Who here is an atheist?

[Votto]

Breaking News: Czernobog refutes scientists at Cern.

Background radiation, red shift and Friedman's solutions to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity all wrong.

Breaking News: Other physicists disagree with Cern, as the article demonstrates. But, hey, why not just compound all of your logical fallacies with, yet, another: Appeal to Authority.

Show me one that said the universe did not start in a hot dense state.

The primordial universe was a liberal?

 

[ding]

No one refutes this.

Not true at all. While yes, it was small, people do refute that it was a singularity.

You guys are so uncomfortable with the universe having a

Then you arent oayong attention. I absolutely believe our observable universe had a beginning. But "all there is" may or may not have had a beginning. People are rightfully objecting to your authoritative declaration that it did have a beginning. You're doing so is not scientific, so you are incorrect to say that anyone is disputing anything scientific to refute your authoritative declaration.

You must not be reading all the posts then.

The best scientific explanation we have today is the universe had a beginning.

Which leads us to the philosophical discussion of what started it.

Which leads us to the first cause conundrum.

Which is what we are discussing. Except some people don't want to have that discussion so they shit all over science.

No. It's. Not! One theory about the origin of the universe says this. There are other theories that do not. The only thing we can say about the formation of the universe,. and what did, or did not, come before is We. Don't. Know. Why does the phrase, "We don't know" bother you so much?!?! Why is ti so anathema to you to suply admit that there are things about our universe that we just don't know, yet?

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

 

[ding]

Breaking News: Czernobog refutes scientists at Cern.

Background radiation, red shift and Friedman's solutions to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity all wrong.

Breaking News: Other physicists disagree with Cern, as the article demonstrates. But, hey, why not just compound all of your logical fallacies with, yet, another: Appeal to Authority.

Show me one that said the universe did not start in a hot dense state.

The primordial universe was a liberal?

A sea of sub atomic particles of nearly equal amounts of matter and anti-matter.

 

[Votto]

Georges Lemaître anyone?

You know George, the Belgium priest who came up with the Big Bang theory.

Of course, he was one of those wacko religious types that actually believed that the universe had a beginning, yes, that the Bible was right about that.

Unfortunately, he was largely ignored by men such as Einstein. For you see, the general scientific consensus was that the universe was eternal and static.......that is, until the evidence continued to pile up showing him to be 100% correct.

Carry on everyone.

Yes, thank you for an excellent example of what separates evidence-based thinkers from magical, authoritative dogmatists.

He was by no means a magical thinker. He was a mathematician and scientist as well as priest.

Einstein made the comment, "Your math is correct, but your physics is abysmal!"

Why did Einstein turn a blind eye to his math?

You completely missed my point. My point is that evidence-based thinkers change their minds, as new evidence comes to light which compels them to do so.

And you missed my point.

The priest had the math to show them. They studied the math and agreed it was right. Then they promptly ignored him until other scientists WHO WERE NOT PRIESTS corroborated his theory.

For you see, man is arrogant and bigoted. Priests are looked down upon , as were women during that time.

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin anyone? She was a woman scientist who made the discovery that stars were mostly helium and hydrogen. Of course, she, like priest, was a nobody. The math was right, but the looks of them were not, so they were rejected until other scientists discovered it themselves. You know, respectable male, atheist scientists that could be listened too.

 

[Czernobog]

You do realize that all the matter and energy in the universe occupied the space of one billionth of one trillionth of an atom, right?

While that may be true, it actually is not necessarily true. The universe did not have to be that small for the expansion to have occurred, and for "time" (as we observe it) to have begun.

That is as far back as the solutions can take it.

CURRENTLY. That's the word you omitted. "That is as far back as the solutions can take it, currently," And that's okay. That just means that, currently, the correct response to questions about what happened before that is, "I don't know. But, boy, it'll sure be cool when we figure it out, won't it?!?!"

And yes, the universe started from an extremely tiny size. That's exactly what all the data shows. No one refutes this. Every cosmological model in existence starts with an extremely hot dense universe and then it begins to expand and cool.

And many of those models demonstrate that the expansion was not necessarily "the beginning"; only the most recent.

My point was for you to wrap your mind around what that actually looks like. It is mind boggling. I don't see how anyone can deny the universe having a beginning.

You guys are so uncomfortable with the universe having a beginning that you are literally shitting all over science.

And therein lies your problem. You cannot imagine that anyone can have a larger sense of things than you. Not "all over science", just all over your definitive presentation of theoretical science, which is not nearly as unequivocal about its positions as you are being.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

False.

 

[ding]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

All the observable data confirms it.

Einstein's equations predict it.

It is the accepted scientific consensus.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

All the observable data confirms it.

Einstein's equations predict it.

It is the accepted scientific consensus.

Then they promptly ignored him until other scientists WHO WERE NOT PRIESTS corroborated his theory.

...using evidence. Like I said.

 

[ding]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

False.

Do you know what thermal equilibrium is?

As time approaches infinity the universe approaches thermal equilibrium.

We do not see thermal equilibrium.

 

[ding]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

All the observable data confirms it.

Einstein's equations predict it.

It is the accepted scientific consensus.

Then they promptly ignored him until other scientists WHO WERE NOT PRIESTS corroborated his theory.

...using evidence. Like I said.

If you were using evidence now, you would accept that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics precludes an infinite acting universe.

 

[ding]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

All the observable data confirms it.

Einstein's equations predict it.

It is the accepted scientific consensus.

Then they promptly ignored him until other scientists WHO WERE NOT PRIESTS corroborated his theory.

...using evidence. Like I said.

A cyclic universe runs into the second law of thermodynamics, which says that any system left to itself eventually reaches the state of maximum disorder, called thermal equilibrium. So if the universe were cyclic, then in every cycle, the disorder in the universe would increase. Eventually the universe would reach this thermal equilibrium state, which is a totally featureless mixture of everything—this is not what we see around us.

In the Beginning Was the Beginning

 

[Czernobog]

No one refutes this.

Not true at all. While yes, it was small, people do refute that it was a singularity.

You guys are so uncomfortable with the universe having a

Then you arent oayong attention. I absolutely believe our observable universe had a beginning. But "all there is" may or may not have had a beginning. People are rightfully objecting to your authoritative declaration that it did have a beginning. You're doing so is not scientific, so you are incorrect to say that anyone is disputing anything scientific to refute your authoritative declaration.

You must not be reading all the posts then.

The best scientific explanation we have today is the universe had a beginning.

Which leads us to the philosophical discussion of what started it.

Which leads us to the first cause conundrum.

Which is what we are discussing. Except some people don't want to have that discussion so they shit all over science.

No. It's. Not! One theory about the origin of the universe says this. There are other theories that do not. The only thing we can say about the formation of the universe,. and what did, or did not, come before is We. Don't. Know. Why does the phrase, "We don't know" bother you so much?!?! Why is ti so anathema to you to suply admit that there are things about our universe that we just don't know, yet?

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

There is an important proviso included with the Laws of Thermodynamics that you are ignoring. We distinguish between the universe as a whole, and that finite part of it over which light has had time to travel to us since the beginning. When we say that we want to explain the form of "the universe", what we mean is the visible universe. There is a vast, unknown expanse of the universe that may well hold answers, and new mysteries that completely destroy evrything we presume to know about the universe. In short, you are presenting the universe as a "closed system". There is absolutely no evidence to support that presumption.

 

[Czernobog]

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

All the observable data confirms it.

Einstein's equations predict it.

It is the accepted scientific consensus.

Then they promptly ignored him until other scientists WHO WERE NOT PRIESTS corroborated his theory.

...using evidence. Like I said.

If you were using evidence now, you would accept that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics precludes an infinite acting universe.

Only if you presume that the universe is a closed system. There is no evidence that requires us to presume such.

 

[Czernobog]

No one refutes this.

Not true at all. While yes, it was small, people do refute that it was a singularity.

You guys are so uncomfortable with the universe having a

Then you arent oayong attention. I absolutely believe our observable universe had a beginning. But "all there is" may or may not have had a beginning. People are rightfully objecting to your authoritative declaration that it did have a beginning. You're doing so is not scientific, so you are incorrect to say that anyone is disputing anything scientific to refute your authoritative declaration.

You must not be reading all the posts then.

The best scientific explanation we have today is the universe had a beginning.

Which leads us to the philosophical discussion of what started it.

Which leads us to the first cause conundrum.

Which is what we are discussing. Except some people don't want to have that discussion so they shit all over science.

No. It's. Not! One theory about the origin of the universe says this. There are other theories that do not. The only thing we can say about the formation of the universe,. and what did, or did not, come before is We. Don't. Know. Why does the phrase, "We don't know" bother you so much?!?! Why is ti so anathema to you to suply admit that there are things about our universe that we just don't know, yet?

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

Only if you presume that the universe - not the visible universe, mind you, but the entire universe - is a closed system. And your evidence to support that presumption is...?

 

[Czernobog]

See, this is why it is so easy to overcome Ding's arguments. Because all of them are founded in basic unprovable presumptions. Once you remove those presumptions, his arguments fall apart.

 

[ding]

No one refutes this.

Not true at all. While yes, it was small, people do refute that it was a singularity.

You guys are so uncomfortable with the universe having a

Then you arent oayong attention. I absolutely believe our observable universe had a beginning. But "all there is" may or may not have had a beginning. People are rightfully objecting to your authoritative declaration that it did have a beginning. You're doing so is not scientific, so you are incorrect to say that anyone is disputing anything scientific to refute your authoritative declaration.

You must not be reading all the posts then.

The best scientific explanation we have today is the universe had a beginning.

Which leads us to the philosophical discussion of what started it.

Which leads us to the first cause conundrum.

Which is what we are discussing. Except some people don't want to have that discussion so they shit all over science.

No. It's. Not! One theory about the origin of the universe says this. There are other theories that do not. The only thing we can say about the formation of the universe,. and what did, or did not, come before is We. Don't. Know. Why does the phrase, "We don't know" bother you so much?!?! Why is ti so anathema to you to suply admit that there are things about our universe that we just don't know, yet?

We do know the universe had a beginning. The 2nd Law of Thermo requires it.

There is an important proviso included with the Laws of Thermodynamics that you are ignoring. We distinguish between the universe as a whole, and that finite part of it over which light has had time to travel to us since the beginning. When we say that we want to explain the form of "the universe", what we mean is the visible universe. There is a vast, unknown expanse of the universe that may well hold answers, and new mysteries that completely destroy evrything we presume to know about the universe. In short, you are presenting the universe as a "closed system". There is absolutely no evidence to support that presumption.

A cyclic universe runs into the second law of thermodynamics, which says that any system left to itself eventually reaches the state of maximum disorder, called thermal equilibrium. So if the universe were cyclic, then in every cycle, the disorder in the universe would increase. Eventually the universe would reach this thermal equilibrium state, which is a totally featureless mixture of everything—this is not what we see around us.

In the Beginning Was the Beginning

 

[ding]

See, this is why it is so easy to overcome Ding's arguments. Because all of them are founded in basic unprovable presumptions. Once you remove those presumptions, his arguments fall apart.

The leading cosmological model for how the universe began has been disproved by you?

I don't think so.

If the universe is expanding then it must have a beginning. If you follow it backwards in time, then any object must come to a boundary of space time. You cannot continue that history indefinitely. This is still true even if a universe has periods of contraction. It still has to have a beginning if expansion over weights the contraction. Physicists have been uncomfortable with the idea of a beginning since the work of Friedman which showed that the solutions of Einstein's equation showed that the universe had a beginning. The problem with a cyclical universe is with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. If it is a periodic universe then the entropy will increase with each cycle. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a fundamental law of nature which tells us that entropy can only increase or stay the same. Entropy can never decrease. Which means that in a finite amount of time, a finite system will reach a maximum state of disorder which is called thermal equilibrium and then it will stay in that state. A cyclical universe cannot avoid this problem. The model by Steinhardt and Turok does not have this problem. They have cycles but the size of the cycle increases with time. So the next cycle is bigger than the first. So in this sense the total entropy of the universe still increases but the entropy you see in your limited region may not grow. This model does no contradict the inflation model because since each cycle is bigger than the previous cycle you still have expansion. And since you still have expansion, it still has to have a beginning because if you follow it backwards in time, then any object must come to a boundary of space time. The best explanation for how the universe began is the inflation model. It is possible for matter to have a beginning. In a closed universe the gravitational energy which is always negative exactly compensates the positive energy of matter. So the energy of a closed universe is always zero. So nothing prevents this universe from being spontaneously created. Because the net energy is always zero. The positive energy of matter is balanced by the negative energy of the gravity of that matter which is the space time curvature of that matter. There is no conservation law that prevents the formation of such a universe. In quantum mechanics if something is not forbidden by conservation laws, then it necessarily happens with some non-zero probability. So a closed universe can spontaneously appear - through the laws of quantum mechanics - out of nothing. And in fact there is an elegant mathematical description which describes this process and shows that a tiny closed universe having very high energy can spontaneously pop into existence and immediately start to expand and cool. In this description, the same laws that describe the evolution of the universe also describe the appearance of the universe which means that the laws were in place before the universe itself.

 

[BULLDOG]

So. Big Bang.

What caused the "Big Bang"?

Did the Big Bang bring existence into existence? Or did something exist before that?

If so, how?

What caused "God"?

Did God bring existence into existence? Or did something exist before that?

If so, how?

The only solution to the first cause conundrum is something which is eternal and unchanging.

Whatever it is... it has those attributes. I can think of several things that meet this description but they are more like verbs than nouns. Which is another clue to the puzzle.

You could be right, but I don't think so. I see no reason why it has to be eternal. It, whether that it is a natural occurrence or a God, only has to predate the creation of the universe. It could have changed or gone away since that time. The Christian God has drastically changed from the vengeful God of the Old Testament to the loving and forgiving God that Jesus describes.

 

[ding]

So. Big Bang.

What caused the "Big Bang"?

Did the Big Bang bring existence into existence? Or did something exist before that?

If so, how?

What caused "God"?

Did God bring existence into existence? Or did something exist before that?

If so, how?

The only solution to the first cause conundrum is something which is eternal and unchanging.

Whatever it is... it has those attributes. I can think of several things that meet this description but they are more like verbs than nouns. Which is another clue to the puzzle.

You could be right, but I don't think so. I see no reason why it has to be eternal. It, whether that it is a natural occurrence or a God, only has to predate the creation of the universe. It could have changed or gone away since that time. The Christian God has drastically changed from the vengeful God of the Old Testament to the loving and forgiving God that Jesus describes.

I don't see any other way to stop the what came before that do loop.

 

[ding]

See, this is why it is so easy to overcome Ding's arguments. Because all of them are founded in basic unprovable presumptions. Once you remove those presumptions, his arguments fall apart.

You didn't overcome anything.

You are just stalling because you don't want to have the philosophical discussion.

You are afraid of what the evolution of matter has to say about the laws of nature.