The big bang.

Our tiny minds cannot fathom the vastness of the universe.

Though we all possess these wonderful imaginations we cannot fully
appreciate just how large it is. It stretches beyond what we can accept.

There are suns out there that our sun would fit into a hundred times.
They are so far away we looking at what they looked liked millions of years ago.
This is a fact yet trying to fully comprehend this is not within our capabilities.

The more we discover about the universe the less we know.

It is far easier to state a God made it all and then we can relax and not feel
so inferior.

Yet it is presumptuous and arrogant for us to think that of all the billions of stars
out there a God chose this insignificent little planet and only this planet to create
life on.

The universe will be teeming with life and I hope I'm around when one day
we meet and discover another life form from another planet.

The explanations from our religious leaders will be very interesting.
Most likely they will want mankind to go war with them just to convert them
to christianity.

All aboard the Space Ship Mayflower we have heathen aliens to bring into the flock.

Oh and VisH.

Stop going on about killing animals.
If we stopped eating animals millions more people would starve to death.
This planet cannot feed us on bread alone.

Next time you clean your teeth look at them.
Those are the teeth of a meat eater, you are designed to eat meat.
Stop denying yourself the pleasure of a hamburger.
Your digestive system will handle it, it was designed that way, it's in your DNA.

You are being dishonest to yourself, go out and eat some cooked animal flesh.
It will also do you some good, Veggies are sterile.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Our tiny minds cannot fathom the vastness of the universe.

Though we all possess these wonderful imaginations we cannot fully
appreciate just how large it is. It stretches beyond what we can accept.

There are suns out there that our sun would fit into a hundred times.
They are so far away we looking at what they looked liked millions of years ago ...[text shortened]... go out and eat some cooked animal flesh.
It will also do you some good, Veggies are sterile.

Thus Spoke Alley/Archer/Beck/Bono (Sonny, of course)/Cartwright (oh, she of Simpson's fame)/Conway (Ha! That ol' has-been?)/Corea/Cruise/Hayes/Holmes (friggin' wannabe, really)/blah/blah/blah/Travolta!

Originally posted by greenpawn34

All aboard the Space Ship Mayflower .


Jon Anderson? 😀

Oh! I adore 🙂

-m.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]=====================================
“...If you believe that the universe popped into existence from NOTHING (and I mean nothing as in NO time, NO space, NO energy) then...”

but I don't believe this!. No thing can come “into existence from NOTHING “ because there is not such thing as “NOTHING “.
======================================
and see a bit more about what you do believe.[/b]

“...The majority consensus of scientific opinion on cosmology, at present, IS that there was no universe "until" the Big Bang. Please tell me then what there "was".
...”

that depends on which theory is the correct one. I am not claiming to know the correct theory. I do not know the correct theory.


“....If the universe began, then NOTHING "preceded" the universe. ...”

that's invalid logic. “If X began then NOTHING "preceded" X” is invalid. The conclusion doesn't follow from its premise.
I only have to show one example of that logic leading to a false conclusion to show that logic to be invalid:
If an avalanche began then NOTHING "preceded" that avalanche ?

“...So far, you are excellent at telling me what you do NOT believe. But I have to hear what you believe. ...”

reminder: “I don't know if time really did begin at the Big Bang “ (my quote)
-in other words, I believe that “I don't know”.

Also, I was not only telling you what I don't believe, I was telling you what scientists and atheist generally don't believe:
I hope now you comprehend that we do NOT believe that “everything came from nothing”! I don't know how many other ways I can say that. Do you undertstand?

“...And then I will ascertain if that is supernatural or not. ...”

I believe that “I don't know”. So, is that “supernatural”?

“...It could be that you mistake your belief for what you wish it was. ...”

what? I WISH to believe that I don't know? Err, nope.

“...We may define time as the measure of change in matter....”

how do you know that this is a correct way of thinking of time? What if time has nothing to do with “ change in matter”?

“... If there was no matter there is no time. ...”

how do you know this? -You haven’t yet demonstrated the premise of time being “ measure of change in matter” but you already use it to form a conclusion.

“...yes, which just confirms my above argument. If time had no beginning, it would still only make sense to talk about “finite periods” of time from an arbitrary chosen point of time to the present and never “infinite periods” of time from an arbitrary chosen point of time to the present and that fact does not logically contradict the notion of time having no beginning. (my quote)
================================

However, the STARTING POINT had to be reached also. And if Time is infinitely extended in the past, the STARTING POINT of your period could not have been reached either....” (my emphases)

if time has no beginning (and I am not saying it has no beginning) then, by definition of “no beginning”, it has no “STARTING POINT”!
What is this “ STARTING POINT” you speak of? How can time have a “ STARTING POINT” if it does not have a beginning? (this is not just a question about semantics; I am questioning the actual concept here )

“...While rearranging the problem somewhat by addressing periods, I don't think you have really solved the problem of the infinite past being traversed. ...”

yes I did! It is not “traversed”. If you read my last post you see that I implied this.

“...Was it "Big" ? "Big" as compared to what ? ...”
...compared to any other known “explosion” we know of; although, note that it wasn’t technically a real “explosion”!

“...I think the phrase "Big Bang" is the best language description to put words on what they are trying to convey. ...”

actually, that's false:
The term “Big Bang” was NOT actually made by the scientists that first came up with it but rather from people that wanted to ridicule the whole theory by making it sound absurd by dismiss it as a crazy “Big Bang” but that name stack even though the scientists that first came up with the theory thought that name was a misnomer:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090102075331AA3i5FO

“...But the consensus is the SPACE came into being with TIME at the (for lack of a better phrase) "Big BANG" ...”

no; for those that believe, rightly or wrongly, that time began at the big bang, that is NOT their consensus because they do NOT believe that space/time/universe “ came “ into being because they do not believe that the universe “came” from something.

“...So we must be really talking about nothing. ...”

no, because it (according to them) did not “come” and so it did not “come” from “nothing”.

“...Robert Jastrow, founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and a astrophysicist who held the Edwin Hubble's chair at Mount Wilson Oboservatory, a self confessed Agnostic said:

"Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover ... That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact." ...”

every profession has its morons; science is no different. He is just talking a load of crap here. The overwhelming majority of scientists would surely agree that he is just talking a load of crap here.

“...Cosmologist Allan Sandage said "We cannot understand the universe in any clear way without the supernatural."

These scientists are not afraid to refer to the word "supernatural". ...”

as I already said, every profession has its morons.

“...Andrew, you have told me that you did not say this and you did not say that. But you have not told me much about what you do believe. Now taking no position is the easiest to defend. ...”

taking “ no position” is not only the easiest position to defend but often the only rational position one can take when one has insufficient data to form a rational conclusion. The position of “I don't know” is perfectly legitimate. I don't know if time really did begin at the BB.

But note I also basically said “IF time had NO beginning then....” and “IF time HAD a beginning then....” so I have at least explained something (albeit not much) of what I think could be.

Sorry for such a long post.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Big bang isn't proven, and it cannot be disproven. Feel free to believe it, or to just
accept it as something possible, or reject it out of hand.
Kelly

We for sure know that our universe is expanding, and that fact alone means if you run back in time, the universe would be shrinking, and carrying that to it's extreme, it runs into some kind of point.

There were problems in the original construction of big bang theory, that one part of the universe could not have connected by energy that only goes at the speed of light, stuff too far apart was seen to be equal in a lot of ways.

That led to Alan Guth and company to envision a very large expansion of the early universe in a way that allowed parts of the universe separated by space larger than light could cross and still have a connection that could not happen if only light were to be the causative agent.

I was at a talk by Alan Guth at Bell labs and was able to ask him a question. I calculated during his talk, when he gave some size estimates and time estimates, I came up with an expansion that was about 22 orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light. I asked him how that could be since in our universe nothing with mass could travel even at c much less that much faster.


He said and I quote 'You did your arithmetic right'! I at least got the main order of speed correct! But he said it was space itself expanding and shuffling all the matter with it like toys on a conveyor belt in a factory, the belt being space and the toys would not be seen as moving relative to the belt but the belt itself is moving and taking matter with it.

So that 22 orders of magnitude faster than c only lasted for an extremely brief duration of time but it allowed all the parts to have the characteristics we see today in the astronomy images.

Astronomy itself is like having access to a time machine. The further out into space, the further back in time we see because light is so far behind reality at that distance. So when we look deeper into space, we are actually seeing an illusion, that is to say, whatever we see at say, 10 billion light years away is what it looked like 10 billion years ago and would certainly not be what we would see if we had a spaceship that could travel that 22 orders of magnitude faster than c I calculated all those years ago.

For instance, if you tried to go to the end of the universe in a spaceship very very close to c and to you very little time goes by, say a week, you go out to ten billion light years and turn around and come home, to what you thought was home, our sun would not even exist any more, having gone through the red giant stage, our solar system pretty much fried, the sun having evolved into something like a white dwarf or red dwarf, because when we get back we would be 20 billion years in our own future. Not a pleasant situation to be in.

Anyway, the idea of this early expansion of the universe going at that rate has not been proven but explains the data we get from astronomy. There are other theories that do not require this ultra fast expansion and the idea of where did the energy come from turns into 'the energy was there all along'. Some event concentrated all the energy of our universe, all the gravity, all the matter into one spot and it all started from there including our idea of time.

Of course time can be seen as multi dimensional in itself so when the big bang event happened, it was only the start of our time clock. There were clearly other time clocks going at probably an infinite number of rates in other universes and ours was like a seed from a tree expanding to what we now know.

It is just there are plenty of other seeds and our universe itself may be making new seeds that become new universes with its own time clock ticking at its own rate and so forth.
I think it entirely possible this will be proven in the next couple hundred years.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
“...The majority consensus of scientific opinion on cosmology, at present, IS that there was no universe "until" the Big Bang. Please tell me then what there "was".
...”

that depends on which theory is the correct one. I am not claiming to know the correct theory. I do not know the correct theory.


“....If the universe began, then NOTHING " of what I think could be.

Sorry for such a long post.

====================================
that depends on which theory is the correct one. I am not claiming to know the correct theory. I do not know the correct theory.
====================================

Neither am I absolutely sure which is correct. That is why I used the word "consensus". And that is also why I did not say "only".

skipping down past the repeated complaints ...

===============================
as I already said, every profession has its morons.
==================================

Ad homs are not effective in this discussion.

What arrogance. You want to say "I don't know. I don't know". And others are morons who don't agree with you.

===================
taking “ no position” is not only the easiest position to defend but often the only rational position one can take when one has insufficient data to form a rational conclusion. The position of “I don't know” is perfectly legitimate. I don't know if time really did begin at the BB.
========================

And cosmologists who deduce that time began at the Big Bang are of the morons born every minute.

I am not too impressed with this. It sounds kind of arrogant.

I have a suspicion that you really don't care about rationality or evidence. I suspect that your real primary and overeaching concern is something else.

Is it making sure the existence of God is rationlized away for you ? Hey, this is the Spirituality Forum.

It was a mathematician who postulated that an actual infinity could not exist except in the mind theoritically. It was not a Christian theologian.

Based upon that the problem of traversing infinite time to arrive at a point today, is deemed impossible.

If I understand Andrew Hamilton's point, he suggests that it is not impossible for arbitraty point T1 to be traversed to point T2 as a period not involving previous periods.

I don't understand how he can argue that T1 to T2 (a period) can be traversed but T0 to T1 was not.

Making an arbitrary point and starting the clock there doesn't prove that from infinity of time prior to the start of that period, that distance was not traversed. Otherwise the beginning of the arbitrary period T1 could not exist.

What did I miss ?

Originally posted by sonhouse
We for sure know that our universe is expanding, and that fact alone means if you run back in time, the universe would be shrinking, and carrying that to it's extreme, it runs into some kind of point.

There were problems in the original construction of big bang theory, that one part of the universe could not have connected by energy that only goes at the forth.
I think it entirely possible this will be proven in the next couple hundred years.

================================
Of course time can be seen as multi dimensional in itself so when the big bang event happened, it was only the start of our time clock. There were clearly other time clocks going at probably an infinite number of rates in other universes and ours was like a seed from a tree expanding to what we now know
=======================================

Do you have evidence of "other universes" ? Where is your evidence for "other universes" ?

And if no evidence, and if you reject the idea of God because of lack of evidence, then why not reject the idea of "other universes" for the same reason ?

delete

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]================================
Of course time can be seen as multi dimensional in itself so when the big bang event happened, it was only the start of our time clock. There were clearly other time clocks going at probably an infinite number of rates in other universes and ours was like a seed from a tree expanding to what we now know
============ ...[text shortened]... lack of evidence, then why not reject the idea of "other universes" for the same reason ?

In the eternal Vedic teachings there are descriptions of other universes, and in fact they state that there are unlimited universes.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
“...The majority consensus of scientific opinion on cosmology, at present, IS that there was no universe "until" the Big Bang. Please tell me then what there "was".
...”

that depends on which theory is the correct one. I am not claiming to know the correct theory. I do not know the correct theory.


“....If the universe began, then NOTHING " of what I think could be.

Sorry for such a long post.

============================
every profession has its morons; science is no different. He is just talking a load of crap here. The overwhelming majority of scientists would surely agree that he is just talking a load of crap here.
============================

You are poisoning the well of discussion with sophomoric name calling. Jastrow and Sandage are respested in their fields.

I don't think you have a doctorate yet and dismissing these men as "morons" doesn't encourage reasonable dialogue.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]====================================
that depends on which theory is the correct one. I am not claiming to know the correct theory. I do not know the correct theory.
====================================

Neither am I absolutely sure which is correct. That is why I used the word "consensus". And that is also why I did not say [ nce of God is rationlized away for you ? Hey, this is the Spirituality Forum.[/b]

“...===================
taking “ no position” is not only the easiest position to defend but often the only rational position one can take when one has insufficient data to form a rational conclusion. The position of “I don't know” is perfectly legitimate. I don't know if time really did begin at the BB.
======================== (my quote)

And cosmologists who deduce that time began at the Big Bang are of the morons born every minute.

I am not too impressed with this. It sounds kind of arrogant. ...”

that is not my position: I “don't know” if time began at the BB because I am not an expert on cosmology and so I have insufficient data (in by brain) on the subject (I know that the way many cosmologists use the equations imply that time began then but I also know that other cosmologists use the equations differently so to imply that time did not began then, -me not being an expert, how should I judge who is right? I believe the answer is I shouldn't ) That does not imply in any way that I think “ cosmologists who deduce that time began at the Big Bang are of the morons born every minute” (so your above accusation is false and therefore I cannot be “arrogant” for having this position because I don't have this position) nor do I believe this because cosmologists have more of the relevant data (in their brains) on the subject.

But for a cosmologist to think he “knows” that the supernatural is involved is moronic -a “supernatural” cannot be deduced from the big bang nor from any science.

Science is logically totally incomparable with mysticism.

“...Is it making sure the existence of God is rationalized away for you ? ….” (spelling corrected)

no, because 'God' was never “ rationalized” to begin with in my mind nor in any rational well-educated mind in this modern age of science and reason.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]============================
every profession has its morons; science is no different. He is just talking a load of crap here. The overwhelming majority of scientists would surely agree that he is just talking a load of crap here.
============================

You are poisoning the well of discussion with sophomoric name calling. Jastrow a a doctorate yet and dismissing these men as "morons" doesn't encourage reasonable dialogue.[/b]

“...You are poisoning the well of discussion with sophomoric name calling. Jastrow and Sandage are respested in their fields. ...”

is the supernatural part of their “field”? Answer, no. Even some scientists can talk crap esp when they talk about something that is outside their field (a common error) let alone when they start talking about something that is not even part of science!

Originally posted by jaywill
It was a mathematician who postulated that an actual infinity could not exist except in the mind theoritically. It was not a Christian theologian.

Based upon that the problem of traversing infinite time to arrive at a point today, is deemed impossible.

If I understand Andrew Hamilton's point, he suggests that it is not impossible for arbitraty point d. Otherwise the beginning of the arbitrary period T1 could not exist.

What did I miss ?

“...I don't understand how he can argue that T1 to T2 (a period) can be traversed but T0 to T1 was not. ...”

it was also you who said this but I disagreed with your conclusion that it means there cannot be time with no beginning.

If “T1 to T2” is a finite period of time and “T0 to T1” is an infinite period of time then, with my current understanding of the meaning of “traversed” in this context, “T1 to T2” can be “traversed” but “T0 to T1” cannot be “traversed” (although perhaps I have misunderstood the meaning of “traversed” ? ) .
but note that “T0 to T1 cannot be traversed” does not equate with “T0 to T1 cannot exist” hence my disagreement with your conclusion.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]================================
Of course time can be seen as multi dimensional in itself so when the big bang event happened, it was only the start of our time clock. There were clearly other time clocks going at probably an infinite number of rates in other universes and ours was like a seed from a tree expanding to what we now know
============ ...[text shortened]... lack of evidence, then why not reject the idea of "other universes" for the same reason ?[/b]

“....Do you have evidence of "other universes" ? Where is your evidence for "other universes" ? ...”

some scientists DO claim to have evidence for other universes!

I wouldn't know what answer sonhouse would give to this but note that some perfectly rational scientists, rightly or wrongly, interpret the results from the famous slit experiment as 'evidence' of the existence of other universes -more specifically, 'evidence' of the existence of an infinite number of other parallel universes, one parallel universe for each possible pathway of a photon through the slits of the slit experiment and, to be more generic, one parallel universe for each possible quantum outcome.
So their explanation is that each single photon that goes through a slit actually split into two photons (one for each new parallel universe) and one goes through each of the slits and THAT is how you can still have an interference pattern on the other side even when the photons are emitted one at a time -the interference pattern comes from photons from different parallel universes interacting! (I am not saying that interpretation is the correct one)
So, if that interpretation of the slit experiment is correct (and I am not saying it is) then that would not only be 'evidence' for 'other universes' but also 'evidence' that all possible pasts and future outcomes “happen” (if that's the right word).