
Okay, thought I better find something by Hawking to highlight what I pointed out two posts above.

Here, he talks a little about the other kind of time everyone needs to know about if discussing the Big Bang:

If space and imaginary time are indeed like the surface of the Earth, there wouldn't be any singularities in the imaginary time direction, at which the laws of physics would break down. And there wouldn't be any boundaries, to the imaginary time space-time, just as there aren't any boundaries to the surface of the Earth. This absence of boundaries means that the laws of physics would determine the state of the universe uniquely, in imaginary time. But if one knows the state of the universe in imaginary time, one can calculate the state of the universe in real time. One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn't have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/text/public/bot.html
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In other words, the form of time we all know well starts at the Big Bang but another form of time isn't limited to that and so physics doesn't break down at the Big Bang any more.

Don't let the terms "real time" and "imaginary time" bother you, the words don't mean the ideas are in any way more dubious than calling them "vanilla ice cream time" and "raspberry ripple ice cream time".

At the same link as the above quote, Hawking says:

Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there's another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time.
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Jimbo07 said:
See...

Everyone's saying what I've been saying about the limits of our physical knowledge. I think this makes me an agnostic. Others think it makes them atheists. It's been suggested that my agnosticism is a misunderstanding of the atheist position...

:(
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I don't know, is agnosticism, as is I can't know.

Atheism is "There is no god".

Some people who say "There is no evidence of god" call themselves atheists and some call themselves agnostics.

Belief in the big band event is different from belief in god, the sets have some overlap but are not the same.
 
davidsmith73 said:
Could there be such a concept as the universe in a state of infinite uniformity?
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Yes, but it doesn't match the observations.

Darth Rotor's statement about time has some problems. Time is defined by local events and therefore what we call time is a flatlander concept confined to the circle.
 
Dancing David said:
Atheism is "There is no god".
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Most thoughtful people that I've heard define "atheism" as "the lack of belief in god (or gods)." Theism is belief in god, atheism is the absence of that belief.

"Agnostic" describes what you don't know. An agnostic atheist is one who does not claim to have absolute knowledge, but does not believe in a god. A gnostic atheist would be someone who claims to know that there are no gods, but I don't know of any people like that.
 
CurtC said:
Most thoughtful people that I've heard define "atheism" as "the lack of belief in god (or gods)." Theism is belief in god, atheism is the absence of that belief.

"Agnostic" describes what you don't know. An agnostic atheist is one who does not claim to have absolute knowledge, but does not believe in a god. A gnostic atheist would be someone who claims to know that there are no gods, but I don't know of any people like that.
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Does that make you an agnostic gnostic-atheist-ist ?
 
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