Before the Big Bang? (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, July 10, 2014, 14:39 (3787 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The other interpretation of Davies remarks is obvious, but I hadn't stated it before. If there is no epoch, then the BB must have appeared denovo, from nothing, and threfore created by God who is not an epoch but a spiritual being. Davies can't say that, because as a leading scientist his career would be in severe jepardy. You will remember that Vilenkin produced a paper within the past year saying this universe and all possible multiverses simply appear with no 'before' before them. At least you and I see the lack of logic in that, but note that Davies dismisses that logic carefully in his essay, by saying we humans have a tendency to always expect causes. But that is our experience! My fingers typing this just proved it. But I view Davies from all of his writings, and I have the right to interpret him as I do. He is not a Stenger-style atheist.-I have seen several websites which say that Davies is an agnostic. He dismisses the cause and effect logic in the article you recommended by repeating the argument that there is no prior cause because “there is simply no epoch in which a preceding causative agency - natural or supernatural - can operate.” He emphasizes that people get upset because this goes against their natural tendency to find a cause, but he appears to be arguing AGAINST the natural tendency. Since you know so much about his writings, it would be far more useful if you could produce just one piece that supports your interpretation!
 
The insertion of “natural or supernatural” is also a direct counter to your argument that if there is no before, it must have been God. “God is not an epoch but a spiritual being” is a non sequitur. Of course God is not an epoch. Nor are you and I. We exist during an epoch. If God created the universe, he must have existed before he did so, which means there must have been a “before”. The before is the “epoch”. And this seems to me far more important than whether Davies is a theist, a deist, an atheist or an agnostic. I want to know how we counter all the arguments he has painstakingly listed to explain why there is no before and how the universe can have come into existence from nothing. The quantum references all seem to favour the “something from nothing” scenario, whereas you want to use quantum theory to support a “before”.
 
Well, I'm on your side, so help me out here. You wrote: “The atheistic scientists always point to a virtual quantum vacuum from which all sprung by a 'perturbation', so it is never something from nothing, and by inference, eternal.” By “vacuum” I understand total emptiness, with no particles of any kind. What is a “virtual” vacuum as opposed to a real vacuum? How can there be a perturbation in something that contains no particles of any kind? Davies talks of the nothing as being non-existence. How can there be a perturbation in something non-existent? And yet you say a virtual quantum nothing is by inference an eternal something. According to Davies, people suspect that scientists use “obscure and dubious concepts” to “befuddle their detractors”. He is defending the scientists, and I am certainly not going to accuse them all of being charlatans out to deceive us. But I would like to follow the logic behind their thinking. You have used the above terminology yourself to support your argument, so perhaps you can explain it to me.