I am gravely disappointed that nobody has offered an ample mathematical solution to Achilles vs. the Tortoise. Noble effort though, my friends. Onward and upward.
I was recently watching a Discovery special on the Big Bang theory, and after a couple of drinks and a few detailed discussions with others, I have found that I do not believe the Big Bang ever happened. My reasoning is thus: no matter the precision in digressing the causation of material currently in our universe, a point arrives where the scientists give up (as far as I'm concerned) and say that the Big Bang happened out of nothing.
So . . . these scientists say that there was nothing, then the Big Bang happened, and then the scientists go on to explain the glories of the universe in detail without discussing how something came from nothing!
Here's my critique: if nothing is nothing, then there is no possibility of something coming from it, because there is nothing. I don't know how we came into existence, other than the possibility that the universe never had a beginning and has always been and is infinite, but that's why I'm asking the Mises community.
Any ideas?
Btw, I posted the OP's post here :http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/28984/big-bang-anybody. Most of the answerers are actual physicists.
Friedmanite: The thing is you know you can have all your questions about the big bang answered through other means.
The thing is you know you can have all your questions about the big bang answered through other means.
Really? That's interesting. What other means exactly? Even this gentleman can't answer the same question I have about the Big Bang. At least he's honest.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
The answer you got in that link is exatcly what I started my second post in this thread off saying. "0 = 1" is incorrect for a starting point. "0+1=1" is correct.
The link to this guy, that triknighted provided, also corroborates what my post said. 'The creation of the universe may well be beyond our comprehension.'
The lecturer at the TED talk that I linked to also said the same thing as me, that 'cymatics may play an integral role in the creation of the universe.'
Does anyone care to respond to anything in my post? Or are you just going to squabble amongst yourselves about credentials that no one has?
"Orthodoxy views vibration primarily as a result of outside physical forces - a moving to and fro - while SVP views vibration as an effect of primary (causitive) laws creating and governing rhythmic or periodic interexchanges of state, acting from within."
Vacuum - quantum fluctuations - false vacuum - quantum fluctuations - false vacuum bubble nucleation - two bubbles collide - point of collision is big bang - blah, blah - decay to vacuum - repeat
Space is eternal and evolves cyclically. Nothing comes from nothing.
triknighted: So it goes back to Aquinas. I completely understand, but then take God as the uncaused cause instead of the universe itself.
So it goes back to Aquinas. I completely understand, but then take God as the uncaused cause instead of the universe itself.
You haven't thought through the implications of time beginning with the universe. Understand that the concept of causation relies on the existence of time. For something to cause another thing, the cause must precede the effect.
If God pre-existed time itself, then it's irrational to call god the uncaused cause. God needs no cause when thinking about a period when causation was literally impossible because there was no time.
If you think of time as a unidirectional dimension, meaning it only moves one way, forward into the future, then God may come from a period where time had two or three or more dimensions, rather than one. In such a period--and I know this becomes very difficult to imagine--in a place where time has two or more dimensions, causality itself breaks down completely. Effects can precede causes.
triknighted:Taking God to have been the uncaused cause, did He have a first experience? If not, how is it that he is infinite? Most people say, "Because he is God," but that doesn't help us understand it. Then people say, "Well, we're not meant to know." True, because if we were meant to know, we would know; but that doesn't mean we're meant to not know. Then people say, "It's too complex for us to solve." On this, they might be right. But it doesn't stop my faith that we can figure it out.
If there is a god, and if he created the universe, then probably the nature of the universe itself is the best evidence we will ever get as to the nature of god. Lots of assumptions built into that of course.
triknighted:One thing I never understood about atheism is its ironic resorting to faith--albeit a type contrary to theism. Athiests believe there is no God. Whether or not it is due to a lack of evidence, they believe there is no God; they don't know. Even many of these scientists who say the Big Bang occured are atheists, so they form their stances on something that doesn't make sense (matter ex nihilo) and claim to know God doesn't exist because they've never experienced God. See the hypocrisy?
Yes, naturally. Naturalism itself is an article of faith. But scientists are terrible philosophers generally.
triknighted:Scientist: "There is no evidence of something ever coming from nothing; in fact it is completely illogical and impossible; but the Big Bang had to have occured because there's no other explanation. We know this, and because we know this, we know God doesn't exist because we have never experienced God and the Big Bang happened anyway." Seems like they're begging the question and should readily admit they just don't know and possibly can't know. Wouldn't atheists be agnostics if they were being honest with themselves and constantly seeking the truth of the matter? I think a degree of agnosticism is needed when considering the origin (if there was such a thing) to the universe.
Wouldn't atheists be agnostics if they were being honest with themselves and constantly seeking the truth of the matter? I think a degree of agnosticism is needed when considering the origin (if there was such a thing) to the universe.
There are many honest scientists whom do take the agnostic position. It's the only position that can be established for sure based on the evidence.
Michel: edit: better stated: Why can't something come from nothing, but god can come from nothing?
edit: better stated: Why can't something come from nothing, but god can come from nothing?
If the universe is a computer and God a programmer, then powering on the simulation known as our universe is something coming from nothing, because we can only experience things within the simulation and cannot access the true cause of the simulation which is the computer and etc. outside the simulation. The reason then that god can come from nothing and nothing else can is because god, as programmer, as someone controlling the environment variables of our simulation, is the only one that can break the rules of the simulation. Just as in a videogame, someone will cheat codes can do things the simulation otherwise disallows completely.
Aristophanes: The link to this guy, that triknighted provided, also corroborates what my post said. 'The creation of the universe may well be beyond our comprehension.' The lecturer at the TED talk that I linked to also said the same thing as me, that 'cymatics may play an integral role in the creation of the universe.'
I think you're spot on here, Aristophanes.
In my opinion, philosophers should be perplexed and distracted by cosmology, specifically the original cause (and implicitly if there even was one, so on and so forth). I guess we will have to be content with having no answer--and apparently no means for an answer--for now. It just gnaws at me, though, when scientists and philosophers alike willingly throw their hands up and give up. I realize others accused me of doing that too soon with the Achilles thread, but I have a genuine stance on it that makes me believe the solution is impossible within mathematics. It's not so with anybody concerning what came before the Big Bang, or more specifically, how the Big Bang came from nothing.
I don't believe in paradoxes, yet apparently, according to our own logic, we are living here and now as an ultimate result of one.
Anenome: Michel: edit: better stated: Why can't something come from nothing, but god can come from nothing? If the universe is a computer and God a programmer, then powering on the simulation known as our universe is something coming from nothing, because we can only experience things within the simulation and cannot access the true cause of the simulation which is the computer and etc. outside the simulation. The reason then that god can come from nothing and nothing else can is because god, as programmer, as someone controlling the environment variables of our simulation, is the only one that can break the rules of the simulation. Just as in a videogame, someone will cheat codes can do things the simulation otherwise disallows completely.
That'd be a relevant example, Anenome, but in that example, God as a programmer can turn in his swivel chair and eat a sandwich (not meaning to sound disrespectful by any means; simply listing a possibility in the example). In the Big Bang, God as a "programmer" is outside of creation, but the question is begged concerning how he got there.
Whether the universe is infinite or it was created by God who is infinite, the question of infinity and how anything can be an uncaused cause is perplexing.
Friedmanite: Btw, I posted the OP's post here :http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/28984/big-bang-anybody. Most of the answerers are actual physicists.
This was the most detailed response I found on that forum:
Obviously we can't see the Big Bang, and we can't make another Big Bang in our lab (ignore anyone who tells you that the LHC recreates the conditions of the Big Bang, because it doesn't). So what we do is to devise theories to explain why the universe looks the way it does, and then we do experiments to compare our theory with the real world. If the experiments match our predictions then we feel confident that our theory is correct.
In this case the theory we use to describe the universe is General Relativity. When we make a few simplifying assumptions about the universe and feed these into General Relativity it tells us that our universe is described by an equation called the FLRW metric. We've used this to make predictions about the universe, and so far they've all been proved true, so we think the FLRW metric really works.
The key prediction of our theory of the universe is the cosmic microwave background. The WMAP satellite has measured this to extreme accuracy and it perfectly matches what we'd expect.
The thing about the FLRW metric is that we can use it to wind time back and calculate how the universe must have been in the past. If we do this we find the universe gets denser and denser and hotter and hotter, until around 13.7 billion years ago the density and temperature become infinite. This is the point we've called the Big Bang.
The problem is that we can't do calculations when physical properties like density and temperature become infinite. That's because infinity isn't a number and you can't feed it into an equation. This means no-one knows what actually happened at the Big Bang. But we can get very close to it. In fact we can get to within 1 picosecond, that's 10 −12 seconds after the Big Bang. That's how back the LHC takes us - to get any further back we'd need an even bigger accelerator, which i guess we'll build some day.
So when you say:
"a point arrives where the scientists give up"
well that's quite correct, and there's an excellent chance we'll never know exactly what happened at the moment of the Big Bang itself. However if we can calculate back to 1 picosecond after the Big Bang and get the right answers then you'd have to concede that if our theories tell us that the Big Bang happened then it probably did.
I'll try my best to answer your last question, Michel: If God is an uncaused cause, then there is no beginning for Him; this is definitional. God did not come from nothing or anything, He was; He exists from infinity. The Bible testifies to this. Faith in what the Bible has to say is the simple rock upon which Christians and other religions based on the Bible rest. Faith in what scientists have to say about the universe is what atheists will claim they believe because it excludes God as an explanation. This is not to say that Christians and theists are "anti-science", because they're not. Isaac Newton was a devout Christian, and believed that science brought him closer to God. The universe is a completely different animal, though. We can observe the universe in a way that we cannot observe God. For whatever reason, He has decided not to be visible to us in the way that the universe is. Apologists will argue empirically that it is impossible for the universe to be an uncaused cause, because if that were the case, the universe would have disintegrated already (I think it's the 2nd law of thermonuclear dynamics, but I could be wrong). I'm referring to entropy - if the universe is infinite in age, then why are we still here? If the universe is infinite in age, every particle should be evenly distributed throughout the volume of the universe. I believe the reasoning for the "ultimate cause" for everything will be self-referential. If the ultimate cause refers to another thing as it's cause, it is NOT the ultimate cause!
If God is an uncaused cause, then there is no beginning for Him; this is definitional. God did not come from nothing or anything, He was; He exists from infinity. The Bible testifies to this. Faith in what the Bible has to say is the simple rock upon which Christians and other religions based on the Bible rest. Faith in what scientists have to say about the universe is what atheists will claim they believe because it excludes God as an explanation. This is not to say that Christians and theists are "anti-science", because they're not. Isaac Newton was a devout Christian, and believed that science brought him closer to God.
The universe is a completely different animal, though. We can observe the universe in a way that we cannot observe God. For whatever reason, He has decided not to be visible to us in the way that the universe is. Apologists will argue empirically that it is impossible for the universe to be an uncaused cause, because if that were the case, the universe would have disintegrated already (I think it's the 2nd law of thermonuclear dynamics, but I could be wrong). I'm referring to entropy - if the universe is infinite in age, then why are we still here? If the universe is infinite in age, every particle should be evenly distributed throughout the volume of the universe.
I believe the reasoning for the "ultimate cause" for everything will be self-referential. If the ultimate cause refers to another thing as it's cause, it is NOT the ultimate cause!
I understand what the concept is, but still, it's illogical to separate god from reason and logic, for a logical person. I mean, only he can be infinite, nothing else? Why is that? Of course, it's a faith based notion, but put this into the logic field, and we have a problem.
Again, I cannot speak for all atheists, but I don't have faith in what scientists say. I don't have faith at all. I believe in reason and evidence, and some things scientists have proven, but other things, they didn't. One of those things is the big bang, which is just a theory, and I accept that as it is, a theory. Theists, on the other hand, accept what's written in the bible, coran, or any other, not as a theory, but as truth. That's something that I think is important to be distinguished.
Either way, I think this debate is very very interesting, and it's mind blowing to discuss what was the origin of universe, what existed before it, etc. I simply love it.
I understand, then again, a programmer has a mother, right?
In that realm, what came before god? Where are god (I mean, in which dimension, or space)? I'm not saying this is false, but I'm not saying that this is true either; like the big bang, is just a theory. The thing is, I'm not open to the "god theory" because I see no logic about it, and gods as we know today are creations out of faith.
I don't know if you know the logical failure of omnipotence (somewhat common, specially among atheists), but, either way: if an omnipotent being can create a rock that is too heavy for even him to lift, than he is not omnipotent, for he cannot lift the rock. On the other hand, if he cannot create a rock this heavy, for he can lift everything, he is not omnipotent, because he cannot create such a rock. Therefore, omnipotence is logically impossible. If there's a being so powerful that were able to create the universe, but who is not omnipotent, then I don't know why call him god.
triknighted replied on Fri, May 25 2012 7:48 PM Friedmanite: Btw, I posted the OP's post here :http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/28984/big-bang-anybody. Most of the answerers are actual physicists. This was the most detailed response I found on that forum: Obviously we can't see the Big Bang, and we can't make another Big Bang in our lab (ignore anyone who tells you that the LHC recreates the conditions of the Big Bang, because it doesn't). So what we do is to devise theories to explain why the universe looks the way it does, and then we do experiments to compare our theory with the real world. If the experiments match our predictions then we feel confident that our theory is correct. In this case the theory we use to describe the universe is General Relativity. When we make a few simplifying assumptions about the universe and feed these into General Relativity it tells us that our universe is described by an equation called the FLRW metric. We've used this to make predictions about the universe, and so far they've all been proved true, so we think the FLRW metric really works. The key prediction of our theory of the universe is the cosmic microwave background. The WMAP satellite has measured this to extreme accuracy and it perfectly matches what we'd expect. The thing about the FLRW metric is that we can use it to wind time back and calculate how the universe must have been in the past. If we do this we find the universe gets denser and denser and hotter and hotter, until around 13.7 billion years ago the density and temperature become infinite. This is the point we've called the Big Bang. The problem is that we can't do calculations when physical properties like density and temperature become infinite. That's because infinity isn't a number and you can't feed it into an equation. This means no-one knows what actually happened at the Big Bang. But we can get very close to it. In fact we can get to within 1 picosecond, that's 10 −12 seconds after the Big Bang. That's how back the LHC takes us - to get any further back we'd need an even bigger accelerator, which i guess we'll build some day. So when you say: "a point arrives where the scientists give up" well that's quite correct, and there's an excellent chance we'll never know exactly what happened at the moment of the Big Bang itself. However if we can calculate back to 1 picosecond after the Big Bang and get the right answers then you'd have to concede that if our theories tell us that the Big Bang happened then it probably did.
Incredible...I did not know that xD