No God, just a freak accident with no reason.
do you believe the universe...
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Kent_Mackem
Striker
I think you just left out the “for certain” clause right at the end.
What Cox presented was a model answer based on the evidence available and plausible calculations. Those same calculations have proved to be incredibly accurate going forwards (otherwise the Voyager probes wouldn’t have managed to get anywhere near the outer planets) so it means the model explanations going backwards are plausible and far, far better than just a guess or a belief (which is what the god squad use).
Dave Herbal
Striker
Why is is difficult to believe there was the nothing? What’s that stuff between the Earth and the moon - oh, nothing. 99% of the current universe is nothing.
dangermows
Striker
Ilios
Winger
No you don't. There is no evidence that there was ever a 'nothing'. No scientific models of the origin of the universe include anything coming from nothing, because as I said earlier, that is a contradiction of terms. Saying that there used to be a 'nothing' that something came from is like saying that you used to be a married bachelor.
Lefty Frizzell
Striker
I can’t get my head around that there was nothing. Then everything.
Kent_Mackem
Striker
Absolutely. Neither can I.
Still doesn’t mean it requires a god to be invented to fill that lack of understanding though.
One way of thinking about it, more commonly used as the “nothing” as in what happens when we die, is to compare it with the “nothing” before we were born.
It’s off-script, out of scope, not relevant - loads of ways to describe it when we can’t understand or appreciate it.
Frijj’s comparison (also used by Jim Al-Khalili in his books) is for a comic character who lives in a 2D comic strip and is therefore only familiar with circles and squares. Get him to try to visualise spheres and cubes and he is lost. He can’t do it because it’s outside of his available parameters of thinking.
Inventing a god to fill in the answer, and then claiming to “know” it is true, is an incredibly lazy but also arrogant approach.
No scientist I know has ever said they “know” something is true, only that the explanation they are suggesting best fits the available evidence - and usually incredibly fits strongly.
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Dave Herbal
Striker
Attempt at what? I’m not sure where the everything came from, just pointing out how easy it is to visualise the nothing bit.Pathetic attempt Dave
DaveH
Striker
I think both are mind blowing concepts. There could have been nothing and then something, which goes against all we know about physics, but is the best explanation we have. An alternative is that there just always was, but that in itself is mind blowing too.I don't think either is likely - I'm not convinced either is possible. I don't think there ever was 'nothing' because that is an inherently contradictory state, and there's no reason to there was or could be 'nothing'. As you say, there is also no reason to assume that at the beginning of the universe, prior to any intelligent agents, that there was some inexplixable, eternal, disembodied, human-like brain-in-a-vat meta-genie floating about without a lamp, just creating things ex nihilo and willing things arbitrarily.
I'm not disputing the Big Bang BTW, im disputing that there was 'nothing' before it - even that sentence doesn't make sense
To quote Brian Cox, that is why physics is brilliant.
It could be that what Frijj has been saying is more along the right lines. We can’t conceive any of it because we have a tiny view of space and the available dimensions. We don’t even fully know the shape and our position in our galaxy. We are building a better picture every day, but our attempts have been likened to trying to map your town, or the world, from what you can see out your bedroom window. If we can’t do that, mapping the universe through time in multiple dimensions seems way off.
What is a shame is that religion is so ingrained in our culture, that this thread demonstrates that very quickly for things we can’t explain, we still talk about the magic wand solution with almost equal value to the best scientific theory based on empirical evidence so far. Could be worse, the conspiracy nuts have not derailed this yet. Probably sniffing a bit of glue while checking what independent thought youtube says they should have, before posting.
Ilios
Winger
That isn't 'nothing' though. 'Nothing' - as in 'ex nihilo' - has no properties, and thus cannot be described or conceptualised.
DaveH
Striker
It is not nothing though. There are a small amount of particles, but there is also light, radiation and distance. We can (not personally) travel that distance in a finite amount of time and once that moment is passed it can not be recreated. The idea of before the big bang was that there was no particles, light, radiation, time or distance. You could not travel through that nothing, because there was nothing to travel through.
Edinburgh Black Cat
Striker
We could all characters in someone else's game. More 'The Sims' than 'The Matrix' but something along those lines.
Probably not like but it's entirely feasible
Probably not like but it's entirely feasible
Harry Angstrom
Striker
Rene Descartes went back to basics and assumed that nothing could be believed. The only thing he was sure of was that he had thoughts.We could all characters in someone else's game. More 'The Sims' than 'The Matrix' but something along those lines.
Probably not like but it's entirely feasible
Seems a bit of a palaver.
DaveH
Striker
That is another difficult concept.
I can see how a dust cloud could condense to make a sun and planet system. I can see how those planets may have cooled and intense geological activity calmed down enough for liquid water (for planets conveniently placed, like ours) to form, weather systems to be created and an atmosphere to be created.
I can see how the simplest life form needed energy to grown and reproduce, so each step of the way it got more and more complex, resulting in the wide variety of life we have today.
What I struggle with is the idea that the first single cell life form happened. You have chemicals, minerals etc, that are just there. Some react together to change state. But at some point some mixed together in just the right way to produce something that needed energy to survive. Without it, it would die. It would have the same chemical make up but not be alive. With enough energy it could reproduce, but if it died it could no longer absorb energy to reproduce. Even without intellegence, it needed something to survive and had the concept of being dead or alive, then for the successors, born.
Once that happened for the very first cell, that was it, the rest becomes possible. But that first one having this new state unlike anything before, I struggle to get my head around.
dangermows
Striker
This. And just look how big and how much of everything there is. It's insane.
Lefty Frizzell
Striker
pillars of hercules
Striker
I don't particularly believe in either and both ideas seem as far fetched as the other.
The question i ask is what was there before the big bang? If nothing, then nothing can come of it. If there was something there, then where did that come from?
dangermows
Striker
Well for a start there's obviously not nothing between Earth and the moon. Nothing means absolutely nothing. Not even space. Literally nothing.
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