Those are tough questions for a mere astrophysics graduate to answer! ;D
It depends on which theory you follow, really.
Firstly, there was no "before the big bang" since time was supposedly created at the big bang as well. Secondly, the matter did not "explode outwards" - that's a misconception given by the name "big bang". The universe underwent a rapid expansion, not an explosion.
Another thing you've got to bear in mind when asking these questions is that humans are 3-dimensional beings. We can only imagine 3 spatial dimensions. Whenever someone asks me these sort of questions, I reply with "stop thinking like a human!" ;D
In the words of JBS Haldane: "Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose."
But yes, these are tough questions to answer. Maybe someone with a bit more of a sciencey background (than someone who did a degree almost a decade ago!) can give you a more comprehensive answer. But the difficulty of these questions and answers are why so many people prefer the easier answer - "God did it".
Fry: Hey, wait, I'm having one of those things…you know, a headache with pictures. Leela: An idea?
The problem is that we simply cannot comprehend so much of this, it is beyond our capacity as human beings to comprehend such stuff.
Exactly, so if you follow all these questions through via logical threads to their conclusions, you are eventually presented with the fact that there are no conclusions, because we simply don`t know. Therefore nobody can ever say "There is a god" or "there are ghosts", and can ever consciously be 100% correct, just in the same way that nobody can ever say "There is no such thing as ghosts" or "There is no such thing as a god".
Another thing you have to bear in mind is that in modern society, science is our religion. In the sense that like a religion, it is a belief system or set of beliefs that seek to explain what is unexplained. Yet science is based on Empiricism. In other words science suggests that we can only arise at a model of explanation of the universe based on direct observation or sensation via our own senses (usually sight, hence the phrase "seeing is believing"), and even if we use apparatus such as microscopes, telescopes, spectrascopic analysis etc, ultimately, our observations are filtered to our brains via our own senses. Then our brains comprehend the observations and create a model of explanation based on those observations.
Now, can we reliably assume that our senses tell us everything. For example, a dog can hear the pitch of sounds at levels higher than what a human being can hear them. The dog can hear the sound, but we can`t. So does that mean that because we can`t hear the sound, it doesn`t exist? In the same way, could "paranormal" occurances such as telepathy, ghosts, precognition etc be actually be cases where mental and physical activity is operating at a higher or lower vibration of energy than what our senses or secondary sensory apparatus can witness?
This for me would explain why certain people can apparantly see and hear things that other people cannot, whether this is activity of "the dead" or some kind of residual energy from previous events which once happened (if we accepted that such a thing exists). Going back to our discussion on evolution, could such people actually have a genetic mutation which allows them to sense things which occur outside the normal parameters of human perception.
Seeing is believing, but if it can`t be seen, does that mean it doesn`t exist?
Last Edit: Jan 22, 2007 18:48:33 GMT by alexraybould
Interesting debate. If God is some kind of infinite super-intelligence, then perhaps there are some questions that man cannot know the answer to but only God can. I agree with alexraybould that evolution and the concept of an intelligent creator are not necessarily contradictory - although we are frequently lead to believe we have to choose between the two. Maybe we can't understand some of these higher concepts because we are not yet sufficiently evolved to perceive things as a God would. If we think of human evolution as a very long ladder between single celled organisms and 'God', then we might be somewhere in the middle of this ladder, and not sufficiently developed mentally to be able to grasp the reasons that things happen the way they do. For example, when we ask questions such as 'who designed God?' that might be because we have to frame everything in terms of a beginning and an end and a creator in order to understand it. The concept of infinity, for example, is very difficult for humans to comprehend. Because everything in our experience has a beginning and an end, we assume that the universe and the intelligence of some kind of creator must also be finite and have a first cause or a creator. It might be a similar kind of anthropomorphic thinking that lead to the idea of God being an old man with a white beard. And perhaps 'perfection' in the human design and in other parts of nature HAS to have, by necessity, some form of imperfection built-in in order to be perfect in the perception of a creator. There is a line in an Oasis song that I like - 'True perfection has to be imperfect / I know that that sounds foolish, but it's true'.
I wrote a big response to the last two posts and then accidentally clicked off the page and lost it all!
I'll try to compile a shorter version! ;D
alexraybould said:
Exactly, so if you follow all these questions through via logical threads to their conclusions, you are eventually presented with the fact that there are no conclusions, because we simply don`t know. Therefore nobody can ever say "There is a god" or "there are ghosts", and can ever consciously be 100% correct, just in the same way that nobody can ever say "There is no such thing as ghosts" or "There is no such thing as a god".
Nope, no scientist will ever tell you anything with 100% certainty. EVEN the "fact" that the earth is a (slightly flattened) sphere that orbits the sun every 365.2524 days is still only a scientific theory which is open to being disproved.
Now, can we reliably assume that our senses tell us everything.
But do our brains interpret the input from the senses reliably?
For example, a dog can hear the pitch of sounds at levels higher than what a human being can hear them. The dog can hear the sound, but we can`t. So does that mean that because we can`t hear the sound, it doesn`t exist?
No, but ultrasound can be shown to exist through technology.
In the same way, could "paranormal" occurances such as telepathy, ghosts, precognition etc be actually be cases where mental and physical activity is operating at a higher or lower vibration of energy than what our senses or secondary sensory apparatus can witness?
Some of those things are possible, I suppose. There's still no reason to believe in life after death, being able to see the future, etc... and until there's proof, I'll prefer to stick to the more plausible solutions.
Going back to our discussion on evolution, could such people actually have a genetic mutation which allows them to sense things which occur outside the normal parameters of human perception.
Evolutionary mutations are very tiny changes - not enough (afaik) to be able to change a human's perceptions radically.
Seeing is believing, but if it can`t be seen, does that mean it doesn`t exist?
Seeing isn't always believing. Don't always trust your eyes, ears, etc... That's why there are so many reported sightings of ghosts.
darknight777 said:
Interesting debate. If God is some kind of infinite super-intelligence, then perhaps there are some questions that man cannot know the answer to but only God can.
Isn't that just the ultimate cop-out though? "We'll never be able to detect him or understand him, but he IS there. Honest, guv'nor!"
The bottom line is that, no, we can't say with 100% certainty that god does not exist. No-one can.
But no-one can say that unicorns, fairies or the flying spaghetti monster do not exist either, and they're all just as believable as the gods.
Fry: Hey, wait, I'm having one of those things…you know, a headache with pictures. Leela: An idea?
I can say with 100% certainty that if the god of the bible does exist he's a stupid, lying, cruel, meglomaniacal bastard.
I suspect that, much to all of the major monotheistic religions' disapproval, if there IS an intelligent being that created the universe, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fantasy stories dreamt up a few thousand years ago that they all hang on to.
Fry: Hey, wait, I'm having one of those things…you know, a headache with pictures. Leela: An idea?
But cannot the same be said of science? Science has studied the universe and came up with a model of the universe that states that everything in the universe began from a "Big Bang". Now whilst this is a theory that none the less I believe in 100%, it then necessitates the questions "What existed before the big Bang?", "What created the matter that exploded outwards in the first place?" "Where did matter come from?" Where did the laws of physics come from which created a big bang in the first place?"
We do have evidence that fits the theory of what is called " The Big Bang" which was more of an expansion than a bang as far as I understand it, such as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation..as for your other questions..this would be a good place to start
We do have evidence that fits the theory of what is called " The Big Bang" which was more of an expansion than a bang as far as I understand it...
Ah yes! That's the part I forgot to put into the second version of my response!
The term "Big Bang" always conjures up images of an explosion in people's minds, but that's not (apparently) what happened. As bone says, it was a very rapid expansion of space rather than an explosion.
Fry: Hey, wait, I'm having one of those things…you know, a headache with pictures. Leela: An idea?
We do have evidence that fits the theory of what is called " The Big Bang" which was more of an expansion than a bang as far as I understand it
Actually you`re right. "Explosion" isn`t the right word. I think if you speeded up the "Big Bang" a thousandfold then it would look like an explosion, but in real time the process would have been so slow that one could only call it at best a rapid expansion.
But do our brains interpret the input from the senses reliably?
This is true, belief can shape your perception, in the same way that perception can shape your beliefs. To an extent, you see this on the much berated "Most Haunted". Somebody hears a noise in the corner of the room, so everyone gets scared and says "What`s that?", because they automatically assume that as they are in an alleged haunted location, the sounds are made by ghosts. However in the comfort of our own homes, if we heard a noise in the corner of the room we might just believe it was a change in temperature that expanded or contracted the floorboards, or we had a mouse infestation etc.
Seeing isn't always believing. Don't always trust your eyes, ears, etc... That's why there are so many reported sightings of ghosts
Again I agree, the fact that hallucinogenic drugs can significantly alter perception to the extent that things are seen and heard which are not really there proves this. Similarly psychotic symptoms in individuals with mental health issues create visual and auditory halluncinations which appear very real to the people they affect. However, in the abscence of any mind altering drugs or an awareness of mental health issues, if I was sat in my living room and a dishevelled man in period costume came out of one wall, walked across the room, and disappeared into the opposite wall, that would pretty much cut it for me as far as ghosts are concerned! The problem is, we can never 100% trust a secondary account, but if we saw it with our own eyes that would be a different story.
I believe to be more exact, the point I was making was that rather than the senses being reliable, to what extent does our sensory range extend to?, and could it be that there are things which exist (ghosts or otherwise), which exist at a vibration of energy which cannot be detected by the normal parameters of human perception. This for example could be why not only animals can hear sounds which the human auditory sensory range cannot detect, but they are traditionally supposed to be able to see and hear alleged paranormal activity which humans can`t.
Last Edit: Jan 24, 2007 19:50:24 GMT by alexraybould
Actually you`re right. "Explosion" isn`t the right word. I think if you speeded up the "Big Bang" a thousandfold then it would look like an explosion, but in real time the process would have been so slow that one could only call it at best a rapid expansion.
The first few seconds weren't a slow expansion, which is probably why the term "bang" is used, and in fact, if you measure the speeds at which galaxies are still flying apart today, it's not an insignificant number.
The "expansion" explanation is not due to the speed of the whole thing, it's due to the principle. In an explosion, particles are flying apart from each other rapidly. In the expansion in this case, it's not that the galaxies are moving apart, it's that the space in between the galaxies is increasing in size. It's a weird thing to think about, but that's what's happening.
I believe to be more exact, the point I was making was that rather than the senses being reliable, to what extent does our sensory range extend to?, and could it be that there are things which exist (ghosts or otherwise), which exist at a vibration of energy which cannot be detected by the normal parameters of human perception. This for example could be why not only animals can hear sounds which the human auditory sensory range cannot detect, but they are traditionally supposed to be able to see and hear alleged paranormal activity which humans can`t.
I think the idea about animals traditionally being able to see/hear alleged paranormal activity is just that. A nice idea dreamed up by people wanting to show some sort of proof for the paranormal.
Yes, cats (for example) can act strange and stare at the same part of a room with its heckles up, growling at what appears to be nothing. But again, that's because whoever reports that is thinking in human terms. Just because they cannot sense something there, doesn't mean that the cat cannot.
It doesn't totally rule out the possibility that cats (and other creatures) can detect "paranormal" activity on a frequency range outside human perception, but if that WAS the case, some technology would probably have shown it by now.
Fry: Hey, wait, I'm having one of those things…you know, a headache with pictures. Leela: An idea?
To include god as the architect of creation in itself creates and infinite regress...by the logic of creationist own argument that anything as complex as life must have a designer....we must then ask the question who designed god..ad infinity.
But cannot the same be said of science? Science has studied the universe and came up with a model of the universe that states that everything in the universe began from a "Big Bang". Now whilst this is a theory that none the less I believe in 100%, it then necessitates the questions "What existed before the big Bang?", "What created the matter that exploded outwards in the first place?" "Where did matter come from?" Where did the laws of physics come from which created a big bang in the first place?"
Bujin has summed this up quite well, the big bang is simply a theory, part of the scientific method of proposing a working model and analysing its validity. What is crucial to understanding the big bang is the idea that space and time are not seperate, rather they are interconnected and are better described as spacetime.
The big bang relies on the mathematical cocept of a singularity, which implies that there was no "before" because spacetime did not exist ( there would be no "past" ) This removes the idea of there being a volume into which the universe expands over time, as space and time did not exist until the big bang.
Many of the concepts used in the big bang theory, such as the idea of more than 4 dimensions are mathematical in origin and if correct would be very difficult to understand and extremely difficult to prove but current research into gravity waves did look at that
Bujin has summed this up quite well, the big bang is simply a theory, part of the scientific method of proposing a working model and analysing its validity. What is crucial to understanding the big bang is the idea that space and time are not seperate, rather they are interconnected and are better described as spacetime.
The big bang relies on the mathematical cocept of a singularity, which implies that there was no "before" because spacetime did not exist ( there would be no "past" ) This removes the idea of there being a volume into which the universe expands over time, as space and time did not exist until the big bang.
Many of the concepts used in the big bang theory, such as the idea of more than 4 dimensions are mathematical in origin and if correct would be very difficult to understand and extremely difficult to prove but current research into gravity waves did look at that
Interesting. While we are on the subject of Astrophysics, as far as I recall, there is a theory that states that the density of gravitational pull of a black hole is so great that not only can light not escape from it, but time itself becomes distorted. What are gravity waves exactly?
Last Edit: Jan 26, 2007 20:00:10 GMT by alexraybould
this is true - the gravitational pull of a black hole would be so great that at a certain distance light would be unable to escape. Gravity bends light - this effect has been known for a while and can be simply verified during an eclipse. There is a parallax effect where objects appear to be in a slightly different position due to the gravitational effect of the earth bending the light. Our concept of time is closely related to the speed of light - in short : if you look at a star through a telescope then allowing for the time it takes light to reach your eye, you are seeing the star as it was some time ago. Light takes approx 8 seconds to reach earth from the sun, so you are seeing it as it was 8 seconds ago ( dont stare at it though ) Gravity waves are associated with the carrier of Gravitational force ( the Graviton ) which has yet to be detected ( as yet I think ) but as one of four fundamental forces in the universe it is unique in that it is relatively weak but acts over immense distances. It has been proposed that gravity waves may resonate through additional dimensions but thats only an interesting theory
Congrats all on a very interesting and intelligent debate. Some of the questions-indeed, most of them posed cannot be answered such as the big bang theory and what was there to cause a big bang in the first place.. "something cannot be created from nothing" My own theory is that the concept of space and time is nothing but an illusion and that the universe is in fact eternal..no beginning and no end. It may expand and contract but I think it is always there. The concept of God and evolution going hand in hand is not contradictory although most definately Religion and science are at opposite ends.
Life must have originated somewhere and at some time..I say again SOMETHING cannot be created from nothing so this question will probably remain open forever more.
The only thing I would respectfully disagree with is that "something cant be created out of nothing" If you mean that "matter" and space itself couldnt suddenly appear from nothing. It can : in the sense that space and time ( or spacetime) did not exist before the big bang and both were created by it. What was there "before" the big bang is debateable, and would be almost impossible for us to describe in terms we could relate to today. It would be mathematical. There may have been some form of field in which a fluctuation could result in the birth of the universe ( one theory ) but the fundamental premise of the big bang is that there was no space or time prior to it. This is difficult to conceptualise
The concept of God and evolution going hand in hand is not contradictory...
I would say that they are not mutually exclusive. The theory of evolution does not disprove the possibility of a "god", however, it is getting closer and closer to removing the need for a god to explain it all. It may never get there completely, but the more and more evidence found in favour of natural explanations for the existence of life and the universe, the less and less need there is to believe in one.
And if a god DOES exist that created the universe, it almost certainly will not be the god of scripture.
As for the beginning of life, there are several hypotheses as to how life could have started on Earth, although naturally, they are practically impossible to prove. The only way it can be proved is if it can be recreated in the laboratory, and that has not yet happened.
Fry: Hey, wait, I'm having one of those things…you know, a headache with pictures. Leela: An idea?
Also : If god existed before the universe was created then he is "outside of time " - if this is the case then he cant influence anything, since "cause and effect require time " If he can influence the universe : then he must be also constrained by time and cannot have existed prior to the creation of the universe
Also : If god existed before the universe was created then he is "outside of time " - if this is the case then he cant influence anything, since "cause and effect require time " If he can influence the universe : then he must be also constrained by time and cannot have existed prior to the creation of the universe
If I understood your last posting correctly, I am assuming that what you are referring to in layman`s terms is a "Chicken versus egg" argument with regards to which came first, the universe or god (assuming such a thing exists), and if god came first then he couldn`t have created a universe since anthing "created" would have had to have a beginning, and the term "beginning" implies that time existed before the creation of the universe.
The concept of no space and time existing before the creation of the universe is indeed difficult to comprehend. To me, if the universe was created via a large mass of matter which broke up and formed a universe that consisted of both space and matter, then the fact that the matter which was propelled outwards by "The Big Bang" existed in the first place suggests that some kind of state of physical state which already existed, since the law of the conservation of matter states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only redistributed. Therefore where did the matter come from in the first place which expanded outwards to form the universe?
Yes - thats a good way of putting it The only suggestion I can give you that would in some way explain where matter came from is that there could have been some form of energy field. Mass is just a form of stored energy - E=MC ( squared - couldnt find superscript ) - shows that we can convert mass into energy. In a similar way a perturbation in a field could cause large amounts of energy to become mass. However, even the most prestigious research establishments have difficulty in predicting the conditions of the early universe, before Planks time so conditions could have been very strange
