@Verithrax I'm not certain I could get that to you, actually Might be a hard debate to find on youtube.

I don't think a lack of citation on that exact quote lessens the fact that nearly every single person nowadays will say that Einstein was wrong. He refused to think of a beginning and an end to the universe. Is this because he butchered his own equations to fit in with what scientists of the day could observe?

The cosmological constant I personally would say was fit into his writings to make a stationary universe "work". As I recall, there were even some obvious loopholes/mistakes that he left in these equations... mistakes that even a novice physicist could pick out immediately, which would imply that he overlooked or ignored them on purpose.

My personal views on this general topic though? I think we're a far way's away from getting any closer to discovering how things began, whether it be what happened before the "Big Bang" or where you personally might happen to trace it back to right now. Even the "unmoved mover" creation thoughts leave a question of where this entity could have possibly come from. We'll just keep trudging along and slowly piecing together things collectively as a race, just as we always have. It's a slow process, but in general.. religion tends to slow down science and facts if they can't be twisted into proving their "divine truths"

Typically when talking about that sort of entity, you don't think of where it came from. It just is. It's pretty much impossible to wrap our minds around it with our world view. Even if there was such a mover and we figured out where it came from, the next question would be, well what came before THAT. The entire idea behind the unmoved mover is that there has to be something that had no cause in the beginning.

I mean just think about the idea of the universe expanding. Even if it's not literally expanding into something outside of the universe and is instead stretching within itself (because the universe is infinite), the entire idea of it is just unfathomable.

This is exactly the reason why it's no better an answer than "because of X scientific principle that we don't fully understand yet." It's an extra and unnecessary step because every question you ask of one thing, you have to ask of the thing you give up as an explanation.

EDIT: I also think you give too little credit to what is and is not fathomable. There are plenty of otherwise unintuitive things we now know about the way the universe works because our brains are not particularly well-adapted to coping with them. For example, it's hard to "fathom" without being taught so specifically that a rock is actually mostly empty space (atom nucleii + electrons with massive rifts inbetween), because that's not what our brains are used to being forced to comprehend.

You've lost me here. I'm giving too much credit to what is unfathomable?

It's not that people can't comprehend something. It's easy to understand the idea that something has just existed, that when we are touching things we aren't actually touching them, etc, but people are almost always driven to ask why (*coughkidscough*). Inevitably you reach a point where your why has no answer and will probably never have an answer, which is usually what leads people to bring in the idea of some sort of being.

I would love to be totally proven wrong and have someone come up with an explanation, though, because thinking about the universe bugs me out.

The more obvious argument for what you (Veonira) said... is how is it unfathomable to think of where a true god (or something similar) could have possibly come from, yet it's perfectly reasonable for us to talk about a universe as if we could go out in the backyard and point at it?

At this current juncture, I find it crazy to speak of a divine entitity in such a fashion. If we're just to assume "Hey! My god was 'just there always' and made the world", why shouldn't we also assume that this consciousness that we're experiencing now isn't the way it always was? To just draw a line and not at least wonder what happened before, what might happen in the future, or to think about the problem at all...

As Einstein said, (Yes, I'm going to bat you to death with him) "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that people should just accept it and leave it as "well that's just the way it is." I've already mentioned that I find the universe bewildering, the idea of it expanding, the idea of such a large quantity of matter coming from a tiny point in whatever there was before the universe. I'm talking about something specific here, because the list of things that we don't understand goes on pretty much for forever. I don't think that it's crazy to talk about some sort of entity because this is a topic about what the beginning was.

Even though I am a proponent of the idea of some sort of intelligent design, I still like to occasionally think about where the universe came from, what existence is, etc. My current theory is that everyone lives in their own dimension/universe/whatever you want to call it and everything else here is just a figment of my imagination. So when I'm having this discussion with you here on these forums, I'm actually just having a conversation with nothing but my own creation.

That's not all that uncommon nowadays. Being a "player" or getting mixed up in the "game" (not just the drug game either) are part of modern culture

I always knew you was a playa, Veo

I love these threads, they always bring up fun stuff to talk about. The downside is that I always want to respond to every post, which takes a long time and is painful for all of you to read through. If you have any suggestions how I could make it easier rather than just lumping it together like this, let me know!

@Verithrax
Good point on 'yet' - I knew it was only a matter of time before I screwed up and used a nonsensical word. I am still fuzzy on what you're getting at. I am guessing you are talking about the additional dimensions that Kashim mentioned? The idea being that, if there are other dimensions relating to time, it is conceivable that time as we know it is actually a defined plane within another dimension? Even with that, I am missing the conclusion. From within time and space, it is difficult to imagine a beginning, however evidence suggests that there was a beginning (and most likely will be an end). So it is like we are in the 2-dimensional world you mentioned, except we recognize that there must have been a beginning of time. Also, we recognize there must be something "outside" of time (i.e. in another plane in an added dimension) - unless I'm misunderstanding something, we seem to be agreeing, at least conceptually.


@Daganev
I think there are only a couple of problems. First, you are beginning by assuming that the Torah is true and literal, and working backwards from that to define what happened. I agree completely that it is true, insofar as it coincides with the Christian Bible, but not necessarily literal. It is quite possible that the beginning happened in a very different way - which I do not believe would contradict the passages in Genesis, since they are not written to give us a literal, historical lesson. The passage you are referring to (Genesis 1:2 and following) begins by saying the earth is formless and void, which does not necessarily mean the Universe was. Also, the Spirit of God is depicted as moving over the surface of the waters, which could not exist if the Universe was still made up of virtual particles.

Of course, all of that is just nitpicky, since I believe we agree on the overall point, but I do not agree with your understanding of the correlation between the passages in Genesis and the Big Bang.


@Kashim
I think I see where you're going. You seem to be suggesting that there could be some discoveries in the scientific realm which would render all of these assumptions, guesses, and discussions moot. Of course, that is always a possibility. I think it is something we should keep in the back of our minds. However, I don't think that knowledge should have any real affect on how we reach our conclusions now. The best we can hope fur scientifically is to say something is most likely, given our current information. I suppose I should revise to say that it seems most likely, given our current information, that time and space had a beginning and thus a cause, which must itself have been extra-temporal and extra-physical. There is always the possibility that this could all someday be proven false, but there is also the possibility that everything else we know and believe could someday be proven false. Until that day comes, the best we can do is work with what we know now.


@Veonira
I have to agree with Hyrtakos that you are exactly where most of us are. Our minds boggle at the concept of anything infinite, and also at the idea of something outside of our own experiences. We can't imagine something outside of time because we have never experienced something outside of time (off-topic, the idea that something cannot be imagined unless it has been experienced has also been used before as evidence for God, but it's not a very strong case on its own). However, just because it is a stretch for us to conceptualize, that does not necessarily mean it is not true.

I can only imagine a few possible scenarios, and all of them are difficult for me:
1. Something exists outside of time, space, and energy
2. Time and the universe itself had no beginning, but stretch infinitely into the past
3. Our understanding of the Universe around us is flawed and unreliable

To me, #1 seems the most likely out of the three options, but I grant that none of them are particularly easy to accept.

There are also issues with the Cyclical Model (the idea you mentioned with the universe expanding the collapsing again). It's a pretty interesting concept, but it also goes against our understanding of different aspects of the universe, and doesn't really have any evidence going for it save for the desire to avoid a beginning.


@hyrtakos
Einstien's findings have been the basis for a lot of progress since then, but he was far from perfect. I haven't heard specifically about his theories on the beginning of the Universe, but I would be particularly interested to hear if he ever talked about how the concept of the beginning of the universe demonstrated a flawed understanding of physics. I've said before I'm no scientist, but from what I know of physics it is the explanation that makes the most sense.

@Shiri
Actually, I would say it is. In order to reach a conclusion when there are multiple possibilities, we have to apply Occam's Razor (known in Philosophy as the Law of Parsimony). It simply states that, all other things being equal, the simplest solution is most often the correct one. It is certainly possible that the understanding of the universe which we've built up over the last few thousand years is completely wrong, or that there are other, deeper forces which we will someday understand - in the same way that it is possible that all of our observations of gravity so far have been flawed. It is possible that humans really have an equal chance to birth other humans or have penguin babies, but we have only observed human births. It's possible that nothing in the universe really has a cause, and we have just coincidentally observed events happening in close succesion. However, if we are to apply Occam's Razor, we are forced to accept that humans always reproduce after their own kind, and that causality does exist. I would also argue that the concession that something must exist outside of space and time is more likely than the concession that our understanding of the Universe (including our understanding of space, time, energy, and causality) is wrong. We have to work on the assumption that our current information is correct until such time as this supposed new information becomes available - planning on it seems to require at least as much faith as planning on finding a God when we die. It is not a scientific conclusion, but one of faith.



@hyrtakos (2nd post to Veo)
I know this was addressed to Veo, but I want to jump in instead. I think the problem is in your way of thinking. I am not suggesting yet that there is any god or even anything conscious outside of ourselves, only that there must have been some Original Cause. It is more logical to say that something is extra-temporal than to say something is eternal - the concept that something is infinitely old makes no sense, regardless whether it is the universe or a god or a flying spaghetti monster. The concept that something is actually outside of time itself, however, makes much more sense. This is why it is unfathomable to think of where this extra-temporal and extra-physical entity "came from" - it had no beginning, it is outside of time itself so the concept of a beginning and age are meaningless. It is also unfathomable to speak of our consciousness now, and even of the universe itself, being infinitely old because, while infinity is great for logic and theory, it simply never makes sense in real-life application. It makes no sense to us to say that something, in application, is infinitely anything - including infinitely old.

I know what Occam's razor is, and how to use it. What I don't get is why you're directing this at me. I think you may have misattributed someone else's post to me, because I don't think I've said anything that contradicts this principle.

As for how YOU'RE applying it - you state that accepting something to be outside of time is "simpler" than accepting that our understanding of the way time/causality works, but that can't logically be true at all because our understanding of the way time/causality works would seem to indicate that things can't "exist outside of time" so simply. Whichever way you put it, there isn't any question that we're doing something wrong - the difference is that proposing it to be some external force adds the extra step of having to ask where it came from. It's a redundant problem with the problem we're having to begin with, so occam's razor necessitates that we strip it away.

EDIT: Going to bed in a bit, so if you reply and I don't that's why.

I was simply clarifying that Occam's Razor is why I believe the hypothesis of something being outside of time (possibly an intelligent designer) is a better answer than "because of X scientific principle that we don't fully understand yet."

There is actually nothing about our understanding of space and time that indicates that nothing could exist outside of it - this is actually what Kashim and Verithrax seem to be suggesting with the idea of extra dimensions. Actually, it seems perfectly logical that such an extra-temporal and extra-physical plane should exist. It does not, however, seem logical to throw out our understanding of the universe simply because we would rather avoid such a conclusion.

As for the point about having to define where this external force "came from" - that's a nonsensical question if we accept that it could exist outside of time. The concept of a "beginning" or of some event when it comes into being is nonsensical - there is no point in time at which it began or evolved or "came" simply because there is no point in time. There is no need to explain where something comes from, how it began, etc if it can truly exist extra-temporally. The debate may exist over whether such a thing is possible, but there are no laws of physics I have heard of that would make it a difficult concept, and in reality evidence seems to suggest that there are other planes (or dimensions, to sound less sci-fi-like) out there which we do not know about. Given that and the evidence of causality and the beginning, it seems to me that Occam's Razor would demand that we accept what seems logical and doesn't violate our understanding of the world (that there is some force in a separate plane, outside of time and energy) rather than to push for a conclusion which might seem more personally satisfying but requires the violation of scientific principals.

EDIT: And feel free to take your time responding, I'm at work anyway this is just my distraction that keeps me from being a good programmer.

Even though I'm not going to reject the notion, I wasn't talking about "other dimension" whatever you think that means. I was using additional dimensions in a hypothetical way to make a point about what our Universe looks like.

While this was addressed to Daganev, I just want to hop in and make a comment. I could be completely misunderstanding you in your interpretations of Genesis, but you seem to be implying that you think Bereshit is a direct metaphor for the Big Bang, which truly doesn't make much sense, unless you're assuming it was given by an omniscient, omnipotent being. If it were a direct metaphor for the big bang, we also have to assume that its authors from a few thousand years before now also know of the big bang, etc., which seems highly improbable.

In reality, I don't believe it is a direct metaphor for the Big Bang, but from my understanding Daganev does - that is the point I was disagreeing with. I believe that the passages in Genesis were meant to convey a few important theological points:
1. God created the Universe (Gen. 1-3)
2. God's power is boundless (Gen. 1, his mere words caused planets and stars to spring up)
3. God designed the universe carefully (Gen. 1-3 talk a lot about the order in which God created things and his careful observation after they were created)
4. God took special care and became personally involved in his creation (account starting in 2:4 shows a much more "personal" God, who formed man out of clay with his own hands)

I do not think it is literal, nor even that it is a direct metaphor for the Big Bang, simply because the form doesn't lend itself to interpreting it that way. It is in poetic form. It's not directly related, but it's an interesting topic so I'll go on a tangent about it for a minute.

Day 1: Light Day 4: Physical sun/stars to demonstrate light
Day 2: Separation of waters Day 5: Underwater life
Day 3: Dry Earth/plants Day 6: Beasts of the Earth
Day 7: day of rest

These parallels are consistent with what we would expect from a poetic account. There are also a couple of other problems, for example the suggestion that waters existed before anything else, and the fact that it suggests the moon is a light in and of itself. In addition, in the account beginning in 2:4, items seem to be created in a different order - God created man before any shrubs or trees in this account, for example.

I think it is clear that the Genesis account cannot be literal. I also think that the fact that it does not seem to coincide with what we know of the "beginning" implies that it is also not meant to be a direct metaphor. I don't think that God saw any need to include a literal transcription in the Bible, but I believe that science is equally reliable - apologists like to refer to the "Word of God through the Scriptures" and the "Word of God through Creation." If at any time these two things contradict, then our interpretation of either one or the other is wrong. In this case, I believe the common interpretation of the Genesis accounts is mistaken.

How's that for a very long answer for a very short question?

This is exactly what I have been arguing in this thread, though it may have become convoluted at some point as people pinpointed parts of my posts. When studying humans you can see that we have a tendency to use the world around us as a model for things or as examples. I actually think #1 and #2 could be considered the same thing...(see below my next quote)



As a disclaimer, to be honest I don't know what I believe regarding what I'm about to say, however I'm going to argue about it just for the sake of it.

As humans, we have, in general, one experience with time. What we see on a clock, how it factors in to measuring speeds and accelerations and all of that business. When you're talking about something that is extra-temporal, why can't that be the same as something being within time but infinite? Time is essentially the term we created to describe what time is (sorry for the circularity). The time dimension may exist, but it's not the same as we imagine it, and so our version of time is totally different. Our perception of time almost HAS to have a beginning because that is how we are trained to think about things. There is a beginning of a second, a minute, an hour, a month, a year, a decade, etc. But really, there is no end to the previous period of time. This isn't even just a side effect of our language, but a perception that everyone shares.

It might be easier to think of something simply being outside of the dimensions we acknowledge just because, like most of us had said it's very, very hard to imagine time not having a beginning. Also, our time may not necessarily be the same time for such a thing. On the other hand, though, we could argue it's easier to believe that something DOES exist within time because that is the only thing we can understand about any "life" or existence, because it's hard to imagine something that doesn't have some sort of life span even if it is infinite.

To be honest I have no idea what I just argued but oh well .

Good, I love agreeing with people! Though, it does cut down on the fun of a good debate...



For claiming not to know what you are talking about, you sound pretty clear on it! This is actually an existing theory - in my first post, I linked an article to a relatively well-known theologian and apologist named William Lane Craig. This sounds similar to the case that he makes. He says that rather than God actually being "outside" of time, he is in a different sort of time, which he refers to as "duration." It's an interesting idea, but I don't personally find it very convincing. Science seems to imply that what we know as time had a beginning. We could agree that there is something outside of the "time" that we know; it might be in a sort of "time" of its own, or it might be completely outside of anything like time. They could be similar concepts, I just personally find the latter easier to swallow.

So far as I know, there is no good model for time as we know it. We usually conceptualize it as a line (or a line segment, or a ray). The model of a line breaks down, of course, since a line is infinitely divisible and time and space are not. You can't literally take 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2...(repeat infinitely) of an inch in practice - a bit of research on Zeno's Paradox would show you why. For the sake of argument we'll say that time is a line. We could then say that there is some force out there outside of our line - maybe on a parallel line of its own, or maybe in a completely different plane that is not even like the line we know as "time." Either one is a possibility, and I'm not sure there's any real way to differentiate and decide between the two other than what is personally easier to accept.

Why are you so focused on time though?
Big Bang theory tells us that spacetime began from a singularity.
You are boggled with the 'before or outside time' concept (trying to imagine or understand it is obviously futile), but you mention nothing about space which supposedly didn't exist as well.

You are saying that there had to be a cause for the Universe to bang based on the law of casuality. Why do you want to apply that law to the event that occured before our spacetime existed? Nobody tries to apply any physics law to 'outside' because it doesn't make sense - physics only apply to spacetime. We know nothing about outside of it.

One more thing, I just went back to read your first post and something bothers me about point 1, though I can't really pinpoint it.
Spacetime (let's even talk space alone) constantly expands. Energy spreads. Would it expand forever, the Universe will become a completely stagnant place with zero energy, scientists claim. So why do you say we should be uh, balls of heat?

Your statements here are exactly why I am focused on the time issue - it answers your questions.

The Big Bang theory does not necessarily posit a singularity - that is an adaptation working backwards from the expansion rate. For all we know there could have been nothing before the Big Bang (which is what I am inclined to believe - no singularity, no anything).

I am applying the Law of Causality to an event that happened within space and time. The beginning of space and time is an event that marks the beginning of space and time - as such, it occurs within the bounds of spacetime, and is subject to the applicable laws. Physics apply within spacetime, and so this event which happened within space time and marked its beginning does fall under the purview of our understanding of physics.

From my understanding, energy does not necessarily spread. Matter is energy, and it is actually pulled together (by gravity/strong & weak nuclear force/etc) rather than spread apart. The celestial bodies are spreading because of the force of the big bang and the lack of another powerful force to pull them back together, but energy does not necessarily spread in the same way. It is simply used up and turned into heat - the real point of the Second Law is not that all energy disappears, but that energy is constantly used and heat is released as a byproduct. Heat cannot be used in and of itself, it is simply a waste product. So, given an infinite amount of time, all energy (including all matter) would be used up and only heat left behind.

What a confusing reply.


If you could elaborate a bit on how exactly. I fail to see it (but maybe that's because it's so late).


Alright. There was a singularity at some point though. The very first moment. It doesn't really matter anyway since you agree that there was no spacetime.


So you are saying that beginning of spacetime was both, the cause for itself and the effect of itself? Law of causality requires the cause occuring before the effect. But there cannot be before, since there was no spacetime. I really find it hard to understand your reasoning here.


I guess I'd have to know physics to argue about that effectively, but still - it's the space dimensions that are expanding. There is more and more room, while the amount of energy does not increase. Therefore eventually everything will 'die' at some point, stars will go off, matter will decay, background radiation/heat that remains will become fainter and fainter and fainter... Even black holes apparently do decay overtime, current theories say. Essentialy, while everything might turn up heat at some point, this heat will keep dissolving in the constantly expanding space.

Wow, I sound so apocalyptic right now.

It's just one of the theories, but I think it's one of the two major ones, the other one being that universe will start collapsing at some point and the whole process will be reversed.

I just meant to say that the crux of the concerns (questions about causality, the Original Cause, etc.) that you and other people have brought up really relates to the issue of time, not so much the issue of space. I also agree that space itself came into existence with Big Bang, but that is a statement of faith more than scientific fact. The only conclusion we can safely draw is that energy and matter came into existence with the big bang - there is no way to demonstrate whether space (as a dimension) existed beforehand or not, other than to demonstrate that time did not and that space and time are closely related.

You're right that it doesn't really matter much, but I don't necessarily think there was a singularity. The idea of something being "infinitely dense" in the real world just doesn't sound practical to me. I believe all of the things came into existence as the big bang happened, and that there was no singularity before that. I do get your point, though, that everything must have been smooshed pretty close together. There is another theory that suggests that space itself was created with the big bang, but matter and energy were simply "added" to that space later. I don't think there's any scientific basis for the theory, but it does also get around the problem of the singularity.



I think there is a misunderstanding here. The Law of Causality does not actually require that the cause occur chronologically before the event. They can actually happen perfectly simultaneously. I would suggest that some force, which must itself have been outside of time and space, interacted (i.e. the "cause") somehow to cause the beginning of time and space. This cause could not have happened chronologically before the beginning, since there was no time. They had to occur simultaneously as a complex first "event." This first event defines the beginning of spacetime - before this, there were no events. After this, every event is measured by its distance from a previous event, which describes our perception of time.



I am not an expert physicist either, but my understanding of the way this works is different. Space itself seems to be constantly expanding, like you said. Celestial objects are all growing further and further apart as the empty space between them stretches. However, while this applies on a cosmic level, it does not seem to apply on a smaller level. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the Earth, for example, has any more empty space in it than it did millions of years ago. The same goes for other bits of matter. If space were truly increasing on a microscopic level, then we would expect to see the number of solids decreasing, while liquids increased, and gasses increased even more (as space between the molecules increases). This doesn't seem to be actually happening, though, so far as I can tell. So, while "space" is expanding, it does not seem to be occurring within a microscopic level - it does not seem that the Earth would ever be completely dissolved by turning into a gas, though (given infinite time) it would be completely dissolved by turning into heat. Whether or not that heat would then dissipate, I am not sure.

This is a test post to see if quotes work like I think they do. If they do I will add content.

EDIT: Good, they do. Content coming soon.

EDIT: Ok, actual post.

My understanding of time is fuzzy but here goes.

Firstly, there are a couple of ways "extra dimensions" can be conceptualised. One is like an extra direction - up, left, forward and into some other axis we can't move in or perceive. While technically "outside time" in that well, it isn't time, nothing that is part of that suggests that it's any freer from time than the known dimensions.
The other way is some kind of quantum portrayal of the universe as lots of seperate "bubbles". I've never heard a description of this theory wherein these bubbles have spatial dimensions but no time.

On top of that, I don't see that something "outside time" could affect something where time exists in the first place. If it doesn't have time, nothing can change (<-- may be wrong but is logically sound given a traditional understanding of time.) If nothing changes it can't be a cause of anything else.

If there was something for this external force to "interact" with to cause the beginning of time and space, then why does it need an external force to interact with it at all? If it's possible to justify the existence of something -outside- of time that can start things within time/start time, then you have to ask where the thing that's doing the starting comes from. If you have something "just starting" something else and not requiring a beginning, why does the something else need a beginning to begin with? Again, Occam's razor seems to require that you cut out the middleman and not have any such extratemporal being that started the existing universe at all.

Also, the term "universe" is a bit of a misnomer nowadays, because it's not "uni" anything. If we pretend that none of the above is true and the universe had to have been started by something else, you -still- have to ask what it came from, and where that came from, and that will be more of a "uni"verse anyway. Saying things exist outside the universe kind of evades the question of what started creation.

I think that's poorly worded, but I hope you can understand what I'm saying.