Before the Big Bang? (Origins)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 09:52 (3557 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...but I find it hard to grasp how a virtual quantum vacuum can produce transient potential particles which constitute the real world. I don't know why there has to be a vacuum of any kind. Since all these theories are based on unproven suppositions, how about this: We know that energy exists, and we know that matter exists, and whether or not the big bang theory is true (something we don't know), maybe energy and matter have always existed, and maybe there have been countless big bangs in the past, reaching back for all eternity. And if you want to shove in the word “quantum” somewhere, feel free to do so. -DAVID: This has been your problem all along. Quantum theory and the actual studies done bring results that are counterintuative. Quantum activity in another plane of reality underlies all of the events we see and live with. -I have several problems, but that is not one of them. First, I don't see how a virtual quantum vacuum can produce transient particles which constitute the real world (see below), and I don't know why there has to have been a vacuum of any kind.
 
DAVID:[...] Only energy existed before the BB.
 
I have suggested energy and matter, since you say ”all matter in the universe comes from energy”, and we cannot assume that energy did not produce matter during the “before” that both of us believe in.
 
DAVID: Before the bb was there only a void? Not likely.-Precisely my argument. I take void and vacuum to be synonymous (is that a mistake?) and have asked why there has to have been a vacuum of any kind.-DAVID: Was the pure energy of just plasma? Or did it have some particles? But logically only energy existed. All matter in the universe comes from energy. The only spacetime we know is a virtual vacuum with potential particles. Please accept that.-I accept that the only reality we know is energy that has formed real particles of real matter. But I still can't see the difference between a virtual vacuum and a real vacuum and what you have called an unlikely void. And why do you and others call the real particles of our world “potential”? Why can't we stick to energy forming particles of matter?
 
DAVID: It is the standard theory of what space is like. The folks like Krauss extrapolate what we see within our univrese to what came 'before'. They try to avoid a creation as the religious would like to have, so I view the fuzzy logic as a way of avoiding a divine foot in the door.-I see nothing but fuzzy logic on all sides. What is illogical about the suggestion with which this post begins, that if our own universe is a manifestation of energy transformed into matter, the process of energy forming matter may have been going on for ever, regardless of quantum this and quantum that? -dhw: Am I right in thinking that what you call the secondary layer is the reality we know, and the primary layer is the reality which you believe consciously created the secondary layer? If so, why do we need all this quantum stuff?-DAVID: Again, underlying our reality is a quantum reality. You cannot escape it.
 -I am not trying to escape it, but I am trying to understand your own efforts to squeeze God into it (with your primary layer), and the efforts of the atheists to squeeze God out of it. None of you understand how quantum reality works, and yet you all insist that it holds your own personal solution to the question of how our universe originated.
 
DAVID: We simply do not see all of reality. And yes plenty of quantum particles are running around in our layer but they are connected to the other layer, and relate to each other there, which is why they can be so weird here.-Of course we don't see all of reality. If we did, there would be nothing to explore or discuss. But since quantum weirdness apparently allows you to say God is in there, and allows the atheists to say God is not in there, I am suggesting that it only adds to the general confusion.
 
DAVID: We can only know our experience in this reality of ours. But logic tells me there was a timeless 'before' before the bb. Beyond our experience, but I still believe in cause and effect. And you must accept the quantum wildness. It won't go away.-Logic tells me you can't have a before without time. I also believe in cause and effect, which again require time, and I accept the quantum wildness but cannot for the life of me see how you or anyone else can extrapolate from it any convincing theory about the origin of the universe.