[andersbranderud]

According to science our universe has a beginning. Time is a physical unit . Therefore there can be no such thing as time external to the physical universe. Timespace has a beginning.

It is a fundamental law of physics (causality) that every physical occurrence in the universe has a cause.
The fundamental laws of physics then require a cause of the universe ex nihilo (since timespace has a beginning); i.e., a Prime Cause Singularity that is non-dimensional and independent of timespace.

Being logically consistent (orderly), the perfectly-orderly universe must mirror its Prime Cause / Singularity-Creator—Who must be Perfectly Orderly; i.e. Perfect. Therefore, no intelligent person can ignore that our purpose and challenge in life is learning how we, as imperfect humans, may successfully relate to a Perfect Singularity-Creator without our co-mingling, which transcends the timespace of this dimensional physical universe, becoming an imperfection to the Perfect Singularity-Creator.

An orderly—"not capricious," as Einstein put it—Creator (also implying Just), therefore, necessarily had an Intelligent Purpose in creating this universe and us within it and, being Just and Orderly, necessarily placed an explanation, a "Life's Instruction Manual," within the reach of His subjects—humankind.

It defies the orderliness (logic / mathematics) of both the universe and Perfection of its Creator to assert that humanity was (contrary to His Tor•âh′ , see below) without any means of rapproachment until millennia after the first couple in recorded history as well as millennia after Abraham, Moses and the prophets. Therefore, the Creator's "Life's Instruction Manual" has been available to man at least since the beginning of recorded history. The only enduring document of this kind is the Tor•âh′ —which, interestingly, translates to "Instruction" (not "law" as popularly alleged).

The fact that the Creator is perfect implies that He isn’t self-contradictory. Therefore any religion that contradicts Torah is the antithesis to the Creator.

[pladecalvo]

Do I understand from that waffle that your basic premise is that nothing can be created from nothing...that everything must have a start point....a creation?

[vertical954rr]

what about Blackholes, Quarks and Hoaglands Hyperdimensional physics model?

the bible just says "God" brought order out of chaos, implying he/they civilized or perhaps terra formed a natural, disordered environment like you would find on an uninhabited planet or among primitive civilizations living close to nature. Perhaps you need to re learn your Hebrew and translation into English from the original manuscript/scrolls...

and remember the Prime directive:

This directive can be found in the Articles of the Federation, which states:
“ Nothing within these articles of Federation shall authorize the United Federation of Planets to intervene in matters which are essentially the domestic jurisdiction of any planetary social system, or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under these Articles of Federation; But this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.[1] ” and has been further defined as:
“ As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Starfleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.[2]

[dr256]

Originally Posted by andersbranderud

According to science...etc etc

You have misunderstood both the scientific thinking and the truth about causality. By making the assumption that every effect has a cause you have assumed that something/someone, made/started/created, the universe.

Quantum physics demonstrates that at base levels things/energy do in fact appear and at the same time just disappear without reason or cause.

Having spent considerable time trying to understand all this - and frankly struggling - below is the clearest definition of all this I've ever read and also happen to deal directly with the question what created the universe.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Happened Before the Big Bang?
Paul Davies

Well, what did happen before the big bang?
Few schoolchildren have failed to frustrate their parents with questions of this sort. It often starts with puzzlement over whether space "goes on forever," or where humans came from, or how the planet Earth formed. In the end, the line of questioning always seems to get back to the ultimate origin of things: the big bang. "But what caused that?"

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines...ingsr/WAND.gif
Children grow up with an intuitive sense of cause and effect. Events in the physical world aren't supposed to "just happen." Something makes them happen. Even when the rabbit appears convincingly from the hat, trickery is suspected. So could the entire universe simply pop into existence, magically, for no actual reason at all?

This simple, schoolchild query has exercised the intellects of generations of philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Many have avoided it as an impenetrable mystery. Others have tried to define it away. Most have got themselves into an awful tangle just thinking about it.
The problem, at rock bottom, is this: If nothing happens without a cause, then something must have caused the universe to appear. But then we are faced with the inevitable question of what caused that something. And so on in an infinite regress. Some people simply proclaim that God created the universe, but children always want to know who created God, and that line of questioning gets uncomfortably difficult.

One evasive tactic is to claim that the universe didn't have a beginning, that it has existed for all eternity. Unfortunately, there are many scientific reasons why this obvious idea is unsound. For starters, given an infinite amount of time, anything that can happen will already have happened, for if a physical process is likely to occur with a certain nonzero probability-however small-then given an infinite amount of time the process must occur, with probability one. By now, the universe should have reached some sort of final state in which all possible physical processes have run their course. Furthermore, you don't explain the existence of the universe by asserting that it has always existed. That is rather like saying that nobody wrote the Bible: it was. just copied from earlier versions. Quite apart from all this, there is very good evidence that the universe did come into existence in a big bang, about fifteen billion years ago. The effects of that primeval explosion are clearly detectable today-in the fact that the universe is still expanding, and is filled with an afterglow of radiant heat.

So we are faced with the problem of what happened beforehand to trigger the big bang. Journalists love to taunt scientists with this question when they complain about the money being spent on [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]science[/color][/color]. Actually, the answer (in my opinion) was spotted a long time ago, by one Augustine of Hippo, a Christian saint who lived in the fifth century. In those days before science, cosmology was a branch of theology, and the taunt came not from journalists, but from pagans: "What was God doing before he made the universe?" they asked. "Busy creating Hell for the likes of you!" was the standard reply.

But Augustine was more subtle. The world, he claimed, was made "not in time, but simultaneously with time." In other words, the origin of the universe-what we now call the big bang-was not simply the sudden appearance of matter in an eternally preexisting void, but the coming into being of time itself. Time began with the cosmic origin. There was no "before," no endless ocean of time for a god, or a physical process, to wear itself out in infinite preparation.

Remarkably, modern science has arrived at more or less the same conclusion as Augustine, based on what we now know about the nature of space, time, and gravitation. It was Albert Einstein who taught us that time and space are not merely an immutable arena in which the great cosmic drama is acted out, but are part of the cast-part of the physical universe. As physical entities, time and space can change- suffer distortions-as a result of gravitational processes. Gravitational theory predicts that under the extreme conditions that prevailed in the early universe, space and time may have been so distorted that there existed a boundary, or "singularity," at which the distortion of space-time was infinite, and therefore through which space and time cannot have continued. Thus, physics predicts that time was indeed bounded in the past as Augustine claimed. It did not stretch back for all eternity.

If the big bang was the beginning of time itself, then any discussion about what happened before the big bang, or what caused it-in the usual sense of physical causation-is simply meaningless. Unfortunately, many children, and adults, too, regard this answer as disingenuous. There must be more to it than that, they object.

Indeed there is. After all, why should time suddenly "switch on"? What explanation can be given for such a singular event? Until recently, it seemed that any explanation of the initial "singularity" that marked the origin of time would have to lie beyond the scope of science. However, it all depends on what is meant by "explanation." As I remarked, all children have a good idea of the notion of cause and effect, and usually an explanation of an event entails finding something that caused it. It turns out, however, that there are physical events which do not have well-defined causes in the manner of the everyday world. These events belong to a weird branch of scientific inquiry called quantum physics.

Mostly, quantum events occur at the atomic level; we don't experience them in daily life. On the scale of atoms and molecules, the usual commonsense rules of cause and effect are suspended. The rule of law is replaced by a sort of anarchy or chaos, and things happen spontaneously-for no particular reason. Particles of matter may simply pop into existence without warning, and then equally abruptly disappear again. Or a particle in one place may suddenly materialize in another place, or reverse its direction of motion. Again, these are real effects occurring on an atomic scale, and they can be demonstrated experimentally.

A typical quantum process is the decay of a radioactive nucleus. If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event "just happened" at that moment, that's all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.

The lesson of quantum physics is this: Something that "just happens" need not actually violate the laws of physics. The abrupt and uncaused appearance of something can occur within the scope of scientific law, once quantum laws have been taken into account. Nature apparently has the capacity for genuine spontaneity.
It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]astronomers[/color][/color] believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.

Inevitably, scientists will not be content to leave it at that. We would like to flesh out the details of this profound concept. There is even a subject devoted to it, called quantum cosmology. Two famous quantum cosmologists, James Hartle and Stephen Hawking, came up with a clever idea that goes back to Einstein. Einstein not only found that space and time are part of the physical universe; he also found that they are linked in a very intimate way. In fact, space on its own and time on its own are no longer properly valid concepts. Instead, we must deal with a unified "space-time" continuum. Space has three dimensions, and time has one, so space-time is a four-dimensional continuum.

In spite of the space-time linkage, however, space is space and time is time under almost all circumstances. Whatever space-time distortions gravitation may produce, they never turn space into time or time into space. An exception arises, though, when quantum effects are taken into account. That all-important intrinsic uncertainty that afflicts quantum systems can be applied to space-time, too. In this case, the uncertainty can, under special circumstances, affect the identities of space and time. For a very, very brief duration, it is possible for time and space to merge in identity, for time to become, so to speak, spacelike-just another dimension of space.

The spatialization of time is not something abrupt; it is a continuous process. Viewed in reverse as the temporalization of (one dimension of) space, it implies that time can emerge out of space in a continuous process. (By continuous, I mean that the timelike quality of a dimension, as opposed to its spacelike quality, is not an all-or-nothing affair; there are shades in between. This vague statement can be made quite precise mathematically.)

The essence of the Hartle-Hawking idea is that the big bang was not the abrupt switching on of time at some singular first moment, but the emergence of time from space in an ultrarapid but nevertheless continuous manner. On a human time scale, the big bang was very much a sudden, explosive origin of space, time, and matter. But look very, very closely at that first tiny fraction of a second and you find that there was no precise and sudden beginning at all. So here we have a theory of the origin of the universe that seems to say two contradictory things: First, time did not always exist; and second, there was no first moment of time. Such are the oddities of quantum physics.

Even with these further details thrown in, many people feel cheated. They want to ask why these weird things happened, why there is a universe, and why this universe. Perhaps science cannot answer such questions. Science is good at telling us how, but not so good on the why. Maybe there isn't a why. To wonder why is very human, but perhaps there is no answer in human terms to such deep questions of existence. Or perhaps there is, but we are looking at the problem in the wrong way.

Well, I didn't promise to provide the answers to life, the universe, and everything, but I have at least given a plausible answer to the question I started out with: What happened before the big bang?
The answer is: Nothing.





PAUL DAVIES is a theoretical physicist and professor of natural philosophy at the University of Adelaide. He has published over one hundred research papers in the fields of cosmology, gravitation, and quantum field theory, with particular emphasis on black holes and the origin of the universe. He is also interested in the nature of time, high-energy particle physics, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the theory of complex systems. He runs a research group in quantum gravity which is currently investigating superstrings, cosmic strings, higher-dimensional black holes, and quantum cosmology. Davies is well known as an author, broadcaster, and public lecturer. He has written over twenty books, ranging from specialist textbooks to popular books for the general public. Among his better-known works are God and the New Physics; Superforce; The Cosmic Blueprint; and The Mind God. His most recent books are The Last Three Minutes and It's About Time. He was described by the Washington Times as "the best science writer on either side of the Atlantic." He likes to focus on the deep questions of existence, such as how the universe came into existence and how it will end, the nature of human consciousness, the possibility of time travel, the relationship between physics and biology, the status of the laws of physics, and the interface of science and religion.

[pladecalvo]

Well thanks dr! That's done my head in for the week!!

[steingar]

A little science in the hands of someone stupid is a dangerous thing.

[pladecalvo]

Originally Posted by steingar

A little science in the hands of someone stupid is a dangerous thing.

As evidenced by the 'Creation Science' websites out there.

[dicknose]

Originally Posted by andersbranderud

According to science our universe has a beginning. Time is a physical unit . Therefore there can be no such thing as time external to the physical universe. Timespace has a beginning.

It is a fundamental law of physics (causality) that every physical occurrence in the universe has a cause.
The fundamental laws of physics then require a cause of the universe ex nihilo (since timespace has a beginning); i.e., a Prime Cause Singularity that is non-dimensional and independent of timespace.

Well since the "laws of physics" only apply inside the universe then it doesnt tell us anything about how it started!
So sure there must have been something that started the universe, but that action may not obey the laws of physics as we know (or possibly - could ever know)

Being logically consistent (orderly), the perfectly-orderly universe must mirror its Prime Cause / Singularity-Creator—Who must be Perfectly Orderly; i.e. Perfect. Therefore, no intelligent person can ignore that our purpose and challenge in life is learning how we, as imperfect humans, may successfully relate to a Perfect Singularity-Creator without our co-mingling, which transcends the timespace of this dimensional physical universe, becoming an imperfection to the Perfect Singularity-Creator.

What?
You are now babbling, not proving.
You are making huge assumptions.
The first (and most important) is that the prime cause is intelligent and not just some action outside of our universe (maybe the equivalent of vacuum fluctuations that can create particles - but on a universe level)

Where did the "perfect" come from? The universe is not perfectly ordered.

An orderly—"not capricious," as Einstein put it—Creator (also implying Just), therefore, necessarily had an Intelligent Purpose in creating this universe and us within it and, being Just and Orderly, necessarily placed an explanation, a "Life's Instruction Manual," within the reach of His subjects—humankind.

Nice to quote someone who didnt believe in a "personal God"!

It defies the orderliness (logic / mathematics) of both the universe and Perfection of its Creator to assert that humanity was (contrary to His Tor•âh′ , see below) without any means of rapproachment until millennia after the first couple in recorded history as well as millennia after Abraham, Moses and the prophets. Therefore, the Creator's "Life's Instruction Manual" has been available to man at least since the beginning of recorded history. The only enduring document of this kind is the Tor•âh′ —which, interestingly, translates to "Instruction" (not "law" as popularly alleged).

The fact that the Creator is perfect implies that He isn’t self-contradictory. Therefore any religion that contradicts Torah is the antithesis to the Creator.

You havent proved a creator is a being let alone that it is perfect.
The creator could be a simple random act - with no will, intention or awareness.

This is not proof - you have started with the assumption of an intelligent creator.

[setanta]

Originally Posted by pladecalvo

Well thanks dr! That's done my head in for the week!!

A week think I need to go and lay down now (phew)


One little thing dr are we not making up laws/theories (quantum) because we dont know the answer yet?

Also if the theories are only proven in the atomic state, then the big bang means that we are in very very big nothing??

[WyoJames]

[setanta]

Originally Posted by WyoJames

I see youve given this some thought

[WyoJames]

Originally Posted by setanta

I see youve given this some thought

Yeah, took me a good 5 seconds to find that emoticon

[dicknose]

Originally Posted by setanta

One little thing dr are we not making up laws/theories (quantum) because we dont know the answer yet?

We dont know the answer in that we havent found a way to combine quantum physics (small) with Einsteins relativity (big)
But we do know quantum physics quite well - your computer works because of it.

Also if the theories are only proven in the atomic state, then the big bang means that we are in very very big nothing??

And that is where we have problems!
When big and small overlap!

But the concept that random things can happen, that things can be created from nothing (and seemingly violate conservation of energy) show that the universe is strange. Things can happen without a first cause.
Even Einstein struggled to accept this (and he even played a role in the start of quantum physics).
His famous line "God does not play dice" is a paraphase. But considering that his version of God is effectively indistinguishable from "the laws of physics" - he is commenting about physics not about religion.
Its actually a common things for physicists to do - refer to God when they mean the laws of physics (or technically the creator of the laws of physics). But it is mainly used by people who consider that this version of God plays no direct role in the universe and is completely incompatible with any religious God.

[tklatti]

Have anyone ever walked into a big mall,theater,stadium,or church,and thought.."Wow, wonder what kind of explosion caused this!!?" I've never in all my years seen order come as a result of a explosion,only destuction. Think about it....

[CBR929RE]

Originally Posted by tklatti

Have anyone ever walked into a big mall,theater,stadium,or church,and thought.."Wow, wonder what kind of explosion caused this!!?" I've never in all my years seen order come as a result of a explosion,only destuction. Think about it....

actually yes. you just need to watch some Discovery/Science channel. A good example is when a star explodes. the resulting matter that's spread across the universe will return to order when it gets pulled into another stellar object (star, planet, meteor, etc).

I still cannot wrap my head around "the universe is expanding" how the hell do you know the supposed end keeps moving out. any light coming from there has taken billions of years to get here so anything further has just not gotten here yet.

[dicknose]

Originally Posted by tklatti

Have anyone ever walked into a big mall,theater,stadium,or church,and thought.."Wow, wonder what kind of explosion caused this!!?" I've never in all my years seen order come as a result of a explosion,only destuction. Think about it....

Firstly - its not an explosion, its an expansion. And its an expansion of the whole universe, not just stuff within the universe.
And secondly - not much in the form of "order" came from this.
It generated stuff about as complex as helium atoms. It didnt form any complex structures that a person would recognise.

Nearly everything we see around us came well after the big bang.
stars formed, the largest of these burnt out and produced heavier elements (heavier from an astrophysicists point of view means heavier than helium - so carbon, silicon, oxygen etc ). This is all the stuff our planet is made of.

Gravity does a good job at making order.
The planets, moons all "order" from junk. The rings of Saturn seem very ordered. Easy to think these are designed, but also easy to show how they happen with gravity.
Gravity and small fluctuations leads to galaxies, stars and later planets and moons. Other processes can make some of these interesting (volcanic activity, erosion etc)
Look at all the interesting things on our planet that used to be attributed to god (or gods) making them - mountains, rivers, caves, fjords!


So yeah - think about it.
People have and they have come up with relatively simple explainations. Ones that have made testable predictions.
The theory isnt wrong just because some people cant understand it.

[WyoJames]

yey dicknose

[tklatti]

Well I'm not a preacher,but I do beleive in God.I've wittnessed His working in my life.Things at times looking as if they would have very dark outcomes turn into better outcomes than i could have ever dreamed. I pray you all the best. It seems you're a smart person. Do me a favor...Go and find a close church. Talk to the preacher about the beginning of time and were things come from. Im sure he can give you 'food for though'. Thank you,God bless.

[setanta]

Originally Posted by tklatti

Well I'm not a preacher,but I do beleive in God.I've wittnessed His working in my life.Things at times looking as if they would have very dark outcomes turn into better outcomes than i could have ever dreamed. I pray you all the best. It seems you're a smart person. Do me a favor...Go and find a close church. Talk to the preacher about the beginning of time and were things come from. Im sure he can give you 'food for though'. Thank you,God bless.

Here fishy fishy

[dr256]

Originally Posted by tklatti

Have anyone ever walked into a big mall,theater,stadium,or church,and thought.."Wow, wonder what kind of explosion caused this!!?" I've never in all my years seen order come as a result of a explosion,only destuction. Think about it....

There are many example of explosions or Order coming from destruction. Dicknose has already pointed that stars explode and create heavy elements and you can also join in the fun yourself if you want to have a go at playing god.
Its really quite simple. Get a stick of dynamite. Stick it in a bucket of sand and set light to the fuse. Don't forget to run away very fast at this point as you really don't want to be "part" of this experiment. Anyway after the resulting explosion, go back to what's left of the bucket and sift the remaining sand. Amongst the bits you will find small pieces of glass that were "created" during the explosion.
Creation you now see is the wrong word - as really its just a change of state - but if you happen to have an electron microscope you will also see that the molecules have indeed become highly ordered.
Bingo. Go buy yourself a flowing gown, big white beard and a cloud, you just did some God stuff.

[dr256]

And so to follow on - Dicknose is right - its not an explosion but an expansion - as I demonstrated by blowing up the above bucket - a change of state.
At the beginning the universe was very very small - now its so big we can't see the edges.

And this is where my understanding falls out my ears - assuming that before the big bang there was nothing - aka an absence of anything - then what is the universe expanding into?
The answer as far as i understand is: the third dimension...twinge of headache....some answers says its not expanding but unfolding....reach for the aspirin....and other stuff says stuff i really don't understand at all....go to bed with a migraine....so the answer is ultimately: no where but in the space between my ears and it hurts!

[dr256]

Originally Posted by setanta

Also if the theories are only proven in the atomic state, then the big bang means that we are in very very big nothing??

No - we are in the third dimension.
Nothing is an absence of anything!

And in this respect even a void is "something" regardless of that void being empty or not. You see, the void has dimensions - Up, down, left and right - it has space and volume so is definitely "something"
"Nothing" on the other hand, has no up, down left or right, it has no time or space. In effect "nothing" doesn't really exist "inside" our universe. Because our universe - even in the parts of it where there there are no galaxies or gas or any particles whatsoever, still have volume. It still has dimension - the third dimension to be exact - and thats where we are!

[setanta]

Ok for you dr if you going to screw with my head then I hope this do the same for you


http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

[dr256]

Thanks Setanta - nice clear explanation that - good find.

Still, kinda glad I only live in the third dimension - especially as its only monday - can you imagine arriving at work in the tenth dimension - jeez you'd have to answer every possible email, on every possible subject, from every possible person at every possible point in time with every possible answer to every possible subject, to every possible person, in every possible point in time.

Darling I think I'm going to be a little bit late home I have an infinite number of infinite emails to answer!!!!!

[dicknose]

Originally Posted by dr256

then what is the universe expanding into?
The answer as far as i understand is: the third dimension...t

Definitely not!

There are 3 spacial and 1 time dimension inside the universe.
Depending on you model there can be more (like the 10 dimension model)

But we cant expand INTO something if it is INSIDE the container!
The universe cant expand into any of the spacial dimensions, since it is these dimensions that are expanding.

The simple answer is that we dont know what it is expanding into (or if that is really even a sensible question)

The big problem is that our brains understand space and time - but struggle to comprehend that there could be things outside that and we want them to seem like they are the same (ie what happened before the big bang - we want to have time outside the universe before time inside the universe, ditto expanding into what?)

[dicknose]

Originally Posted by tklatti

Do me a favor...Go and find a close church. Talk to the preacher about the beginning of time and were things come from. Im sure he can give you 'food for though'.

Im sure there is plenty that a priest, pastor or preacher can tell me about.
But the beginning of time is not one of them.
Not a single religion predicted an expanding universe (as seen by red shift) or that there would be remnants of when the universe first became transparent (cosmic background radiation)



ps - saying stuff in red doesnt make it any more true!

[jacjohnston19]

[tklatti]

Originally Posted by dicknose

Im sure there is plenty that a priest, pastor or preacher can tell me about.
But the beginning of time is not one of them.
Not a single religion predicted an expanding universe (as seen by red shift) or that there would be remnants of when the universe first became transparent (cosmic background radiation)



ps - saying stuff in red doesnt make it any more true!

Do words in red make you uncomfortable?? The first words in the Bible read"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" My friend every new president we have here in the states thinks he has new,great ideas,better than the previous ones.My point is; every man is different.Everyone has different points of veiw,different backgrounds,different values.The one consistent thing is Gods word.

[setanta]

Originally Posted by tklatti

Do words in red make you uncomfortable??

It annoys me, sore to read, would prefer to be able to read your post without getting a headache

[tklatti]

Originally Posted by setanta

It annoys me, sore to read, would prefer to be able to read your post without getting a headache

Sorry,Setanta..