Do you believe in the Big Bang theory?
If yes, what convinced you that this is how the universe came to be?
If no, what makes you doubt it?
If “I don’t know”, what are your thoughts on the subject?
Discussion
Yes, the CMB is a strong evidence for that.
Could the CMB have originated from something other than a bang?
i will start with, i am 100% on the side of science, as such i believe in scientific method for proving or disproving things. I believe universe is in move due to any kind of force, explosion or collision that makes elements in the space to move in different directions. if it is probably that was caused by a big explosion, however, i don't think it was only one big bang type of event. nobody knows precisely how it happened and where all these elements came from.
If you are 100% on the side of science do you believe that no humans have any true control over what they do because all things were set in motion at the Big Bang (or by another force before) and everything downstream is just particles and charges following the laws of physics, including your own thoughts (as they are just particles moving through pathways in your neural network that is also made of particles).
Meaning humans do not have choice or free will……because that is pure 100% science…..everything is just an outcome from a previous reaction.
You can’t believe or not believe in theory. It is built upon observations and conclusions are derived from our best knowledge at this time. So, to answer your question, I am in agreement with observations and think that it’s one of the best theories we have given out current level of understanding. 🐶🐾🫡
Perfect answer here.
This is the answer and how I feel.
Do you feel the bang came from a singularity and out of nothing came everything?
Feel, is not the word that I would use, but according to my human flawed intuition, it makes sense. Remember, we are not that great at understanding things we can’t observe, so take it with a huge grain of salt! 🐶🐾🫡
Does your intuition say that first there was nothing, and suddenly that nothing burst? Or maybe the nothing was something- and the question is where did that something come from?
Our current theory states that the space and time itself has started at this “point”. There is no concept of before or nothing that is compatible with our understanding and what have happened. It is not intuitive at all. There is no such thing as before time has started, since “before” itself is referencing time. Same goes for nothing. So it’s not possible for me to answer your question to yours or mine satisfactions. To help us understand in more abstract ways, we can potentially think in terms of dimensions. My unscientific and backed by no data speculation tells me that perhaps our set of dimensions came into existence at that “point” 🐶🐾🫡
👍 btw not looking for a satisfying answer, just poking the bear so to speak to see what people think. I’ve already prompted chatgpt inside out on the topic beyond my regular reading and podcast consumption.
I am with you, and I am painfully aware of how limited our minds are to grasp something so complex as this. It’s not about smart or stupid, it’s just part of evolution I guess. That level of understanding wasn’t required for us to survive. 🐶🐾😂🫂
Its a likely event based on our current observations. I won’t be around to know for sure, or at least not in this body. So I try and live a virtuous life.
idk but it would be perfect to witness it figured out while I'm alive
Space is definitely expanding (we know this with universal redshift), uniformity in CMBs is definitely an indication. Also general observations from telescopes, ages of oldest stars, point to a similar “age of the universe”.
Apart from this I don’t know. If there’s a better theory out there tomorrow that explains these things I would not be averse to it.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1
It’s just incomplete. Where did the giant rock come from? And the laws of physics?
Feel like it’s pretty obvious we’re in a vacuum flask in a lab somewhere. Just allow for scale 🤷🏻♀️
To believe purely in the “Big Bang” and everything else downstream is 100% science based and are just reactions following the laws of physics means that humans have no free will and even our every thought is pre-determined.
Many physicists have talked about this on the Lex Fridman podcast. I choose not to believe this because it shatters all meaning in life. Not 100% sure what I do believe yet but I think and meditate on it constantly.
Alvin Plantinga is great on the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism in 'Where the conflict really lies'.
He presents a defeater for belief in Naturalism and evolution if Naturalism and evolution are true.
If our minds have come from a process aimed at survival, the probability that they produce true belief, is low. If the probability that out minds produce true belief is low, it is not rational to believe the beliefs that our minds produce, including belief in Naturalism and evolution.
This argument might seem trivial at first, because we naturally believe the deliverances of our minds to be true, but it is a solid philosophical defeater that has no defeater.
That's precisely why we have the scientific method, so we don't have to "believe". And based on it, evolution (natural selection) and the big bang (cosmic inflation) are the best answers we have right now.
Also based on it, because we don't "believe" in evolution and the big bang, we keep applying the scientific method and questioning them, trying to find refinements to them and maybe whole new paradigms that completely supercede them.
What's quite clear though is that there's no magic man in the sky throwing bolts and distributing rewards to individuals based on how closely they believe the apocryphal writings of whatever middle eastern medieval crook.
I mostly agree, but we will never that we have things right cuz we can never know what we don’t know.
Remember that for years there was only one man on the planet who believed it wasn’t flat, all other figures of authority in “science” believed it was flat and the center of the universe.
There is always room for belief because we don’t know what is around the corner and there is always a chance that what we find around the corner aligns with some beliefs.
Yes... since the amount of energy in the universe is still increasing, it's probably still happening. But I don't know if I can believe it to be the conception of the universe. Maybe just the universe as we know it? I kind of get behind the idea of black holes being universe regenerators. There is no such thing as nothing so it all had to come from somewhere... it just makes sense to me.
There is a short story by Asimov called 'The Last Question' that reflects on this. If you haven't read it, do so 🙂. It is one of his best texts and my absolute favourite. I know I'm not answering you directly but Asimov had more imagination than me, of course.
Can I talk abt the sitcom instead lol ? I think Kaley Cuoco is hilarious and Young Sheldon is the best!
I have no idea what you just said 😂
lol, glad to introduce humour to the day - its funny! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898266/
#[3] … 😂
“Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and as it always has, rock crushes scissors.”—Sheldon
Lol 😂 sheldon’s character is just priceless. It’s like the opposite of Kramer in Seinfeld but both are a win!
The scientific method eliminates the need for "belief". Based on it, those two (very broad) theories are used as frameworks to give a variety of answers.
Some are more plausible than others, but all of them more likely than a magic spirit man in the sky meddling in the affairs of men.
The point is that because we do not "believe" in evolution and the big bang, we keep applying the scientific method to them and we keep making progress.
Your questions "Do you believe in the Big Bang theory?" and "If yes, what convinced you that this is how the universe came to be?" imply that if there is a Big Bang, then this Big Bang is how the universe came to be. But that's not the case.
General relativity theory is a proper description of spacetime, and GRT includes singularities like the center of black holes and the big bang singularity. So the Big Bang is real, indeed. It is a misconception, though, that spacetime comes into existence via the big bang. Spacetime, including it's laws, and including the Big Bang, is emergent from more fundamental objects and laws that we describe by Quantum Mechanics. (The Copenhagen interpretation was a philosophical belief system that denied this and made up some nonsense about collapsing wave functions, but all that's left of that deeply unscientific bullshit today is the attitude "shut up and calculate" of some really bad college text books.)
To apply the scientific method about the question how the universe came to be, you have to mathematically model how spacetime emerges from quantum mechanics and then try to falsify that model's observable predictions by experiments. If generations of physicists keep being interested enough in failing on that subject, you can finally consider it knowledge. This is why we know that GRT is a proper description of spacetime and therefore that the Big Bang exists. But we're not there yet about spacetime emergence from quantum state. We have some very plausible theories but not enough conductible experiments to observe that reality manifests in that ways. And without experiment it's just belief. Even in science.
In short: We don't know how the universe came to be. But we know that it just includes a Big Bang and did not originate itself from one.