Where did everything come from?

[pantheory]

We all know the religious answer to this question, God did it. And in older cultures the gods did it. Anyone promoting ideas contrary to this were often punished, tortured, or killed by the churches or cultures of their times.

Since the advent of better observations via technology, the telescope for instance, generally new ideas contrary to religion sprang up. Although the science of the early Greeks showed almost-certain evidence that the Earth was a sphere, it wasn’t until Galileo and his telescopic observations and the theory of Copernicus millennia later, that the knowledge of this became better known. After the invention of the printing press and much cheaper books, the knowledge that the Earth was generally spherical and may not be the center of the solar system became somewhat wide-spread throughout the general populous. That the Earth was not the center of the universe was certainly contrary to the Bible and the book of Genesis.

The prevailing science theory today to explain the above question is that the Big Bang did it, absent any God or gods in the process.

As to the origin of human life, again the biblical answer is that God did it. God created man and everything else, according to the book of Genesis.  But in the 1850’s Darwin proposed that human life evolved from less intelligent animals, and that all life is generally related to each other via a process he called evolution, which was certainly contrary to almost every religion.  Although evolution theory of some kind began in antiquity, it wasn’t until about a hundred years before Darwin that such ideas were more seriously considered by intellectuals. But it wasn’t until Darwin and afterwards, that these ideas became widely known. Darwin did an almost exhaustive study of the subject and brought a great deal of evidence in support of his theory, specifically from the Galapagos islands off south America, where differences between the species related to the separate evolution of individual islands, could be demonstrated.  His book was called The Origin of the Species; his theory is called the Theory of Natural Selection.

Beyond the evolution of life on Earth, where did the first life come from? These theories have been called theories of abiogenesis, life evolving from non-life. There are a number of different theories of this, but most involve life first evolving on Earth as opposed to theories of Panspermia which propose that life first evolved in space such as inside a large comet or planetoid much older, and brought to Earth via collisions in its beginnings.

Nearly all ex-Christians “know” that God didn’t do it, and most believe that these explanations have been explained by science. The true answers, however, have not been explained by science either IMO, but they will be in time.

For instance, if the Big Bang model is totally wrong, which it is IMHO, mainstream science would not have the correct answer concerning how the universe was created. Very few know that there are hundreds of other theories of cosmology to explain this beginning, but few of these are known by scientists in cosmology, and little or none are known by the general population.  Here is just a small sampling of such theories.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alternative_cosmology

As far as life on Earth, the theory of natural selection via evolution is indisputable. There is a mountain of evidence to support it, but what about the beginnings of life?  There is no consensus theory in science explaining how this happened, only a number of possibilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

OK, so what is the point of this topic?  The point is that many or most ex-Christians here know that God didn’t do it, but few realize that present science theory may not be able to explain these beginnings correctly either. Even the scientific method is debatable concerning its practices in different fields of science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

The belief in science theory is better than faith in religion for non-believers, but such theories can also be wrong, and many are IMO.

In time, science theories will be able to better explain all of these beginnings, so the belief in science processes rather than science theory is the better choice IMO.   

What are your thoughts on this?

[◊ Weezer ◊]

It is mind boggling!!  How does something come from nothing?  Has matter and energy always existed?  Evidently there are billions of galaxies out there, and each time we get the means to see further in space, we find even more.  Are they infinite??  And I understand our galaxie is one of the younger ones around??   Is time infinite on both ends??

 

The answer to where it all came from used to bother me, but now it is only very interesting.   The knowledge is no longer corrolated with my "salvation".  When I think of the extreme complexity of the situation, I think we may only be scratching the surface of understanding it.  Will we ever understand it?  My big concern at present is, what do we do with what we got now??  Like the problem Sexton Blake just raised in the Christian theological issues forum.

[pantheory]

4 hours ago, Weezer said:

It is mind boggling!!  How does something come from nothing?  Has matter and energy always existed?  Evidently there are billions of galaxies out there, and each time we get the means to see further in space, we find even more.  Are they infinite??  And I understand our galaxie is one of the younger ones around??   Is time infinite on both ends??

 

The answer to where it all came from used to bother me, but now it is only very interesting.   The knowledge is no longer corrolated with my "salvation".  When I think of the extreme complexity of the situation, I think we may only be scratching the surface of understanding it.  Will we ever understand it?  My big concern at present is, what do we do with what we got now??  Like the problem Sexton Blake just raised in the Christian theological issues forum.

 

Hi Weez,

 

Yeah, you're right. Only some believe that something came from nothing, but this isn't part of the Big Bang model. It doesn't address the very beginning. If the Big Bang model is wrong then the universe may appear to be infinite, at least the part we are able to observe. Our galaxy is thought to be one of the older ones, about 12 billion years old, and the universe is thought to be about 13.8 billion years old according to the Big Bang model. Yes, I think the present Big Bang model is wrong, and have an opinion concerning what I believe to be a better model. But this is not the thread for that.

 

I also think abiogenesis theories in general are also very interesting

[walterpthefirst]

With regard to the universe coming into existence from nothing and it being infinite in both size and duration, there needs to be some clarification.

 

First, according to way the Big Bang model was understood in 1960's and 70's, the universe was thought of as coming from absolutely nothing.  That's because the Hawking - Penrose singularity theory predicted this.  But , with the discovery of the universe's accelerating expansion in 1998, that theory cannot apply and so it's predictions have been discarded.

 

Second, according to the currently-accepted Lambda Cold Dark Matter Model, the universe is not considered to have come from absolutely nothing.  The LCDM begins to apply when the universe was in a hot and dense state.  It has nothing to say about absolute beginnings.

 

When it comes to infinities, logic and mathematics tell us that anything finite in either size or duration cannot become infinite in either size or duration.  

 

How this understanding connects to our observations and models is still a matter of debate.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

[midniterider]

Maybe everything came from nothing. As illogical as it sounds, what if it's true? 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

Maybe everything came from nothing. As illogical as it sounds, what if it's true? 

Nothing comes from everything.  That's Zen.

[pantheory]

2 hours ago, midniterider said:

Maybe everything came from nothing. As illogical as it sounds, what if it's true? 

 

I read of Hawking's proposal that was asserted by others as being a 'something from nothing proposal. The proposal itself was mostly mathematical, but the verbiage, and that of its reviews, explained that he was not talking about pure nothing. He was talking about the vacuum of space, also called the Zero Point Field. There is thought to be more energy in the zero point field, called zero-point-energy, than there is in the rest of the universe combined. This may be the farthest thing away from nothing that there could be. Here, they talk about vacuum fluctuations, one or more of which is thought by some theorists to have created the entire universe via the Big Bang scenario, but not me

[walterpthefirst]

That's news to me, Pantheory.

 

Hawking and Penrose's singularity theory employed entirely classical physics - the equations of general relativity, to be specific.

 

And as you and I both know, gr deals in the curvature of spacetime and has nothing to say about vacuum energy.

 

In their equations they found that spacetime geodesics always converged to a single point when a massive star collapses to become a black hole.

 

That single point we call a singularity.

 

But since gr is time-reversible, they inverted the equations to show that the spacetime geodesics of an expanding universe always radiate from a single point. 

 

Which is the reverse of a black hole singularity.

 

That is why their paper was entitled, The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology.

 

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspa.1970.0021

 

It deals only with these two types of singularity and has nothing to say about anything that might have preceded a cosmological singularity.

 

 

 

But, perhaps I'm wrong here?

 

So, to settle this, perhaps you could cite exactly where either of them specifically say what you've asserted?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

[pantheory]

1 hour ago, walterpthefirst said:

That's news to me, Pantheory.

 

Hawking and Penrose's singularity theory employed entirely classical physics - the equations of general relativity, to be specific.

 

And as you and I both know, gr deals in the curvature of spacetime and has nothing to say about vacuum energy.

 

In their equations they found that spacetime geodesics always converged to a single point when a massive star collapses to become a black hole.

 

That single point we call a singularity.

 

But since gr is time-reversible, they inverted the equations to show that the spacetime geodesics of an expanding universe always radiate from a single point. 

 

Which is the reverse of a black hole singularity.

 

That is why their paper was entitled, The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology.

 

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspa.1970.0021

 

It deals only with these two types of singularity and has nothing to say about anything that might have preceded a cosmological singularity.

 

 

 

But, perhaps I'm wrong here?

 

So, to settle this, perhaps you could cite exactly where either of them specifically say what you've asserted?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

Yeah, Hawking wrote that paper alone. I think these links are a review of that paper:

 

https://www.hindustantimes.com/science/nothing-existed-before-big-bang-stephen-hawking/story-a5gvWSIMKodRyeMCccj5FJ.html

 

and links to somewhat similar papers that Hawking co-authored

 

https://theconversation.com/how-to-understand-one-of-stephen-hawkings-final-papers-according-to-an-expert-96132

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast123/lectures/lec17.html

 

[walterpthefirst]

Exactly, Pantheory.

 

Both of your links refer to later papers and not to the Hawking - Penrose singularity paper I cited from 1970.

 

Your first link refers to Hawking's No Boundary Proposal.

 

https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5948

 

Your second link refers to this Hawking - Hartle paper.

 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP04(2018)147

 

Could you please show me exactly where they refer to the Zero Point Field?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

 

 

[pantheory]

"How to understand one of Stephen Hawking's final papers:

May 9, 2018 — "Applied to the early universe, quantum fluctuations could have caused some parts of the universe to suddenly start inflating faster than others............."  (second link)

[pantheory]

42 minutes ago, walterpthefirst said:

 

......Could you please show me exactly where they refer to the Zero Point Field?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

 

Zero-point energy/ Zero-point field - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Zero-point_energy
Necessity of the vacuum field in QED — All quantum mechanical systems undergo quantum fluctuations even in their ground state, a consequence of their wave-like ...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state

"In quantum field theory, the quantum vacuum state (also called the quantum vacuum or vacuum state) is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. Generally, it contains no physical particles. The word zero-point field is sometimes used as a synonym for the vacuum state of a quantisized field which is completely individual."

[TheRedneckProfessor]

When abbreviating General Relativity, please use capital letters so that we know that is what you are referring to and that you're not just mildly irritated. 

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

Pantheory,

 

The sticking point occurs in this message.

 

I read of Hawking's proposal that was asserted by others as being a 'something from nothing proposal. The proposal itself was mostly mathematical, but the verbiage, and that of its reviews, explained that he was not talking about pure nothing. He was talking about the vacuum of space, also called the Zero Point Field. There is thought to be more energy in the zero point field, called zero-point-energy, than there is in the rest of the universe combined. This may be the farthest thing away from nothing that there could be. Here, they talk about vacuum fluctuations, one or more of which is thought by some theorists to have created the entire universe via the Big Bang scenario, but not me.

 

Here you imply that Hawking refers to the vacuum of space as the Zero Point Field.

 

I do not dispute that he often referred to quantum fluctuations in his science papers.

 

That's not in dispute between us.

 

What is is dispute is your implication that, in his work,  Hawking referred to quantum fluctuations as being the Zero Point Field.

 

Can you definitely and unequivocally show that he did this?

 

Please note that I'm not talking about what others have said about his work, but only what he said.

 

Therefore, please cite exactly where Hawking refers to quantum fluctuations as being the Zero Point Field.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

 

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

Posted 4 hours ago

  5 hours ago, walterpthefirst said:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5948

 

 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP04(2018)147

 

......Could you please show me exactly where they refer to the Zero Point Field?

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

 

Zero-point energy/ Zero-point field - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Zero-point_energy
Necessity of the vacuum field in QED — All quantum mechanical systems undergo quantum fluctuations even in their ground state, a consequence of their wave-like ...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state

"In quantum field theory, the quantum vacuum state (also called the quantum vacuum or vacuum state) is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. Generally, it contains no physical particles. The word zero-point field is sometimes used as a synonym for the vacuum state of a quantisized field which is completely individual."

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Please don't do this again, Pantheory.

 

I specifically asked you to show me where in these two papers...

 

https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5948

 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP04(2018)147

 

...the Zero Point Field is referred to.

 

Citing Wikipedia is not showing where, within those papers the ZPF is referred to.

 

So, I'll try again.

 

Without going anywhere else in the internet and going only to the two papers cited above, please show me where they refer to the Zero Point Field by name.

 

Thank you.

 

Walter.

[pantheory]

The words the 'Zero Point Field" is a synonym for the quantum vacuum as explained above. This is not my theory, it is simply BS IMHO. You can say whatever you  want. My point is that mainstream theory is varied with differing, conflicting versions of it that sometimes will be wrong.

 

[walterpthefirst]

7 hours ago, pantheory said:

The words the 'Zero Point Field" is a synonym for the quantum vacuum as explained above. This is not my theory, it is simply BS IMHO. You can say whatever you  want. My point is that mainstream theory is varied with differing, conflicting versions of it that sometimes will be wrong.

 

 

Ah, so you can't substantiate the claim you originally made, can you?

 

That Hawking used the term Zero Point Field in his work on singularity theory.

 

Furthermore, you can't show that he used it in either of the papers you linked to either.

 

So, it's time for a Hitchslap.

 

That which can be asserted by Pantheory without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

 

 

 

Walter.

[midniterider]

3 hours ago, walterpthefirst said:

 

Ah, so you can't substantiate the claim you originally made, can you?

 

That Hawking used the term Zero Point Field in his work on singularity theory.

 

Furthermore, you can't show that he used it in either of the papers you linked to either.

 

So, it's time for a Hitchslap.

 

That which can be asserted by Pantheory without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

 

 

 

Walter.

 

 

 

Pan didn't say Hawking used the term Zero Point Field. 

 

Pan said, "He (Hawking) was talking about the vacuum of space, also called the Zero Point Field."

 

Like that's what other people called it, not necessarily Hawking. 

 

 

 

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Isn't it interesting how we can't get away from arguing over who is right, and who is wrong? 

[walterpthefirst]

4 hours ago, midniterider said:

 

 

 

Pan didn't say Hawking used the term Zero Point Field. 

 

Pan said, "He (Hawking) was talking about the vacuum of space, also called the Zero Point Field."

 

Like that's what other people called it, not necessarily Hawking. 

 

 

 

 

 

Pantheory associated Hawking with the usage of the term 'Zero Point Field' and implied that Hawking used it too.

 

Think of it this way, Weezer.

 

Isaac Newton considered gravity to be an invisible force and Albert Einstein considered gravity to be the curvature of spacetime.

 

If I associated Newton with spacetime curvature and implied that he thought about gravity in this way, would that be ok?

 

Historically, Hawking never used the term Zero Point Field in the papers Pantheory cited.

 

We would call a Christian out if they tried such a thing; associating and implying something that was not historically accurate.

 

Why not Pantheory?

 

 

 

Walter.

 

 

[walterpthefirst]

2 hours ago, Weezer said:

Isn't it interesting how we can't get away from arguing over who is right, and who is wrong? 

 

That's because historical accuracy matters, Weezer.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

4 hours ago, Weezer said:

Isn't it interesting how we can't get away from arguing over who is right, and who is wrong? 

We need a new christian to show up.  I'll pray about it.

[midniterider]

Master debaters in need of an opponent...and a topic. 

[pantheory]

2 hours ago, midniterider said:

Master debaters in need of an opponent...and a topic. 

Master debaters?  Maybe similar sounding wording might fit 

[midniterider]

2 hours ago, pantheory said:

Master debaters?  Maybe similar sounding wording might fit 

 

lol.