How was the Universe created?

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Asking what was before the universe is... simply meaningless.
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Then you must believe in spontaneous generation?

How did all that energy come to be?
 
Cuddles said:
The universe didn't start. To speak of the universe having a begining implies that it exists within time, but since space-time is the universe, this makes no sense, since it is actually time that exists within the universe. Asking what was before the universe is exactly the same as asking what is north of the north pole, it is simply meaningless. Since we can't say when it was created or what it was created from, the question of how can never even be asked, let alone answered.
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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.

That is why arguments about religion that are based on logic or observation in our space time make no sense to me.
 
bob_kark said:
No, he's simply stating that he doesn't know what caused the Big Bang.
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No one is saying that he "knows" what caused it. But we do know that it occured, so he must believe that it spontaneously generated if he believes it is meaningless to talk about its cause.
 
T'ai Chi said:
No one is saying that he "knows" what caused it. But we do know that it occured, so he must believe that it spontaneously generated if he believes it is meaningless to talk about its cause.
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He's stating it is meaningless to talk about it because there is no way to determine what caused it. If anything existed prior to the Big Bang, it was destroyed by the Big Bang. If everything that existed prior to the Big Bang was destroyed, all the information about everything that existed prior to the Big Bang was also destroyed. Therefore, we have no way to determine what generated the Big Bang, because all the information about whatever generated the Big Bang was destroyed by the Big Bang.
 
T'ai Chi said:
No one is saying that he "knows" what caused it. But we do know that it occured, so he must believe that it spontaneously generated if he believes it is meaningless to talk about its cause.
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:nope:

He's saying that time and space as we know them started at the Big Bang, so "before" is a meaningless concept, and physics as we know it can't be applied. We cannot, therefore, know anything about what came before the Big Bang. It could be a quantum fluctuation, God, the Great Green Arkleseizure, The FSM, or a young deity with a 'Early Learning Creation Kit'.

We can't know, so he isn't saying he believes in spontaneous generation, he's saying we can't know which renders the question meaningless.
 
T'ai Chi said:
No one is saying that he "knows" what caused it. But we do know that it occured, so he must believe that it spontaneously generated if he believes it is meaningless to talk about its cause.
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We know that it appears that something like the Big band Event occured. We just can't tell what happened before the Band Began to Play.
 
wollery said:
:nope:

He's saying that time and space as we know them started at the Big Bang, so "before" is a meaningless concept, and physics as we know it can't be applied. We cannot, therefore, know anything about what came before the Big Bang. It could be a quantum fluctuation, God, the Great Green Arkleseizure, The FSM, or a young deity with a 'Early Learning Creation Kit'.

We can't know, so he isn't saying he believes in spontaneous generation, he's saying we can't know which renders the question meaningless.
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I prefer the Great Coyote, the Cosmic Burrito and the Mighty Fart.
 
bob_kark said:
He's stating it is meaningless to talk about it because there is no way to determine what caused it.
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He cannot just define the problem away as meaningless because he lacks the motivation or imagination to think of how it could be determined.

If anything existed prior to the Big Bang, it was destroyed by the Big Bang.
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What is your evidence for that?
 
Cuddles said:
The universe didn't start. To speak of the universe having a begining implies that it exists within time, but since space-time is the universe, this makes no sense, since it is actually time that exists within the universe. Asking what was before the universe is exactly the same as asking what is north of the north pole, it is simply meaningless. Since we can't say when it was created or what it was created from, the question of how can never even be asked, let alone answered.
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Well stated. As I've said a few times before: There is no "before" the universe.
 
valis said:
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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I think you misunderstand our take on things. We see no evidence for a God, therefore find no reason to believe one exists.

Many people view the existence of the universe as evidence for God, with the logic of "something had to create the universe, therefore that was God's role." But we skeptics like to point out that this logic is invalid. If something can't exist without being created by another entity, then you can immediately hit the auto-destruct button on the theist's logic by simply asking "what created God?" The theist's logic circuits go into an infinite loop and quickly melt.
 
Theists have an error catch for that scenario which exits the loop and outputs "god always was", with a preventative code that disallows future access to that loop so they don't realize they are ignoring the fact that one could just cut out a step and say the universe just plain exists.
 
T'ai Chi said:
He cannot just define the problem away as meaningless because he lacks the motivation or imagination to think of how it could be determined.
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It's a good thing he isn't then. He lacks any evidence at all to be able to determine it, period, the end. If you feel comfortable making up plausibilities, that's your prerogative. However, in the scientific field, evidence is found before theories are formed not the other way around.

T'ai Chi said:
What is your evidence for that?
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I really recommend studying more about the Big Bang. A Brief History of Time is a good start. Some of the information is a little out-dated, but the information about the Big Bang is fairly relevent.
 
T'ai Chi said:
He cannot just define the problem away as meaningless because he lacks the motivation or imagination to think of how it could be determined.
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As many people have explained, it is not me that defines the problem as meaningless, the problem itself does this. Take a globe. Label the top "North", label the clockwise direction "x" and the anti-clockwise direction "y". Start at any point on the sphere and travel however you like in the x and y directions. You will find you can move unhindered as far as you like, although you will come back to your stating point if you travel far enough. Now try travelling in the north direction. What happens when you reach the top? Now replace the word "north" with the word "time". We cannot leave the universe either spatially (x and y) or temporally (time), and since these coordinates only exist within the universe it simply makes no sense to talk about them as if they exist outside.

What we can say is that the universe seems to have started as an infinitely small, infinitely dense point. This is when time and space started, and we can try to describe what happened from this point onwards. What we can't say is what was before this point, because there is no such thing as before.
 
T'ai said:
But you are still welcome to give a compleyely detailed Darwinian account of any biological thing. Maybe I could get a clue by you clueing me in on some of these accounts?
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Why? Are you going to change your mind based on this "completely detailed Darwinian account"? How about all the other things for which you don't have a completely detailed account? Do you believe that the weather happened yesterday?

Valis said:
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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As opposed to arguments about religion that are based on no observations whatsoever?

No one is saying that he "knows" what caused it. But we do know that it occured, so he must believe that it spontaneously generated if he believes it is meaningless to talk about its cause.
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We don't know whether there was a cause or not. If you want to say that this leaves the possibility of "spontaneous generation," fine, but you should use scare quotes.

~~ Paul
 
Cuddles said:
As many people have explained, it is not me that defines the problem as meaningless, the problem itself does this. Take a globe. Label the top "North", label the clockwise direction "x" and the anti-clockwise direction "y". Start at any point on the sphere and travel however you like in the x and y directions. You will find you can move unhindered as far as you like, although you will come back to your stating point if you travel far enough. Now try travelling in the north direction. What happens when you reach the top? Now replace the word "north" with the word "time". We cannot leave the universe either spatially (x and y) or temporally (time), and since these coordinates only exist within the universe it simply makes no sense to talk about them as if they exist outside.

What we can say is that the universe seems to have started as an infinitely small, infinitely dense point. This is when time and space started, and we can try to describe what happened from this point onwards. What we can't say is what was before this point, because there is no such thing as before.
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I've being trying to do this for the last hour and a half, my globe doesn't seem to have a top.
 
sphenisc said:
I've being trying to do this for the last hour and a half, my globe doesn't seem to have a top.
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Draw a dot on it with a pen. That's the top. The globe analogy is not perfect because time appears to have directionality. If you impose directionality on the globe then you have a much closer example.
 
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