How The Universe Came Into Being

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 04:08 PM' timestamp='1262722111' post='2030305']
Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, to be pedantic.
[/quote]

Tushea

[Varg]

*Touché

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 06:08 PM' timestamp='1262729286' post='2030388']
*Touché
[/quote]

Thank you dear sir.

English language has a tendencey to be such a pain with its unphonetical approach.

[Varg]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' date='05 January 2010 - 05:10 PM' timestamp='1262729416' post='2030389']
Thank you dear sir.

English language has a tendencey to be such a pain with its unphonetical approach.
[/quote]
It's French.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Varg' date='05 January 2010 - 03:23 PM' timestamp='1262723021' post='2030310']
Why wait billions of years before creating any life?
[/quote]
Why not?

[Nunsense]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='05 January 2010 - 11:13 PM' timestamp='1262693610' post='2030147']
actually, there's already air and space in that cup. it's impossible to scientifically observe nothingness, since it doesn't exist. it'd only be theoretical to say that there was nothingness before the universe came into being; it is entirely possible for the universe to be eternal (and Aquinas, since he loves Aristotle so much, said that from the point of view strictly of the natural law philosophy without divine revelation, it is entirely possible to have an eternal universe with no beginning and no end)

I think a decent argument could be made from philosophy that there was nothingness before the big bang and that all matter came into being at that moment and then expanded; but scientifically, one might say that we could trace the big bang as coming from an infinitessimally small concentration, so that the further back in time you went, the smaller that concentration of matter in the singularity that caused the big bang is squeezed in... eternally because it's just infinitessimally smaller and smaller, and thus the universe is eternal. when Aquinas said it'd be possible philosophically to say that we had an eternal universe, however, he didn't exactly forget his first cause argument and proposed that it was still necessary, even if there is no beginning, to have a first cause. if there is an eternal universe with no beginning or end, there must be a cause for that universe which also has no beginning or end, a causeless cause.

anyway, yeah, the universe as we know it totally exploded from a singularity some 13.7 billion years ago or so, but the real juicy juice of the philosophical inquiry comes when you ask where that singularity came from. and what the nature is of whatever bordered that singularity... was there indeed nothingness bordering that singularity... can we even imagine a border to existence in such a way that beyond a certain line there is literally nothing? not even blackness, not even a void (because in a void there is still space)... the singularity contained all that we know of both matter and space, so there was no space surrounding it; so how could it expand? how could it blow? it had nowhere to blow up into, as it were; the very "explosion" of the big bang created the space into which it expanded. mind boggling... and really, thinking about it that way completely takes away the security of trying to say there's an eternal infinitessimally shrinking universe going back into endless ages; because it still doesn't solve the problem of the nothingness bordering it.

it is my opinion that contemplating nothingness is the surest way to realizing the existence of God. either our intellects truly are incompetent to imagine nothingness and thus there is a defect in our intellect, because we cannot apply our logic to this basic fact of the beginning of the universe about nothingness (because think about it, every time you imagine nothingness, you imagine blackness, which is something, you imagine a void of space, which is still something; it's impossible to imagine true nothingness, imagination can't do it), or there's nothing wrong with our intellects because there's no such thing as nothingness, and there really had to be something non-material and non-spatial "bordering" as it were, the edge of all existence contained in the singularity of the big bang. that which we call the spiritual, which continues to this day to border the edge of all material existence, where we imagine there to be nothingness, there is certainly something.
[/quote]


I loved this, particularly because what it is saying to me is that nothingingness can't exist. Since the uncreated cause is something, there can be no nothing (is that a double negative??).

And since the condition can't exist, the original question is meaningless. Right?

[Apotheoun]

Threads like this make me think about the biblical pericope where God speaks to Job from out of the whirlwind.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Theologian in Training' date='05 January 2010 - 02:31 PM' timestamp='1262716280' post='2030236']
How do we know about "nothingness" to begin with? Where does the concept of "ex nihilo" originate?
[/quote]
out of a logical necessity, if you hold to the big bang, then you hold that all matter and all space was once crunched into an infinitessimally small singularity. thus, you account for everything in a singular tiny location, all space crunched into one tiny point. any point must have a border, and thus there comes the need logically to decide what lies "beyond" that border. because if there is a border, there are two sides to that border, inside that border is the point where everything is; outside that border, we either have no ability to cognitively imagine it, or it is spiritual and thus we are perfectly able to cognitively imagine it because humans have been talking about spiritual things "beyond the membrane" as it were, from the very beginning of culture.

of course, the ultimate source of the idea of ex nihilo is Divine Revelation, so would say Aquinas who didn't think natural philosophy alone could establish an ex nihilo creation of the universe since the existence of an eternal universe is just as logically possible.

[OraProMe]

Aloysius,

Can you explain to me how the existence of an eternal universe is possible?

[mommas_boy]

Commonly, either an oscilliating universe that expands and contracts ad aeternum, or a static universe that just "is", "was", and "ever shall be" ... if you'll pardon my plagiarism.

[Mr.Cat]

Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) suggested that some kind of "primeval atom" existed before what was later coined as the “big bang”, possibly by Fred Hoyle (1915-2001). Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) suggested that before this event the fabric of space-time did not exist yet as it does today, but this does not necessarily suggest “[i]nothing[/i]” existed outside of this "primeval atom". Different philosophers when handing the matter of “nothing”, they tended to conclude that “nothing” does not and cannot exist, because nothing is nothing. Thus to me personally, to suggest before the eruption of this "primeval atom", that there was nothing beside from it, does not seem logical or relevant to the “big bang theory”.

Perhaps now isn't the time or place for this, but because even Catholic philosophers and theologians are willing to consider this, let’s examine the arguments against the Cosmological argument. The Cosmological argument starts with the premise of causality, cause and effect, which tends to be merely an assumption and a circular argument, which it cannot be reasonably proven. But even with this premise, the Cosmological argument leads to an uncaused cause, which seems to contradict the premise of causality. Then upon examining this “uncaused cause” in the Cosmological argument, with what certainty can we have that this "uncaused cause" is “God”? For the sake of discussion if “God” can be an uncaused cause, an exemption to causality, why can our universe not be exempt as well?

The Catholic Church proposes that our supernatural faith is reconcilable to natural reason and that the true religion is reconcilable to true science, but moreover that our faith can be demonstrated, through reason to at least some certainty, of the existence of God. But curiously, far as I am aware, the Church never definitively defined what those demonstrations of the faith were. To take the Cosmological argument as an absolute and infallible demonstration of the existence of God, I personally perceive as unreasonable and illogical. But to suggest the Cosmological argument can demonstrate with some certainty the possibility of “God”, enough for “faith”, I think I could be convinced of such, but the Cosmological argument cannot be seen as single sided.

For anything to be able to be considered real or be considered discussable in Philosophy, it must be to some degree falsifiable, that it must be able to have positive and negative arguments for and against it. If the only possible arguments can be for whatever we are attempting to discuss, it’s not a discussion, it’s a monologue and not Philosophy.

Empirical Science functions from natural observation, that which is detectable, thus speculation on supernatural origins of our universe remain out of the reaches of empirical science or the modern scientific method, for it deals the supernatural making first assumptions rather than empirical observations. For this reason even the Holy See seems to suggests that the “big bang theory” could [u]indirectly[/u] support the Cosmological argument for the existence of God.

Edited January 6, 2010 by Mr.CatholicCat

[cmotherofpirl]

I read somewhere that Albert Einstein applauded Father Lemaitre's explanation of the Big Bang as an elegant explanation of Creation.

[tojo]

I am enjoying this thread but have nothing to add.

Others, please carry on!

[OraProMe]

Where is Hassan when you need him?

[Nunsense]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='06 January 2010 - 03:01 PM' timestamp='1262750478' post='2030603']
I am enjoying this thread but have nothing to add.

Others, please carry on!
[/quote]


Oooh - are we allowed to do that? Me too! I love this thread, but I am not smart enough to keep up with everyone. Keep on keeping on please!

[Aloysius]

[quote name='OraProMe' date='05 January 2010 - 10:08 PM' timestamp='1262743726' post='2030516']
Aloysius,

Can you explain to me how the existence of an eternal universe is possible?
[/quote]
if the big bang came out of a singularity into which all space and all matter were condensed, it could be possible that one could trace back further and further in time to an ever shrinking condensed singularity, ad infinitum. mommas_boy provided the other common explanations for an eternal universe, but the one I was describing would say that the singularity could be traced to infinitessimal smallness.

Aquinas held that for an eternal universe to exist, there'd still have to be an eternal cause for that universe, namely God.

as regards nothingness, it was indeed my argument that there is no such thing as nothingness; it is the question of nothingness which I believe necessitates either that the human mind is deficient because it cannot describe what lies beyond the border of all matter and space (because nothingness cannot exist, so there cannot be nothingness beyond that border; but if it is all matter and space, there also cannot be something beyond that border), or that non-material things do exist beyond the border of space/matter.

if all matter and space was once condensed into a single location, the question of what is beyond that location is relevant; because saying that it was all condensed into a single location establishes a border and there remains a question of what is beyond the border.

I'm not sure if I included it in my first post, if not I meant to, but I would argue that the Universe cannot be considered an uncaused cause, because the universe is an effect and not a cause. if we are looking for the cause of existence, we cannot say that the universe causes its existence; we could say Existence (which is to say, what we would call "God" who is the very definition of Existence, "I am that I am") causes existence, but the universe cannot cause existence, because the universe must first exist before it can cause anything. the uncaused cause has to be a cause, but it remains clear to me personally that the universe itself is an effect of a cause, that is, existence causes the universe. and existence causes itself by its very definition.

of course, whether that "existence" is indeed a personal God also definable as "love" and "truth" is up for question, but the uncaused cause cannot be material, IMO, because all material things have to exist first before they can cause anything.

[OraProMe]

[quote name='mommas_boy' date='05 January 2010 - 09:29 PM' timestamp='1262744981' post='2030525']
Commonly, either an oscilliating universe that expands and contracts ad aeternum, or a static universe that just "is", "was", and "ever shall be" ... if you'll pardon my plagiarism.
[/quote]

I thought that it was a given that the universe isn't static? I thought it was ever expanding.

[Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='06 January 2010 - 01:01 AM' timestamp='1262754092' post='2030659']
if the big bang came out of a singularity into which all space and all matter were condensed, it could be possible that one could trace back further and further in time to an ever shrinking condensed singularity, ad infinitum. mommas_boy provided the other common explanations for an eternal universe, but the one I was describing would say that the singularity could be traced to infinitessimal smallness.

Aquinas held that for an eternal universe to exist, there'd still have to be an eternal cause for that universe, namely God.

as regards nothingness, it was indeed my argument that there is no such thing as nothingness; it is the question of nothingness which I believe necessitates either that the human mind is deficient because it cannot describe what lies beyond the border of all matter and space (because nothingness cannot exist, so there cannot be nothingness beyond that border; but if it is all matter and space, there also cannot be something beyond that border), or that non-material things do exist beyond the border of space/matter.

if all matter and space was once condensed into a single location, the question of what is beyond that location is relevant; because saying that it was all condensed into a single location establishes a border and there remains a question of what is beyond the border.

I'm not sure if I included it in my first post, if not I meant to, but I would argue that the Universe cannot be considered an uncaused cause, because the universe is an effect and not a cause. if we are looking for the cause of existence, we cannot say that the universe causes its existence; we could say Existence (which is to say, what we would call "God" who is the very definition of Existence, "I am that I am") causes existence, but the universe cannot cause existence, because the universe must first exist before it can cause anything. the uncaused cause has to be a cause, but it remains clear to me personally that the universe itself is an effect of a cause, that is, existence causes the universe. and existence causes itself by its very definition.

of course, whether that "existence" is indeed a personal God also definable as "love" and "truth" is up for question, but the uncaused cause cannot be material, IMO, because all material things have to exist first before they can cause anything.
[/quote]

I found this to be very stimulating especially the part of existence and only something non-material could be the first cause. however, I would like to raise a question. You speak of space as a thing as matter and space. I don't know that it is Space in no more anything condensible or tangible than the number 0. Space is simply the set of all possible places in which matter can reside (I use the mental image of a three dimensional graph). Space cannot be condensed into a singularity since it does not in tangibility exist but only notionally. Only matter could be. The limit then of space would actually be the ends of the cosmos and everything else is nothingness since it has not had matter to create space.

I would also argue that nothingness does exist, even if only notionally (just like 0). Make no mistake to exist notionally is still to exist but not in materiality. To speak of nothingness is to in fact speak of something that is the object of our knowledge. However, it is only the object of knowledge insofar as we know it through negation of what we know to be existence since existence is and nothingness is not. This does not change your argument but rather requires you to say that there is something beyond this plane of ours which is based on matter, an assertion make anyway.

Just some ideas I wanted to raise. What do you think Aloysius?

Edited January 6, 2010 by Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

[OraProMe]

Aloysius,

Why is it clear to you that the universe is an effect and not a cause? Is it possible that the cause was energy? or is energy an effect too?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, just trying to wrap my head around it all.

[OraProMe]

Also I think there were some experiments where tiny particles randomly came into existence in a void. I think you'll probably disagree but it seems to me that void, meaning the absence of something, is indeed nothingness. If atoms and particles can come into existence from nothingness in an experiment then would it then be feasible that "nothingness" can indeed be a cause. Or the cause and effect are one and the same? Would existence have to be conscious and intelligent to be the cause of an effect (the universe)?