Before the Big Bang? (Origins)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 17:06 (3774 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: 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.-This has been your problem all along, why you couldn't follow Kastner. It is established quantum theory that our space is a virtual vacuum, that is, although it appears to be empty, there are quantum particles popping in and out of existence at all times. Threfore the use of the word virtual. There are the two layers of reality to explain this, as shown by Heisenberg and now Kastner with her transactional analysis of the handshake between the two layers. The particles in our 'real' word can go in and out of the two layers, as shown by the two slit interconnections of the sister particles, the delayed choice experiments, etc. You are all tangled up in the counterintuitiveness. Don't fight, it accept it, it is real.
 
> dhw: 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.-Ah, the nubbin of your problem! You are very mistaken. I've explained a virtual vaccuum, which is not nothing. A void is a true nothing, no virtual particles popping in and out. This is why clear thinking philosophers of science have laughed at Krauss and Stenger.
> 
> dhw: 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? -With clear understanding of virtual vaccuum and true void, things are not so fuzzy. Actually you are correct in that we have no idea about the past befroe the bb. BB's could have been going on ad infinitum.
> 
> dhw: 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.-I plead that you accept current quantum theory. Otherwise you will remain muddled in your thinking. Both atheists and theists are using quantum theory from the same basis of knowledge. Of course we reach different conclusions.
> 
> dhw: 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.-No, it does not. I view you as very confused.
> 
> 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.
> 
> dhw: 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.-If space and time appear at the bb, you logic tells me the bb came from nothing! Where is your belief in cause and effect now? I have no problem with a timeless 'before'. True stasis is timeless.