Subject:
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Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:36:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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4926 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Thank you. That is entirely my point. Therefore any explanation about the
origin of the universe is outside the peruse of science, irrational, and
illogical to boot. But here it exists.
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I’m not sure that it will be forever outside the scope of science. The more we
learn, the more we discover.
Take Brendan’s sealed-closet example. And let’s suppose we can walk around the
closet. Well, we know whatever’s in the closet has to FIT in the closet, so an
elephant might be right out. We might see a trail of Lego bricks leading up to
the closet. We might open 40 other sealed closets and find that they all have
Lego in them. Etc.
We can potentially learn more about the nature of energy, time, etc., and
therefore learn more about the Big Bang and what happened “before” it, without
actually being able to retrieve evidence that is directly affected by the state
of things “before” the Big Bang. Scientists are always coming up with neat
loopholes around things we thought to be impossible.
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My personal guess is that there’s no such thing as “before” the Big Bang. It
would be like me asking you “who created God?” or “have you stopped beating
your wife?” or what-have-you. The premise of the question is incorrect. But
that’s just my personal guess.
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But that’s clearly a dodge in my mind. The one thing science does know is
that there was AN EVENT. The beginning of the universe happened at a point
in time. It is similar those questions you posed, because we are dealing
outside the bounds of logic and reason pre Big Bang, which is an
uncomfortable place for a person of science to be.
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Well, again, you’ve got this idea of time which is linear and absolute. Some
sort of perfect Cartesian timeline. But if science has taught us anything about
time, it’s that time is WAY more messed up that we might otherwise believe. For
example, time for my left arm is different than time in my big toe. Not by much!
But by a pathetically small amount.
Time, energy, space, matter, gravity-- they’re all related. In some senses, they
actually seemingly define one another. So saying “what was the universe like at
time X?” is actually an inaccurate question. The whole concept of “right now” is
(as I understand it) an utter farce.
The long and the short of it is that there may NOT be a “before” the Big Bang.
The Big Bang may have *created* time. And as such causality is totally out the
window, just like “who created God?” is totally out the window. The answer would
be something like “the Big Bang simply was”.
Personally (I’m not sure why), I frequently imagine time like passing through a
square block of Swiss cheese. Perhaps you could think of it as flip-book of
infinitely thin slices being flipped. As you progress, you see a hole appear,
get bigger, then smaller, then disappear. But the block of cheese as an entity
simply exists. You may think of that hole as a temporal object that changes, and
ceases to exist, but it’s not so.
The fact that you seem to perceive the cheese as “changing” is a trick that your
mind plays on you. Even though you can only see a thin slice at any given
moment, the reality is that the whole thing exists all at once. What happens at
the ends of the block of cheese? Nothing. The cheese is finite.
The question would sort of be like asking “what color was the cheese before the
cheese started?” Well, there was no color. There was no cheese.
But that’s simply my own guess. I’m not sure how much scientific research has
been done or could be done to test it. I don’t see it as a dodge at all-- I’m
admitting that I don’t know, and don’t really have much good basis for my guess.
Would it be any more of a dodge to say that my guess was that another universe
preceeded this one, ad infinitum? In short, is there any answer I *could* give
you that you wouldn’t consider a dodge?
DaveE
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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| (...) Now that's unfair:-) I am NOT arguing for creationism. Science is about explaining things. All I'm saying is that what happened pre Big Bang is inexplicable. (...) Agreed. (...) Thank you. That is entirely my point. Therefore any explanation (...) (18 years ago, 24-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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