Problems understanding naturalistically the beginning of the universe

[Alex K]

I'll try to respond later...

[ignoramus]

I'll try to respond later...

Typical atheist! Avoiding the tough questions!   Hehe

(Not diapers again?)

[robvalue]

@Everyone:

I have some articles on my website here explaining what atheism is, and more importantly what it isn't.

Hopefully this will help anyone who is unsure understand that there are no "atheist beliefs" about anything, including the origin of the universe. If you ever want to understand atheists, you need to get a handle on this. Trying to group us together is guaranteed to fail. The best you can do is trends. Many atheists are sceptics. But far, far from all. Same goes for any other trend you might spot.

Announcing "atheists believe that.." just shows a total lack of understanding about the subject. Some people have been on this forum for years and still don't understand this point.

I did a video about this too.

http://youtu.be/d34BmGnrUEI

[pocaracas]

Like has been pointed out, we cannot tell what happened before the big bang... Such is the nature of the singularity.
Because we cannot tell anything, we arbitrarily place the start of our universe at that point.

All the space-time in or universe was contained in that singularity... If there is any space-time beyond it, we cannot tell, but it cannot be ruled out.
If there is an entity beyond our universe which created it...there may be other similar entities creating similar universes... There may be whole "universities" for those entities dedicated to creating singularities that lead to universes.
If there is space-time beyond our universe, then Krauss's "universe from nothing" notion may be right...

Answers exist, each opens its own little box of extra questions.
Your theist answer is no exception.

[robvalue]

Here's a very simple possible explanation:

This reality is a manifestation of a process in another reality. This could be a computer program, a brain, or whatever. It's some sort of "realisation" of an emergent property.

Crucially, there's no reason to think any intelligent beings in that reality have any idea that this manifestation has occured. How exactly would you know if your computer program manifested itself, with parts of it becoming "self aware"? Or if your dreams manifested somewhere?

There's no reason to pile on loads of extra assumptions on top of this, like:

-It was caused directly by an intelligent being
-The being was aware of the manifestation
-The being cares about the manifestation
-The being is very concerned with the activities of a particular group of organisms on a particular rock somewhere in the middle of the manifestation
-The being interacts with this manifestation
-The being has amazing powers which apply not just when interacting with this manifestation, but independent from it
-This being is the final end-all, and isn't itself a manifestation
-This being intends to further manifest you outside of this reality, into other realities, based on your actions
-This being doesn't want you wanking or letting gay people marry

And so on.

[Wryetui]

Now, I want to clarify somethings. Even though I said I want this thread to be religion-free because it would lose its atheism if so, religion still appeared.

It is not true that "I cannot ask this question about my God" or about my religion. The universe is the Creation, and the creation was created ex-nihilo (out of nothing) by God, that is transcendent to it. God Himself is without a beginning and without an end, because beginning and end are adjectives that require contingence. God say that His name is "I AM", showing one of the deepest theological conditions about Himsel; God is existence as existence is. However, we cannot at all think that the matter is eternal since it is clearly not, we have seen it. The word "eternal" belongs to religion, not to naturalistic science.

I believe this is the last barrier for science, after all, it would only be speculation to talk about it, scientifical speculation. Just as I have heard in this forum the phrase "There are literally billions of galaxies", which is a claim based entirely on a scientifical speculation.

[robvalue]

Yes, it's speculation. So why do you claim to have the answers already?

"Billions of galaxies" is not speculation. That's scientific testing and observation. This is the tu quoque game I predicted in the other thread.

[rexbeccarox]

Now, I want to clarify somethings. Even though I said I want this thread to be religion-free because it would lose its atheism if so, religion still appeared.

It is not true that "I cannot ask this question about my God" or about my religion. The universe is the Creation, and the creation was created ex-nihilo (out of nothing) by God, that is transcendent to it. God Himself is without a beginning and without an end, because beginning and end are adjectives that require contingence. God say that His name is "I AM", showing one of the deepest theological conditions about Himsel; God is existence as existence is. However, we cannot at all think that the matter is eternal since it is clearly not, we have seen it. The word "eternal" belongs to religion, not to naturalistic science.

I believe this is the last barrier for science, after all, it would only be speculation to talk about it, scientifical speculation. Just as I have heard in this forum the phrase "There are literally billions of galaxies", which is a claim based entirely on a scientifical speculation.

1. Where's your evidence?

2. "Scientifical"? Really??

[Alex K]

Hello to everyone (I have seen a post that is like this one but the forum adviced me to create another thread since that one was too old).

This matter "worried" me most when I was an atheist. I deeply believe that God created ex-nihilo the universe and I find it correct due to a number of reasons, but in this thread I am interested in speaking only naturalistically, in order to consider if actually the atheist cosmology

Just say physical cosmology or scientific cosmology. Calling it atheistic cosmology is silly. There is no atheist cosmology. It's the cosmology physicists have derived from observations and theory. Many of them are atheists, others aren't. The guy who co-founded it, Georges Lemaître, was a Catholic priest.

And this is Georges giving you "the look" when you tell him you think Jesus wants you to doubt physical cosmology:

is plausible

Yes.

now that I have a better understanding of the world and to eventually find a solution to this struggle that my atheist friends now (and myself many years ago) have. According to the Wikipedia: "The Big Bang is a scientific theory about how the universe started, and then made the groups of stars (called galaxies) we see today. The universe began as very hot, small, and dense, with no stars, atoms, form, or structure (called a "singularity").

Is that what Wikipedia says? Sounds like one should edit it, then. It's not sensible to say "The (observable) university began as a [...] singularity". Hot, small, dense, that's all correct. For all we know, the apparent singularities in the past are an artefact of using classical relativity and the homogeneous ansatz for the universe beyond its breaking
point.

Then about 14 billion years ago, space expanded very quickly (thus the name "Big Bang"), resulting in the formation of atoms, which eventually led to the creation of stars and galaxies.

That's the grossly simplified gist, yes. Although the exact physics of the inflationary period is still speculative and hard to test. After that though, we are in pretty safe waters conceptually, and have confirming data.

The universe is still expanding today, but getting colder as well.", and this is what I believed.

You should not believe that religiously. You should believe that that is the picture that by far fits all the observations and measurements.

But my main question is, since: "The universe began as very hot, small, and dense, with no stars, atoms, form, or structure (called a "singularity"). Then about 14 billion years ago, space expanded very quickly", since the universe actually began,

That's what the writer of the Wikipedia article says. It's not that simple, and I'd say, wrong, to simply say "Big Bang, Singularity, Beginning". But don't take my word for it that real cosmologists don't think about the issue in such simplified terms. Here's excellent theorists Sean Carroll and Matt Strassler:

https://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/21...ngularity/

Yet all over the media and all over the web, we can find articles, including ones published just after this week’s cosmic announcement of new evidence in favor of inflation, that state with great confidence that in the Big Bang Theory the universe started from a singularity. So I’m honestly very confused. Who is still telling the media and the public that the universe really started with a singularity, or that the modern Big Bang Theory says that it does? I’ve never heard an expert physicist say that.

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog...rse-start/

Apart from this, it is possibly to construct classical cosmologies which avoid this singularity. Someone recently posted a paper by Prof. Christof Wetterich where he constructs a simple model as a proof of principle.

where did it begin from? The universe is all we know for sure (and sometimes not even for sure), but how can something exist outside the universe? Where was this very hot, small and dense structure since the universe "didn't happen" yet?

To the extent that your question is a valid question, nobody knows. I don't know, Roger Penrose doesn't know, you don't know, and your preacher doesn't know either. That's the sensible position to take unless you've had a deep insight into inflationary physics you'd like to publish.

Why it might not be a valid question: if we run with the incorrect classical picture of an initial singularity, not only does space get compressed to a size zero abomination, but time seems to end there as well. So, let's say for the sake of the argument, we assume that time really began with the universe 14.8 Billion years ago. This then means that the questions "where did the universe come from" or "what was before", or "what caused it" are meaningless as long as these words "to come from..., before..., causation" refer to temporal processes, which they do. Your concept of causation is derived from everyday experience in time. You don't have a valid concept of causation you could apply to the origin of time itself, and your question then is meaningless - unless you  supply a precise new meaning of these words which is still valid in such circumstances. (*)

(*) and even if we run with the usual temporal meanings of these words - they are not just true and obvious. Causation is a subtle thing, and quantum mechanics seems to be random. You are not at all justified to just say "obviously, the universe needs a cause". But I digress.

[Alex K]

2. "Scientifical"? Really??

Purely scientificationally speaking, of course