The Big Bang as evidence for God

[sayak83]

It has everything to do with it if you want to engage me seriously. The universe has mass...where did it come from? If you say from the hot dense state...I ask....where did the hot dense state come from? I know that there was nothing before the big bang....so let us not play silly nonsensical word games and we'll cut to the chase...How did existence emerge from non-existence? And why did the singularity come into existence? And from where did the universal mass come ?

Nobody has said there was nothing before the Big Bang. In fact most cosmological theories today say there was something before the Big bang and are trying to understand what that was.
The only theory that posits a true nothing was the Hartle-Hawking no boundary model, but that is not favored today for various reasons. The popular idea out there in the media that the universe "began" is a miscommunication of the science. Scientists do not know much about the very hot, very dense pre-Big Bang phase of the universe. It could have emerged from an even earlier form of stable space-time (something like Spin-Foam ), or it may have been existing for all eternity and bubbling intermittently to form rapidly expanding pockets of dilute universes like ours.

NOTE:- There is not even one cosmological model (and there never was) that says that the universe emerges from a singularity. Singularity is a completely artificial but very convenient theoretical hard stop (like the tangent to a hyperbola) from which the time from the start of the expansion can be measured. Its a bit like center of mass for Newtonian mechanics, exteremely useful model for calculations, but nobody believes that mass of a body is literally concentrated at a point within it. Singularity is not an esoteric concept at all. Singularities are routinely used in inviscid fluid mechanics and many types of flux diagrams as part of excellent model of flow behavior. In GR, space-time under gravity behaves a bit like a fluid, and hence the model proves useful.

Moral of the story:- Do not try to make to much out of simple popularization of science.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Nobody has said there was nothing before the Big Bang. In fact most cosmological theories today say there was something before the Big bang and are trying to understand what that was.
The only theory that posits a true nothing was the Hartle-Hawking no boundary model, but that is not favored today for various reasons. The popular idea out there in the media that the universe "began" is a miscommunication of the science. Scientists do not know much about the very hot, very dense pre-Big Bang phase of the universe. It could have emerged from an even earlier form of stable space-time (something like Spin-Foam ), or it may have been existing for all eternity and bubbling intermittently to form rapidly expanding pockets of dilute universes like ours.

I have been engaging on this thread those who believe that the universe is not eternal, but had a beginning....either by a miraculous creation by God or a miraculous appearance of a singularity... both implying a something from nothing scenario.... By nothing I mean no time and no space......a true nothing not a relative one..

 

[sayak83]

I have been engaging on this thread those who believe that the universe is not eternal, but had a beginning....either by a miraculous creation by God or a miraculous appearance of a singularity... both implying a something from nothing scenario.... By nothing I mean no time and no space......a true nothing not a relative one..

Well, science does not say anything of that sort. The only way it can happen is that, contrary to our perception, the universe is actually and really a substance like block of space time that self exists with all past, present and future time space-time points existing together in a real sense, while we, lower dimensional embedded beings, are seeing sectional views that advance with an illusory sense of flow of events and causality. This is basically what Hawking's theory posits, that the perceptions that events "happen" is itself an illusion. Anything is possible of course, but one would need a full-fleshed theory with good empirical backing for such a thing to be believed.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Well, science does not say anything of that sort. The only way it can happen is that, contrary to our perception, the universe is actually and really a substance like block of space time that self exists with all past, present and future time space-time points existing together in a real sense, while we, lower dimensional embedded beings, are seeing sectional views that advance with an illusory sense of flow of events and causality. This is basically what Hawking's theory posits, that the perceptions that events "happen" is itself an illusion. Anything is possible of course, but one would need a full-fleshed theory with good empirical backing for such a thing to be believed.

I note your religion is secular and so I respect your perspective on what and who you are in the context of the bigger picture...but I feel obligated to point out there is a limitation to trying to understand the bigger picture using the conceptual mind, for it is dualistic in nature and can never apprehend that which it is forever trying to understand due to the underlying non-dual nature of existence. Concepts stand as symbols to represent aspects of the whole...but are not equal to those aspects...and so the nearest one can get to reality using this approach is an admirable image... Going beyond duality however and dispensing with thought allows direct apprehension and the game is over...at least that's the plan..

 

[`mud]

hey say,
In the said 'singularity' surrounded by 'nothingness,
is there no motion, no mass, no 'light' and just 'gravity',
from where does the "temperature" come ?
~
and I have others,
~
'mud

 

[idav]

Scientific theories need to be within the bounds of reason....your statement is nonsense...without logic or reason..you need to explain what this concept 'nameless' is meant to represent...otherwise it is meaningless.

So let's see....the atheist ask a theist what God made the universe from and they respond with "God made the universe from the nameless" ....is this a reasonable statement that the atheist should accept? No....and you know it...the complementary opposite concept.of 'existence' is 'non-existence'.

Sure it might be nonsensical because non-existence is nonsensical. There is no name for something that does not exist.

Btw idav, as a pantheist, do you understand God to be infinite and eternal?

Yes I believe so, I thought thats what I've been saying lol.

Here is the issue that science runs into. As the universe is traced back through observation it is found that all this stuff emerged from a dense like state at possibly a single point. That isn't so much the problem as much as how that state of the universe affects spacetime as we know it, where the rules would be completely different from what we are used to.

What would have existed milliseconds into the big bang is all the stuff of the universe in a state of timelessness and eternity, especially since physics is broken down in that state. Beyond that I lose track and Hawking isn't much more helpful with his description of the beginning of "real-time" vs the "imaginary time" they say existed with no boundary or edge, which would eventually lead to the universe collapsing again instead of heat death. What all that spells out to me is an infinite eternal god that the big bang emerged from, and this god continues to be within us, and deep down things are still eternal while our material realm is trapped in this "spacetime". So it isn't too far from what I believe when you say time already happened and is happening, however that is not to say time is an illusion, time is a real physical thing that spans infinite, even if we physically can't see it cause we are materially trapped.

Here is something to consider. The big bang was only the beginning of what we are familiar with but physics allows for so much more beyond what we experience.

All this is evidence of god, I believe science found god when they found the singularity, not that they would take to such a label. I don't know what else to call and infinitely powerful, omnipresent, omniscient state of being that is the source for everything we see in existence.

 

[sayak83]

I note your religion is secular and so I respect your perspective on what and who you are in the context of the bigger picture...but I feel obligated to point out there is a limitation to trying to understand the bigger picture using the conceptual mind, for it is dualistic in nature and can never apprehend that which it is forever trying to understand due to the underlying non-dual nature of existence. Concepts stand as symbols to represent aspects of the whole...but are not equal to those aspects...and so the nearest one can get to reality using this approach is an admirable image... Going beyond duality however and dispensing with thought allows direct apprehension and the game is over...at least that's the plan..

Actually I am a Hindu (a secular Hindu) and the concept of non-duality is not alien to me at all. I, however, try to be careful to not forcibly shoehorn poorly understood scientific concepts into speculative religious and philosophical worldviews, whether they be Deistic, Monotheistic, Atheistic, Pantheistic or Panentheistic.

 

[sayak83]

Sure it might be nonsensical because non-existence is nonsensical. There is no name for something that does not exist.

Yes I believe so, I thought thats what I've been saying lol.

Here is the issue that science runs into. As the universe is traced back through observation it is found that all this stuff emerged from a dense like state at possibly a single point. That isn't so much the problem as much as how that state of the universe affects spacetime as we know it, where the rules would be completely different from what we are used to.

What would have existed milliseconds into the big bang is all the stuff of the universe in a state of timelessness and eternity, especially since physics is broken down in that state. Beyond that I lose track and Hawking isn't much more helpful with his description of the beginning of "real-time" vs the "imaginary time" they say existed with no boundary or edge, which would eventually lead to the universe collapsing again instead of heat death. What all that spells out to me is an infinite eternal god that the big bang emerged from, and this god continues to be within us, and deep down things are still eternal while our material realm is trapped in this "spacetime". So it isn't too far from what I believe when you say time already happened and is happening, however that is not to say time is an illusion, time is a real physical thing that spans infinite, even if we physically can't see it cause we are materially trapped.

Here is something to consider. The big bang was only the beginning of what we are familiar with but physics allows for so much more beyond what we experience.

All this is evidence of god, I believe science found god when they found the singularity, not that they would take to such a label. I don't know what else to call and infinitely powerful, omnipresent, omniscient state of being that is the source for everything we see in existence.

Nonsense. Singularity is a mathematical model only. Singularities crop up in many types of physics modeling, but they are always considered convenient theoretical constructs and not some real thing.
http://web.mit.edu/2.016/www/handouts/2005Reading4.pdf (paGE 7 TO 11)
http://www.igf.fuw.edu.pl/KB/HKM/PDF/Moffatt_2009.pdf

GR uses very similar types of mathematical models, and hence gets similar kind of results.

 

[idav]

Nonsense. Singularity is a mathematical model only. Singularities crop up in many types of physics modeling, but they are always considered convenient theoretical constructs and not some real thing.
http://web.mit.edu/2.016/www/handouts/2005Reading4.pdf (paGE 7 TO 11)
http://www.igf.fuw.edu.pl/KB/HKM/PDF/Moffatt_2009.pdf

GR uses very similar types of mathematical models, and hence gets similar kind of results.

What is it with all this math not actually representing any sort of reality?

Probing the skies there are plenty of institutions gathering baby pictures of the universe. The singularity isn't just mathematical model, we keep gathering up plenty evidence as predicted.

http://www.space.com/19027-universe-baby-picture-wmap.html

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Sure it might be nonsensical because non-existence is nonsensical. There is no name for something that does not exist.

Yes I believe so, I thought thats what I've been saying lol.

Here is the issue that science runs into. As the universe is traced back through observation it is found that all this stuff emerged from a dense like state at possibly a single point. That isn't so much the problem as much as how that state of the universe affects spacetime as we know it, where the rules would be completely different from what we are used to.

What would have existed milliseconds into the big bang is all the stuff of the universe in a state of timelessness and eternity, especially since physics is broken down in that state. Beyond that I lose track and Hawking isn't much more helpful with his description of the beginning of "real-time" vs the "imaginary time" they say existed with no boundary or edge, which would eventually lead to the universe collapsing again instead of heat death. What all that spells out to me is an infinite eternal god that the big bang emerged from, and this god continues to be within us, and deep down things are still eternal while our material realm is trapped in this "spacetime". So it isn't too far from what I believe when you say time already happened and is happening, however that is not to say time is an illusion, time is a real physical thing that spans infinite, even if we physically can't see it cause we are materially trapped.

Here is something to consider. The big bang was only the beginning of what we are familiar with but physics allows for so much more beyond what we experience.

All this is evidence of god, I believe science found god when they found the singularity, not that they would take to such a label. I don't know what else to call and infinitely powerful, omnipresent, omniscient state of being that is the source for everything we see in existence.

Fine..I now understand where you are coming from and respect your view... I too can be considered a pantheist but I see God manifest as eternally one...beyond all limits of space...beyond all limits of time....beyond all knowledge....beyond all description.. I think contemporary science is far from understanding the cosmos...and that present prevailing theories will be looked back upon in the future as primitive superstition..

 

[sayak83]

What is it with all this math not actually representing any sort of reality?

Probing the skies there are plenty of institutions gathering baby pictures of the universe. The singularity isn't just mathematical model, we keep gathering up plenty evidence as predicted.

http://www.space.com/19027-universe-baby-picture-wmap.html

You are misinformed. A theoretical physicist explains:-
https://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/21/did-the-universe-begin-with-a-singularity/

The part of the universe that we can see with our eyes and telescopes is the “observable patch” of the universe; it is probably far smaller than the whole universe (or, if it’s sufficiently complicated, “the multiverse”). What we know from interpreting various observations of the cosmos is that

• today the observable patch is cold and diffuse and expanding
• once upon a time, billions of years ago, the observable patch was hot and dense

To the extent that we trust Einstein’s equations for gravity, we can use those equations to understand how the Universe might have had this present and that past. People studying those equations (Friedmann, LeMaître, Robertson and Walker) learned that a universe can go through a process of expanding, cooling and diffusing — and thus could proceed from a hot, dense, rapidly expanding past to a cool, diffuse and slowly expanding present. This process is what we think our observable patch (and probably a larger region in which it is contained) has been doing for almost all of its 13.7 billion year history, is called the Big Bang.

What then is the singularity? Its a hypothetical construct:-

But suppose, seeing this behavior, we use these equations try to follow timebackwards — just as we tried to infer the past of an embryo. We find our equations suggest a universe in which the further you go back, the hotter it was, the more dense, and the more rapidly it was expanding. If you keep going back and back, then (in the Old Big Bang model, before we knew about inflation) you find that at a sufficiently early time, 13.7 billion years ago, the density, temperature and expansion rate start off as infinite. That’s a singularity!

The emphasis is on the hypothetical here.

But would you have a reason to believe in that singularity?

I’ve talked over the years with many experts in “quantum gravity” [the poorly understood but required blend of Einstein’s gravity and quantum physics, a blend that will be needed to explain extreme gravitational phenomena] and I’ve never spoken to one who believed that the universe began with a real singularity. Why? Because

• the singularity arises from using Einstein’s equations for gravity
• but we know Einstein’s equations aren’t sufficient — they aren’t able to describe certain extreme gravitational phenomena.

Specifically, when the density and heat become extremely large, quantum physics of gravity becomes important. But Einstein’s equations ignore all these quantum effects. So we already know that in certain extreme conditions, Einstein’s equations simply don’t apply. How could we then use those very same equations to conclude there’s a singularity at the beginning of the universe?

We can’t.

The status is similar to "singularities" inside Black Hole. They don't exist. They are simply hypothetical constructs (like point sources and sinks of in-viscid flow theory) that exist as convenient models within GR until a fully worked out theory of Quantum Gravity replaces them. They are the same status as ideal gases, reversible heat engines and simple harmonic oscillators. Simple idealized models that approximate for real behavior till a more sophisticated model is developed or needs to be used.

 

[jeager106]

Fine..I now understand where you are coming from and respect your view... I too can be considered a pantheist but I see God manifest as eternally one...beyond all limits of space...beyond all limits of time....beyond all knowledge....beyond all description.. I think contemporary science is far from understanding the cosmos...and that present prevailing theories will be looked back upon in the future as primitive superstition..

Science still calls what they don't understand as "dark energy and dark matter".
I reference the fairly recent scientific conclusion that the galaxies are ACCELERATING
instead of moving apart at a steady state.
What is accelerating these immense galaxies?
Science hasn't a clue so they call whatever "it" is as dark energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_expansion_of_the_universe



A link with math I don't understand any longer. Don't use it so I loose it.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Actually I am a Hindu (a secular Hindu) and the concept of non-duality is not alien to me at all. I, however, try to be careful to not forcibly shoehorn poorly understood scientific concepts into speculative religious and philosophical worldviews, whether they be Deistic, Monotheistic, Atheistic, Pantheistic or Panentheistic.

Brahman can not be known by any knowledge or described by any words (Tantrasara - Abhinovagupti)... science deals with the manifestation which is fine...

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Science still calls what they don't understand as "dark energy and dark matter".
I reference the fairly recent scientific conclusion that the galaxies are ACCELERATING
instead of moving apart at a steady state.
What is accelerating these immense galaxies?
Science hasn't a clue so they call whatever "it" is as dark energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_expansion_of_the_universe

A link with math I don't understand any longer. Don't use is so I loose it.

Yes jeager, I suspect you are correct...they keep adding to it, removing parts, modifying it, adjusting it, patching it, etc. as they go along.....and sometime take a wrong turn and come to a dead end....I suspect the big bang theory will turn out to be one of the latter...

 

[idav]

You are misinformed. A theoretical physicist explains:-
https://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/21/did-the-universe-begin-with-a-singularity/


What then is the singularity? Its a hypothetical construct:-


The emphasis is on the hypothetical here.


The status is similar to "singularities" inside Black Hole. They don't exist. They are simply hypothetical constructs (like point sources and sinks of in-viscid flow theory) that exist as convenient models within GR until a fully worked out theory of Quantum Gravity replaces them. They are the same status as ideal gases, reversible heat engines and simple harmonic oscillators. Simple idealized models that approximate for real behavior till a more sophisticated model is developed or needs to be used.

Except the stuff keeps getting confirmed which only solidifies the existence of said singularities.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160211-gravitational-waves-discovered-at-long-last/

Sure plenty of people want to argue that it is wrong I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it if it exists. I'm not scared of evidence to the contrary. Just saying it doesn't exist doesn't coincide with where the evidence has been leading us for over a century.

 

[jeager106]

It's odd to me but I accept it that we see the light emitted from stars and galaxies
years and years after that light left it's source.
Likely some of the stars we see in the night skies have burned out eons ago.
So it is possible that you could look up in the night sky and see a “dead” star, but almost all of the stars you see are perfectly active main-sequence stars, and will be for quite some time.
From:
http://www.universetoday.com/113709/are-all-the-stars-really-dead/

The distance to the stars is so great that it's very unlikely we'd ever be visited by any
advanced space traveling civilization.

Star Trek "warp speed" is probably a sci-fi fiction.
But 75 years ago so much of what we take for granted today was science fiction.
Star Treks communicator is very like today's cell phone.
As late as the 1930's the sound barrier was thought impossible to break by an aircraft.

 

[sayak83]

Except the stuff keeps getting confirmed which only solidifies the existence of said singularities.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160211-gravitational-waves-discovered-at-long-last/

Sure plenty of people want to argue that it is wrong I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it if it exists. I'm not scared of evidence to the contrary. Just saying it doesn't exist doesn't coincide with where the evidence has been leading us for over a century.

I am very confused as to why gravitational waves confirm the existence of singularity. Let me repeat, singularities are not predictions of GR, they are regions of space-time where the the assumptions of GR (that gravity and quantum mechanics can be treated separately) do not hold and therefore the equations of GR blow up.

Please read up the treatment on the website of the Max Planck Institute of Gravitational Physics which is devoted to showcase the work of Einstein.
http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/big_bangs

Did the big bang really happen? If you are talking about the big bang phase, the hot early universe as described by well-known physical theories (or, if you include inflation, by extrapolation from those theories), then there is good evidence that, yes, nearly 14 billion years ago, the cosmos developed in just the way described by the cosmological models (the main exhibits are the original abundances of light elements as deduced from astronomical observation, the distribution of far-away galaxies and the existence and properties of the so-called cosmic background radiation).

Whether or not there really was a big bang singularity is a totally different question. Most cosmologists would be very surprised if it turned out that our universe really did have an infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitely curved beginning. Commonly, the fact that a model predicts infinite values for some physical quantity indicates that the model is too simple and fails to include some crucial aspect of the real world. In fact, we already know what the usual cosmological models fail to include: At ultra-high densities, with the whole of the observable universe squeezed into a volume much smaller than that of an atom, we would expect quantum effects to become crucially important. But the cosmological standard models do not include full quantum versions of space, time and geometry - they are not based on a quantum theory of gravity. However, at the present time we do not yet have a reliable theory of quantum gravity. While there are promising candidates for such a theory, none are developed far enough to yield reliable predictions for the very early universe.

Thus, while some cosmologists do not have a problem with assuming that our universe began in a singular state, most are convinced that the big bang singularity is an artefact - to be replaced by a more accurate description once quantum gravity research has made suitable progress. To be replaced with what? Nobody knows for sure. In some models, we can go infinitely far into the past (one example is presented in the spotlight text Avoiding the big bang). In others, the big bang is replaced by a beginning of the universe which avoids all infinities, but in which time itself is rather different from what we are used to (some more information about this can be found in the spotlight text Searching for the quantum beginning of the universe).

 

[idav]

I am very confused as to why gravitational waves confirm the existence of singularity. Let me repeat, singularities are not predictions of GR, they are regions of space-time where the the assumptions of GR (that gravity and quantum mechanics can be treated separately) do not hold and therefore the equations of GR blow up.

Please read up the treatment on the website of the Max Planck Institute of Gravitational Physics which is devoted to showcase the work of Einstein.
http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/big_bangs

Because what detecting gravitational waves is doing is pointing out ripples in the fabric of spacetime, this isn't just made up stuff. Which points to black holes being exactly what einstien predicted with GR.

“This observation is truly incredible science and marks three milestones for physics: the direct detection of gravitational waves, the first detection of a binary black hole, and the most convincing evidence to date that nature’s black holes are the objects predicted by Einstein’s theory.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science...scovery-hailed-as-breakthrough-of-the-century

 

[sayak83]

Because what detecting gravitational waves is doing is pointing out ripples in the fabric of spacetime, this isn't just made up stuff. Which points to black holes being exactly what einstien predicted with GR.

Umm no. Black Holes are highly dense conglomerations of matter and all currently external behavior of Black Holes will remain the same regardless of whether a singularity exists or not (and no cosmologist believes that there exists a singularity at the center of Black Hole, only that what-ever exists can be well modeled as a point mass of infinite density). In fact, because they are Black Holes, the state in which matter insider them actually exist is completely irrelevant to how it behaves around its event horizon. In fact all modern quantum gravity theories that replace the singularity predict exactly the same behavior of a Black Hole (and gravitational waves) as the the more approximate GR theory.

 

[idav]

(and no cosmologist believes that there exists a singularity at the center of Black Hole, only that what-ever exists can be well modeled as a point mass of infinite density)

So cosmologists don't believe a singularity exists but whatever exists can be described and modeled as a point of infinite density ie. a singularity. If thats the model then thats what is said to exist. Other theories can't get rid of the black holes enormous mass and density that is so powerful that light doesn't escape.