Religion

[deadboy]

Ok I phrased that question really badly. What I meant to say was if there was -nothing- but god before time started, and we know that there was nothing, not even space before a certain point in time through science, but religion says that god was just there anyway, confusing but I'm pretty sure that it isn't meant to make sense, anyway, if there was nowhere, where did god exist, because if he didn't exist anywhere then he could not of existed, and if so he must have been created with everything else.

Creation. It's a love, hate thing to talk about. I think some day my head is going to explode

[formerly known as hf]

It's this big 'nothingness' question that is such a bone of contention.

People generally have a very hard time contemplating nothingness - the abscence of everything.

Which is (one of the) reasons why the beliefs in the afterlife have been so compelling for some - the idea of nothing, no more, the big end, is just too much for some people to take.

The nothingness at the begning of it all is even more of a head-twister. A supreme deity is one explanation - a deity doesn't have to conform to our notions of time, existence and creation - a supreme being isn't created, doesn't die - a supreme being just is, always was, and always will be. There was no 'before God' as God is the 'begining'.



But the big nothingness at the begining can be explained in more than supranatural/religious terms. One of our biggest problems, as mere humans, is understanding time.

We experience time as a constant, a fixed parameter, which passes at a constant rate. But this notion of time has more to do with social norms that practical physics.

This notion of time defies any conception of a begining or an end. It is also insufficient to explain not only the great big picture, but also individual experiences.

We've all had moments when 'time flies', and we've also had moments when time has stood still, or crpet along at a seemingly immobilepace (and just as an experiment - stare at a clock that has a second hand for a whole minute - and see how long it feels)

This indicates that time is a relative phenomenon. In human terms, it is relevant to our life experiences, both at the moment, and over our lives.

In the grand scheme of things, time is also relative, indeed it is debateable if time even exists beyond our limited capacity of percieving the passage of it...

Time may be circular, time may be concertina-like, bunched up at the ends (the begining and end of all things) and stretched out in the middle, time may even be the fixed parameter we percieve it as, but with a fixed start and end point, time may not even exist.


If you don't start realising our relative and experience-based concept of time, and grapple with understanding that there can be such a thing as nothingness and 'no time', then these questions can be explored. Otherwise, you end up going bang and making a big brain-coloured mess, or just go mad...

[Nosajimiki]

I think I slightly touched on Bowl theory in the "Shape of Cantr" thread, but it is theory Invented by Stephan Hawkings (rather resurrected, as Albert Ionstien had it first but disregarded it b/c it did not fit with his Jewish concept of creationism). Basicly it uses our undertanding of blackholes to explain that the Universe has always existed. Albert (as I'm sure I atociously mispelled his last name), ussed liniar time when explaining the big bang, but from what we know of blackholes the closer you get to such an extream gravity source the more time slows down untill it reaches an incalculably small and slow "stuck" progression of time called an event horizon. Since the universe is expanding from a central location, as best as can be proven, that means at some point, time progressed at this incalculably slow rate and that as the Universe expands time continues to accelerate. Since the closer the universe would get to a single point in space (looking back through time), the slower time progesses. That meens that there never was a single static point, and relitively speaking, time has always seemed to pass at a constant rate from anything that procieves it. So beyond philosophical speculation that time and space MAY not have needed God to create them, there is also mathimatically proven scientific data to suport that they have always existed (or at very least could have.)

[Diego]

Alber Einstein was not a creationist, nor religiously Jewish. Just by heritage. He was either a secular humanist or a deist.

[formerly known as hf]

I was about to say the same, Diego, at no point did Einstein ever disregard theories based upon religious beliefs.

[Mykey]

It is remarkable, it is rather valuable information

[Floris]

Hmm.

In a way, if we try to grip time not as a relative fact to is, that would mean it being a fourth dimension of understanding.

Someone or something who can perceive time like that would then perceive everything what is, what was and what will be. or not?



On the issue of God being there before the big bang, I have so far not yet found a good explanation of how the universe came to exist. I'm close to accepting that it always existed(in a way with big bangs and big ends happening every now and then). Matter and energy must always have been there and always will be.

[Diego]

Floris, quantum fluctuations takes care of the issue of the origin of the Big Bang relatively well, eliminating the necessity of a prime mover figure.

[formerly known as hf]

Mykey has a point about infinity, but, again, it is somewhat possible to accept that 'time' will extend to an infinite degree from this point onwards, but it is difficult to comprehend the possibility that time has exended to an infinite degree before now...

[Mykey]

On your place I would arrive differently.

[Floris]

Floris, quantum fluctuations takes care of the issue of the origin of the Big Bang relatively well, eliminating the necessity of a prime mover figure.

Could you then explain it to me or direct me to any website it is explained in.

I have heard stuff about string-theory, multiple universes, bigbangs and big shrinks as a series that follow out of each other. But so far no explanation how it all began.

And the nothingness before the big bang, is it nothing in the sense of absolute nothing. Or was there no matter, but only energy?

[Mykey]

On mine it is very interesting theme. I suggest all to take part in discussion more actively.

[Nick]

And our church does baptisms for the dead and things like that.

Now that is creepy!

[formerly known as hf]

To me, the Quantum Theory explanation has always seemed pretty dodgy to me. It's the same old something out of nothingness that God requires.

Instead of God creating the Universe, quantum-level particulates/waves/whatever you want to call them managed to do it. It brings us back to the same old question, but instead of 'how was God created' it's 'how did the quantum waves form' - and we again have to resort to 'Quantum Particulates aren't created - they just are, always were, and always will be. There was no 'before' as they are the 'begining'.'

Which is a cop-out argument, like the one about God.


In fact, quantum physics smacks of supra-natural thinking all over. I've always considered that quatnum mechanics should be considered a stand-in for something we just can't properly observe / comprehend.


We know there was a 'Big Bang' - it's beyond conjecture now, and has been partially observed. The causes of the big bang can be explained-away by theories behind quantum physics, but every time we 'explain' the begining of something, we have to explain the begining of that thing which we just used explained the begining (ad infinitum)

A cyclical theory has always made more sense to me - that the Big Bang was caused by the Big Crunch, which has not yet happened... - Time is circular. At the Big Crunch, time is so heavily warped by the mass of the Universe in a small space, that it folds in on itself.

[formerly known as hf]

Although I'd like to add that I'm aware the vast majority of physicists diasagree with an oscillatory universe - as it goes against observed phenomena, and doesn't conform to entropy.

But, in my mind, the alternatives - the Big Freeze and the Big Rip - don't satisfy the explanation for 'what was before' the Big Bang.

I like the idea that the Universe will keep expanding, until it becomes without gradient, without differentiation, an even spread of the most basic component of matter and energy (whatever that may be) - and will stay like that ad infinitum.

But it still leaves the sticky question of what came before the Big Bang. I don't know the science well enough to say anything more than what I can most easily comprehend. And my comprehesnion is that nothing happens without a cause - and anything which doesn't have a cause seems like hocus pocus religiony stuff to me, but I get the feeling that the begining of the Universe, whatever it may be, requires an understanding of effect without cause.


What particularly fascinates me is the concept of spacetime. I have a vague understanding of it in the physical science sense, but it has been incredibly useful in recent understandings of the social world. The unserstanding that space and time are inextricably linked (you can't have one without the other) and are, more precisely, not just linked but two parts of the same phenomena, indeed, are just one and the same, suddenly makes things in our social world much more easy to understand.