Why Didn't the Universe Always Exist?

[idea]

I love this essay: The Beginning. by Brig Klyce

Nor is anything gained by running the difficulty farther back.... Our going back, ever so far, brings us no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject. — William Paley (1)
How did life begin in the first place? It's a natural question. Yet science is nowhere near the answer to this question. In fact, the question may be flawed. Maybe there was no beginning. This possibility cannot be logically ruled out.

Helmholtz​

This possible consequence of cosmic ancestry is not new. In 1873, the great German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz said, "if failure attends all of our efforts to obtain a generation of organisms from lifeless matter, it seems to me a thoroughly correct scientific procedure to inquire whether there has ever been an origination of life, or whether it is not as old as matter..." (2). Contemporaneously with Helmholtz, Louis Pasteur wrote (3):

I have been looking for spontaneous generation during twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible.... You place matter before life, and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists... to consider that life has existed during eternity and not matter?

In 1914, BAAS President William Bateson suggested that life may have evolved from an original complex that already included all of its ensuing variety (3.5). How could that begin? And in 1926, Russian geochemist V. I. Vernadskii observed (4):

None of the exact relationships between facts which we know will be changed if this problem has a negative solution, that is, if we admit that life always existed and had no beginning, that living organisms never arose at any time from inert material....

 

[muhammad_isa]

Of course, and you see fit to believe by faith. Are you offended that I say so?

..and so do you.
You have faith in the current scientific facts and theories.

I have a great deal of faith in them too, but not to the extent that they rule my mind.
I evaluate things from more than one perspective. I call it thinking.

You merely add the word "critical" and claim your way is superior.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You have faith in the current scientific facts and theories.

No, I don't, if by faith you mean unjustified belief as in gods and angels and afterlives. My trust in empiricism and my rejection of religious-type faith is supported by the success of the former and the uselessness of unfalsifiable beliefs.

I evaluate things from more than one perspective. I call it thinking.

Yes, but not all thinking is good thinking. You allow in other types of thinking, which don't benefit you except perhaps to comfort you.

I have a friend who, when told, "Great minds think alike," was quick to point out that so do mediocre minds.

You merely add the word "critical" and claim your way is superior.

Critical thought and empiricism have been confirmed to be superior to belief by faith. They converted alchemy to chemistry, astrology to astronomy, and creationism to cosmology and evolutionary biology.

 

[muhammad_isa]

No, I don't, if by faith you mean unjustified belief as in gods and angels and afterlives.

I do NOT mean that, quite obviously.

I mean what I say. You rely on the scientists honesty, and correct conclusions etc.
I never claimed its unjustified, as you do with anything other than science.

Yes, but not all thinking is good thinking. You allow in other types of thinking, which don't benefit you except perhaps to comfort you.

That is merely your bias. You claim your way is superior.
I see it as narrow-minded, and lacks insight and feeling .. robot-like.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You rely on the scientists honesty, and correct conclusions etc.

No, I don't. My confidence in empiricism comes from two observations:

[1] It works in my daily life. When I make decision based in properly evaluating the evidence of the experiences of daily life, I am rewarded, whereas, if I were to make decisions based in faith -based beliefs, the outcomes are variable and less satisfying.

[2] Science works. It makes life longer, more functional, easier, safer, more comfortable, and more interesting. Religious beliefs do none of that.

I never claimed its unjustified

Agreed. You don't call faith-based belief unjustified. Still, it is by the standards of critical analysis.

You claim your way is superior. I see it as narrow-minded, and lacks insight and feeling .. robot-like.

My way generates results. Yours just generates useless to harmful unfalsifiable beliefs.

 

[muhammad_isa]

My way generates results..

You believe that they produce favorable results.
"seeing is believing" .. perhaps.

 

[gnostic]

You have faith in the current scientific facts and theories.

I have a great deal of faith in them too, but not to the extent that they rule my mind.
I evaluate things from more than one perspective. I call it thinking.

You merely add the word "critical" and claim your way is superior.

That is merely your bias. You claim your way is superior.
I see it as narrow-minded, and lacks insight and feeling .. robot-like.

Excuse me, but I could say the same with you, if you (and others like you) allowed your belief in scriptures or belief in superstitions (eg “God did it”), to cloud your thinking…that would be consider biases.

if I was to compare what science say about nature, and whatever religion you believe in that would say about nature, then I go with the one that are verified by evidence (which would include experiments) & data, and not something that come from scriptures or religious teachings.

The problem with religions, especially in scriptures that talk about nature (eg natural phenomena like Earth, Sun, rain, mountains, seas, living organisms, etc), they often used vague descriptions, or worse, using symbolic languages that often appear in verse literature like poetry, epic poems or scriptures, eg literary devices like for examples - metaphors, similes, analogies, allegories, etc.

These literary symbolic devices can have any number of interpretations that can contradict each other, or could cause confusion. They are often obscured, misleading or just outright wrong.

Now I am assuming you are a Muslim, so I will give you some examples from the Qur’an of a simile or metaphor.

In Qur’an numbers of passages it describes the Earth being “spread out” or “stretch out” or “extend”, and some would include it being spread out like a “bed” (20:53, 43:10) or like a “carpet” (51:48).

A simile is where one thing is mentioned - like the “Earth” - and this is described and compared with something else entirely - like with “carpet” or with “bed”. That the Earth is described as being spread out like bed or being spread out like carpet, would imply that the Earth is flat like a bed or a carpet.

While it is true, that I don’t read Arabic, and there are possibilities that translating passages into English, may lose their actual contexts, but being ”spread out“ or “stretch out” like a bed or like a carpet would indicate a flat surface, not rounded like a sphere.

Now you may also cite some passages that imply roundness of the Earth. But being “round” isn real good descriptions, because many shapes can be round. With 2-D shapes, both circle & elliptic have round & curve shape. In 3-D, ”round” can include a sphere (eg ball or orb) or a spheroid shape like ellipsoid (eg egg shape), or it can be round & flat at the same time like cylinder (as well as disk) or cone.

So unless scriptures like the Qur’an or Bible be more precise with their wordings, by describing the Earth being shape of sphere, orb or ball, just saying “round” isn’t good enough, because as I said number of shapes can be round & flat like cylinder or disk.

The Earth is definitely spheroid, meaning it isn’t a perfect sphere, as the circumference at the equator is wider than those (circumference) of the polar.

The Ancient Greek natural philosophers have known the Earth to be orb-like for about a thousand years before the composition of the Qur’an, but no Muslims describe the Earth being spherical until centuries later, when Muslims scholars have translated Greek texts into Arabic and Persian, from 9th century and later.

Biases can go both ways. How you view the world, can just be as narrow.

 

[gnostic]

@muhammad_isa

I forgot to say before pressing the "Post reply" button.

That everyone are capable of "thinking"...including yourself.

You wrote:

I have a great deal of faith in them too, but not to the extent that they rule my mind.
I evaluate things from more than one perspective. I call it thinking.

That's all good and well.

It is particularly good to able to do that. Because in the line of any scientist's work, that scientist have to be skeptical of other people's work, BUT he or she must be also capable of evaluate his or her own work, skeptically, because no hypothesis a scientist has formulated to be automatically true, that's why a scientist, if he or she can MUST TEST his or her own hypothesis, to determine its validity, as must any other scientists (eg peers in Peer Review).

No new hypothesis is true, unless it has been rigorously tested, whether it be the scientist or someone else (some other scientists). And the only way to test a hypothesis

Note that I wrote - "...or someone else" - hypotheses can be tested by independent scientists. For instance, Albert Einstein was more theoretical physicist than a experimental physicist, especially in some of his models in Special Relativity and his models in General Relativity, other scientists have his hypotheses.

Anyway, I am digressing, as I normally do. Sorry. Back to the subject of "thinking".

As I said everyone is capable of thinking. You, me, and so on.

But not everyone is capable of "critical thinking", an ability to scoff at, when you replied to @It Aint Necessarily So with this:

You merely add the word "critical" and claim your way is superior.

You are making it out as this is bad.

Critical thinking is not so much as being "superior", as being able to analyze things (things, like an argument or evidence or fact) objectively, without biases.

Some people do critical thinking better than other.

The question is, can you analyze your own work, critically & dispassionately? Can you critically analyze your own belief?

When I was younger, I did believe in the Bible, Old Testament & New, and believe in Jesus' teaching and all. I didn't question what I believe in, and I didn't question the gospels. But during a 14-year period hiatus, I was busy with college life than with works, so religion took a backseat, and I didn't open up the Bible until 2000.

The year 2000 was my 2nd year when I created my website Timeless Myths, that included information about Greek and Norse and Celtic myths. I was doing research on the Grail legend for my Arthurian section at Timeless Myths, when I picked up the Bible once again. But it wasn't Jesus' death and Joseph of Arimathea that changed my personal view on religion, it was Jesus' birth (Matthew 1:23) about the messianic sign that supposedly prophesized Jesus' coming in Isaiah 7:14.

The gospel claimed that Jesus was Isaiah's Immanuel, but when I re-read Matthew 1:23 along with Isaiah 7 (whole chapter and not just verse 14), I came to realize that the gospel has cherrypicked the Isaiah's sign, leaving out the rest of sign (Isaiah 7:14-17).

Perhaps, I was young and inexperience at the time, that I took what the gospel of Matthew at face value, didn't bother to double-checking what I read, didn't cross-reference one book from the other. But being more experience with life and with literature, I did as much as cross-referencing as I could.

This discrepancy in Matthew 1:23 with Isaiah 7:14-17, made me check for other so-called messianic signs, comparing the gospel with supposed signs of Jesus from the Old Testament.

From that point on, I was more "agnostic" than a "theist", although, quite frankly I never heard of agnosticism until 3 years later (2003), when I joined my first internet forum.

The point, I was able to critically analyze my own belief - questioned it for the first time.

Can you question, analyze and challenge your own belief, muhammd_isa?

If you cannot evaluate your religion critically and skeptically, what make you think you can analyze any scientific theory?

 

[muhammad_isa]

..not everyone is capable of "critical thinking", an ability to scoff at, when you replied to @It Aint Necessarily So with this:

You are making it out as this is bad.

It is bad, imo, if "critical thinking" is merely an evaluation of physical observation, and nothing more.
That is not really critical thinking, as the word "critical" implies.

Critical thinking is not so much as being "superior", as being able to analyze things (things, like an argument or evidence or fact) objectively, without biases.

..and if there is no data to analyze, how can one reach any conclusion?
The only physical data we have to analyze, pertains to this universe, and that says nothing
about the possible existence of another.

..From that point on, I was more "agnostic" than a "theist", although, quite frankly I never heard of agnosticism until 3 years later (2003), when I joined my first internet forum.

The point, I was able to critically analyze my own belief - questioned it for the first time.

Can you question, analyze and challenge your own belief, muhammd_isa?

Yes, thankyou.

 

[gnostic]

..and if there is no data to analyze, how can one reach any conclusion?

Then a scientist should conclude that there are no data, as there are no evidence.

And if the data don’t support a model, then a scientist would conclude the evidence & data have refuted the model.

What a scientist shouldn’t do, is make some up, when there are no data, or when the data don’t support the model.

 

[gnostic]

The only physical data we have to analyze, pertains to this universe, and that says nothing
about the possible existence of another.

Any concept about “outside” the Universe, would either be speculative, or worse, wild imagination, or even worse, delusional.

Unless, you have data about there being Universe, all such concepts are baseless.

 

[wellwisher]

No. It's a question of which model works to predict reality. Treating time and space separately was the model used until Einstein, but it's only a good approximation.

You seem to be obsessing over the mechanics of measurement. You can't measure time without space, but you can't measure space in without time either (try measuring a distance in zero time) - so what?

You can measure time without space. If you look at the propagation of time, it always goes to the future. It does not go backwards. It does not cycle like clocks, which are like a sin waves; 12 noon to 12noon, or from day to night and back to day. The path of time is linear 1-D and not a 2-D sine wave in the bigger picture of time. This linear aspect of time is pure time. The universe aging to the future, has no zones that do not age at some level. This 1-D model of time is not space dependent, but occurs in all of space at the same time; literal universal omnipresent time.

Another concept of science that behaves in a very similar way; 1-D, and not restricted to any place in space, is entropy. The entropy of the "entire universe" has to increase. We may not know exactly where; pin point. Entropy can also be detached from space-time, that is 2-D. We may use statistics to get close to that point in space-time.

One clock, that I invented, we can make to measure linear 1-D time and not space-time, 2-D time, is an entropy clock. I call it the dead fish clock.

I place a dead fish on the counter, and knowing it has to decompose and increase entropy, when it stinks a certain level, and I can smell the stink in my office, that is one unique unit of 1-D time. Since, the next fish may not have the same 2-D clock duration, due to variation reasons, entropy clock time, is not a constant like the second hand of space-time clocks. It accommodates internal differences in the fish as a function of the linear vector of time. I like to express this type of time, as time potential; increment along the vector. The time potential can be used up slower or faster, based on the internal free energy dynamics within each fish.

I can normalize each fish and make all dead fish clocks, have the same clock time, by changing the temperature. Like a variation of relativity, if I make it colder it will take longer to stink, and if I make it warmer it will stink sooner. Different fish references can be ascertained by tweaking temperature until they all normalize to a standard reference.

Free energy is G =H-TS, with -TS (temperature times entropy) the change of free energy connected to entropy increase, which can be normalized if needed via tweaking T. But I am not that concerned, since time potential is not about clock time, but rather the journey to the future of stinking, with all the variations; turns and hazards, unique to each fish.

A fertilize ovum has the time potential for 120 years under optimized conditions. However, each human generates entropy at different rates and like the fish clock, some can use up its time potential faster, by burning the candle at both ends. We can cool that compulsion and extend the clock time of the time potential. The future; time potential, is not carved in stone but can have different space-time duration.

In a highly time dilated space-time reference, a little time potential can go a long way, since entropy is slowed by the slowing of space-time, time. We can travel across the galaxy and appear to have not aged to much; worm hole. Out time potential goes farther that way.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Unless, you have data about there being Universe, all such concepts are baseless.

Stephen Hawking (a respected scientist) would not have agreed with you, and he was not a believer in G-d.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Then a scientist should conclude that there are no data, as there are no evidence.

And if the data don’t support a model, then a scientist would conclude the evidence & data have refuted the model.

What a scientist shouldn’t do, is make some up, when there are no data, or when the data don’t support the model.

Some people are born or become blind and cannot see what you can see, and so it is that some souls are born or become 'blind' to the reality represented by the concept 'God', and cannot apprehend what a spiritually receptive soul may realize.

What a non-believer shouldn't do, is deny spiritual reality, just because they cannot apprehend it.

 

[SDavis]

Why didn't the universe always exist? Because since God is supposed to be outside of time and is supposed to have always existed, then how could God have used a point in time to start creation? Any thoughts on this?

There are some scientists now saying that the Big Bang wasn't the beginning of the universe. (The big bang and God said Let There Be Light and that burst of microwave radiation light burst fourth and lit up the entire space within seconds of the singularity.)

The majority of scientists still theorize the beginning of this universe began with the big bang. Maybe because they can only see 5% of this universe so they have no other information. And I say this universe because it is not known what is their past was science can see.

The Bible indicates there is more than one heaven - it says heavens with an s. Paul even said he was taken to the third heaven, that he does not mean there is only three. Heaven is actually everything outside of the Earth. People affiliate heaven as the abode of God saying, but there is more than one and Jesus said he's going to create a new place.

When Jesus said in his Father's house are many mansions, he wasn't speaking of an extremely large building with a lot of little buildings inside of it - he was speaking of what we term as space.

So man with his current technology will not know what all is out there. Some say space is finite, some says infinite. I believe infinite, why wouldn't it be?

This universe happened to be the universe where God created the earth (I personally believe the Earth is Eden) and the animals on the Earth, placed the Earth so it would continue to exist and life continue to reproduce. Until judgment comes upon those he call man.

And if there is any tell tale sign that life exists somewhere else - whether it's in a different universe / different dimension however you want to call it - that telltale sign would be what's flying around in the skies of Earth that even President Obama said they're there and we don't know what they are and has been since flying and written of by many ancient cultures.

 

[gnostic]

Stephen Hawking (a respected scientist) would not have agreed with you, and he was not a believer in G-d.

Respected, yes.

But the thing you need to understand is that Hawking is also, foremost, a theoretical physicist.

Emphasis on the “theoretical“ part.

Theoretical physics relied on the person - a theoretical physicist - to come with any mathematical model to solve to any problem; so such a physicist must be very creative with coming up with mathematical solutions.

Mathematics - the solutions they can provide are very useful way to look at the natural world, however all mathematical solutions are only representations of nature, and they are abstract, abstract are not the same as physical. And all abstract are of human constructs - the equations or formulas, the variables, constants, numbers, these are all of human constructs, and as such, human logic can be wrong, humans can make mistakes.

What scientists & mathematicians called “PROOF” is actually those mathematical models - the equations or formulas.

Hawking was as much a mathematician as he was a physicist.

Theoretical physics differed from experimental physics, where the later the models must be testable (hence falsifiable), and in the 2nd half of Scientific Method, the physicist(s) must find way to physically test the model of a hypothesis.

So the only way for theoretical model to actually become accepted as “science”, is to be able to OBSERVE the physical phenomena (hence testing the phenomena and its properties) and how the phenomena work (testing the mechanism of the phenomena). And the only way to observe and test the phenomena against the model of a hypothesis is either by discovering EVIDENCE or doing EXPERIMENTS.

The problem with a theoretical model is the line where it crosses between that being testable (falsifiable) and being untestable (unfalsifiable). Some of theoretical models do eventually become “science”, but some models failed the tests (these are falsifiable models but the evidence or experiments refuted the model)…and some models are unfalsifiable and ultimately remained untested - these unfalsifiable models would fall under the category pseudoscience or fringe science.

Below are the opening paragraphs of 2 Wikipedia articles on fringe science and pseudoscience:

Fringe science, Wikipedia

Fringe science refers to ideas whose attributes include being highly speculative or relying on premises already refuted. Fringe science theories are often advanced by people who have no traditional academic science background, or by researchers outside the mainstream discipline. The general public has difficulty distinguishing between science and its imitators, and in some cases, a "yearning to believe or a generalized suspicion of experts is a very potent incentive to accepting pseudoscientific claims".​

Pseudoscience, Wikipedia

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the Scientific Method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited. It is not the same as junk science.​

Concepts like Irreducible Complexity and Specified Complexity both fall under pseudoscience category…as they offered no predictions as to the ways they can be tested, they don’t even fall under the theoretical category, as they provide no mathematical solutions.

Multiverse is “theoretically” possible, which is the only saving grace for this theoretical model, but the longer it remains untestable and be experimentally untested, then it too might be ultimately thrown into trash as being pseudoscience.

But getting back to Hawking. While some of his works are science, others are just untested theoretical models that are not science, yet, or ultimately may never be science, as they may be never be tested and verified.

 

[gnostic]

Some people are born or become blind and cannot see what you can see, and so it is that some souls are born or become 'blind' to the reality represented by the concept 'God', and cannot apprehend what a spiritually receptive soul may realize.

What a non-believer shouldn't do, is deny spiritual reality, just because they cannot apprehend it.

You do realize that are even more working scientists that have theistic backgrounds than there are those with atheistic backgrounds, don’t you?

What they choose to believe or don’t believe, in their own free times, are their personal rights. But when they are doing their works or researches in science, every single one of these working scientists, must put aside their personal beliefs. A scientist must be able to do their work without letting their personal beliefs cloud their judgement. A scientist must be professional, letting the evidence, experiments & data, to decide whether the hypothesis is science or not science, and not let their personal beliefs or personal preferences dictate their works.

Second, there are numbers of believers here, and as good scientists (eg @shunyadragon (geologist) & @metis (anthropologist) both have decades of experiences but are now retired, are themselves theists), and yet, they have rejected Intelligent Design because they know that ID is nothing more than pseudoscience, just as vigorously as atheist members & agnostics do.

The question about the validity of the Big Bang theory, isn't about atheists vs theists, but whether the BB models are scientifically tested or not.

 

[Pogo]

Stephen Hawking (a respected scientist) would not have agreed with you, and he was not a believer in G-d.

Stephen Hawking (a respected scientist) would not have agreed with you, and he was not a believer in G-d.

I think you rather misunderstand Stephen Hawking and science in general.

he might not disregard your position, but that does not mean he considered it valid in any way,

Some people are born or become blind and cannot see what you can see, and so it is that some souls are born or become 'blind' to the reality represented by the concept 'God', and cannot apprehend what a spiritually receptive soul may realize.

What a non-believer shouldn't do, is deny spiritual reality, just because they cannot apprehend it.

What a rational person should do is question anyone who claims to have knowledge without being able to demonstrate said knowledge.

 

[muhammad_isa]

But getting back to Hawking. While some of his works are science, others are just untested theoretical models that are not science, yet, or ultimately may never be science, as they may be never be tested and verified.

..so scientific theories are not scientific theories, if they are not (or cannot) be tested.

Many scientific theories that people accept as "probably true", fall in to that category.
..including the sprawling number of theories under the umbrella of ToE.

 

[shunyadragon]

..so scientific theories are not scientific theories, if they are not (or cannot) be tested.

Many scientific theories that people accept as "probably true", fall in to that category.
..including the sprawling number of theories under the umbrella of ToE.

This reflects the intentional ignorance of science based on an ancient tribal religious agenda,.
Scientific theories are scientific based on Methodological Naturalism and objective verifiable evidence without regard to religious beliefs.