So, if GOD, or whatever,didn't create all this shit, how did it get here????

[FlamingoBlue]

So, if GOD, or whatever,didn't create all this stuff, how did it get here????

This thread is not about religion or evolution or anything else but how the earth and everything on it that wasn't man made was created. So, there was a BIG BANG and all these little particles and elements came together. But where did all those particles and elements come from? And where did the stuff that eventually became frogs and birds and butterflies and James Dean and Mother Theresa come from??

I'm not asking for me, mind you. There's this little kid down the street who asked me this question and I just don't know what to tell him. I sure am not going to tell him to ask his Sunday school teacher, so I figured that you geniuses on the BB could help out old blue. (After all, I'm a lawyer and I don't know squat about this stuff).

Btw, this little kid is no dummy. He doesn't believe in the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny so you better have some good answers for me and him.

blue

p.s. All expletives have been deleted because this is a verry serious thread and I don't want to take your attention away from the subject matter.

 

[Pyper]

Noooobody knows.

But, as I posed to Never on another thread, if God created all this shit, who the fuck created God?

(Sorry about the language, I thought it was appropriate to go along with the tone of Blue's thread. )

 

[Problem Child]

Just tell him it all comes from a magical place called Sparkysass.

 

[Doulton]

I'm with Pyper; it is very tempting to turn this into yet another religious debate. But if they don't start anything, I'll behave too I'm afraid she's right about the nobody knows bit too. If you think about it, there can never be a satisfactory answer to this question. Whether you subscribe to the Big Bang or theories of god, either there always was stuff, or stuff came from out of nowhere. Both these explanations defy our full understanding. Our only option is to look at the evidence and extrapolate what we can. We see that all matter is moving away from a certain central point in space. The logical concusion is that that is where it came from. From the distance it has travelled at it's current velocity, we can determine that it happened very quickly, so we call it a bang. All the stuff in the universe is, by most people's standards, quite alot of stuff. So we call it a big bang.
If you have more specific questions about the big bang you can post them here and I will do my best to answer, as I'm sure will others. But like I said, I don't think there is any answer you can give the kid that will really appease his curiosity. At a certain point you just have to accept that we cannot understand it. Which sounds far too much like faith for my liking, but it's really not faith
Anyone wants to dispute that particular point with me you're more than welcome, but let's start a new thread so we don't get blood on the kid down the road

 

[Pyper]

Oh hell, Doulton. We are NOT going to get into that whole "is science a faith" business again.

 

[Guest]

.......a comet...........

 

[shadowsource]

Bob Dylan

But even he doesn't remember....

 

[Never]

Pyper:
Oh hell, Doulton. We are NOT going to get into that whole "is science a faith" business again.

Yeah, I don't need DCL to tell me that I must believe in a diety because I don't belive in him.

"if God created all this shit, who the fuck created God? "
Another universe?

Flamingo Blue, I hope you smacked the kid for using that type of language.



Oh, and I never said science is faith.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Yeah, I don't need DCL to tell me that I must believe in a diety because I don't belive in him.

Who the fuck told you that? What the fuck are you talking about? Why the fuck can't I say fuck? Fuck.

We can only hypothesize, theorize, observe, experiment and conclude via the physical laws, and the physical laws didn't exist until a millisecond after the Big Bang, so it's impossible for us to ever know the nature of the cosmos beforehand. Although a particular model theorizes that all the elements were actually created from particles in an infinitely dense singularity the size of a pinhead.

But for the kid you can just say, "Askyour mother".

 

[FlamingoBlue]

DCL, just so you know, it was the.....

kid's mother that told him to ask me.
So now what do I tell him??

blue

 

[Pyper]

Tell him nobody knows. If he's a smart kid, he can handle the truth.

 

[Never]

DCL:
"Who the fuck told you that? What the fuck are you talking about? Why the fuck can't I say fuck? Fuck"
Ahh my virgin ears..

You said, "The fact that you start your argument with a door that must have something behind it tells me you are again trying to define my atheism in terms of your own faith. "There must be a God, so tell me why you think there isn't?"

First off, the door was symbolic of a question, all questions have answers just like all doors have something behind them.
Secondly, I never said there must be a God. In fact my first post stated I'm an agnostic.

And no, I'm not trying to bring back that thread. It was obvious we both had our arguements and opinions and neither of us were going to change our minds.. I respect your opinion - I always have.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Really? Because I think your opinion is for shit.

LOL I typed that sentence too quickly, and when I said "you" i was referring in general to a person who might use that argument, not you personally. My mistake.

Flamingo. Here you go. Say, "Ask your father." You'll have this couple divorced in a week.

 

[Laurel]

Just tell him it all comes from a magical place called Sparkysass.

"Magical"? That's not the word I'd use...

 

[FlamingoBlue]

Ahhhhhh, the wonder of it all!!!

I'm so pleased that some things are just inexplicable. It is quite humbling for me to be in awe of the nature of things.


blue

 

[Neale]

Creating 'something' from 'nothing'

is not as impossible as it sounds. In fact, current models indicate that this is a continual process, with paired particles and anti-particles springing into being all the time, and just as quickly being annihilated. The original, infinitely dense, proto-universe operated under rules so impossibly strange that our best and brightest minds can only give answers that ultimately boil down to 'because it happened like that.'

Cosmology is a weird and wacky topic, mainly because it is so damned impossible to prove or disprove, but it keeps the roofs over the heads of a lot of brainy professor-types as well as religious-types.

 

[Never]

Ohh, I've always liked the Quabbalistic answer.
First there was nothing.
Nothing = 0
Then nothing split up into something and less than nothing.
something = 1
less than nothing = -1

We're in the something - but someplace there's a less than something and it all still equals out to be nothing.

1 + -1 = 0

 

[shit4brains]

Beats the shit out of me

What really boggles my mind is the idea that space is infinite--no begining or no end--no shape, without boundaries--zillions upon zillions of light years in all directions--never ending...

 

[Never]

The universe is shaped like a cube.
Think about it.

 

[Svedish_Chef]

This is why I want to marry you and have your babies Never

 

[Doulton]

Re: Beats the shit out of me

What really boggles my mind is the idea that space is infinite--no begining or no end--no shape, without boundaries--zillions upon zillions of light years in all directions--never ending...

OK, I just want to state once clearly that my knowledge out to this extent is rather patchy, so I may be wrong here. But I'll say what I know (Or think I know) and hopefully others can fill in the gaps if I'm wrong

It wouldn't be shaped like a cube, it would be a sphere Ever since the big bang the universe has been expanding at the speed of light. Now according to relativety nothing can ever be moving towards or away from anything else at a speed of more than the speed of light. So if you have two objects each moving away from the same point in opposite directions at the speed of light, how fast are they moving away from each other? Sorry, getting a bit off track here, but that's something I've always been curious about
Anyway, the universe is expanding. And by that, I mean space itself. It's hard to comprehend, but everything in the universe is moving away from everything else in the universe. The analogy I was given was the stars and planets etc. being dots drawn on the surface of a balloon. While the balloon is blown up, the very stuff the between the matter expands. So the universe is actually finite. It's also very easy to calculate. All of 'space' expands at the same rate, so if something is twice as far away as something else, then it will be moving away from you at twice the speed. The rate of expansion is also slowing down due to gravity. Everything (with mass) in the universe is exerting a gravitational pull on everything else in the universe. The net result of this force is to oppose the initial momentum of the big bang and pull everything back to the centre. There is actually a specifc value found by comparing the total amount of matter in the universe to the momentum of the big bang which tells us whether the force of gravity will eventually take over and pull everything back into a huge implosion, or whether it will be too weak and the universe will continue to expand forever. The value is as of yet undetermined, but it is know that it its extremely close to the point of equilibrium (A point which some take as evidence of a supreme being.)
Anyway, my point is (yes, I have a point) that the universe is not infinite. What happens when you get to the edge of the universe may be a tricky question, but luckilly it's irrelevant as nothing could ever travel fast enough to leave the universe, not even light.
Please, correct me where I am wrong.

And Never's Quabbalistic thingimy reminds me of something from the Hitchikers guide to the galaxy:
(The Guide's summary of life in the universe: 0. Some people have argued that there quite clearly is life in the universe, but the reasoning goes that there is an infinite number of planets in the universe, but only a finite number of planets that are inhabited. The average popilation of the planets is The number of people in the universe divided by the number of planets in the universe. Any finite number divided by infinity is so close to zero that for all intents and purposes it is zero. Therfore the average population of all the planets in the universe is zero, and the universe is therefore uninhabited.)

This is a very shaky recollection. I read the books several years ago, so please forgive me if and where I have got it wrong

Last of all, I almost brought up the topic of matter and antimatter and quantum theory etc. myself, but I don't really know many of the details, and I don't really think it changes the initial argument. Particles that appear from out of nothing isn't really any different from the big bang coming from nowhere. Anyway, that was my reasoning.

 

[Doulton]

Fuck that's a big post. I swear it didn't look that big when I was typing it

 

[Neale]

Friend Doulton, you left out the most important part of the idea from Hitchhikers!

...And, therefore, anyone you meet is the product of an overwrought imagination...

Yeppers, the cosmological constant is a sort of important thing to calculate, if you look at it in a LOOOOONG term kinda perspective. It would be kinda nice to know if a Big Crunch is coming, or eventual heat-death will claim everything. Still, I'm expecting to have "billions and billions" of lives ere either is a pressing concern.

 

[Neale]

A good book to read

Masters of Time: Cosmology at the End of Innocence, by John Boslough, published by Addison-Wesley.

It is only 10 years old, and is a good layman's view of many of the newer ideas surrounding cosmology and physics.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Re: Re: Beats the shit out of me

It wouldn't be shaped like a cube, it would be a sphere

You're thinking three dimensionally. There is no "sphere" because a sphere is a shape that occupies space. But there is no space, only spacetime,. So there is no "shape" to the Universe, only quantum properties. There. That ought to be clear. LOL

Ever since the big bang the universe has been expanding at the speed of light. Now according to relativety nothing can ever be moving towards or away from anything else at a speed of more than the speed of light. So if you have two objects each moving away from the same point in opposite directions at the speed of light, how fast are they moving away from each other?

Excellent question. It was exactly this kind of question that started the whole modern physics explosion. The answer is "the speed of light". Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true.

For example. A man on a train shines a flashlight down the track. The light moves at the speed of light. But what if the train is moving? Doesn't the speed of the train add to the speed of the light? Nope. Welcome to spacetime.

Anyway, my point is (yes, I have a point) that the universe is not infinite.

Yes it is, but I understand your dilema. You're thinking of the universe as that big balloon, which is a model to explain the movement of matter, not a model to show the shape of the universe. There is no "edge" of the universe, like there is a skin on a balloon.

Unfortunately there is no real model to show the shape of the universe, since that would require being able to visualize in four dimensions, something homo sapien is not wired to do (kind of like how dogs can't see color, no matter how much you explain to them what "color" is).

And Never's Quabbalistic thingimy reminds me of something from the Hitchikers guide to the galaxy:
(The Guide's summary of life in the universe: 0. Some people have argued that there quite clearly is life in the universe, but the reasoning goes that there is an infinite number of planets in the universe, but only a finite number of planets that are inhabited. The average popilation of the planets is The number of people in the universe divided by the number of planets in the universe. Any finite number divided by infinity is so close to zero that for all intents and purposes it is zero. Therfore the average population of all the planets in the universe is zero, and the universe is therefore uninhabited.)

And as with equally confounding conundrums like Zeno's Paradoxes the answer always lies in a fault (usually purposeful) in the mathematics.

-----------------

By the way, has anyone caught the various "Enterprise" trailers on UPN. The latest one contains a MAJOR science error, and I'm amazed that in this day and age anyone could make this mistake, PARTICULARLY the studio producing "Star Trek".

The voice over for the trailer goes something like this: "Man has always dreamed of leaving the galaxy. This Septemeber, he will." The Voice Over is referring, of course, to the beginning of the Federation and humans venturing to the stars for the first time.

But "LEAVING THE GALAXY"??? Even in the Federation's glorious days of Kirk and Picard the Federation had only explored about 20 percent of our Galaxy. "Leaving" the Galaxy would take centuries (Voyager needed 70 years to fly home just from a nearby corner of the Galaxy. Lucky they found that Borg wormhole, eh?) No one on Star Trek ever "leaves the Galaxy" (unless Q's being a dick).

This also same up in "Star Trek: The Stupid Movie Shatner Directed with the Laughing Vulcan" where they went to the center of the Galaxy in a couple of hours, blowing all continuity the series had created.

AND in the original Lost in Space the Jupiter Two's mission was to spend five years flying to Alpha Centuri, one of the closest stars to earth. But they hit a couple of meteors and suddenly they're flying "out of the Galazy!" If it takes five years to reach Alpha Centuri, it's going to take about five million years to reach the edge of the Galaxy.

And THEN they'd be stuck in a void of nothingness that extends for a profoundly long distance before reaching the next galaxy. But, no, they're bumping into planets every freaking day. Planets! OUTSIDE the galaxy! Where there are no stars. Nothing.

AND, AND, AND in "Space 1999" the fucking moon goes off on its own into space carrying some humans on a moon base, and they wander past all these alien worlds. I'm sorry, but is the freaking MOON now traveling at warp speed to reach all these planets? And why is it always sunny on the moon? Did the sun ALSO fly out of the solar system and join the moon for its intergalactic voyage through space?

AND THEN there's Gilligan's Island!!! Why is no one fucking? Huh? Huh? And just how long do the batteries last in that fucking radio? Wait! I have more! Arrghghh! Acckk! Arggggh! Wait.......!