Wyz_sub10

Welcome to the forum, wizwoz.

Please take a moment at your convenience to stop by The Secular Lounge and introduce yourself.

Wyz_sub10,
EoG Moderator

Wiploc

Welcome, wizwoz.


What if you put #3 at the top of the list so it looks more like a premise than a conclusion, like so:

1. Something can't have come from from nothing unless there was nothing before there was something.
2. But, Big Bang theory doesn't posit a time before there was something.
3. Therefore, at least as far as big bang theory is concerned, something didn't come from nothing.


I've already misrepresented SRB once, so I'm not going to claim this is his position. But it works for me.
crc

luvluv

Do Big Bang theories really say that ALL TIME came from the Big Bang? Do they say that even if there are times in other universes, they came from OUR Big Bang? I'm going to have to ask you to demonstrate that there are any Big Bang models that say that, all time, anywhere, in any universe, must start with the big bang which created our universe.

SRB

Put "no time before the big bang" into a search engine, or read the works of prominent writers on cosmology such as Hawking and Davies. Many of them would say that there was no such time as "before the big bang" and hence it cannot be true that there was a state of affairs before the Big Bang, not even a state of affairs before the Big Bang where nothing existed. It follows that if they are right there is no way the universe could have popped into existence from just such a prior state. It is not part of those Big Bang theories that the universe "popped into existence from nothing," despite what you earlier claimed.

SRB

wizwoz

Thank you Wyz_sub10 for your kind welcome
Hi wiploc, thanks for the welcome and the explanation, I think that does for me too as far as it goes. I was a getting sidetracked (concentration is only a fair weather friend to me) by my interpretation of SRB’s construction of the argument being questionable rather than its actual premise, with which I agree - but then only to a point.
Big Bang is good for.. (Bang Time/space) +14 billion years (approx) to Now, but as I understand things, the question inherent in its model …. was Time always present? Which on reflection is where I thought the thread had been leading to.
Big Bang postulates Time as always present but surely it does not insist that as A Cosmological Argument, it would be any less valid or less sound by allowing something from nothing to be a part of it.? My understanding is that Big Bang posits a singularity where Time commences. However I don't see space/time as such must always have been present.
Words attributed to Paul Davies for instance…. “we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful, unnatural or unscientific…..”
I would think that in context, considering Time as always having to be a constant sameness would be analogous to crushing a car down to the size of a single atom so that the original component parts alter their form and identity, but insisting it's still a car instead of it was a car. Likewise looking back 14 mill yrs, to the singularity and suggesting it is still space/time would be mistaken I think, as rather one might say (at the singularity) it was space/time. This is why I was querying the statement that Big Bang necessarily says something didn’t come from nothing because of the time element.
A singularity where quantum mechanics may rule that space/time is no longer space/time - any more than the crushed ‘car’ is a car. In this scenario, crushed space/time is a component possibility of the singularity, just as the bang is, and the crushed time as such is "the state of affairs before big bang” a.k.a. nothing (?). As things stand I don’t see why such “nothingness” should be out of the question.

wizwoz

SRB

Nor do I. I just deny that one who believes that the universe began with the Big Bang needs to assent to the sentence "the universe popped into existence from nothingness" in order to be consistent. For people like Luvluv to describe contrary views in that way is a mistake. Maybe there was a time before the origin of the universe as we know it where nothing existed, and maybe not. One conclusion that can be drawn is that there are numerous plausible options to theistic creation with regard ultimate origins.

SRB

Wiploc

I don't think anybody really believes in the singularity. We talk about it as a convenient way to talk, but we are not being literal. Maybe you weren't being literal either.

If there was a movie of the big bang, and we played the movie backwards, we'd see things getting closer and closer together, but we'd never see them shrink to nothing. They'd get small enough for quantum mechanics to rule; and then instead of shrinking smoothly to nothing, they would suddenly jump down to nothing in a quantum leap.

Except they wouldn't really, because that last frame would be missing. The movie starts "after" the singularity. In the first frame, we already have size and motion, and yes, time. There is no frame without time and expanding matter.


In the alternative. Last time I had lunch with the physics students, it seemed to me the movie might go more like this: When we get close enough to the beginning, the frames of the movie start doing a Xeno's paradox thing where each successive frame is halfway closer to the singularity that they will never reach. In this case, there is no beginning because the movie goes forever.


In neither case is there a frame showing a singularity. And time is running in every frame.




Hawking and Azimov and other sources (but not all other sources) include a little hedge phrase, something like, "Of course nobody knows for sure what happened before the big bang, so we may as well talk as if time began at the big bang." So, while I've come to believe that physicists really do believe that time started at the big bang (to the extent that it can be said to have started --- in any case, it didn't extend beyond the big bang) I'll allow the possibility that there was time before the big bang.

The point as I see it, is not to allow two-stepping. If there was time before the big bang for luvluv, then there was time before the big bang for me. If the universe popped into existence from nothing --- which isn't true regardless of whether there was a singularity or an actual beginning --- but if it was true, then god would have to have popped into existence out of nothing also. And if god didn't come from nothing because there was time before the big bang, then, because of that very same pre-bang time, the rest of the universe didn't have to come from nothing either.
crc



Sounds a bit like the _quantum flux._ I have no problem with that. (Well, I hate it, but so what.) If I may paraphrase, what you're saying (here I go putting words in your mouth) is that "before" there was the universe there may have been a _situation_ which allowed for the universe to come into being. This is a way of saying that the universe may not have come from literally nothing.

My only objection to that is going to be if the anti-naturalists say they can have the prior situation (and call it god) but say we can't have one (and call it the quantum flux).
crc

luvluv

SRB:

Come on man, I'm not a genius, but just who are you trying to kid?

Do you really think that if you asked Paul Davies or Hawking (and I've read a few of their books on the subject) about whether it is possible that time existed in some OTHER universe, that they would say that Big Bang theory says no?

Big Bang theory makes precisely NO predictions about the possibility of time in other universes. What you are now saying is just plain disengenious and borders on dishonesty. THAT was what I was talking about when I said I doubted that this was what you really believed. Not that you doubted that the argument was sound, but that you really are willing to hedge in your beliefs by a very shaky argument which really doesn't consider all the possibilities.


For your argument to be sound, and if you choose to keep the definition of time as "all time" in your premises, you have to show POSITIVE PROOF that Big Bang models (which ones, for that matter?) predict that time cannot exist before OUR Big Bang in any other universe. Otherwise your argument is not sound.

I am not going around looking for statments from Davies and Hawking about the impossibility of time in other universes before our Big Bang. Mostly because I know they don't exist, but also because it is your argument and if you want to make it sound then you do your own work.

SRB

Evidently we disagree on what contemporary cosmologists believe with regard whether there were any times prior to the Big Bang. You think that they all believe there were such times and I don't think they all believe that. I lack the time and interest to go searching for quotes to show you are wrong. In any case, I don't need to. Provided you admit that it is possible for one to consistently believe in the Big Bang and deny that there are any moments of time prior to the Big Bang, you must admit it is possible for the Big Bang theory to be true and for there to be no prior moments of time. That is enough to refute your claim that a naturalistic Big Bang theory entails that the universe "popped into existence from nothingness."

Here is the proof of that, formally stated:

(1) It is logically possible that the Big Bang took place and that there were no prior moments of time.
(2) If there were no moments of time prior to the Big Bang, then the universe did not pop into existence from nothingness.
(3) Therefore, is logically possible that the Big Bang took place and that the universe did not pop into existence from nothingness. [from (1) and (2)].
(4) Therefore, the Big Bang theory does not entail that the universe popped into existence from nothingness. [from (3)]

SRB

luvluv

It is not enough that it is possible to believe in the Big Bang and that that there are no moments of time prior to the big bang (anywhere, I assume you mean) because the two HAVE ABSOLLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER, particularly in your syllogism, unless the Big Bang theory expressly prohibits time IN OTHER UNIVERSES before the Big Bang.

The fact that the two views are not mutually exclusive means precisely nothing. Unless you can justify the notion that time before the Big Bang did not exist in other universes VIA Big Bang Models, your original argument is not sound.

(And please stop the nonsense. You know as well as I do that no scientists reasons from the Big Bang to the notion that there can be no time in other universes before our big bang. Be serious.)

I already conceded, a few posts ago, that I mispoke when I said that the universe popped into existence from nothing. Being a theist, I obvioulsy cannot believe that. What I am saying is that the fact that time did not exist (in our universe) prior to the Big Bang does not remove the necessity of a sufficient cause for the Big Bang. If their could be time in other universes causally related to the existence of our universe, we are unjustified in saying that since there was no time IN OUR UNIVERSE before the big bang the big bang needs no cause. If incidents in one universe can cause the existence of other universes (as has been argued on this forum in the case of scientists creating universes) then it would be more reasonable to believe that our universe had it's cause in another universe than to believe that our universe had no cause.