The confusion mainly stems from (largely) two different schools (and both speculative) schools of thought in cosmogony / cosmology.

One school states that in the singularity physics break down. This school of thought regards the big bang as the beginning of our universe, as our universe is not caused by the singularity (because there would be no causes). The other school of thought regards the singularity as a period where the (at least current) scope of physics break down. This school of thought regards the singularity as causing our universe and / or being a part of it.

But, and this is the important bit, the big bang theory exists independently of these schools of thought (but not vice versa). It is an empirical theory, testable and falsifiable and covers the time after the known laws of physics apply.

And that's about it.

It might be nitpicking from some perspectives in physics, ie in the sense that if you go beyond the scope of physics it doesn't hold empirical value. That said, it is one of the great questions in physics and there are many important theoretical and speculative frameworks that discuss this. I don't think you would find a physicist who doesn't find the issue interesting.

But in the sense of this discussion, an argument on "the first cause" I'd say it isn't nitpicky at all. Let's flip the coin and look at someone who (erroneously) states "the big bang disproves first cause", and I think it is clear why.

Why? Because you make unecudated claims? You clearly have shown that you have no clue of even basic physics.

You're trying very hard to parse something that is just a forced reading of the theory to win a point on FZ that's really not worth winning.

"The big bang" is not a specifically defined concept to be only the events that happened beyond a few Planck seconds after some event that we don't know what it is. It encompasses the entire process, including the process that we don't yet understand and do not have access to. Even if you believe in multiple big bangs creating multiple universes, that doesn't deny the statement that FZ stated.

This statement is completely accurate based on both schools of thought that you suggest. Again, what he tries to conclude from here is not something I'm defending.

Edit: To put it another way, let's say that one school of thought ultimately wins out over the other with regards to those planck seconds. Whatever that theory is will almost certainly be included the concept of the big bang. It won't likely be rendered as some event, THEN the big bang. Rather, it would be understood as "The big bang started when <insert theory> which led to an expansion a few planck seconds later."

Because I quoted NASA, and you're trying to reject what NASA has said. Even if I know nothing, you still have to tell NASA that the big bang is not a theory about how the universe came to be.

Here's one from Stephen Hawking:

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

Yep, he is a firm believer (and the main advocate of) the first perspective on cosmogony that I described above. Which is also the reason for the title of the book you just quoted.

Those views are based on the big bang theory being correct, but the big bang theory is not based on those being correct.

No, no and disagree vehemently. I'm an empiricist; a framework that fits mathematically is good, potentially useful and can indicate a fruitful venue of research. It is not enough evidence to lift a hypothesis to theory, however.

Anyway, if you and FesteringZit want to go on in life believing that the big bang theory describes the inner workings of the singularity and/or how it affected the universe or not; feel free to do so. I can't stop people from believing London is the capital of France if they simply won't listen either.


I leave you with this tidbit from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck...oretical_ideas

"As there presently exists no widely accepted framework for how to combine quantum mechanics with relativistic gravity, science is not currently able to make predictions about events occurring over intervals shorter than the Planck time or distances shorter than one Planck length, the distance light travels in one Planck time—about 1.616 × 10−35 meters. Without an understanding of quantum gravity, a theory unifying quantum mechanics and relativistic gravity, the physics of the Planck epoch are unclear, and the exact manner in which the fundamental forces were unified, and how they came to be separate entities, is still poorly understood. Three of the four forces have been successfully integrated in a common framework, but gravity remains problematic. If quantum effects are ignored, the universe starts from a singularity with an infinite density. This conclusion could change when quantum gravity is taken into account. String theory and loop quantum gravity are leading candidates for a theory of unification, which have yielded meaningful insights already,[citation needed] but work in noncommutative geometry and other fields also holds promise for our understanding of the very beginning."

I won't bother to quarrel or argue with this issue with you any further, I know very well you'll just keep in trucking into infinity. But, I'll close with saying that this is trivial and very basic stuff, and I find your zealous attempts at digging for an argument rather amusing.

You are clearly maintaining your forced interpretation of the words. I do not claim that the big bang theory "describes" the singularity and have used no words to that effect. Rather, I've maintained that referring to "the big bang" as the beginning of the universe is entirely consistent with the usage of scientists. You have produced no particular evidence to the contrary. Your over-reliance on calling yourself an "empiricist" to hold to your definition of "theory" simply highlights how far you have to stretch the language to make yourself right.

I make no claim that the models of the universe extend into the time period that we don't understand. You wish to take that the "big bang *theory*" can only possibly refer to the time period that we understand, which I think is nit-picky but valid insofar as you're using the concept of a "scientific theory" to be something that has a significant level of validation. However, to say that "the big bang" ALSO only refers to only the "theory" (where the phrase is interpreted in the particular manner indicated) is plainly wrong.

Conceptually, it is perfectly meaningful to refer to an unknown event or object. "Something" happened in those first few planck seconds, and that "something" is referred to by physicists as "the big bang." There may be no agreed-upon scientific theory for how exactly it worked, but such a requirement is not necessary. (Consider "dark matter" as an example of this.)

And the wikipedia post does not deny anything that I've claimed throughout this thread.

Quoting myself to further emphasize the points I'm making and also demonstrate that my position has been made clear throughout the conversation. The point you're *actually* quibbling on is trying to say "We *KNOW*" something, not the reference to the "big bang."

the universe did not "come to be" during the big bang, it was already there.

Your inaccurate wording is pretty embarrassing, maybe you should stop talking about physics and check out some sites like "the universe explained to kids".

Take it up with NASA.

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics...-the-big-bang/

If you accept that the currently accepted scientific models do not extend to before the first planck second, why do you think that cosmologists accept that this was the beginning of the universe in an absolute sense? Or am I misunderstanding what you are suggesting? I don't think the quotations you have provided necessarily imply the acceptance of an absolute beginning, just the beginning of the current state of the universe if 'the universe' is defined as what exists now.

As an analogy, consider an acorn. The acorn itself isn't defined as an oak tree. The acorn is what exists before the oak tree. But when you plant the acorn, over time it absorbs nutrients and water from the soil to grow into an oak tree. The planting of the acorn would be the point at which the oak tree could be said to begin to exist in the same sense that the universe began to exist in the statements you posted.

So where's the part that says "With the big bang the universe came to be"?

Could not find it, must mean you did again chose a very poor wording. I can only urge you to stop making posts about physics, it's clearly a field you are not proficient with. Stick with discussing unproven fairytales, that way no one will notice how uneducated you actually are.

I don't expect you to understand this but maybe you could look up what a singularity is and then feel ashamed for your last few posts.

If a man looks for "wisdom" in the world he need only look without him. Nature presents "wisdom" which is not dependent upon the intellectual meanderings of the individual man.

Beavers build a dam, wasps produce paper for their nests and the swallows return to Capistrano, all evidence of "wisdom" in the world.

Man is also immersed within this "wisdom" but through his intellectual thinking , at least scientifically, he places himself "outside" cosmic nature and in this loses comprehension of world and cosmos.

The only way for man to gain knowledge of the cosmic wisdom is through himself within this world which necessitates his understanding of himself "Oh Man, Know thyself".

I know this is a lot to say but seeing Man as a thinking, feeling and willing being thereby coming to comprehension of the supersensible members of Man is an entrance to this "wisdom". Also to renumber, Love will manifest as "wisdom" is not the end all but through wisdom one comes the gates of Love.

The quasi science of "big bang" or what was it like from the BEGINNING of MATERIALITY meets the supersensible as does philosophy, religion and their cohorts. There are scientists who do not believe that this "bang" is so.

http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

If I project forward what my heart will look like in 10 years I could do so and can continue 300 years forth and be absolutely right, according to the intellect but of course the heart would not be in existence then andlikewise a projection backward is no more than bringing forth present concepts into a realm which call for more than a repetitive meandering of present to past, a rotating wheel of thought, so to speak.

Yes, there is "intelligence" in the universe and even the 14th Scholastics understood this as when they related to specific planets the would speak to the "intelligence" of the planet. this comprehension has been lost due to our fall into abject materiality. I believe you made a reference to economic materiality but this materiality is its source.

One route, which fits into our intellectual age to this supersensibility to which I refer isthe perfect book for the modern man and one whinh will last the longest in reference tos the Anthroposophical Society is "the Philosophy of Freedom" by Rudolph Steiner.

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/...004_index.html

Look at the bolded words. Do you see how none of those words reflect what I'm saying? I've even accepted the following in the use of terminology:

Basically, the word game going on here is all about "knowing" something and not the terminology of "the big bang." If iFold2MinRaise thinks that creating an ENTIRE PAGE of evidence pertaining to the big bang that says right at the very top that "Astronomers combine mathematical models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be" and cannot bring himself to make the intellectual baby step to realize that "workable theories of how the Universe came to be" is referring to the subject matter of the page (the big bang and its consequences), then I probably can't help him tear a hole in a wet paper bag.

Nobody has yet to produce evidence that "the big bang" does not actually refer to the cosmological event that brought the universe into existence. The best that has been done so far is to point out that "the big bang theory" does not itself extend to the beginning of the universe. And I've granted that repeatedly and without objection.

But to try to make the argument that scientists don't refer to "the big bang" as the event but only the theory is absolutely absurd. You don't have to believe me and can persist in all the ignorance you want. But once you realize that scientists do refer to such a thing as "the age of the universe" (acknowledging their usage of the term "universe") and that there's a value of about 13.8 billion years, and that the only term that is used to describe the earliest period of that universe is "the big bang" (or its derivatives), then you see that there is no issue referring to "the big bang" as the event that brought the universe into existence.

I welcome you all to try to take your argument to SMP.

Addendum:

"The big bang" may ultimately be seen not to have been an event that brought the universe into existence. There are some models which appear to deny that the universe had a beginning. If those turn out to be successful, then we would just update/change our terminology and concepts in the same way that we dropped the idea of luminiferous ether once we discovered that we couldn't detect it.

I think we may be talking past each other a bit here. Let me try to clarify what I was attempting to describe with my acorn analogy. When scientists claim that our universe began with the big bang, the 'universe' to which they are referring is the four dimensional manifold that we currently observe. If this is what you are trying to describe, then we are in agreement. The problem is that proponents of Kalam try to extend this definition to mean the existence of everything, ever (except god), in order to include the assumption that this "bang" originated from a philosophical nothingness, that is, the absence of anything. This assumption is not shared by scientists and is not a necessary implication of the statements you have provided.

I am making no attempt to defend anything beyond the part of the single sentence I had identified as being what I'm defending.

Then I think you and I are probably largely in agreement, though I suspect FZ and I would be in disagreement that this is somehow a problem.

LOL, see it only took you an intellectual baby step. Hope you have some paperbags at hand.

LOL - Your reading comprehension is as much of a failure as your knowledge of science and your use of logic. The "big bang" in the present tense refers to exactly what I said it does, and hypothetical futures don't mean anything.

But thanks for playing.

You're not assuming that they're automatically meaningful either, are you?
Whether you assume they're meaningless or not, does not determine whether they are.
'Motivating action' is not the only source of meaning in concepts.
Rocks, in most conceptions of 'God', would be considered a product of God - the creator; or a part of God. Rocks do not oppose/contrast with God. Nothing does.

For example, the concept of justice is meaningful, for it contrasts with injustice. The moral contrasts with the immoral. Good contrasts with bad. Positive with negative. Black with white. Determinate with indeterminate. And so on. In fact, many concepts have meaning - as derived from this particular source - often denoted by their antonyms. A quick look at the numerous concepts inside a dictionary will show you that most have opposing antonyms.

What is the antonym of God? Nothing.
The tribe that believes there's a divine purpose or support for what they're doing will likely outlast, or conquer the tribe that has no equivalent inspiration for their action.

It is of the theory that many concepts in culture originate solely due to man's fear of death (acknowledgement of mortality). Individuals that care less about their mortality - for they will spend eternity in 'heaven' - will put their life on the line and defend their tribe more readily, than individuals in a tribe that has no equivalent source from which they can draw inspiration for their action.
Sure. The problem is that lots of meaningless concepts motivate action and thus contribute to culture. It's not the only source from which meaning is derived.
I'm not appealing to Wittgenstein's conception solely. While I agree about remaining silent on meaningless concepts (as based on propositional notions of meaning), I believe meaning is derived from additional sources. Utility [pragmatism] and contrast for example. I don't have a clearly specified framework for this yet. This doesn't automatically mean that my notion of meaning is entirely arbitrary either.

Also, I'm not convinced that you have the monopoly on the interpretation of the Tractatus. I hope you don't think you do. Or perhaps you don't believe that it is a widely misinterpreted text? "Clearly without understanding his views" suggests to me that you may be projecting, but then again, I'm no psychologist.

Sorry, but he is correct. It is clear that you don't know much about this issue. The Big Bang theory does not account for how the universe came to be, it is a theory of how it developed from an early state. Nothing you can came up will change this, because it is simple inescapable fact. Why is this a fact? Because the big bang theory is the theory that explains the universe from the point where the known physical laws were in effect. They (as of yet) theoretically break down if you try to go beyond that point and experimentally you can't (as of yet) measure beyond that point.

There are several trending theoretical hypotheses on cosmogony, but not reigning theory. Conflating these with the big bang theory is misguided at best. Were they to be reconciled experimentally and theoretically, then you can talk of a unified theory. For your line of thought to be correct, this unified theory would have to already exist. It does not.

I'm sorry, but this is a knot that you can sit and nibble on for thousands of hours, but it's not going to untie with rhetorical and boneheaded arguing.