Big Bang Theory

[Kathlene]

Hey all,

 

I know this is something I could look up on the net and research myself, and I will do it, but I would also like to hear your opinions and views on this subject.

 

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

 

I would really like to hear your side of things and get a feel for it. Thanks.

[chefranden]

Hey all,

 

I know this is something I could look up on the net and research myself, and I will do it, but I would also like to hear your opinions and views on this subject.

 

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

 

I would really like to hear your side of things and get a feel for it. Thanks.

 

No, I usually wake up hoping someone else has made the coffee.

 

But randomness doesn't cause all this. Natural selection does. Randomness only supplies the contestants for natural selection.

[par4dcourse]

You obviously don't want a reasonable scientific answer or you'd already googled it, so: The magical sky-daddy breathed it all into existence in 6 days, a few thousand years ago. Happy now?

 

 

[ghost_warlock]

I like the Big Bang Theory, it's a good show. Sheldon ftw!

[Legion]

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

What I'm told Kathlene (I've never looked directly at the models themselves) is that current observations of the universe imply (under the model) that the universe expanded from a singularity.

 

I don't give it a great deal of credence or attention. It seems they only recently observed that the visible universe is not just expanding; it is accelerating. And they can't account for the observation. The model doesn't explain it. But on top of that I just don't believe we understand the nature of causality very well.

 

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

In some sense I don't believe in randomness. (And this despite the fact that I play poker and calculate probabilities.) I think everything is necessitated. I believe everything exists and developes of necessity.

[oddbird1963]

Hey all,

 

I know this is something I could look up on the net and research myself, and I will do it, but I would also like to hear your opinions and views on this subject.

 

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

 

I would really like to hear your side of things and get a feel for it. Thanks.

 

Here's a link for you to follow that will deal with most relevant questions about the big bang.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html

 

Why do I believe it? Because there is evidence for it. I haven't heard a well supported alternative theory.

 

Maybe there is one. But I haven't read about one.

 

When I wake up in the mornings, I don't deal with anything as profound as cosmology. I usually think something like 1) Boy! I have GOT to pee! 2) Do I have anything for breakfast? 3) Why can't it be Saturday?

[Ouroboros]

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

I have a nagging feeling that the theory is not complete or not accurate at all. There might be another theory that better explains the Universe, and there are some alternative ideas floating around, so I don't believe anything to be 100% true anymore.

 

It is healthy to have some doubt, about everything.

 

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

Random? If true randomness exists, sure, then it's possible, but why would God (a non-random entity) explain it better?

 

Think about it. God randomly come up with an idea and create the universe. Or did he plan it?

 

If he planned it, then the problem is: when did he plan it? Does he have his own temporal existence before the Universe? Does he think? Plan? And then act like a human? So where did that come from? Where did he come from? He can't just have been thinking for infinite past since our Universe supposedly can't have existed an infinite past. What applies to this universe will apply to God if you make God just like humans. So God then randomly created the Universe. Why is that better?

 

I would really like to hear your side of things and get a feel for it. Thanks.

My view of Nature and Reality (as real objects and entities of existence) is more complex than you think. It's not something I can just throw out there and hope you get. Sorry. If you want to know, you have to walk my road, there is no other way. And that means to leave your religion behind and be more critical of your own ideas of the world.

[Legion]

I have a nagging feeling that the theory is not complete or not accurate at all.

I share the feeling.

 

It is healthy to have some doubt, about everything.

I think there are at least two things we cannot doubt... We exist and language is a part of us. Antlerman hates when I assert these as undoubtable truths. But I think a few certainties can carry us a remarkable distance.

 

Random? If true randomness exists...

I realize this is just the conditional part (i.e. the IF part) of a statement Hans, but while we're here let me ask you. What are your thoughts on randomness and probability and such?

 

My view of Nature and Reality (as real objects and entities of existence) is more complex than you think. It's not something I can just throw out there and hope you get. Sorry. If you want to know, you have to walk my road, there is no other way. And that means to leave your religion behind and be more critical of your own ideas of the world.

I agree with the general sentiment of this Kathlene. To have a passionate question is to engage in a journey, where we learn and leave old understandings behind.

[Vigile]

I think there are at least two things we cannot doubt... We exist and language is a part of us.

 

You forgot the other two, I'm right and you're wrong.

 

Sorry, had to do that.

[Legion]

Sorry, had to do that.

Cogitumus ergo sumus. Lingua est a secui nostrum.

 

You are hereby cleansed Vigile.

[sciencemike]

As Legion has said before, current understanding of the Big Bang theory is based on the assumption that the universe expanded from an initial state at some finite time in the past. This initial state is thought to be a point source with an incredibly large energy density. Current relativity theory indicates that this energy density is infinite, but this indicates that this result is a mathematical singularity and not an actual solution to the Einstein Field Equations, which account for conservation of matter and energy.

 

The primary difficulty in understanding the earliest stages of the Big Bang (prior to 10^-37 seconds) is that the physics of the Standard Model do not accurately describe the behavior of subatomic particles at very high temperatures (currently the LHC can accelerate protons to about 7 TeV) and, perhaps more importantly, does not explain gravitation at all (which is left to the canonical theory of relativity). Considering that it is hypothesized that all four forces (electromagnetism, weak, strong, and gravity) had essentially the same strength and were related in some manner, the theory of relativity would somehow have to be merged with the Standard Model in order to be able to explain (on a theoretical basis at least) the earliest stages of the universe.

 

There are other unexplained questions about the early conditions of the universe, such as why there is more matter than anti-matter, the curvature of the universe, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Until a few of these are explained in more detail by scientific thought, our current extrapolations to the earliest stages of the universe are not very useful.

 

From a philosophical standpoint however, the universe is governed by immutable physical laws which on a microstate basis is governed by the random states of quantum mechanical systems. Ascribing a meaning to it is sort of like giving a physical meaning to the law of probability itself. Example: If I throw a coin N times, we know that it would eventually due to the Law of Large Numbers settle on 1/2 probability of heads and 1/2 probability of tails. Why does this happen? It just does. Perhaps, to be a little less vague, one can say that since there are two possible states, and only one state can be occupied at any given time, then on average the probabilities of being in either state are roughly equal if enough coins are flipped. We can say the same of the initial universe... only we don't know the states to begin with.

[ShackledNoMore]

I'm going to deliberately not answer your question, at least not exactly.

 

The big bang, whatever exactly happened about 14 billion years and a detailed understanding of the preconditions and postconditions, as well as what the big picture is and how exactly the big bang ties in is a tough question in cosmology. I think we have a partial understanding, and I think we still have a lot to learn. And here I said that I would not exactly answer the question.

 

The point is, there is an underlying premise to this question, a "trap," if you will, but it is not valid. The expectation on the part of the theist is that one of two things can happen:

 

1) The non-believer will embrace the "truth" of the big bang in almost faith driven, religious fashion. Moreover, there is another strawman involved: the implication that "accepting" the big bang theory involves the belief that "something" can come out of "nothing." This is soon followed by an unsupported conclusion that the non-believer is addle minded in his faith that something can come out of nothing and the Kalam Cosmological Argument gallops in to the rescue by inventing a "god" to be a "first cause." (Nevermind where that god may have come from).

 

2) The non-believer will admit that he doesn't know. This will be used as evidence that "science does not have all the answers" or "says one thing one day and something else the next" in contrast to "God's unchanging truth" (which is forced to follow a century or two behind our scientific discoveries). Enter God, who has all the answers for those who find iterative advances in knowledge to be unpalatable.

 

Either one of these things tend to lead to a god of the gaps, who keeps shrinking as we learn more and more about the world, ourselves, and the universe, and thing after thing that was credited to god becomes explained. The fact is, just because we don't understand something yet, does not by default mean that it must have been done by some magical deity.

[Ouroboros]

It is healthy to have some doubt, about everything.

I think there are at least two things we cannot doubt... We exist and language is a part of us. Antlerman hates when I assert these as undoubtable truths. But I think a few certainties can carry us a remarkable distance.

That I exist (in some mode), and that I'm able to think and identify myself, are probably the only things I don't doubt at all.

 

When it comes to reality, I have a certainty of 99.999...% of many things. Some of those things I accept to be highly probable about reality are necessary for my continued existence. Bing Bang is not.

 

Random? If true randomness exists...

I realize this is just the conditional part (i.e. the IF part) of a statement Hans, but while we're here let me ask you. What are your thoughts on randomness and probability and such?

I can't say.

 

Because it's a conundrum to try to think of truly randomness.

 

And everything becomes absolutely deterministic if it doesn't.

 

I can't think of anything that exists between random and determined.

 

Here's my thoughts about this: religious people invent God to explain things they can't explain any other way, but when paradoxes and conundrum are brought up about God's nature, one answer is that God's true nature is a mystery, and we can't fully understand him. So the religious answer is to accept certain paradoxes about God to answer the paradoxes about reality. The myopic and pragmatic answer would be to accept the paradoxes about nature (as a mystery) without replacing it with a "God" symbol to represent the same mystery.

 

My view of Nature and Reality (as real objects and entities of existence) is more complex than you think. It's not something I can just throw out there and hope you get. Sorry. If you want to know, you have to walk my road, there is no other way. And that means to leave your religion behind and be more critical of your own ideas of the world.

I agree with the general sentiment of this Kathlene. To have a passionate question is to engage in a journey, where we learn and leave old understandings behind.

Right. I try to always remind myself to test my knowledge and views of life. As a Christian I was forced to find the answers that fit my belief, and when they didn't, it caused dissonance. The practical view here is to accept that we don't know, but we kind of know something to some degree. And yet keep a willingness to change when new data or thoughts come along. As a Christian, I failed to do this since Christianity does not allow straying the ideas outside of given dogma.

[hereticzero]

The Big Bang is science's best explanation for how the universe began. According to the theory, the universe started out much hotter and much denser than it is today, and expanded and cooled over time.

 

Though the term may sound like the universe began with a giant explosion, many scientists say that's not part of the theory. An explosion implies that something exploded, or expanded, from one center point outward into space. In fact, the Big Bang theory suggests that space itself expanded.

 

"If it were an explosion it would have a center," said physicist Paul Steinhardt, director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. "We actually observe that everything is moving away from everything else. It's really about an expansion of the universe."

 

Instead of a center from which everything expanded, scientists think space is expanding everywhere, in all directions, equally.

 

"Space isn’t just something that sits there and things happen in it – space is a dynamical thing," said Andreas Albrecht, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Davis.

 

Though to some, the question of whether there was an explosion is just semantics.

 

"I think anything that starts out at 10 to the 40th degrees, and is doubling in size every tiny, tiny fraction of a second – I think you'd want to call that an explosion," Albrecht said. "But it has different features than someone setting off a bomb in the desert."

 

Another confusing aspect of the theory is the idea that at the very moment of the Big Bang, the universe existed in a single point, a singularity of infinite temperature and density. Although this is what the theory says, scientists think that's where the Big Bang theory becomes inadequate. Those infinities are signs that the mathematics have broken down and fail to truly describe the universe.

 

In order to fully understand what happened then, scientists think we need a better fundamental theory of physics that can incorporate our current description of the very small (quantum mechanics) with the very large (general relativity). As of now, those two theories are irreconcilable, and they collide at the moment of the Big Bang.

 

www.lifeslittlemysteries.com

 

Another place to find information is www.space.com.

[nightflight]

Along the same line, how could God create or pervade if existence didn't exist? For God to be, there had to be being. Religious believers imagine God existing in some fashion. They usually don't try to imagine existence itself, which is a hell of a lot more mysterious, inexplicable and intriguing than a God with comprehensible qualities.

 

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2010/03/best-reason-why-god-doesnt-exist.html

[Petrel]

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

No, I think:

 

1. brush teeth

2. feed cats

3. eat breakfast

 

But when I do think about the origin of the universe, I realize that astronomers and physicists have spent a lot of time studying this, and their consensus is that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and expanded from a singularity, and from that Big Bang all of the matter in the universe coalesced. The formation of galaxies, stars, and planets is entirely in accord with physical law and does not require divine intervention. Evidence says the origin of life was also a process in accord with natural laws and not requiring divine intervention. Evolution of lifeforms is subject to random events, but natural selection winnows the resulting genetic variation to leave organisms that are suitable for survival--again, in accord with natural laws and not requiring divine intervention.

 

Postulating a deity is a decision that is not founded upon reason. The implication of your initial post is that the universe is so cool, someone must have made it. But if that is true, whoever made the universe also requires someone to make that entity, and so on forever. A more rational course is to look at the evidence and figure out what happened based upon physical evidence. The evidence says that the universe is explainable by natural laws all the way back 13.7 billion years to when the Big Bang first happened. As to what caused the Big Bang? Currently our physics are unable to tell us about the innards of a singularity, and whether the Big Bang even required a cause. Since time began at the instant the Big Bang occurred, and causes are thought typically to precede their outcomes, the Big Bang did not have a cause as we understand it (A, then B ) because there was no time before the Big Bang for that cause to occur within.

[Shyone]

The Big Bang is science's best explanation for how the universe began. According to the theory, the universe started out much hotter and much denser than it is today, and expanded and cooled over time.

 

Though the term may sound like the universe began with a giant explosion, many scientists say that's not part of the theory. An explosion implies that something exploded, or expanded, from one center point outward into space. In fact, the Big Bang theory suggests that space itself expanded.

 

"If it were an explosion it would have a center," said physicist Paul Steinhardt, director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. "We actually observe that everything is moving away from everything else. It's really about an expansion of the universe."

 

Instead of a center from which everything expanded, scientists think space is expanding everywhere, in all directions, equally.

 

"Space isn’t just something that sits there and things happen in it – space is a dynamical thing," said Andreas Albrecht, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Davis.

 

Though to some, the question of whether there was an explosion is just semantics.

Another place to find information is www.space.com.

Clearly, theories are adapting to the information we have been gathering, and to continue to think of the Big Bang as an explosion is like hanging on to the theory of Spontaneous Generation in an era of Germ Theory and Cell theory.

 

More information => better theory.

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

I don't know very much basic physics, let alone the complexities of quantum physics and big bang cosmology. I "believe" in the big bang in as far as I believe its what the most of us are able to understand but I also understand that it is likely far from Truth. This video goes through evolution as well, something I think we have a much better understanding of though it is also far from complete. In any case, I think this video tells a probable story and I am okay with its fallibility. I am okay with uncertainty even as I enjoy being able to watch a narrative about what could have happened. Much of what it says could be obsolete already, much more could become so in years to come and I will happily watch new videos with new information.

I do believe in naturalism which I think is the heart of the big bang question. We are not a result, nor an end but just another part of a continuation, something I think the video shows well. Billions of stars died in the formation of the elements that allow us to exist. We were forged in our sun and someday it will expand and reclaim us. I see symbolic meaning in this which only extends to my own mind but I am okay with that. We may be the only conscious minds in the universe (i doubt this) but as part of the natural universe our thoughts and feelings are important in their own right. "We are the universe becoming aware of itself" - is that not a wonderful thought?

I am very Carl Sagan-y as you can tell. So I do look around at the world and see an amazing interconnected web of cause and effect that brings us all together, everything in existence, back to a singularity, a oneness. The wonder and awe I feel for the world and the universe only increases as I learn more about the natural forces and causes that encompass it.

[Phanta]

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

No, I think:

 

1. brush teeth

2. feed cats

3. eat breakfast

 

But when I do think about the origin of the universe, I realize that astronomers and physicists have spent a lot of time studying this, and their consensus is that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and expanded from a singularity, and from that Big Bang all of the matter in the universe coalesced. The formation of galaxies, stars, and planets is entirely in accord with physical law and does not require divine intervention. Evidence says the origin of life was also a process in accord with natural laws and not requiring divine intervention. Evolution of lifeforms is subject to random events, but natural selection winnows the resulting genetic variation to leave organisms that are suitable for survival--again, in accord with natural laws and not requiring divine intervention.

 

I'm crap at science, so this is basically my attitude: leave it to the expert's whose mode of inquiry I respect. Though, no cats. (A big flaw in your theory about the perfect universe, btw; the perfect universe would not have cats).

 

Phanta

[Kathlene]

Thankyou all so much for your replies. I have to admit a lot of them went way over my head, which was why I was asking for someone to explain it to me in laymen terms, but I did get the general gist of it. Thankyou for the serious replies. I have a lot of good sites to go and check out now. I don't know why people thought I was here to trap or argue about God, because I wasn't. I was actually serious in wanting to hear your worldviews about this and how it reflected in your lives. I like to hear your side of the story and what it is you believe.

[Ouroboros]

I don't know why people thought I was here to trap or argue about God, because I wasn't.

 

Probably because of this statement:

 

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

It does allude to a question about "where did all come from?" And doesn't that imply thoughts and arguments for and against God as well as Big Bang?

 

You have to be careful how you say things because there are multiple meanings and understandings of everything you say. Don't expect people to read your mind.

 

Think about this: about 100 Christians before you have come to this website and asked: "Do you believe everything is random from nothing, do ya'? Do ya'? Huh huh? Do ya'?" And they do it to trigger a discussion about God vs Big Bang and randomness and Evolution and atheism and ...

 

Be specific, or people will misunderstand.

[Kathlene]

Hey all,

 

I know this is something I could look up on the net and research myself, and I will do it, but I would also like to hear your opinions and views on this subject.

 

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

 

I would really like to hear your side of things and get a feel for it. Thanks.

 

Here's a link for you to follow that will deal with most relevant questions about the big bang.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html

 

Why do I believe it? Because there is evidence for it. I haven't heard a well supported alternative theory.

 

Maybe there is one. But I haven't read about one.

 

When I wake up in the mornings, I don't deal with anything as profound as cosmology. I usually think something like 1) Boy! I have GOT to pee! 2) Do I have anything for breakfast? 3) Why can't it be Saturday?

 

 

Wow Oddbird, reading that link just sent my brain cells into overdrive. Most of it went wayyyyy over my head. It was interesting at the end there were comments that even religious people go ahead with the theory. I shall have to look more into that. I know nothing about science or cosmology whathaveyou, so it was a little hard to understand it. I think I got the general idea though. I always wonder why earth, so far, is the only planet to have thriving life. Anyway, the size of the universe isnt even known, it really boggles my mind.

[godlessgrrl]

What is this theory and do you believe in it?

 

Here is another good link on Big Bang cosmology, from NASA: Big Bang Theory

 

My layperson's understanding of it is that at some point billions of years ago, all the matter in the universe was contained in a very hot, dense singularity. It expanded into the universe as we know it today.

 

I accept it as the best theory for now, but I also understand that science allows for theories to be shaped or revised by new information. And there's new info aplenty out there. Ten years from now there may be a better model.

 

Do you wake up and look around you and think, yeah something random just caused this all into being?

 

No, I generally wake up and think "crap, yet another poor night's sleep", then go on with my day.

 

As to whether or not the universe was "caused" in general, it sounds more like you're asking about whether or not I think "something came from nothing", as Ray Comfort might put it. The answer to that is no, I don't think the universe came from "nothing", whatever "nothing" means: my layperson's understanding of the Big Bang singularity is that it was already there. It wasn't as if there was necessarily nothingness and then suddenly a hot singularity popped into existence and then wham! Big Bang.

 

I am no astrophysicist, however, and there are explanations and understandings of it far better than mine, so don't take me as any expert or authority on the matter.

 

As to any source of the aforementioned singularity, I have no idea. There are plenty of possibilities, but I don't know what they all are - and I don't find it honest to insert "a god did it" into the gap in my knowledge.

[Brakeman]

Kathlene,

Please allow me to explain it in laymen's terms.

 

As you probably know, Mankind loved looking up at the stars, and quickly proceeded to draw maps of the star patterns. Yet quickly they discovered that the patterns were difficult to predict, as they changed with time. Some changed on yearly cycles, and some did not. Yet others changed over the years and never went back to match the older star maps. As telescopes got better, they permitted ever more accurate tracking and mapping. This led to Copernican theory of the sun at the center of the universe. Later we began to see other galaxies and began to track them and measure their speed and direction mainly using the Doppler effect of light called the "red shift" method. Like sound changes when a train is coming towards you or away from you, the color of the starlight shifts in it's direction. By using triangulation and red shift for direction, astronomers began to map the stars and galaxies. Surprisingly the universe was found to be expanding. Every single galaxy was leaving away from one single point, like a bomb exploding. That is why it's called the "Big Bang" Anybody with about $10,000 can buy telescope equipment to absolutely confirm the big bang. All of the unknown is within the first second or so, but really, how much does the first second matter to the theory (Fact, actually)?

[Petrel]

Every single galaxy was leaving away from one single point, like a bomb exploding.

Actually everything is moving away from everything else, with no center or starting point in evidence. An analogy is blowing up a balloon. The balloon expands and dots painted on the surface of the balloon move away from each other, but there is no origin that the dots are moving away from.