You are still evading the question. How does nothing become something? And another question, what was before the big bang? Science is going by faith that the universe has a beginning when they cannot prove it. I am not sticking up for creationism in any way by the way.



No I can accept the big bang, however I am willingly to admit that it has a major flaw as it is unable to explain what was before it and if there was nothing then how does nothing create something? Unless there was something already there, some potential or another to give actuality to the big bang then this of course would lead to us to believe that the big bang didnt start the universe but is only merely an act in an already existing universe.




You assume that the big bang created what we can observe. This hasnt been proven despite the evidence and therefore will always be an act of faith to believe in it. If you believe I am going beyond what is 'scientific' then perhaps science then has to lay down and admit it cannot explain as to how something arose out of nothing.

If scientists (and many do) want to play the cause and effect argument with 'God and creation' then why shouldnt they answer also as to what caused the big bang?

If there was nothing before the big bang then nothing could not have arisen to be a big bang and in turn give rise to the universe.

Energy as far as what I have read cannot be destroyed or created. It just changes form. Is it an implausible to perhaps assume that energy has always been here in some form or another and that the big bang was just another change of energy or something already existing?

If the universe has always existed in some form or another then it is highly probable that it has always existed (and since energy cannot be destroyed) and therefore is eternal.

Is there evidence that energy cannot be destroyed or created? If the big bang created energy then where did it get that potential or bring it into existence? Is it unscientific to believe that something cannot come from nothing?

BNW, your arguement is flawed in the semantics of the something from nothing theory. You are implying
that the universe has always been there, without anything creating it. The universe is the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm. Something therefor had to create it.

I am not evading the question, I don't know the answer, however you are ignoring the fact that you have based your entire belief in this matter on evading the question. If the Universe is eternal the there was no beginning. How can something exist without having a beginning. You have evaded that since I asked it.



There was no beofre in a meaningful way we can comprehend as time was created with the big bang


You still fail to get the point I am making, you're own beliefs that the Universal just do not have any supporting evidence and present the same issues you are trying to avoid. You still have the question of how is it possible for somethijng to have existed with out a beginning. You are not answering any of the problems with your belief you are just avoiding them. Maybe this question is unanswerable, but if you can accept that why can you not accept the same thing for the creation of the Universe in a big bang.

To me you seem to be falling into the same trap that a lot of religious people do (I don't know whether you consider yourself religious or not). There argument goes something like this...

"The Universe exists so it must have been created. It can not have come from nothing so something must have created it. A god must have created it."

"Ah!" says the athiest, "who created the god?"

"It doesn't count for the god," says the religious person, "for the god is eternal and doesn't need to have been created in a way that we can understand"

You seem to be using the same argument but without employing a god (at least not yet).

Your entire argument seems to be based around the fact that science can not prove to your satisfaction that the big bang created the universe and yet you are happy to employ a belief system for which you can offer no evidence at all. Can you not see the double standard you are employing?



I assume based on evidence.


It is not faith, it is deduction based on evidence.



Science (unlike many believers) admits it does not have the answers to everything. Science does not claim to know the truth, it is an ongoing quest for the truth. Are you prepared to admit you can not explain how the universe could have existed for eternity. You see you are employing that double standard again, demanding something of science that so far you have not been prepared to do yourself.



Scientist also have beliefs and faith, they are after all human, do you demand that the Christian scientists prove scientifically the existence of their god? In most cases their faith and their science are different issues, some (both believers and none believers) merge the two.


And your evidence for this is what exactly?


It's not implausable, but I ask again what is your evidence that this is what happened.

Besides which we get down to that semantic argument again, what is the Universe. The Universe we live in was created at the moment of the big bang, that has overwhelming evidence to support it. If that energt already existed somewhere fine, but it wasn't in our universe because it didn't exist. This is a problem that science admits it can not answer (because all the scientific laws that govern our understanding of the universe were also created at that moment we simply have no framework to use to understand beyond that... maybe that will change one day).



Yes, but those are Universal laws which apply to the Universe as we know it. We can not know if it was the same before the big bang.


Yes but see my comments above.



If the Universe has always existed where did that energy come from. Something which exists must have had a beginning.. see there are unanswerable problems either way.

You may be correct in what you say (although we have a different idea of what constitutes the Universe) but you are running on faith alone.

What created the big bang?

The same question applies to you BNW! Don't you get it? You are implying that the universe was always there.
What created it? With your analogy there cannot be a something from nothing.

who knows, we can only theory how the big bang was created rather than what actualy happened

Something can exist without having a beginning by simply being there (in whatever form) always. How that came about I dont know.




You speak like a little like saint Augustine. There is a story attributed to him in that one day when he was preaching about God's creation, someone asked him 'what was God doing before he created everything?' , Augustine thought for a moment and said ' making hell for people who asked stupid questions like you!'

St Augstine believed it was meaningless to ask what was before creation too.





I dont plan to employ a God. I am simply saying that existence has always existed and that existence cannot arise from non-existence i.e big bang out of nothing.



No because I am happy to accept part of the big bang. However I wont accept that the big bang came from nothing because that to me seems absurd. Again the question is asked: How do you get something from nothing?



Yes but your evidence says nothing as to what was before the big bang.



I am quite willing to admit that I dont know how the universe has always been here but with saying that if anything does exist then it must have come from some form of existence before hand and therefore existence has always existed. Therefore two different existences may just be one existence but two different aspects.




Yes I do demand that Christians prove their existence of God.



That never in my entire life have I ever seen anything be created from nothing. I have only ever observed energy changing form into something else and never seen 'nothing become something'. I have only ever seen something become something else. My evidence for this is also that science has shown that energy cannot be created or destroyed. How did the big bang create energy from nothing?




See aforementioned paragraph.



This is your flaw. If that energy already existed somewhere then how is that energy not part of this universe? Unless you want to say there is two universes. One a universe which is full of potential and one that was created from this potential. However this in my view would require the interaction of the two.




But this is my point. The universe as energy has always existed but not always as we know it. The big bang would therefore not be the beginning of the universe but merely the beginning of it as we know it. The would mean that universe under some guise of existence has always existed.




This is where you are at fault. What is the evidence that for something to exist it must have a beginning? I think the universe has in some form or another always existed and therefore has no beginning. Nothing created it because by the very definition of eternity, eternity has no beginning.



You are running on faith alone to assume that everything that exists has a beginning. Also it isnt faith alone because energy cannot be created or destroyed (so far) therefore it is by this evidence on the nature of energy that I say it has always existed.

I dont believe anything created it! I believe it just undergoes eternal change. Something (energy) has always changed form into something else (energy). The big bang may just be part of these changes. I dont believe existence has to have a beginning. Why does it? As science shows energy cant be created or destroyed, it just changes. Apply this on a macroscopic level. The big bang is just a change in an already existing universe whatever form it was before the big bang. Hence the Big bang may be the beginning of the universe as we know it but not the beginning of the universe as a whole or if you prefer different wording, not the beginning of existence.

What do you think it would mean if existence has always been here even before the big bang?

Exactly who knows! The big bang may have very well have happened but that doesnt mean it was the ultimate beginning to existence.

Your analogy is one big circle arguement DC. Then what created this infinite energy/existance you keep talking about?
(It will always fall back to that). Again, by your analogy something cannot just exist without being created in the first place.

You have your own deep philisophical mindset on this, so I will leave it at that.

I dont actually believe it was created. It has always just been there. This is based on the fact that energy as we know it only changes and never is created or destroyed.

Why does it have to have been created? I am only exploring possibilities.

Take this fictional parable to ponder on:

There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild *** of the deasert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening -- first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: "It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!"
Stories of the Hidden Wisdom,
from the Oral History of Rakis
Heretics of Dune

You say right here that:

Then you say:

What if the the Big Bang is nothing more than infinite enegry constantly creating and destroying itself?

What I meant here was that the big bang is only a change in the infinite or finite energy potential and not the beginning. In saying this it shows me up in that I dont believe in a very conventional big bang.




It very well could be. First we would need to ask how can energy be utterly destroy and then brought back into existence? It makes more sense to me that energy is always there but just changing form.

The point remains still as to how did a singularity arise from nothing? My explanation states that nothing was never there and something always is which.

Isn't this thread about " the universe ends" not BEGINS or whatever. We are derailing a little bit and arguing about other peoples theories. I thought we were all supose to be rather intelgent here... lets get back on track. No matter how much the big bang is agrgued what answers are you gonna get except more speculation, and more things to be argued..... so how will this thing all end???

It will end when I pass away , leaving the rest of the Side Walk Theologian's to to their musings.

Well perhaps if there is no beginning there will be no end?

Sorry, Leonardo, this one sort of slipped by me.



Redshift is usually seen in the shift of emission lines in a spectrum. For example, the emission line that's at 121.6 nm for stationary hydrogen might be all the way down at, say, 700 nm for a distant quasar. These lines are the mile markers--the landmarks--in the spectra and these are what switch position to indicate something is going on. That's what I was trying to get at with the admittedly bad chair analogy.



It is largely permanent once done (though entering and exiting gravitational wells can cause its own redshift or blueshift). I'm not sure, however, what you mean by "entropic side-effect of this expansion." Can you elaborate?