Big Bang vs. God

virtual particles, Hawking radtiation and the Casimir effect you are right i know nothing about. no matter how many things you show me that i cannot explain or somthing that i dont understand you cannot explain to me how these virtual particals first came into existance. please dont tell me that you think that they have always been here. what do you base the idea that matter has just always been? a rock cant form from empty space, its same with everything else. you give me statements that mean nothing "anything that exists outside the real universe isn't real." and "Still, it's probably more important to note that the Big Bang theory is a mathematical model and may differ greatly from the reality." if you think its not reality then why do so many people stand by it and accept it to be true. if you can tell me that the big bang may not be true then how are you so sure about all your other statements.

Just to be nitpicky... Quantum vacuum fluctuations aren't really an instance of "something coming from nothing" either. Instead, they're more evidential of the fact that there's no such thing as a state of true nothingness in reality.I see that you had "nothing" in quotes in your subject line though, so I'm guessing you meant to indicate that it should be qualified somewhat along the same lines as what I've just laid out here.

A little thing I like to call the Conservation Law of Matter and Energy. That and the fact that it appears that its impossible for a true state of nothingness to exist in reality. First of all, according to our best observations there really is no such thing as "empty space." Second, there actually exists a real probability that a rock could spontaneously form out of the sea of quantum potential that permeates space-time, although it's so unlikely that it would be practically impossible to observe. Just as amazingly, there exists a real probability that I will spontaneously teleport through my floor and land on my couch downstairs, though again the odds are highly against it. Well, more and more the persons who are on the cutting edge of cosmological research do NOT accept the old Big Bang model in the terms you've presented it here.

those are some good points. when you say "although it's so unlikely that it would be practically impossible to observe." it is that point of impossiblity that i think the factor of God comes into the picture, and because God can make anything happen it is highly possible that you could spontaneously teleport through your floor and land on your couch. it is only in our mind that makes things like this seem impossible. im not trying to disprove the laws of physics by any means, as i believe that God created everything i think he created these laws and he used them to create. some people think that God and science repell eachother i think that both could very well go hand in hand.

ballewski writes:

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it is that point of impossiblity that i think the factor of God comes into the picture

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Why?If you know that something is going to happen somewhere within the vast reaches of the universe, do you think you're going to be in the right place at the right time to witness it happening?In poker, the odds are 649,740 to 1 of drawing a Royal Flush at deal. And yet, I think it's safe to say that in the course of one month, given just the official gambling locations in the world like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, somebody somewhere was dealt a Royal Flush. One only needs about 450 thousand hands of poker to be dealt in order to get a 50% chance of it happening.Do you think you're going to be anywhere near it when it does?The universe is a big place. Why is it amazing to think that something unlikely happened in it? And if that unlikely event resulted in you, why is that unusual? You wouldn't be here to think about it if it didn't.

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some people think that God and science repell eachother i think that both could very well go hand in hand.

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Then I have a question for you:Is there anything that happens on its own or is god required for everything?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Well if God created everything then because of God everything exists so everything does need God. I think things do happen on there own but only because God gives them the power to, we are the only species on earth that has the ability to reason and make complex decisions and I believe that God gave us that gift.Drawing a royal flush and the ability to teleport are completely different things. If it is true when you say one person a month can draw a royal flush at a casino then that would mean over thousands of people have done it already, and I don’t think that I recall anyone having the ability to teleport from one room to another or be at the same place at the same time. There was however an incident in the Bible that after Jesus had been crucified and laid to rest in his tomb he rose from the dead and appeared to all the disciples and then 500 other people, this is by far an even greater feat than teleporting from room to room.

Some comments... This is actually false. Please see The Gorilla Foundation – Conservation Through Communication and learn of the reasoning and complex decision-making abilities of one of our species' closest relatives: the gorilla. As statistical anomalies no, they're not that different. The point that Rrhain and I were making is that these things may be highly improbable, but they're not impossible. Given enough opportunity, they probably will happen -- no magic and no gods required.BTW - I didn't describe teleporting as an "ability." Actually, its probable occurance is a simple consequence of the structure of the universe. I don't have the "ability" of teleportation any more than I have the "ability" of gravity. For example: If I throw a raquetball against a brick wall, there is a small, small probability that it will pass right through the wall to the other side. Not due to any real "ability" on the ball's part, but rather as a consequence of the structure of the interactions between the matter of ball and that of the wall.

A small clarification:I don't want to confuse you overmuch with my terminology, but what I've said thus far isn't totally precise. What I've described is actually a macro example of quantum tunneling, not exactly teleportation. Tunneling is the traversal of a barrier by an actual particle, whereas teleportation is the transference of a particle's properties to another particle in a remote location.Its a rather small hair to split since the point I've made remains the same, but in the interest of accuracy and all, there ya go.[This message has been edited by ::, 12-09-2003]

ballewski responds to me:

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Well if God created everything then because of God everything exists so everything does need God.

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That doesn't answer the question.My computer needs me to turn it on, but once I do that, I become pretty much irrelevant to its boot process. I don't make the electrons move through the circuits, I don't power up the hard drives, I don't send signals through the cables.Whether or not god got everything started doesn't answer the question of whether or not there is anything that happens on its own.If I were to take a handful of change and toss it on the ground, do the coins land the way they do all on their own or does god come down and personally, deliberately, and consciously make the coins land that way?

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Drawing a royal flush and the ability to teleport are completely different things.

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No, they're not. The only difference between them is the specific probability.There's a common problem in probability theory that can help:Suppose you have n darts, each of which has a 1/n chance of hitting the target. That is, if you have 10 darts, there is a 1/10 chance of hitting the target for each individual dart. If you had 20 darts, they'd each have a 1/20 chance.For any given n, what are the odds of hitting the target at least once?One of things about this problem is to make you look at the problem from the other side. That is, rather than try to count the number of ways at least one dart hit the target (because as n gets large, that becomes tedious to calculate), we recognize that it is easier to solve the opposite problem: Find the probability of not hitting the target at all. If we know how likely it is that you didn't hit the target, then the converse probability tells us how likely it is that you hit the target at least once.So, if the dart has a 1/n chance of hitting the target, it has a 1 - 1/n chance of not hitting it. That is, if the dart has a 1/10 chance of hitting, it has a 9/10 chance of not hitting.Now, there's only one way to miss the target completely: Every dart must miss. Since each dart is independent, that means we multiply their miss chances together. Thus, if each dart has a (1 - 1/n) chance of missing, then the chance of them all missing is:(1 - 1/n)ⁿAnd thus, if we subtract this number from 1, we get the probability of hitting at least once. Thus, from our examples, if we had 10 darts, the chance of missing completely is:(1 - 1/10)¹⁰ = 0.35This means that the chance of hitting the target at least once is 0.65...almost two-thirds.Now, here's where things get interesting: What if we had an infinite number of darts? Each dart would have an infinitesimal chance of hitting the target, but what is the probability of hitting at least once?Well, we just need to use the same formula we used above and let n go out to infinity. It turns out that (1 - 1/n)ⁿ happens to equal 1/e where e is Euler's number, 2.71828182845904523536....This means that the chance of hitting the target at least once is 1 - 1/e which is about 0.63, or slightly less than two-thirds.So the scenario of drawing a royal flush and the scenario of an object quantum mechanically teleporting one foot to the left are essentially the same...one is just more likely than the other. The concept is the same: Given enough chances, it becomes pretty likely to happen.So in a space the size of the universe, what do you think the chances are of having something astronomical happening?

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If it is true when you say one person a month can draw a royal flush at a casino then that would mean over thousands of people have done it already, and I don’t think that I recall anyone having the ability to teleport from one room to another or be at the same place at the same time.

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You're not looking in the right place.You need to search the universe, not the earth.

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There was however an incident in the Bible that after Jesus had been crucified and laid to rest in his tomb he rose from the dead and appeared to all the disciples and then 500 other people

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No, there wasn't. We have no evidence that this ever happened. Oh, we have a few people who weren't even alive at the time and who never met anybody from the time period when it was supposed to have happened claiming that it happened, but we don't have a single eyewitness or even any contemporary second-hand sources.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

On the subject of matter appearing from nothing, this is not what bing bang theory states. First of all, according to Einstein's famous equation E=mc2, matter equals energy. So matter can originate from energy, and energy can originate from matter (which is qhat makes nuclear fission possible). Now, in the classical theory the universe is thought to be energy neutral, which means that in essence it is also matter neutral.Now, where did matter come from? The example of virtual particles has already been mentioned. This has been experimentally observed, where within a vacuum (i.e. an energy and matter neutral space), particle of matter and anit-matter have appeared. It is not that difficult to imagine a slight imbalance in this process, giving large quantities of one of the two. Why this imbalance would appear is the stuff of fundamental physics, but it is interesting to note that the result of this theory was that there had to be a small inhomogeneity in the cosmic background radiation. This effect was later indeed observed, AFTER the prediction. The power of science in action.You can accept it or not, but the presence of matter is the least of the Bing Bang's problems. The major one is the incompatability of the Quantum Mechanics with General Relativity.

Taco
Buddy I hate to burst your bubble but E=MC2 states energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared.What this means is that energy and mass are two ways of looking at the same thing.Matter is another matter altogether.[This message has been edited by sidelined, 12-11-2003]

Sidelined,No worries, my bubble is not so easily burst. Matter is used here (by me at least, and that's also how I understood it from the original poster) as all particles having mass. Mass is a property of matter. It is mainly a question of semantics I think. I don't really see why you say matter is a whole different matter (except for the opportunity of making the pun of course). Now E=mc2 gives the relation between the mass bearing matter that dissappears in a nuclear reaction, and the massless energy that replaces it (and heats some of our homes). It also appears in relativity (when the velocity or energy of a particle increases its mass also increases as given by the formula), but that IS a different matter altogether.I was trying to explain that the origin of matter is not a problem for the bing bang theory (this doesn't necessarily mean it is correct, we more or less KNOW it is not correct before the planck time). But the classic inflationary BB theory describes a energy NEUTRAL universe, containing negative gravitational energy and positive "particle-energy" (my words, don't know how to describe it). This positive energy is basically all matter.BTW, any phycisists out there please correct me if I'm wrong. It's been a while since I seriously dealt with this.[This message has been edited by Taco, 12-12-2003]

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Well if God created everything then because of God everything exists so everything does need God. I think things do happen on there own but only because God gives them the power to, we are the only species on earth that has the ability to reason and make complex decisions and I believe that God gave us that gift.

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Well, you can believe anything you want, but without backing up your claims with facts (or even an interesting story, LOL), nobody is ever going to believe you. ------------------
"The only thing necessary for the Triumph of Evil is for Good Men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

When we accelerate an object the mass increaes correct? By way of your logic the the matter must increase as well. In other words the protons electrons etc. must increase as well,and not by a tiny factor but by the constant of proportionality of the speed of light squared! It isn't simply semantics now is it?

I'm not so sure of that. Taco did say "Mass is a property of matter," which is correct, but he did NOT say "Matter is a property of mass." As we increase the velocity of some fixed amount of matter, the mass which is a property of the same matter will increase.