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Science gives us an answer to the question of how the universe began: the big bang. The first major evidence for the big bang came in the 1920s when it was discovered by Edwin Hubble that all distant galaxies were moving away from our galaxy and that the entire universe was expanding uniformly. Later on, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation strengthened the evidence that the big bang actually occurred.
Physicists have also discovered that certain subatomic particles called virtual particles constantly pop into existence and then disappear again. These virtual particles appear literally everywhere in our universe, even in "empty" space. Because of certain properties of our universe, some physicists now believe that the big bang spontaneously came into existence from nothing much like a virtual particle does.
However, for many people it is intellectually unsatisfying to accept that all the physical laws of our universe just came into being from nothing. There seems to be something missing in this explanation.
So, do you think that a God was necessary to cause the origin of these physical laws, or will science eventually find a better explanation for this gap in our knowledge?
I think science is a never-ending chain of questions asking, "what caused that?", and every time we answer one question, we will inevitably create at least one more.
Science will one day find what caused the big bang, and then it will move on to discover what caused the thing that caused the big bang.
So, do you think that a God was necessary to cause the origin of these physical laws, or will science eventually find a better explanation for this gap in our knowledge?
It can be rightly argued that sexual intercourse is not required or necessary to produce a child. However..............
So, do you think that a God was necessary to cause the origin of these physical laws?
No, it may be emotionally unsatisfying to think these laws either pop into or out of existence, or there is some multiverse substrate that just exists without a Creator, but it is certainly possible that all that is exists without a god.
Now, could a god have created something? That is possible, too.
But, acknowledging what is possible only takes one so far.
Science gives us an answer to the question of how the universe began: the big bang. The first major evidence for the big bang came in the 1920s when it was discovered by Edwin Hubble that all distant galaxies were moving away from our galaxy and that the entire universe was expanding uniformly. Later on, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation strengthened the evidence that the big bang actually occurred.
Physicists have also discovered that certain subatomic particles called virtual particles constantly pop into existence and then disappear again. These virtual particles appear literally everywhere in our universe, even in "empty" space. Because of certain properties of our universe, some physicists now believe that the big bang spontaneously came into existence from nothing much like a virtual particle does.
However, for many people it is intellectually unsatisfying to accept that all the physical laws of our universe just came into being from nothing. There seems to be something missing in this explanation.
So, do you think that a God was necessary to cause the origin of these physical laws, or will science eventually find a better explanation for this gap in our knowledge?
So, do you think that a God was necessary to cause the origin of these physical laws, or will science eventually find a better explanation for this gap in our knowledge?
Why assume that goddidit is actually an explanation in the first place? It seems like that sort of claim is functionally the same as "I don't know".
In scientific terms, this would mean the complete absence of matter, energy, time and space. But it's not known whether a state of nothing could ever really exist, because subatomic particles have the property of constantly popping into existence.
However, for many people it is intellectually unsatisfying to accept that all the physical laws of our universe just came into being from nothing. There seems to be something missing in this explanation.
There are some interesting chapters on this at the end of Hawkings "Brief History of Time" in which he shows how some of the models for the universes origins actually do not have the current "laws" simply coming out of nothing but actually being necessarily the way they were and could not have been much different. Might be interesting for you to read.
His current book, in which I hope he goes deeper into that area of discourse, is alas quite far down my current "to read" list. Currently the number of books waiting to be read on my shelves actually out number the ones that have been read... such has been the rate I have been buying them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxcar Overkill
Science will one day find what caused the big bang, and then it will move on to discover what caused the thing that caused the big bang.
So the process will continue, ad infinitum.
Hard to say if this is true, it is still a realm of discourse with too many open questions for me to come down either way. The issue here is that we are creatures that evolved in a universe where causality and time are the norm. Causality is time based however and time is one of those things that came about "after" the big bang.
So when discussing the singularity that expanded into the big bang and providing explanations for it... it is likely it will not be done in terms of causality, causation and so on. Our language and our minds are probably both insufficient to deal with that too since both are very much stepped in a sea of causality and temporal thinking.
Likely discussion of such topics will only make sense in languages such as the language of mathematics and it is going to be near cripplingly difficult to comprehend. I certainly question however that what we will be discussing will be an infinite chain of causality.
For me, the more intuitively correct answer is the cyclical theories of the universe, in which big bangs happen over and over again, into infiniti. But intuition is a really poor way to decide what is real in cosmology.
Either way, one has to wrap their head around the possibility of "something out of nothing" or "something always existed."
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