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All creation has an ultimate source though, does it not? A point of singularity. This source, or point of singularity, is what religious people refer to as 'G

All creation has an ultimate source though, does it not? A point of singularity. This source, or point of singularity, is what religious people refer to as 'God'.

ceejayoz 8y ago
> All creation has an ultimate source though, does it not? A point of singularity. This is an unsupported assertion. The current answer to "what came before the Big Bang" is "we're not sure, and we're not sure that's even the right terminology". If everything needs a creator, that "singularity" has to have one, and its creator, and its creator, and so on and so forth for infinity.
- linsistine 8y ago
  Name me one thing which has no beginning.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    We see all sorts of weirdness with time, like delayed choice experiments: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-eraser-delayed-choice-experiments/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-eraser-de... The entire concept of time starts to break down in spots, like within a black hole: https://phys.org/news/2015-09-law-implies-thermodynamic-black-holes.html https://phys.org/news/2015-09-law-implies-thermodynamic-blac... It also breaks down when you start talking about pre-Big Bang cosmology. It's not clear there is such a thing as a "beginning" outside of the universe.
    - linsistine 8y ago
      What does this even mean?
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        "Time is a weird concept even in our universe at times. It breaks down entirely outside of the known universe."
        linsistine 8y ago
        Yes...but what does this mean?
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        That the idea that "things must have a beginning" may not be the case when talking about physics outside the known universe. Sure, that's hard to wrap your head around, but so's quantum entanglement and the double slit experiment. Doesn't change the fact that the universe works in very, very weird ways sometimes. Here's Stephen Hawking on the weirdness of all of this: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html > Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there's another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time.
odorousrex 8y ago
This is one of the hardest concepts to grasp in theoretical physics/quantum physics/cosmology. (And I'm not saying I fully grasp it) We, as beings who experience time linearly, can't fathom the concept of "No time". Every event we experience has a beginning, middle, and end. Time was created along with the universe. "Before" the Big Bang there was literally "No time". There was no "before". There was nothing you could say was "before" because "before" literally did not exist. Just asking the question "what was before the big bang?" is nonsensical. You can't ask what was before "before" existed. This gets more confusing because we know the Universe has had a finite lifetime. I know this seems like a cop out. And you can say well then whoever/whatever caused the Big Bang was "God". That may or may not be true, it can't be tested of verified, but it seems that the universe is here just because it is here. Which is not a very satisfying answer to most.

All creation has an ultimate source though, does it not? A point of singularity. This source, or point of singularity, is what religious people refer to as 'God'.

ceejayoz 8y ago

> All creation has an ultimate source though, does it not? A point of singularity. This is an unsupported assertion. The current answer to "what came before the Big Bang" is "we're not sure, and we're not sure that's even the right terminology". If everything needs a creator, that "singularity" has to have one, and its creator, and its creator, and so on and so forth for infinity.

linsistine 8y ago
Name me one thing which has no beginning.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  We see all sorts of weirdness with time, like delayed choice experiments: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-eraser-delayed-choice-experiments/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-eraser-de... The entire concept of time starts to break down in spots, like within a black hole: https://phys.org/news/2015-09-law-implies-thermodynamic-black-holes.html https://phys.org/news/2015-09-law-implies-thermodynamic-blac... It also breaks down when you start talking about pre-Big Bang cosmology. It's not clear there is such a thing as a "beginning" outside of the universe.
  - linsistine 8y ago
    What does this even mean?
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      "Time is a weird concept even in our universe at times. It breaks down entirely outside of the known universe."
      - linsistine 8y ago
        Yes...but what does this mean?
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        That the idea that "things must have a beginning" may not be the case when talking about physics outside the known universe. Sure, that's hard to wrap your head around, but so's quantum entanglement and the double slit experiment. Doesn't change the fact that the universe works in very, very weird ways sometimes. Here's Stephen Hawking on the weirdness of all of this: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html > Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there's another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time.

odorousrex 8y ago

This is one of the hardest concepts to grasp in theoretical physics/quantum physics/cosmology. (And I'm not saying I fully grasp it) We, as beings who experience time linearly, can't fathom the concept of "No time". Every event we experience has a beginning, middle, and end. Time was created along with the universe. "Before" the Big Bang there was literally "No time". There was no "before". There was nothing you could say was "before" because "before" literally did not exist. Just asking the question "what was before the big bang?" is nonsensical. You can't ask what was before "before" existed. This gets more confusing because we know the Universe has had a finite lifetime. I know this seems like a cop out. And you can say well then whoever/whatever caused the Big Bang was "God". That may or may not be true, it can't be tested of verified, but it seems that the universe is here just because it is here. Which is not a very satisfying answer to most.