Before the Big Bang? a new view (Origins)

by dhw, Sunday, December 13, 2020, 12:51 (1223 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I see outside our universe total void, a complete nothing. Why we are here is up to your reasoning. What is your first cause? That has to exist. We had a demonstrated beginning in time as the CMB demonstrates.

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

DAVID: Explained in my book, Spacetime is flat, convex or concurved. Current evidence flat and will expand into heat death 100 billion years in the future.

dhw: If the universe is eternal, how does anyone know what happened BEFORE the big bang; if it’s infinite, how does anyone know its shape; and how does anyone know what will happen 100 thousand million years from now to all the parts of the universe that we currently know nothing about? And finally, I really don’t know how anyone can believe in a single eternal “first cause” conscious mind and yet regard an eternal "first cause" universe of non-conscious matter and energy as impossible.

DAVID: I know your agnostic brain about everything. I am telling you about current accepted theory and facts. Currently actual measurements of space time tells us it is flat, and if that is the case the universe will expand until it becomes cold and breaks apart.

Earlier (now bolded) it was going to expand into heat death. Ah well, never mind. I’m sorry, but I have no idea how current accepted theory and facts can possibly tell us what existed before the big bang (if it happened), or what lies beyond the range of our “actual measurements”. And I don’t see how a mysterious, unknown and eternal mind is deemed possible whereas eternally changing matter and energy is deemed impossible. And I boldly predict that during the next 99.99 billion years, scientists will discover a few things that will change current theory.