Why Didn't the Universe Always Exist?

[Ben Dhyan]

Yes they may have been flat earthers but the verse seems to work well for a ball earth also.

Myth of the flat Earth - Wikipedia

The myth of the flat Earth, or the flat-Earth error, is a modern historical misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat.

The earliest clear documentation of the idea of a spherical Earth comes from the ancient Greeks (5th century BC). The belief was widespread in the Greek world when Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of Earth around 240 BC. This knowledge spread with Greek influence such that during the Early Middle Ages (c.600–1000 AD), most European and Middle Eastern scholars espoused Earth's sphericity.[3] Belief in a flat Earth among educated Europeans was almost nonexistent from the Late Middle Ages onward, though fanciful depictions appear in art, such as the exterior panels of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent sphere.

 

[Brian2]

circle is 2-dimension shape. sphere, cone and cylinder are 3-dimension shapes.

What the Old Testament describes, is like cylinder (or disk), not a sphere.

The earliest people to describe the Earth being a sphere or spherical, were ancient Greek natural philosophers, like Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato & Aristotle, and later by Hellenistic astronomers, like Aristarchus of Samos, Archimedes.

God sitting above the circle of the earth does not show the earth to be flat imo. However it does also not show the earth to be a sphere.

 

[Brian2]

It seems rather obvious.

You can't be part of the thing you are creating.
You must necessarily exist independent of the thing if you can exist while the thing doesn't.

Yes God does not require space and time to exist but can exist in both of them

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Yes God does not require space and time to exist but can exist in both of them

So pray tell, where is God located if not in space?

 

[Brian2]

So pray tell, where is God located if not in space?

Spirit does not require space it seems. I cannot say where God is if there is no space or time.
I suppose He could be still everywhere since He is outside of time and knew what would happen in time and space even before they existed.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Spirit does not require space it seems. I cannot say where God is if there is no space or time.
I suppose He could be still everywhere since He is outside of time and knew what would happen in time and space even before they existed.

Time is not an entity in and of itself, it is the 4th dimension of space as in 4D space-time. Time is the continuation of 3D space to exist.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yes God does not require space and time to exist but can exist in both of them

A thing that does not require space and time is very consistent with a thing that doesn't exist.

 

[cladking]

And perhaps undetectable graviton pixies regulate gravity.



I "believe" nothing of the sort.



"could" it?
I wouldn't know and I don't think it's wise to pretend otherwise.


Projecting much?

Maybe you should re-read your post.... You're the one here who is simply imagining things with "perhaps" and "could" and pretending they are valid options.
But you don't know at all. It just reeks of desperation to engage in such unfalsifiable claims indistinguishable from sheer imagination in an attempt to pretend as if your god is plausible.

Imagination and speculation are far more important to science than genius and knowledge.

Without imagination there can be no new hypothesis.

I'm not the one here speculating about the origin of reality and life. That would be you who dismisses "God", pixies and impeti even as possibilities while believing everything came from a point that occupies no space at all.

I have far more mundane beliefs which you can't accept because you want to believe everything is already known and simple. "Reality" can be summed up as a massive explosion and life as "survival of the fittest". Obviously there can exist no gods in this paradigm.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes they may have been flat earthers but the verse seems to work well for a ball earth also.

Yes, reinterpretation after the fact will do that. What you need is to find a verse that actually inspired a scientific discovery. But all that you have is reinterpretation. Seriously, the sciences do not help Christianity. Christianity can coexist with the sciences. But it loses when it opposes the sciences.

 

[Brian2]

Time is not an entity in and of itself, it is the 4th dimension of space as in 4D space-time. Time is the continuation of 3D space to exist.

Maybe, but still, spirit does not need space to exist and does not need a continuation of that space to continue to exist.

 

[Brian2]

A thing that does not require space and time is very consistent with a thing that doesn't exist.

It's consistent with something that we don't have any experience of.
Maybe you think that only things that we have experience of can exist. Maybe that is why you want scientific evidence for the existence of God before you will accept other evidence for the existence of God. Science has all the answers for you.
The materialist worldview faith is fairly closed and exclusivist like that.

 

[Brian2]

Yes, reinterpretation after the fact will do that. What you need is to find a verse that actually inspired a scientific discovery. But all that you have is reinterpretation. Seriously, the sciences do not help Christianity. Christianity can coexist with the sciences. But it loses when it opposes the sciences.

I don't mind reinterpreting verses that can be reinterpreted.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Maybe, but still, spirit does not need space to exist and does not need a continuation of that space to continue to exist.

But space does exist, and continues to exist, there is no evidence that space ever did not exist, nor that it could ever be made to non-exist. Physical creations otoh did not always exist, Stars, Galaxies, etc., they have finite life times.

Have you ever considered that the Genesis story of creation pertains to this star system, ie., our Sun and Planets? For certainly they were created, but they were created in already existing larger Milky Way Galaxy? That actually is my understanding, for our Sun and Earth was not created at the same as the rest of the Galaxy. And our Galaxy was not created at the same time as all other Galaxies. And so on....

 

[gnostic]

@Ben Dhyan , @mikkel_the_dane , @Brian2 , and anyone else.

i am tired of answering the same questions over again. Perhaps, my replies/posts are not clear enough, or perhaps I overlooked something. As I am not physicist, my physics were in the Applied Science to Civil Engineering & to Computer Science, so perhaps I am not the best person to explain the Big Bang cosmology to anyone, part that I am still learning myself.

I just wish @Meow Mix was around. Or @Polymath257 as I haven’t heard from him in while. They have better handle or grasp on the physics

So i will leave you all some links for to read, to do some researches yourself:

• NASA: Universe 101: Big Bang Theory - this should give you overall explanation about the Big Bang theory.
• Discovery: Ashley Hamer, If the Universe Is Expanding, What Is It Expanding Into? -
• NewScientist: The universe is expanding, but what exactly is it expanding into? - These are short quotes from some scientists
• BigThink: Ask Ethan: What is the Universe expanding into? - this is longer article than the last 2 links above, but it is more worthwhile to read.
• NASA: Chelesa Godh, What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe - another good article. While it talk more about Dark Energy, what it say, is very relevant to the things we have been talking about.

My answers are still the same, whether you understand them or not, whether you agree with me or not. It matters not, if you have your own views about alternative cosmology. I have only trying to answer you what I could understand about the current model of the Big Bang theory.

The problems with all the alternatives, they are largely untested, so none of the alternatives are “science”…yet.

The answers, are the same as they were before:

• The Universe is everything, so there are no “outside of the Universe”,
• there are no “nothing”, as nothing isn’t possible in the Universe,
• and given that the Universe is everything, it is expanding itself, not expanding to anything outside of itself.

if you not happy with my own answers (perhaps because you didn’t understand them), then read those links I have provided.

I am giving myself a break, because repeating myself have stressed me out.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

@Ben Dhyan , @mikkel_the_dane , @Brian2 , and anyone else.

i am tired of answering the same questions over again. Perhaps, my replies/posts are not clear enough, or perhaps I overlooked something. As I am not physicist, my physics were in the Applied Science to Civil Engineering & to Computer Science, so perhaps I am not the best person to explain the Big Bang cosmology to anyone, part that I am still learning myself.

I just wish @Meow Mix was around. Or @Polymath257 as I haven’t heard from him in while. They have better handle or grasp on the physics

So i will leave you all some links for to read, to do some researches yourself:

• NASA: Universe 101: Big Bang Theory - this should give you overall explanation about the Big Bang theory.
• Discovery: Ashley Hamer, If the Universe Is Expanding, What Is It Expanding Into? -
• NewScientist: The universe is expanding, but what exactly is it expanding into? - These are short quotes from some scientists
• BigThink: Ask Ethan: What is the Universe expanding into? - this is longer article than the last 2 links above, but it is more worthwhile to read.
• NASA: Chelesa Godh, What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe - another good article. While it talk more about Dark Energy, what it say, is very relevant to the things we have been talking about.

My answers are still the same, whether you understand them or not, whether you agree with me or not. It matters not, if you have your own views about alternative cosmology. I have only trying to answer you what I could understand about the current model of the Big Bang theory.

The problems with all the alternatives, they are largely untested, so none of the alternatives are “science”…yet.

The answers, are the same as they were before:

• The Universe is everything, so there are no “outside of the Universe”,
• there are no “nothing”, as nothing isn’t possible in the Universe,
• and given that the Universe is everything, it is expanding itself, not expanding to anything outside of itself.

if you not happy with my own answers (perhaps because you didn’t understand them), then read those links I have provided.

I am giving myself a break, because repeating myself have stressed me out.

Thank you gnostic, but truly, I read that stuff long ago, and have long since increased my understanding of existence itself in its totality. Same with the bible, I read it long ago, and have long since increased my understanding of existence itself in its totality.

The universe is infinite and eternal, it can't be any other way. The reality represented by the name God is the universe, seen and unseen, known and unknown.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I don't mind reinterpreting verses that can be reinterpreted.

That makes the Bible rather worthless as a source if one can do that.

 

[gnostic]

Thank you gnostic, but truly, I read that stuff long ago, and have long since increased my understanding of existence itself in its totality. Same with the bible, I read it long ago, and have long since increased my understanding of existence itself in its totality.

The universe is infinite and eternal, it can't be any other way. The reality represented by the name God is the universe, seen and unseen, known and unknown.

If you know what the Big Bang do say & don't say, then you already know the Big Bang, then why asking me questions that you already understand? Is it just simply your pointless needs to argue with someone?

If that's so, then that's truly petty of you, making explain something that you have no interests in learning. Then thanks. Go bother someone, and have them play your dishonest game of cat-and-mouse.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

If you know what the Big Bang do say & don't say, then you already know the Big Bang, then why asking me questions that you already understand? Is it just simply your pointless needs to argue with someone?

If that's so, then that's truly petty of you, making explain something that you have no interests in learning. Then thanks. Go bother someone, and have them play your dishonest game of cat-and-mouse.

I have been trying to open your eyes to another possibility, so don't be ungrateful. The universe is infinite and eternal because nothing does not exist. The BB would only make sense if there was space already existing.

So you can believe the BB came from nothing, or you can consider a preexisting infinite universe (multiverse), up to you.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

@Ben Dhyan , @mikkel_the_dane , @Brian2 , and anyone else.

i am tired of answering the same questions over again. Perhaps, my replies/posts are not clear enough, or perhaps I overlooked something. As I am not physicist, my physics were in the Applied Science to Civil Engineering & to Computer Science, so perhaps I am not the best person to explain the Big Bang cosmology to anyone, part that I am still learning myself.

I just wish @Meow Mix was around. Or @Polymath257 as I haven’t heard from him in while. They have better handle or grasp on the physics

So i will leave you all some links for to read, to do some researches yourself:

• NASA: Universe 101: Big Bang Theory - this should give you overall explanation about the Big Bang theory.

....
The answers, are the same as they were before:

• The Universe is everything, so there are no “outside of the Universe”,
• there are no “nothing”, as nothing isn’t possible in the Universe,
• and given that the Universe is everything, it is expanding itself, not expanding to anything outside of itself.

if you not happy with my own answers (perhaps because you didn’t understand them), then read those links I have provided.

I am giving myself a break, because repeating myself have stressed me out.

For those of us who know enough of philosophy of science and methodological naturalism it is not that hard to read such articles and now what to look for.
From the NASA link:
"After the introduction of General Relativity a number of scientists, including Einstein, tried to apply the new gravitational dynamics to the universe as a whole. At the time this required an assumption about how the matter in the universe was distributed. The simplest assumption to make is that if you viewed the contents of the universe with sufficiently poor vision, it would appear roughly the same everywhere and in every direction. That is, the matter in the universe is homogeneous and isotropic when averaged over very large scales. This is called the Cosmological Principle. This assumption is being tested continuously as we actually observe the distribution of galaxies on ever larger scales. The accompanying picture shows how uniform the distribution of measured galaxies is over a 70° swath of the sky. In addition the cosmic microwave background radiation, the remnant heat from the Big Bang, has a temperature which is highly uniform over the entire sky. This fact strongly supports the notion that the gas which emitted this radiation long ago was very uniformly distributed."

If you understand what the bold ones say, the Big Bang theory is based on an assumption. Now for methodological naturalism:

Methodological naturalism

Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the...

rationalwiki.org

"Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps, scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic, which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically."

So unless you actually quote the actual evidence of these 3:

• The Universe is everything, so there are no “outside of the Universe”,
• there are no “nothing”, as nothing isn’t possible in the Universe,
• and given that the Universe is everything, it is expanding itself, not expanding to anything outside of itself.

Then I will assume that there are no evidence and assume you don't understand methodological naturalism.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Imagination and speculation are far more important to science than genius and knowledge.

Not if it is invented on the spot out of thin air with nothing at all to back it up or otherwise justify it, for the only purpose to "defend" a priori unfalsifiable beliefs.

I'm not the one here speculating about the origin of reality and life. That would be you who dismisses "God", pixies and impeti even as possibilities while believing everything came from a point that occupies no space at all.

What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Come up with some actual evidence and i'll happily consider it. Until then = waste of my time.

I have far more mundane beliefs which you can't accept because you want to believe everything is already known and simple. "Reality" can be summed up as a massive explosion and life as "survival of the fittest". Obviously there can exist no gods in this paradigm.

Strawman and doesn't follow