JPD

Perhaps "God" elected to form the universe by reducing himself to the singularity.

Perhaps that is just pantheism in a slightly different form.

It does say, after all, that God is the source of all good and evil in the Bible.

The combination of this reduction/reformation would render worship pointless.

If this is the case, was the singularity ("God") the one unpaired 'thing' necessary to bring all the particle/anti-particle pairs into existence?

Did God commit suicide?

BlakeEM

Well I guess when I say center of the universe I say center of where all the galaxies started expanding from.

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html

How is it known that the universe is infinite if we can only see so much?

If it truly is infinite that would mean that everything that can exist does exist (going by the set laws of the universe anyway). There must also be infinite other "universes" that have formed and infinite other galaxies. This would mean that what happened to form our little collection of galaxies must have happened infinite number of times in the universe and there must also be infinite number of humans over infinite number of planets. To me this just seems a little silly. That is unless it’s simply infinite emptiness, but then the one point where this singularity is could be considered the center of the universe. And it seems a little silly to think we were some how the only singularity in an infinite universe seeing a there are infinite chances of one to form anywhere else.

If you start at zero and count infinitely positive and infinitely negative, zero is still the center.

John A. Broussard

Actually this not far from the conclusion reached by 17th century rationalists of the Cartesian variety. The belief grew among intellectuals and scholars that, while god created the world, he simply set it in motion and didn't do any interfering after that point...sort of a hands-off equivalent of suicide.

The framers of the American Constitution seemed to have shared that view, allowing the hoi polloi to think whatever they pleased about their god, but not allowing any godlike interference with government. Theirs is a form of deism that I've encountered in universities and is often mistaken for atheism by fundamentalists--or at least it's called atheism by fundies

But then, Socrates was tried and convicted for being an atheist.

What can I say?

RGD

But the point is that there is no center inside the universe. There is no direction you can go to be at the center.

We don't, actually. We theorize that it's infinite, but we don't have conclusive evidence yet.

Well, maybe.
Um, this doesn't really follow from true infinity.

But there really is no "zero" in this case.

Gawdzila

The thing is, there is no such center. Anywhere you go in the universe,
be it here on Earth or in some other galaxy, you will see everything spreading
away from where you are. Thus, every point in the universe is a "center of
expansion". As RGD explained, there is no point *inside* the universe that
is the center of expansion, just like there is no point *on* the balloon that
is the center of it's expansion. You have to find a point outside the confines
of the balloon's surface to identify a center. Equally, any center for the
universe's expansion would need to be outside the confines of 3-D space.
Thus, there is no point inside the universe from which everything is
expanding.

We don't know for sure that the universe is infinite. However, we do know
that there are things outside our directly visible universe. We know this
because all objects move away from us more quickly the farther away they
are. Since their recession is accelerating, we know that things that were
on the edge of our visible universe a billion years ago are no longer visible
now. They have expanded out of our view. This doesn't mean that the
universe is infinite, but it DOES mean that it includes more than we can see,
so we are not justified in saying that our visible universe is THE universe.

It seems wierd at first, but this has been hypothesized before.
It is one example of a multiverse. Remember, just because it is wierd
doesn't mean it's wrong I'm not saying that it is necessarily true, but
it is possible.

That's only because you're putting it on a number line.
A more accurate way to think of it would be to think of all the points on
the surface of a sphere. You can number them from negative infinity to
positive infinity if you like. Which one is in the middle? This works for other
shapes, too. What's the middle of the surface of a torus (donut)?

KnowNothing

I must say that all the talk of space being "created" in the expansion and space being "dense" shortly after "the big bang" assumes a definition of space that simply doesn't exist. Space is not stuff like matter/energy as far as I know. There is no such thing as "dense" space like there is dense rock. Space is by defintion the lack of "stuff" ie matter/energy. It doesn't have density and it can't be created. Otherwise it isn't space. It's just another kind of matter/energy.

Also, Socrates was not convicted for being an atheist. He was convicted of "impiety". His conclusion about the Gods can be summed up as..."Either there are no Gods or if there are, they take no care of men." Thus he left open the possibility of the very kind of enlightnment era deism that we are familiar with.

John A. Broussard

Pretty much the standard in college these days when it comes to Socrates is:

"In 399 B.C. Socrates was put on trail for atheism (not believing in the gods of Athens) and corrupting the youth of the City (by teaching them to question everything). In the end, the jury found Socrates guilty as charged and condemned him to death by the drinking of hemlock."

Maybe it's a quarrel over a Greek word. Someone more familiar with Greek than I am will undoubtedly clear up the confusion.

KnowNothing

My schpeel on Socrates comes from the lecturing mouth of the esteemed Professor Eugene Weber of UCLA I believe. I use portions of his taped lectures in my history classes. If my analysis is wrong I would appreciate being corrected.

Gawen

Please stay on topic; Big bang proved existence of god?. Feel free to start a "Socrates" thread in the appropriate forum or continue through PM's.

Thanks.

KnowNothing

I have to admit that I've toyed with the idea of creating my own religion called "The First Church of the Past Light Cone". Using Kantian cause/effect and modern light cone theory, "God" in my religion would be the cause of the big bang minus any personification. Pope John Paul II actually tacitly accepted (with personification of course) this idea but clearly he could never accept that such a God would be incapable of continued involvement in the universe's unfolding. Who knows what the current ex-nazi Pope would say on the matter.

Core Beliefs of the First Church of he Past Light Cone...

1. Science answers most questions about the universe.
2. Those few untestable questions (the biggies) are largely answered by Zen Buddhism.
3. The moral code that we should live by is embodied in the "golden rule" that is at the root of all major religious traditions.

What do you think?