First of all, I’d like to introduce my-self, my name is Mat and I just found this awesome website. I was reading your comments about god and the thread about the universe; I thought I might have some fun debating the subject my-self. It will be quite a challenge to tackle all the questions the universe holds for us… So I did a little research…
Encarta Dictionary: “big bang” (noun)
English Assistance Dictionary: “the big bang” (noun)
Now, when I think about it, fifteen billion years ago … I know Straight Dope has been here for a long time but nobody can go back fifteen BILLION years to witness the creation of “everything”. I extracted the following text from http://www.umich.edu, therefor I remember learning all this in my earth science class.
Now, if this is all true (the Big question), I’m starting to think that the all mighty God might just be “the big bang” or vice versa. Let me quote Cecil’s Reply “Is there a god (revisited)”
Okay, I’m soso familiar with the Bible, but I think it’s full of amusing stories that are full of good values that we should all stand by. Therefor that does NOT mean “God” turned water in to wine or that “God” actually existed. For all I know, he’s just the main character in the oldest fairy tale known to man; Jesus was just mentally ill and Mary simply had an affair. NO OFFENCE ATTENDED.
Dear Cecil or whoever,
Did the “Big Bang” happen?
Religion preaches God is the creator of the universe, is the “Big Bang” god or vice versa?
Do you have any speculations on what was before the “Big Bang”?
If the universe is expanding, will it ever stop?
Sure, you could call the big bang god, but there’s no reason to. It’s a much less descriptive word, and it brings with it all sorts of unwanted and counter-productive connotations.
To the best of our knowledge, the big bang was the beginning of time. Asking what came before it is like asking what’s north of the north pole.
Well the physicists on board can give you some fairly detailed answers about what current cosmological speculations are.
My quick stab is -
Probably.
Depends on how you define God. But not in the way most use the term.
To my take time itself ceases to exist at the Big Bang so there is no before, but some have speculated that the Bang is the end of another contraction …
But current thinking is that universe is not slowing its expansion, but is instead speeding up, driven by what gets called “dark energy”. So by this thinking, no, it won’t ever stop.
@strinka, well the world is round to my knowledge, thus what’s North of the North Pole is obviously Antartica. The question is, “Do you have any speculations…” feel free to speculate the big bang is the begining of time, I think there must of been something there. I’ll quote the Encarta Dictionary
Not necessarily true. If the big bang was a singularity, there could be time before the big bang, but nothing that happened in that time could have any effect on anything after the singularity.
Whatever happened before the big bang would be scientifically unknowable, but thats not the same as saying time didn’t exist before it.
Well common sense is that the North is up. Scientifically speaking I understand that Antarctica is south of the North Pole. This is all beside the point lmfao. Stick with the Big Bang …
I’ve heard people say, “Well there has to be ***something ***before the Big Bang. Suppose you just go back in time, and when you get to the Big Bang you just keep going. Where (or when) would you be?”
Now suppose someone says, “There has to be ***something ***north of the North Pole. Suppose you just keep traveling north, and when you get to the North Pole you just keep going. Where would you be?”
Obviously the answer is that at the moment you cross the North Pole you then find yourself traveling south. So if you intend to cross the Big Bang, at the moment you reach it, you then begin traveling forward in time again. So in a way, you might say that north of the North Pole is south again, and before the Big Bang is “forward in time” again.
Heck, you want some mind-blowing notions, there’s a line of thought that the universe’s expansion will eventually slow, stop, and reverse, leading to a “Big Crunch” that recompresses the universe back to a singularity, from which, possibly, another Big Bang could follow, restarting the cycle.
Of course, why we should assume that any human religion has any relevant commentary or insight on the issue escapes me.
The Encarta Dictionary is wrong. You shouldn’t try to learn science from dictionaries, there are plenty of very good books on cosmology out there. Just after the big bang the universe was pure energy. Very shortly after the energy “froze” into matter. Matter and energy are equivalent, in a sense, which is what E = mc**2 is all about.
The other thing is that the Big Bang was not about matter expanding into space - it was about space itself expanding.
As for God, if you want to call God the Big Bang feel free, but clearly it has nothing to do with the interventionist, personal god of most human religions.
Right now, the evidence says the universe will keep expanding forever. There is basically not enough matter in the universe to make the expansion slow down and stop (or stop and reverse itself). In fact I believe the rate of expansion is increasing. Before you ask, that doesn’t mean much of anything for us because the earth (and our solar system, our galaxy, our local group, etc.) is held together by gravity- it’s not going to come apart because the universe is expanding.
Also, the estimated age of the universe has been refined a bit in recent years. Scientists currently believe the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago.
Why would you look to a dictionary for information on anything when there’s Wikipedia?
Go read up on the actual theory, then slide over to cosmology where you can slog through 3000 years worth of universal models though I suggest you read about cosmic inflation since that’s the current mainstream view. Inflation has some issues but it does address the impressive uniformity of what we can actually measure and observer today.
Basically matter resides inside spacetime, spacetime appears to be expanding and cooling. Therefore if you “ran the tape” backwards you would get a progressively hotter and denser object.
Why even bring religion into this? People who consider religion at place in a science debate are generally like those who consider communism at place in an economics debate: stupid, small-minded, biased, and incredibly hard to convince that their beliefs are wrong.
Why? Seems like a bit of a non sequitur to me. I mean, it’s probably possible, but that doesn’t seem a good enough reason to conclude that it is the case.
The big bang is merely the expansion of time and space. It doesn’t necessarily represent an ultimate beginning. I’m sympathetic to the block universe idea.
No. “God” is just a myth created by some primitives who had no idea how the universe worked. It has no connection with modern science. Some people are apparently just so addicted to the label “God” that since there’s no bearded sky-god, they instead try to apply the term “God” to the Big Bang, the Universe, the laws of physics, or something else they feel sufficiently cosmic. But there’s no good reason to do so; the term refers to a particular mythical entity, and the reason they try to label anything “God” is because they are clinging to that myth, not for any scientific reasons. If they came from some culture that never heard of “God”, they wouldn’t think of labeling the Big Bang or whatever by that term; it is purely derived from a particular religious mythology.
