The Big Bang is NOT Scientific

The question this brings up is 'If God has always been, why can reality without God not have always been?' Evolutionists do say stuff about the big bang, but if you want to learn what science has to say about it, it's best to ask cosmologists not biologists. Cosmologists certainly don't say anything as easy to understand as "it exploded generating all space time and matter". If they did, I'd certainly reject the Big Bang as a hypothesis. See Message 77 for evidence of this.As it turns out cosmologists start talking about general relativity (see earlier in this very thread), the geometry of space time, and if you start pushing them they might start talking to you about Quantum Fields and stuff. You are right though, 'it' likely didn't make itself - but what processes led to the rapid expansion of space and the procession of time is something which our current physics struggles to explain.There are some interesting ideas, but there are no clear cut winners in the debate yet since there is an unfortunate mathematical constraint (and problems with our models at a certain scale (sub-Planck scale). It may be that the question is unanswerable by science, but philosophers and theologians specialize in areas that are left ununanswered by science.

I'm not going to reinforce the points Posit was putting forward, but I will point out an issue with your logic in that it goes from 'the universe had a cause' to 'it was caused by a being' with no reason; it appears to be non sequitur.If the universe had a cause, it could be some entity that can't be described as being a 'being'. That is, it is not some kind of sentience or intelligence. It could be some kind of reality envisioned by M-Theory with colliding 11 dimensional objects being the 'cause' of our 4 dimensional space-time. It might be that this underlying reality has no 'beginning' or 'cause' or perhaps it does, I don't know. I have enough difficulty getting my head around a universe with four dimensions let alone an 11 dimensional hyper-reality.IANAC, YMMV

Unfortunately I don't think that is a good aplication of parsimony. One superpowerful entity that betrays explanation is an entity too far. I am only positing one entity - reality. Something we know exists in some sense. Your application of the principle of parsimony fails and a simply analogy will demonstrate the error you have made (its an easy mistake to make though).The weather, the science behind it involves air pressures, sea temperatures, fluid dynamics and all sorts of variables, all of them very complicated and many deserve a branch of physics in themselves. We could just put the weather down to Wotan, Grothar, Indra, Tefnut or Enlil etc.After all, to paraphrase:

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I think Ockham's Razor can be applied here as a scientific principle to not multiply causes beyond what's necessary to explain the effect. One being or intelligent creator is sufficient to explain how the weather changed, leading to a hurricane.

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Which is why what we think is logic and common sense was thrown out as a model for explaining these kind of concepts over a century ago. A more reliable 'logic' was used - mathematics. Trying to explain advanced mathematical concepts using English is doomed to failure (heck its quite difficult to explain simple mathematical concepts in english (OK folks we are going to divide the circle into sections each -0.2m²)).I'd like to see things that make sense to our limited minds thrown out and instead mathematics get used.After all, it is almost common sense to me to consider the universe as a 4-d object that has no beginning, just different points. To me talking about the universe origanating at the big bang makes as much sense as talking about the creation of the earth starting at the south pole.As such, I'd keenly like to see a thread (perhaps feat. cavediver and yourself) actually discuss the physics and maths of the concepts as opposed to bashing out analogies and seeming logic. I'd like to see a rock solid GR thread, and I'm not terrified of the maths (I'm a little nervous about them though )

You know when you were a kid and you finally got the courage to get into the pool? I'm like that now, I'm perfectly comfortable being half way to the deep end. I have a feeling that going any further is going to involve a lot of work and some near drowning panics. I'd rather sit here and watch the graceful divers do their stuff! Of course, that said, I'm like a rat. Neophobic and curious about the subject. If you ever have the time, would you be up for a cosmology thread similar to some of the geology ones going about? Slow steps, building things up nice and gently. As opposed to you having to participate in yet another 'the big bang is the sux0r' type thread, you can have a 'glory glory, cosmology!' type thread. It'll be all liberating and stuff.You want to know what causes my cautious curiosity? Sentences like

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I've not looked into it myself (though I might, when I get home tonight), but a friend of mine swears by L^ATEX. I don't know how practical it is - but there are latex to html programs out there that might do wonders here. I always found it odd that HTML has been around so long but equations have eternally been prohibitively time consuming. Here is a test of latex to html:

x 0  - x >   (x >) dx > = 1 + é 1 2xa > + 3w >i 1 + x2 + 2x3 1/2       .

A quick look at the insane HTML needed to do that should be enough to convince the world that something must be done... Fair point. Damn your perception, you saw through my transparant attempt to entice you into cosmology-fu. Seriously, I often see yourself, Goku and Eta talking about how the answer lies in the mathematics and that analogies only go so far. I'd kind of like to see some of this, despite the fact that my A-level maths will mean precisely nothing for the level of maths I'd need to fully comprehend it (or perhaps even partially understand it(my missus has a BSc in Physics, though in a different area entirely (accoustics) she had to deal with the start of the obscene maths of the quantum world...). Still, something deep within me would like to see some of the maths, with some discussion (and a nearby guru) - I might not understand it but it would give me a sense of satisifaction to know that somebody out there understands it, and that if I really wanted to I could give a shot at coming to grips with it all. Scared senseless, truth be told, but its the kind of excited fear of the adrenalin junky

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I've blathered on far too much in here, I'm kind of bored at work and I just let my fingers fly over the keyboard in a near stream of conscious. To enquisitively paraphrase RAZD:Enjoy?This message has been edited by Modulous, Tue, 04-April-2006 01:59 PM

To be honest (and its such an odd direction for the thread to have spiralled towards), but I think I missed something in the formatting. I haven't examined it in detail, but it might require a cascading style sheet to format it properly since it looks fine here.

I'm quite surprised by your attitude buz! Ignoring the seeming arrogance inherent in the self descriptive moniker that is Mr Logic, it looks (relative to this observer) like you are simply giving up because the subject gets complicated and doesn't make clear sense to you.Fortunately for myself I was given a lesson in physics humility once. I was studying fluid dynamics and everything that I was learning seemed to betray common sense and any logic and I simply didn't accept what my physics teachers were trying to teach me. I even applied my version of how fluids surely work in a multiple choice test and got zero marks, worse than those that guessed the difficult questions.You hold plain English in high esteem, but I'm not sure that is justified. I'm fairly sure plain English is an oxymoron to start with. It's a great language, but it carries connotations and ambiguity like old friends. When you get down to the 'nitty gritty' (I really love English, me), we have to be careful with our language. Hence why the caution about using the word 'before' in discussions of the big bang. Indeed, 'before' gets problematic when you start looking beyond local affairs because of other relativistic concerns.Should we be surprised to find that English - a bastard language of Greek, Latin, German and Celt (and more!) - is a woefully dangerous ally to rely on when we are trying to discuss things which the language was never intended to describe? No, new words have to be fashioned, words which have difficult definitions; words which are not usually described as 'plain'. What seems illogical might not actually be the case; when one man's before is another man's after. It seems this isn't a new problem people have with the Big Bang, but I find that the language stops being obscure and becomes frighteningly specific and requires patience and thought to understand it. For example, the concept of a 4-manifold has come up, I'm currently reading about manifolds and topology in an attempt to understand them. It's my understanding that an good understanding of non-trivial topology ideas is pretty important to understanding cosmology (I recently got my head around the concept of two dimensional topologies in 3 dimensional space (eg a donut), and it was a really rewarding understanding process).Do I see this as obscuring the language? Absolutely, no! Its specifying it to a degree beyond which I can currently comprehend. Do I see this as complicating the math? Of course! This is a subject that is seemingly dominated by mathematicians . The wonderful thing is that mathematics has explicit rules about what can and cannot be done - so if there is any mathemagics going on, somebody will be able to spot it.I can understand backing away from threads where the language becomes unusual or the mathematics difficult to comprehend, but I am confused by your seeming disdain about such a thing happening. I'm just hoping you are not implying that cosmologists are a secretive group of mathemagicians who cook up confusing language and difficult math-like gobbledegook in the hopes that nobody who speaks plain english or Mr Logic won't spot the flaws in their treasured philosophy/theory. Because that would be crazy.

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abe: I realise that you weren't identifying yourself as Mr Logic btw...but the implication seems to be that you are associating yourself with 'him'.This message has been edited by Modulous, Wed, 05-April-2006 11:50 AM