Creation of the Universe...or Not

[questor]

I would like to discuss whether or not the universe was created or just appeared by happenstance. During this discussion, we must not use any words referring to deities worshipped by man, since this is a totally man-made concept which can be only a few million years old. If we are to believe
in the Big Bang, the universe occurred around 14-15 billion years ago by a massive explosion of matter and energy. Gravity, magnetism, time, space, and all the ponderables and imponderables fell into place. How could this be? Was this a result of millions of neccessary components for life and particles and planetary formation just waiting for that moment to spring forth in full flower, or was it the result of some plan of which we are unaware? If the BB occurred, wouldn't it have to be a planned event or could all this just be an accident of nature? There was a plan and a creation or there was not...which was it? Please.. no religious discussions, we have had enough of those.

[HydrogenBond]

The BB is also a manmade concept. It describes the logical extrapolation backwards, of what the data says is an expanding universe. Now the data says an accelerating expansion. If we extrapolate an accelerating expansion backwards, the universe should have logically begun at an initial snail's pace and has been expanding faster and faster due to acceleration. (acceleration is the rate of change of velocity). This is better described by the Gentle Pop theory or GP. The anomaly was in no hurry to expand taking all the time it needed, until it makes a gentle pop noise. Then it leisurely takes 15B years to get it current velocity as it accelerates.

If prefer to retain the BB beginning, because it is quite spectacular, the universe banged quickly, then it needed to slow way down, and then reaccelerated at a certain point in time, to get what we have today. If we retain BB, the question then becomes when did it almost stop and then begin to accelerate again, so it could end up slower today than at the very beginning of the BB and still be accelerating?

[questor]

I am only proposing the BB because it has been the prevailng theory for some time. We do seem to agree that the universe has older and younger parts, indicating that there was a starting point. Assuming there was an original event, was it caused or was there no cause? It is difficult to imagine NO cause, because there seems to be a cause for everything else in the universe.
Was there a cause for gravity? If there was no gravity, there would be no universe as we know it. Was there a cause for order in the universe? Without it there would be no universe. Why is there spin and orbiting? Could the universe exist without them? Basically, how can we have nothing one day
and a universe the next without cause?

[Moontanman]

Personally I think the BBT is flawed, I think the indications of these flaws are the fact that it depends on infinites to exist. It depends on things that should be impossible. Nothing exits, at all, not even space and time, then space and time comes into being for no apparent reason. I like the ideas behind brane theory much better, they are satisfying in a way that BB isn't, Of I won't insult you by claiming brane theory is reality and that BB is just BS. Brane theory just feels right to me, totally an emotional response.

[HydrogenBond]

The point I was making is the playback (reversal) of an accelerating expansion, back into time, is a slow leisurely beginning, since it implies negative acceleration into slower velocity. Based on that, the universe may not have just appeared in an instant, but the precursor of the universe could have been in the works for a long time. When it was ripe, it began to slowly expand, with a weak popping sound. If we add the know rate of the accelerated expansion, this rate of acceleration took 15B year to reach the moderate modern expansion velocity. This is not traditional just logical based on an accelerated expansion.

The theoretical use of the BB, in light of an acceleration expansion is a contradiction, unless the BB expanded, slowed and then began to accelerate again to allow our universe expansion to be the slower than the beginning even though it has been accelerating. If we retain BB, the acceleration could not have been in affect from the beginning or the beginning should be minimum velocity which is not BB. The implication of BB and accelerated expansion is the universe had slowed, but quickened somewhere between then and now.

[questor]

So, Hydro, whatever happened at the instant or period of time when the universe appeared, do you think there was a cause or there was no cause?

[HydrogenBond]

Based on the state of art in science, we don't know enough to define a cause for the universe, with any reliability, even though we sort of have a handle on the effect. We use the stock answer of random, which is used all over science when science reaches the point of no known cause. But someday theory will evolve to where this will be addressed. Once that zero point or origin is defined we may also find that existing theory, defined without a solid handle of the origin, may also need to be revised. This is not politically correct, just logical.

The bible's explanation says that God was brooding over the deep. Brooding is sort of like a chicken sitting on an egg, which implies a slow formation, which, in turn, just so happens to be consistent with the reverse of an acceleration expansion, which logically extrapolates to a slow beginning. Who would have figured. Then the bible says, let there be light or suggests energy appearing first. Next, the bible has waters separating from the waters. Maybe this was not literal water but the equivalence of mass/energy with matter and energy separating. One has to read the seams on the fast ball to hit it right. This is not a bad theory, but has the problem of a variable called God, which can't be defined by science.

If you look at the concept God, it is not under the laws of cause and affect or under the laws of probability, since by definition it can defy both logic and probability. The original cause then would have to follow different principles than what we currently know. In other words, even if we take out the word God, and assume a natural event, this natural event may defy the odds and doesn't need to be logical.

One way to explain that is to consider a speed of light reference. Time is fully dilated at C, such that time is not a variable, since infinite is not a hard number but only a concept. Both cause and affect, and probability involve a time variable. The ordering of cause and affect implies a time sequence: the cause is first in time and the affect is second in time. Without time how do you order it to show cause and affect? The same is true with probability, the odds of throwing a coin and it landing on heads is 1/2. Without time as a variable, how to do throw a coin twice to demonstrate this, especially since the cause and affect of two coin tosses has no time to set a sequence to show this will occur over time? As an analogy say we go into a coin toss experiment to prove the law of odds. We film this to present it to the audience. During the presentation, the camera stops before the experiment. It will become impossible to show cause and affect or even probability without the film advancing in time.

There is a way to define both cause and affect and probability without the direct requirement of time. It can be done with distance. If we go back to our camera recording the coin toss, even if time was stopped, if we first stretched the film out over distance, as a long thing, even with time frozen, if we stand back we have a story board with time frozen. But it will appear all blended as a single frame, but will contains the essence of both cause and affect and the probability. Both are there, just with time stopped we can only focus on one thing at a time and not be able to see it, even though the entire long film shows it.

Once you add time, then you can scan the story board. If cause and affect are important, one will start at the beginning. If random is only important you can jump around. You can also do a blend by going from start to end, for cause and affect and random. We can also go from start to end but skip large segments of frames to make life appear to form really fast. Science has been useful in filling in the frames to help us use more frames in the story board, which requires more time to scan the story board.

[questor]

Hydro, I did not want to make this a discussion about God or any other deities
since this subject has been covered at length on many other threads. Assume for the moment that it is 14.5 billion years ago, there are no people, no bible, only nothingness. Suddenly, the BB, or some event occurs which marks the start of the universe and all the matter and energy and particles and forces that it includes. Was this event caused, or did it just happen? If it was caused, how could we describe the progenitor? If it was not caused, how can we describe what happened? In our world and sensibilities, things do not happen without cause.

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by questor

In our world and sensibilities, things do not happen without cause.

Lot's of things happen spontaneously without a cause. Call them accidents, mutations, chance occurences, vacuum fluctuations, big bangs, little bangs, quantum tunneling events, symmetry breaking...

Here's a nice short text on the topic:

Coming To Be Without a Cause

And this:

The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe, Quentin Smith, 1988

There is sufficient evidence at present to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so. This evidence includes the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems that are based on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and the recently introduced Quantum Cosmological Models of the early universe. The singularity theorems lead to an explication of the beginning of the universe that involves the notion of a Big Bang singularity, and the Quantum Cosmological Models represent the beginning largely in terms of the notion of a vacuum fluctuation. Theories that represent the universe as infinitely old or as caused to begin are shown to be at odds with or at least unsupported by these and other current cosmological notions.

[...]

This review of the role of quantum mechanics in accounts of the beginning of the universe strongly suggests that the probabilistic argument to an uncaused beginning of the universe, although more complicated than we had been supposing in Sections 1-3, still goes through. Its conclusion is summarized in this disjunctive statement: it is probably true that EITHER the universe began without cause at the beginning of this expansion (a) subsequent to a singularity of infinite density, temperature and curvature, and zero radius, or (b) at a singularity with finite and nonzero values, or (c) in a vacuum fluctuation from a larger space or a tunneling from nothing, OR the universe spontaneously began to exist at the beginning of some prior expansion phase under conditions described in (a), (b) or (c).

...and yes even rebels happen without a cause.

Believe it or not


CC.

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by questor

Was this event caused, or did it just happen? If it was caused, how could we describe the progenitor? If it was not caused, how can we describe what happened? In our world and sensibilities, things do not happen without cause.

Some quantum events occur without cause, so not everything requires a cause.
The fact that we as beings with evolved minds that adapted to an environment in which one of our primary faculties were predator-prey-protector detection systems explains why you would feel that an agent or intention must be behind everything, including existence as a whole.
Our ancestors got the false-positives, and those who didn't get jumpy and imagine predators in the corner of their eye, did not become ancestors because they did not hyperactively detect agency.
The universe did not need a "progenitor". This word choice plus the fact that this is in theology and not cosmology makes it seem like a necessary agent is implied, which is presumptuous and silly.

Originally Posted by questor

Basically, how can we have nothing one day
and a universe the next without cause?

This article by physicist Victor Stenger is quite interesting/relevant:
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? (Reality Check, Skeptical Briefs July 2006)

Originally Posted by Stenger

[...]
What this example illustrates is that many simple systems are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy. Since "nothing" is as simple as it gets, we would not expect it to be completely stable. In some models of the origin of the universe, the vacuum undergoes a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter. The transition nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any external agent.

As Nobel Laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable."