Many if not all human societies have origin myths and they differ greatly.
Several years ago a San Francisco-born-and-raised woman told me she is a materialist.
An hour ago a woman who was raised a Jehovah Witness and has left that faith told me the Big Bang story grew from a human need for a beginning. I agreed.
Can you wholeheartedly accept that the universe had no beginning, that it has always existed?(copied from AU)
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The issue is more that OUR universe had a beginning – time, as a dimension did not exist before the big bang (probably) and it therefore makes no sense to make any reference to a time before the big bang
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Is the big bang the beginning or that’s the furthest we have gone?
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The big bang is the beginning of spacetime within our universe; I do not believe this is the only universe however
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MWI?
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Perhaps although not necessarily – parallel universes are the key feature there but you can have a multiverse without parallel universes
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Well, you get around these days. You’re everywhere Mr. T. 😀
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I’m not sure I understand!
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I see your gravatar popping up on a load of blogs a read.
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Oh I see! Yes I do like to try and read others, it seems only polite since many kind people read mine
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Ask the bloggers! Isn’t it all the shape of a ring doughnut or something; no beginnings, no endings; like the craving for Krispy Kreme’s?
We see what we expect to see; we believe accordingly. See Hermann von Helmholtz’s man as prediction machine. Cue various predictions.
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Hello Hariod, many days no hear from you. Hope all is well in wet Britain?
I like the doughnut analogy
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Hello Mak, and yes it is wet today here in Somerset. I don’t know where the doughnut theory comes from, but Joseph will, I’m sure. I think it might be called Torus Theory, and the idea is . . . wait a minute, I’ll let Joseph explain.
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Was it you who told me to watch the Hyper Normalisation documentary? I did today. It was almost three hours long!!!
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Do I owe you three hours of my life then, Pink, or was it any good?
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It was very interesting. The analysis on the development of Islamic politics was superb.
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Have you seen Adam Curtis’ Bitter Lake? It sounds like you’d appreciate that too, if you haven’t. Fabulous and free on BBC iPlayer or YouTube: https://youtu.be/VRbq63r7rys And a mere two hours sixteen minutes long! 🙂
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4393514/
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I’ll watch that this week. Thanks!
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I will bookmark it
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Should I watch it?
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Yes, it’s worth your time.
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Can you wholeheartedly accept that the universe had no beginning, that it has always existed?
And yet this same person seemingly has no problem “accepting” their particular god has always existed. If one, why not the other? Can that be explained without special pleading?
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No. No it can’t.
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The author of the question is not a creationist as far as I can tell.
I don’t think one can accept god having always existed without special pleading
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Who is the author?
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He is some atheist from atheist universe. Saw it today during my reading
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Well, nothing is not “nothing”… and of course, the tangible multiverse could simply exist through retroactivity. That’s to say, it brute-forced itself into existence by the sheer weight of possibility. Whose to say what sort of zoo exists in 11 dimensions.
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So it is possible it didn’t have a beginning?
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Not in a traditional sense.
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Groucho Marx.
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😀
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I agree with the first commenter. The connection between time in space means that time also began when the big bang happen. The idea of something “before” the big bang doesn’t make sense in the way we understand time. It is only our linear experience of time that makes us think about cause and effect in this way.
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Is the big bang the beginning of all that is or the beginning of inflation?
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From what we know the big bang was the beginning of time and space. Space and time do not exist independently of each other.
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Inflation began in the early 80’s when Reagan was elected.
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Has it gone down since?
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I believe not. Soon we’ll all be so inflated we’ll float.
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Hopefully not in our lifetime.
Hope you are well my good friend
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I am. Hope you’re well, too.
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It depends. Are you counting in Zimbabwean Dollars? 😀
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Hahaha
I prefer to count in Zim dollars as long as am not buying anything
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It’s odd. The universe does not necessarily need to have had a specific “beginning”, but this sentence would not be grammatically correct without one.
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I think I agree
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It’s time turtles all the way down, Mak.
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Some turtles should go up
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My question in return: Why does it matter if it does or doesn’t? Does knowing the answer (which is essentially impossible) change anything?
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I don’t think answering that question one way or the other influences how I treat Nan 🙂
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In cosmology, the “Steady State” model of the universe (i.e. the perpetual universe has no beginning nor end, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_State_theory) was once widely accepted. It isn’t any longer because of the major developments of Einstein (i.e. Relativity) and in Quantum Physics. One prevailing idea that people should realize is no longer accepted is the equating of our observable universe with the much larger cosmos. What we can actually see is almost certainly just a small fraction of what exists in totality.
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That’s what she said.
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She always said the right things
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Given that we can only see a portion of the visible universe, there is, in my view, in postulating that the universe has always been
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Again, the “universe” does not equate to the “cosmos.” Science knows quite a lot about our universe, its age, approximate extent, physical properties, etc. What science doesn’t know is the larger cosmos which our universe is part of.
The “Steady State” model of our universe as perpetual is contradicted by empirical facts. Belief in that hypothesis is unwarranted; however, it may still be rationally applied to the nature of the cosmos.
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Well I accept all that. My question is, is there a contradiction in saying the cosmos has always been?
My reading on the BB model is that BB is just a place holder of sorts
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I see no contradiction, at this point in time, in saying that the cosmos is perpetual. We just don’t know what the nature of the cosmos is, so anything is possible.
The Big Bang is a widely accepted theory. Think of it this way: what happened after it, from our perspective, is the observable universe; what happened before it is the unknown realm of the cosmos.
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Have you voted?
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Yes, I cast a ballot – mostly protest votes.
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”Always been”, is more my take. Don’t think about it much, & don’t really care.
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That’s the way to go
Works for me too
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I still run into the intuitive ‘there cannot be an infinite regress’. Wouldn’t there have to have been a time, space, or existence before there was time, space and existence? And what happened on bring time space and existence into being?
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That intuitive there cannot be an infinite regress itself is in need of an explanation. Why can’t we?
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I wish I were better versed in physics. I still can’t wrap my brain around particle that pop into and out of existence spontaneously
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Don’t know about the universe or the cosmos, but we can certainly see right now that republics can come crashing down.
I wish I was competent in running my own life and had the cache of money to emigrate. I don’t want to live in a country dominated by Trumpalos.
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I hope Trumpalos do not take you back many years on progress that has been earned.
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Just because we (humans) with our limited senses cannot see it or understand it or measure it and thus name it … does not meant that ‘it’ did not exist -:)!
On the other note – I am just saying ‘hi’ in passing and letting you know that my daughter is having a great time in your lovely country!
Hope all is well!
Daniela
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All is well Daniela
She should call me we have coffee when she comes to Nbi
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