How did the church make a comeback

[devonrevenge]

I must applaud the people that have taken part for not letting the discussion degrade into a slanging match.

Ive been impressed too, when someone has disagreed with someone they have done it in a very sincere mature way, sometimes people come across more hurt upset and angry than they are, because of what text does to emotions, but again, ive always been impressed by the maturity of you guys, ever made a comment on yahoo news? OMG! humanity weeps.

[chrisname]

SIK wrote:

Human science is currently very limited in that it cannot tell us what came before the big bang

There's no such thing as "before the big bang", the big bang was the first ever event. The universe has existed forever, "forever" having lasted an estimated 14 billion years so far. The big bang was the start of expansion, and it's been expanding ever since.

[Disch]

Well if we forget the Bible then we would have to forget Christmas

No bible OR Christmas?

The world could never be so perfect.

[Moschops]

The festival and celebrations at Christmastime predate Christianity.

[SIK]

There's no such thing as "before the big bang", the big bang was the first ever event.

The big bang is theory as well as the exitence of a multi-verse. Both cannot be proven or disproven currently, so your claim that it was the first event ever is unsupported.

If we were to accept that the big bang was the very first event ever we have to discard the idea of a multi-verse.

There are also other scientific theories that speculate about the instance before the big bang.

The point is that even if the big bang was the first ever event to occur scientist still cannot explain how it came into existence.

[Moschops]

Both cannot be proven or disproven currently, so your claim that it was the first event ever is unsupported.

It's supported by a great deal of scientific theory (in the proper meaning of the word). "Unproven" does not mean the same as "unsupported".

[chrisname]

SIK wrote:

The big bang is theory as well as the exitence of a multi-verse. Both cannot be proven or disproven currently

No, but the evidence for the former is so overwhelming that to reject it is to reject rational thinking.

If we were to accept that the big bang was the very first event ever we have to discard the idea of a multi-verse.

Why?

There are also other scientific theories that speculate about the instance before the big bang.

If they only speculate, then they aren't theories, they are hypotheses.

The point is that even if the big bang was the first ever event to occur scientist still cannot explain how it came into existence.

It didn't come into existence, it has always been.

[hamsterman]

@SIK, language takes many liberties with meaning. It is rather easy to say a meaningless thing without intending to. It seems that time is not understood well enough to even say that there always has to be a "before". Intuition should not be trusted here. It's even worse for questions that ask "why".

By the way, is it just me or do religious threads always turn into physics threads?

[helios]

The point is that even if the big bang was the first ever event to occur scientist still cannot explain how it came into existence.

If by by "came into existence" you mean "happened" and by "how" you mean "why", then you're right. The nature itself of the event implies that any information about anything that could hypothetically have existed "before" (in a sort of higher dimensional sense of the word, because as chrisname said, time started with the Big Bang) was destroyed. If the Big Bang had a cause, it can't possibly be determined by studying the state of the universe after the Big Bang.

To draw a simple analogy, a computer can't know why it's on by analyzing its internal components, because the cause of it being on (e.g. your finger pressing the on switch) is external to it.

[darkestfright]

Time came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang, so asking what the cause of the Big Bang was doesn't make sense because causation requires time.

[TheIdeasMan]

Time came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang

I disagree with that concept. In my mind time is a semi abstract idea: Abstract because time could be thought of as a number line that extends to infinity in both directions, past & future; Real in the sense that we say the amount of time between standard reproducible events is our unit of time.

hamsterman wrote:

By the way, is it just me or do religious threads always turn into physics threads?

It starts because the religious people make comments on scientists not being able to prove what went on before the Big Bang, as a vague means of attack, implying that scientists can't prove 1 thing, then they must be wrong about everything else. Meanwhile, the religious people are unable to prove anything at all.

Religious people do this because they have absolutely no evidence of their own, so they attack the quality / quantity of scientific evidence, which there is mountains of.

[darkestfright]

disagree with that concept. In my mind time is a semi abstract idea: Abstract because time could be thought of as a number line that extends to infinity in both directions, past & future; Real in the sense that we say the amount of time between standard reproducible events is our unit of time.

This is not up for debate. It's scientific knowledge, Time is a real "thing". Einstein demonstrated this with relativity.

[SIK]

Why?

A multi-verse would imply many universes exiting instead of just one. This would then mean that there were as many big bangs (asuming big bangs are how all universes are started).

Hence we cannot assume that our big bang was the very first event ever. It may have been the very first event for our universe but other universes may have been born first.

We may not be able to refer to time in the same reference as physical time in our universe, but mathematics allow us to extrapolate beyond that point in time of the big bang (call it nagtive time if you will).

[TheIdeasMan]

I was disagreeing with the concept of "Start of time"

I am at risk of a lot of people seeing me as a pedantic individual, but I disagree with Einstein as well .......

Any one with a skerrick of proof about religion?

[darkestfright]

I am at risk of a lot of people seeing me as a pedantic individual, but I disagree with Einstein as well

Einstein didn't just pull relativity out of his ass, you know. Relativity is rigourously tested, and makes extremely accurate predictions about the nature of time and space.

If you "disagree" with it, go ahead and do some experiments, write the paper and collect your nobel prize in physics.

[helios]

Hence we cannot assume that our big bang was the very first event ever. It may have been the very first event for our universe

Well, until we find spacetime that's naturally unconnected to our own, the only definition of "first" that's relevant to science is "there's no previous event in the timeline of this universe".

It may have been the very first event for our universe but other universes may have been born first.

Alright, but this makes a huge assumption: it implies that aside from the timeline local to each universe, there's a "super timeline" along which these universes can be placed.
In principle, if several separate universes exist, they could exist in timelines that are uncomparable. That is, to say that one existed before the other would make as much sense as saying that 2 is greener than 5.

We may not be able to refer to time in the same reference as physical time in our universe, but mathematics allow us to extrapolate beyond that point in time of the big bang (call it nagtive time if you will).

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the conclusions you draw from such a line of reasoning will have anything to do with reality.
http://xkcd.com/605/

[Grey Wolf]

Here is a question that I am undecided about.

Can you have a religion without a deity? I know that Buddhism, Taoism and the like are said, in some places, to be religion and in others not. So what constitutes a religion?

[darkestfright]

Can you have a religion without a deity?

Mainstream Buddhism is atheistic, Jainism is another one, but Taoism is a polytheistic religion.

Also...Christian Atheism...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

EDIT: it seems there are atheistic versions of Taoism too

[TheIdeasMan]

@darkestfright

Einstein didn't just pull relativity out of his ass, you know. Relativity is rigourously tested, and makes extremely accurate predictions about the nature of time and space.

There are 2 sorts of relativity, I disagree with the basic idea of time relativity. It is not something I have said lightly, and I am not the only one.

The General Relativity is a "whole different kettle of krawldads" and does make accurate predictions.

[darkestfright]

There are 2 sorts of relativity, I disagree with the basic idea of time relativity. It is not something I have said lightly, and I am not the only one.

Yeah well, put your money where your mouth is then. Just because you disagree with something because it doesn't make sense to you as a concept, doesn't mean it's not true. The Universe is the way it is, it doesn't give a crap what you "think".