The Big Bang is NOT Scientific

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If something comes into being then it must have a cause, how is it rational to assume otherwise?

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Since we have not witnessed every possible thing that has come into being or will come into being, how is it rational to assume that everything that comes into being must have a cause?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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But those things that will come into being will probably have a cause.

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I don't think you really mean this. Probably is not certainly. By using the word "probably" you are acknowledging doubt, and so you are acknowledging the unsoundness of any argument that includes "everything that exists has a cause" as a premise.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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If the universe has a beginning then how did that beginning come to be?

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Who knows? Maybe it just did.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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how can everything come from nothing?

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If the universe has no cause, then this question cannot be answered. "How can" implies a cause.Let me ask a different question: why couldn't the universe have no cause?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Because the universe can't come from nothing.

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This doesn't answer the question. It is simply a restatement of your previous claim. You are simply stating that the universe must have a cause. I am asking you why you think this. Who knows -- if your reasoning is sufficiently sound you may even convince me that this must be the case. However, simply repeating that the universe must have a cause over and over again does not constitute reasoning.-

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Can you explain how this would be possible?

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No, I cannot. If the universe has no cause, then there would be no answer to this question. If the universe has no cause, then it simply exists. If the universe has no cause, then there simply is no process that explains how it came to exist.-

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Can any scientific theory how the whole universe could come from nothing?

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Perhaps it could. But then it would be explaining the cause of the universe. If the universe has no cause, then there would be no way to explain how it came to be since it would simply exist.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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I'm saying the universe is a 4 manifold, with distance and time as just another field in it.

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That's interesting. If a successful theory of quantum gravity results in a paradigm shift where another field of mathematics turns out to be more useful, will the fundamental nature of the universe change as well?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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The maths is a pain primarily becasue of the typesetting. Anyone know of an easy way of getting equations written down here?

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I would be interested in this, too. If the conversation was going to be solely between mathematics people, the LaTeX would be good enough -- I'm assuming that most people can read raw, untypeset LaTeX (I originally learned it mainly to write email, in fact). However, as Modulous points out, it seems to be problematic getting it into HTML, and untypeset equations would definitely leave out a lot of people.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Well time and distance is just another field and that is unlikely to change

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If you mean that time and distance are very well modelled as fields and this probably will not change, then I will agree with you. Whether time and space are fields I'm not so sure about -- perhaps Kant is correct and time and space do not even exist except as mental constructions to organize the perceptions that we experience.-

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Whether the base space is actually a 4-manifold or not I don't know, but we at least know it is excellently approximated by one which is why I used it.

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That is what I was trying to say.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Interesting. The "typeset" equations are still gibberish on my home computer (Mac OSX, Firefox), but different gibberish than on my office computer (LINUX, Firefox).

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I would stick to the recommended books...

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Is Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler a recommended text (for someone who is at the appropriate level, of course) or is it out-dated now? What do you recommend?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Thanks, cavediver. Maybe late I'll pick your brains for a good cosmology text. Maybe quantum field theory, too, if that is up your alley. No need to give any recommendations now, though, since they might be out-dated by the time I get to them.

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warning for anyone else reading this... these are graduate texts and not layman books!

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Heh. No bowling balls sitting on rubber sheets, eh?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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...the science credibility of the BB really hangs on....

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The credibility to whom?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)