Before the Big Bang? (Origins)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 22:01 (3768 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The Strassler article (which you have referred to before) may make riveting reading for would-be quantum theorists, but I'm afraid it doesn't help me very much. .....I don't understand why you need to bring these highly specialised categories into the discussion.
DAVID: Only to show you and others of the complexity in quantum source-of-the-universe theories, as a result of the particles discovered so far. All of the matter particles come out of pure energy, as do the field particles.
 
You have telescoped a number of ideas here, and I feel they need to be separated. The more you talk of “pure energy”, the more nebulous the concept becomes. How “pure” can it be if it is able to give rise to all these particles? I can understand the argument that matter came from energy, so perhaps we need a definition of “pure”. Otherwise, it sounds exactly the same as Stenger and Krauss arguing that matter came from “nothing”.
 
DAVID: The first cause logically has to be pure energy in some form, which is really unknown to us. -Why does the first cause logically have to be pure energy? Why can't the first cause have been energy with particles? “In some form, which is really unknown to us” suggests that you yourself cannot conceive of “pure energy”, so why do you need to? -DAVID: Next step is to realize that if cause and effect are accepted, timeless energy has existed eternally as a first cause. You cannot get something from a pure nothing.-You and I both accept cause and effect, but once again you insist on “timeless” energy being first cause, even though cause and effect depend on time. Following Ockham, why not opt for the simplest scenario: the first cause as energy eternally transmuting itself into matter? Since the only energy/matter we know of is that of our own universe, why assume that the eternal past has been any different? In other words, why assume that energy in the past has been devoid of particles, which is the only definition of “pure” energy that I can think of? You cannot get something new from a “pure” anything!