What If?

[Robbo]

I like 'What Ifs' as long as they are asked seriously, and by that I mean the question is asked to provoke an answer that might reveal something.

Einstein and many other scientists use the 'What Ifs' to scratch at the surface of the universe's secrets; 'What Ifs' challenge orthodox mindsets and sometimes open the door to experimental techniques that turn the 'What If' question into an experimental truth thus nudging back that fringe of doubt that permeates every person who is able to think past 'Dancing on Ice' or 'Eastenders' ......
Certainly some truths are discovered withouth experimentation, these are called 'a priori' discoveries and the 'What If' questoin is crucial to this branch of learning as Einstein discovered when pondering the absolute nature of time, or so everybody thought before Bertie Einstein blew that out of the water.

And so, what if..we acknowledge there was a Big Bang, and trust me on this one, the scientific evidence in my mind, is overwhelming even though the religious nuts would have us jettison commonsense in favour of complete buffoonery.

Our notion of time is a human trait, time itself was ONLY created at the instant the 'big' went Bang!

And so it's ludicrous to ask, what happened before the big bang, because the word 'before' is time-lined; it is dependent upon a continuum that we call time and if it wasn't around in a place that had no big bang (notice I said 'place' and not time) then WTF was going on?


And so, what if we look beyond the big bang, in what us humans mistakenly describe as before the big bang, what was it like living with no time to punctuate existence.....assuming there was existence of some kind..I mean can we describe God as existing?
Is God alone or does he create Angels for some form of social comfort?
That seemed such a stooopid questoin as I just typed it out but I am gonna leave it in anyway ...

Some people believe the universe spontaneously created itself and they are actively developing branches of mathematics to prove as much ..and I have to say, I haven't seen any of the maths (not that I'd understand it anyway) but I hear they are making headway, which is kinda frightening because it suggests they can mathematically prove there is no God..which would kick me right in the balls coz that goes against everything I believe.

Anyway, enough of what I believe, what do you guys think was going on where there was, and is, and will be, no time?

First of all, you have to deal with, is there a God to populate this place with no time and go on from there? .....should be fun

 

[Ainsley]

Jesus Pete, you sure know how to pick em!

Mathematics can prove whatever it wants, they set out to prove something and sooner or later, it will be proven. I can bet my life savings that God could also be proven to exist by mathematics as well if they wanted to......but why would they? It's a double edged sword, always will be.

As for time, our notion is a twisted one, developed to offer meaning and control that is applicable to our daily lives. I'm pretty sure if a 'God' had a clock on 'its' wall, it wouldn't be a 24hr one.

Whatever you call it though, time is here regardless of if we are here or not to measure it. If there was a bang, call it point B, there must have been a point A before it to cause B. Likewise, as we don't know what happened at A, we have to take the start of time as B to make us feel safe (?) about living in C......and the fact that is the only thing we can measure from. To us, point A is really quite irrelevant in terms of time.

I don't think time was born at the creation, more like it was a reason for it, and without it, the universe would not exist. If there wasn't time, no wonder there was a bang! God was probably bored s*******

 

[Piper]

Oh jesus!

This is too intelligent for me!

 

[jagerpirate]

Your telling me, I don't even understand the question!

 

[Robbo]

Jesus Pete, you sure know how to pick em!

Of course I do, that's my job on here

Mathematics can prove whatever it wants, they set out to prove something and sooner or later, it will be proven. I can bet my life savings that God could also be proven to exist by mathematics as well if they wanted to......but why would they? It's a double edged sword, always will be.

Untrue mate, mathematics cannot prove the things that are unprovable, if there is a truth to be found, then mathematics will provide the language to understand that truth in mathematical form but it cannot prove whatever it wants ...if it could, it wouldn't be mathematics, it would just be a nonsensical language with no use whatsoever.
Mathematics is the most pure, beautiful and eloquent form of language known to man, it can be described as such because it's unambiguous, endeavours to be absolute in nature and thus can be trusted to exhibit and explain the world in which we find ourselves.

As for time, our notion is a twisted one, developed to offer meaning and control that is applicable to our daily lives. I'm pretty sure if a 'God' had a clock on 'its' wall, it wouldn't be a 24hr one.

'Twisted' in this sense just means adapted, and of we course format time in a way that is easily understandable and usable, it makes sense to do this and shouldn't be highlighted as a criticism or a weakness.
Time on an everyday level for the average Joe is simple but we have other forms of time available to us because we understand time isn't absolute.
We do not as you suggest all live by one form of time, we have a multiplicity of 'understandings' and we adapt our calibration or thinking around that difference.

Whatever you call it though, time is here regardless of if we are here or not to measure it. If there was a bang, call it point B, there must have been a point A before it to cause B. Likewise, as we don't know what happened at A, we have to take the start of time as B to make us feel safe (?) about living in C......and the fact that is the only thing we can measure from. To us, point A is really quite irrelevant in terms of time.

I don't think time was born at the creation, more like it was a reason for it, and without it, the universe would not exist. If there wasn't time, no wonder there was a bang! God was probably bored s*******

I cannot for the life of me believe time wasn't created at the big bang, you suggest there was a point A prior to B and you do this because you are presumably assigning 'causality' to what went down which kinda suggests time was there before the big bang.
I fundamentally disagree with this proposition because time as we know it, linear forward moving time, is inextricably woven into the fabric of this universe, so much so, that I find it impossible to believe the universe and time weren't created together.
The universe obviously needs time to give it existence but this is not a reason to believe time is independent.

 

[Ainsley]

What I meant by my mathematics point is that when used in the context of the universe, our understanding of maths relative our world is flawed. If we introduce infinity into the equation, effectively dividing by zero, it allows you to “prove” that 1 = 2. From that perspective, from the ground up we have a problem wouldn't you say? I agree that maths is the purest form of explaining anything, but when it comes to things like this, it requires greater reasoning of the information that we are granted at this present time.

I never meant to imply our 'adaptation' (better word there Pete, thanks ) of time is a weakness. It serves its purpose extremely well for us; I was merely trying to highlight the sense of 'huge' when it comes to our roles in the grand scheme of things. As we know time is not a constant factor, being bent and misshaped my mass in the universe. What we think of as time must be something far grander than we can ever imagine.

I'm just debating the last point here.....

Yes it is in the fabric of the universe, and can see your point. It makes sense that way to imagine it being spread out with the universe after the big bang, woven in to all matter. However, I don't think of time as matter. It doesn't have a physical body, we scale it as we see fit, and it can't be extracted from anything. There had to be something before B, including some kind of God. Why did time have to be created in the bang?

Pete, now my head hurts and I've got loads of work to do.....couldn't you have left this one for the weekend?! I might start one on the Koch snowflake.....a shape contained in a finite area with an infinite perimeter - just for Tom Allen and his snowflake fetish

 

[TEKLOFTY]

The only way i can conceive of a place without time is by thinking comparitively and metaphorically about some arbitrary holiday island - if i ponder it deeper then i find myself questioning our definition of time.

With that in mind, what is time in the context of everything, both before and after the Big Bang? If I take it as simply the progression of 'things' or energy from one form to the next then I can start to contemplate the question. Ultimately, I don't think a human can physically see themselves on a cosmic scale because we need that raison d'être, whether scientific of religious we need that existential sense of being and so we posit questions like this; could it be that the question was irrelevant and that there was either A) Simply nothing before time as we see it began or B) Something completely beyond our understanding, (hence we need to make something up that we do understand, gods/deities/theories etc...)?

 

[Robbo]

What I meant by my mathematics point is that when used in the context of the universe, our understanding of maths relative our world is flawed. If we introduce infinity into the equation, effectively dividing by zero, it allows you to “prove” that 1 = 2. From that perspective, from the ground up we have a problem wouldn't you say? I agree that maths is the purest form of explaining anything, but when it comes to things like this, it requires greater reasoning of the information that we are granted at this present time.

The anomaly you mention whereby you can prove 1 = 2 is just that, an anomaly, it is not indicative of any inherent flaw in mathematics, and so can be ignored if the rest of mathematics follows its rules and axioms, which it does.

I never meant to imply our 'adaptation' (better word there Pete, thanks ) of time is a weakness. It serves its purpose extremely well for us; I was merely trying to highlight the sense of 'huge' when it comes to our roles in the grand scheme of things. As we know time is not a constant factor, being bent and misshaped my mass in the universe. What we think of as time must be something far grander than we can ever imagine.

Everything you mention there Ainsley is already acknowledged; I think you are trying to introduce the notion of perspective here in terms of the common man; And yes, it is awe inspiring, even for the cosmologists who work every day in this field but this sense of awe (hugeness as you term it) doesn't in any way impinge upon the work being done or in fact, its understanding.
Time is extremely well understood in many cases but as you imply, it also raises many questions, and there are many that remain unanswered.

I'm just debating the last point here.....

Yes it is in the fabric of the universe, and can see your point. It makes sense that way to imagine it being spread out with the universe after the big bang, woven in to all matter. However, I don't think of time as matter. It doesn't have a physical body, we scale it as we see fit, and it can't be extracted from anything. There had to be something before B, including some kind of God. Why did time have to be created in the bang?

If there was no time created at the big bang, then there would be no big bang !!!!
Time was an integral necessity to the cosmos because unless it (universe) has time, there can be no event, period !
There would be no 4th dimensional extension (time) for the event (Big Bang) to move in to and exist.
As they say, 'Time is of the essence' !

 

[ReservoirFrog]

If time is the fourth dimension, all be it the non-spacial one, I suppose it stands to reason that it needed a point of zero in order to exist. Just as any of the other 3 need a start point. They can be infinite in any direction but still need a start point to exist.
If I'm stating the obvious here, I apologise, I'm just getting it straight in my own shed.

 

[Robbo]

The only way i can conceive of a place without time is by thinking comparitively and metaphorically about some arbitrary holiday island - if i ponder it deeper then i find myself questioning our definition of time.

With that in mind, what is time in the context of everything, both before and after the Big Bang? If I take it as simply the progression of 'things' or energy from one form to the next then I can start to contemplate the question. Ultimately, I don't think a human can physically see themselves on a cosmic scale because we need that raison d'être, whether scientific of religious we need that existential sense of being and so we posit questions like this; could it be that the question was irrelevant and that there was either A) Simply nothing before time as we see it began or B) Something completely beyond our understanding, (hence we need to make something up that we do understand, gods/deities/theories etc...)?

OK, good post, it's got me thinking instead of writing out a knee-jerk response......I don't think the question can be termed 'irrelevant', more academic is maybe a better description.

And in that sense, you have a point, but you are suggesting such a question is devalued because of the possible answers, both of which ostensibly negate the question asked.

My only room for manoeuvre here seems to be on the latter option, of you suggesting those circumstances before the big bang are 'something completely beyond our understanding'...
I would propose there is a way we might understand circumstances before the big bang, whether its through mathematics or scientific exploration, it matters not, but I think having come so far, I cannot for the life of me, believe there is something there that we can't get some sort of handle on .....ironically enough, science is almost there, it's just a matter of time