Let me start by saying I have absolutely no qualms about people believing in a higher power. We shouldn't propose to tell anyone what to believe. It's a personal matter and faith and spirituality can be a wonderful thing and can come from religion as well. As long as faith and science are kept separate, I have no issues whatsoever and nor should anybody else too.
But no, religions of the world and science are not compatible. Arguments based on faith will never hold in a scientific conference, that is what I mean by them been incompatible. No such model will be taken seriously. Science with it's emphasis on empirical evidence, of reproducibility of experiments, on firm mathematical and logical support and peer review is the polar opposite of theology and other such domains. And I think that distinction is important to make.
You can believe anything, it's up to you. But those believes shouldn't be used to enforced in places they don't belong or atleast not without challenge and without the same rigorous checks and balances that are placed on other ideas, for example in cosmology which is a scientific discipline. We have paid enough a price already by doing so and hopefully we will never go there again.
So the point of this and subsequent posts, is not to discuss religion per say or to declare belief/faith false. I am not interested in any such thing. Rather its going to be aimed at aspects of discussion here ,that centred around aspects of physics and more broadly logic and science.
With that said, let's start with the big bang theory. It actually refers to what happened after the bang. We have no concrete evidence of what happened during or before. All things point to the universe getting denser and denser, hence the bang. Actually we can pretty confidently predict back to 10⁻²⁰ or so seconds after the bang. We need a quatum theory of gravity and there is work underway on that, before we can talk about the instant of the big bang.
It doesn't mean physics won't ever know or can't know or doesn't have ideas about what might have gone down. And when I say ideas, I mean pretty consistent theories which reproduce everything we do know about the early universe and indeed how it is now. There are some pretty interesting restrictions on what the early universe could have looked like.
And if science doesn't know, nothing else does either. Science is the best, I would say it's the only way we have to determine answers to such questions with any degree of certainty.
Time and space not existing before the big bang doesn't nullify the question how did the big bang occur? Scientists have no clue, they can only make random guesses or suggestions. Therefore its logical to ask how did this happen. Some may think its an all powerful creator or others simply have nothing to say. Either way its logical to think if there is a creator. To suggest logic and reason doesn't has nothing to do with believing in God, is daft to say the least.
Yes, it doesn't nullify that question and people are working on answering it. Scientist do have a lot of clues though. There are many theories about how the big bang happened or how was the universe before that.
There is the so called big bang. Fairly consistent with all the data we have.
Eternal universe that extends forever into past and future is one such example of other models. Where you get pockets of low entropy areas like our universe. It's obviously much more detailed than two statements but thats the gist of it.
A universe with an entropic low point in the middle is another example where entropy was very low in the middle (our start/big bang) and has been increasing ever since.*
Another one is that of a cyclic universe that bounces between the dense point we see at the start and the extreme expansion that is coming, or to put it another way between expansion and contraction.*
The two with the stars could be argued to be the same but there are differences, mostly subtle though.
Multiverse in the cosmological sense you are already fimiliar with, there is a quantum interpretation of it as well with the many worlds hypothesis that anything that can happen, happens.
There are more models still. A cool one is that there is a mirror universe running backwards with everything reversed dominated by antimatter on the other side. It's cool because it solves a big question, why there is so much more matter than antimatter in our universe.
The maths says you cannot create from zero.
Logic says, a computer program requires a programmer.
Our understanding is based on observation of the physical world, metaphysics on the other hand can be used to ‘suggest’ anything without observation.
What math are you talking about here. What does it mean to create from zero?
Where did the single point of infinite mass come from? If you believe it was just 'there', then using your logic 'god' can also be just there just like infinite point of mass with no explnation required. If you believe the single infinite mass came from nothing, then how? Which is it? Or let me guess, you're going to come out with the 'science doesn't know yet' line?
Yes code needs a coder. There is no if, no buts. This is empirical logic that is demonstrable time after time. Feel free to disprove this logic by citing an example of code coming from nothing.
Your point is your logic is based on human observation and understanding, but this isn't universal, in the same way the laws of physics considered universal by do not do not apply to quantum behaviour.
The issue with your view is that you say god is faith, which is true, but you try an± disprove God using laws/logic within the known universe, when logic dictates that these laws do not apply to a creator because said creator resides outside the universe inorder to create the universe.
Where is the proof that the said creator resides outside the universe? Where is the evidence that such a place even exists. A place where there is no physics, no mathematics, nothing we are fimiliar with? Where human logic doesn't work.
Your starting point makes this assumption that shouldn't be granted at all and wouldn't work in any mode of inquiry.
To that, here is an addendum. What does it even mean to suggest that three is something other than logic, something that proves mathematics wrong or takes precedence over it, while thinking from within the realms of that very logical/mathematical/physical system you are refuting? All the while providing no substantial framework of how such a thing would even begin to work?
Also the analogy at the end doesn't hold. Logic works, it doesn't disappear when we go to the quantum realm. What does happen is that certain theories are no longer applicable on the small scale, just like some theories don't work on the massive cosmological scales. Infact, the quantum laws have to give way to classical ones in what's called the classical limit otherwise we know the theory is wrong.
No, that’s not what I asked you.
Where did the infinite mass come from?
If you are going to use science, then lets talk Physics. Causation is a primary tenet in Physics. Yet here you are saying that the infinite mass came from nowhere and was just there? Steady state theory died an ignominious death ages ago. Still, if you want to go with the - it didn’t come from nowhere - answer, then God didn’t come from nowhere either. So your arguement about what created what infinity, has also died a death.
Our current knowledge and understanding tells us that mass and energy are interchangeable; so where there is mass there is energy.
Logically, where did infinite mass come from can be answered from 1 of the 3
1. Something
2. Nothing
3q. Was always there
Here’s the thing, you believe science and God oppose each other, I believe the two compliment each other and easily coexist; yet both you and I still make leaps of faith.
On the point of the coder - intelligence begets intelligence.
This idea of infinite mass has come up quite often here so I would like to make a couple of point on it.
There is no such thing as infinite mass. That is a basic requirement of the all phsyical theories, no infinities of energy, mass etc. That is what (well one of the things) actually led to the discovery of quantum mechanics with the infamous blackbody problem and its classical prediction of an infinite energy density.
Infinites are a sign that a physical theory is at it's limit. An example which I cited above is the blackbody problem (classically it showed that as you go to lower wavelengths of energy, the energy density of the body approached infinity) , the 'big bang' is another such example and the singularity at the center of the black holes another. These later two, both, show that our current understanding of gravity is lacking and we need a quatum theory of gravity (string theory and loop quantum gravity being two of the more popular approaches).
One more thing, infinite density doesn't mean infinie mass. Density is mass divided by volume so even if I have a very finite amount of mass (say a table's worth or even indeed a few subatomic particles) and I sequeze it into a extremely small volume, the mass desnity will be huge. The smaller you make the volume, the more quickly you approach infinity. It doesn't mean you have infinite mass.
So when physicists say infinity in the context of the start of the universe, that is what they mean: all the mass of the universe at that time fitted into an extremely small volume, approaching a point (zero dimensional object) and hence you get an infinite mass desnity.
As for causation, it is not the primary tenet of physics. It was in Aristotle's time but hasn't been since Newton invented calculus. But it's a common misconception though, and not at all a misfounded one. Today the language is that of differential equations and more modern techniques. Tell me the state of a system now and I can tell you it's state in infinite past and future. We don't need a cause for a universe to exist.
I can and indeed anyone can imagine a plenty of universes that dont need or require any intervention to function.
I think you are looking too deep into logic. Its just reasoning. esp in this subject. There is also logic in computer terminology.
I agree its logical to ask if there is a God , who created God. The answer is simple, God has always existed, space and time are his creation.
This makes more sense than some strange chance , after chance, after chance x 1trillion chance meaning its just chance everything has come together. With the complexity of the universe inc life, this isn't very logical.
Im not here to convince anyone but to suggest those who believe in God are illogical is very lame.
The idea of science has always been to explain the complex in terms of simple. We did it with celestial mechanics, biology and then everything else too with the standard model (reducing everything to basic, fundamental and simple building blocks/particles from which all the complexity arises).
At present we have four fundamental forces and some elementary particles that explain everything. We have unified two of the four fundamental forces (there are hints of a fifth but minute hints only). The two being electromagnetism and weak nuclear force (Salam got his Nobel for this), the strong force is basically done too. Gravity is next and hard (it's the hardest problem in physics so far).
But you see the theme, as we go back in time to the early universe things get simpler to the point that even fundamental forces become unified. The standard model is a pretty elegent and simple theory, and yet we are still going deeper to understand it more simply.
A God hypothesis stands in stark contrast to modern science, it's ideas, results and goals as outlined above. It is infinitely more complex than simple particles doing random things.
I don't agree that the answer is simple and particularly satisfying. Carl Sagan is very good at this:
"If the the general picture of a big bang followed by expanding universe is correct, what happened before then?.... In many cultures the customary answer is that a god or gods created the universe out of nothing.
But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must ofcourse, ask the next question, where did god come from. If we decide that this an an unanswerable question, then why not save a step and say that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question. If we say that God always exited why not just save a step and say that the universe always existed......These are not easy questions, cosmology brings face to face with the deepest mysteries, with questions that were once treated only in religion and myth."
That is precisely the view point of phsyics when it comes only it's been more refined since Sagan's time. Cosmology has uncovered a lot more, put further onstraints on how the universe could be in it's initial days, or in the infinite past if it is eternal (which seems to be the prevailing belief now).