The birth of the universe

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As for creation, intelligent design, that could be done better with a few stars and each having several planets in the liquid water zone.

If that was the goal, it is way overbuilt. What we have seen, is planets around other stars that could not support life.

Still, with so many tries, there should be many planets within 1% of Earth conditions. Nothing local.

At one time the Sun was the Universe, and the stars thought to be sparks.

Then we learned it was bigger than that.

Just the idea there is one universe, of finite size, that had a beginning, is falling apart.

What lies beyond, forever and ever?

We do ask better questions, but we are stuck with much older thought.

!4 billion years and the Big Bang does not account for Black Holes. They seem older, much older.

How it all came to be is an ultimate question, and we are apes.

Maybe, but then…maybe not. If there ARE more universes, where is the evidence? That's not really a falsifiable idea.


We won't know until we get there, will we?


Not really, though… If you hold to the theory that black holes are singularities created when massive objects collapse under their own gravity, it isn't necessary that they really be that old. The general rule of thumb is the larger the star, the shorter the lifespan. I don't know the theoretical lifespan of some of the largest objects out there, as I'm barely an amateur astronomer and can't converse on the same level as a seasoned astrophysicist, but I'm sure it's theoretically possible for a supermassive object to run out of fusible fuel in much less than 13 billion years.


I dunno about THAT. But I find the relationship between the age of the earth and the age of the universe to be interesting. And with life appearing within a billion years, at that! I don't take issue with the POSSIBILITY of life crawling out of the primordial ooze, but I have serious doubts as to how life could have ORIGINATED on earth. The only way I can see it happening is if the ingredients originated in space and "seeded" the earth somehow. It's telling that there's no sign of this happening elsewhere and that we just happened to have the magic formula orbiting our particular star or a singular "rogue" source just happenstance drifting into our neighborhood. A First Cause certainly does throw the odds favorably for the birth of a life-supporting universe.

BTW, I don't pretend to have any sophistication in this area. There are better people than me at putting the argument together.

No I mean, the universe is perfect for us and appears to be carefully designed to accomodate life, and ultimately, us. But that is faulty reasoning; If the universe had been any different, we wouldn't be here asking the question, and you wouldn't be creating this thread. So the question if the universe had a designer or not doesn't make any sense, because there is only one way it had to be designed anyway. (In order to have us talk about it here that is...)

Exactly. The mistake some make (not yourself) is that they perceive it the wrong way around. That is the various parameters are set as they are to allow life to exist. Wrong, life exists purely out of chance because by chance the parameters are conducive to life. As MCalavera has already pointed out it is evolution on a cosmological scale.

@AngeRrho. I thought you were are creationist?

I don't pretend to be the most informed person in the sciences, but I certainly am not the least informed either, so I thought I would just inject a thought that i had reading your post. It involves the section of your comment that I placed in bold text above. I was under the impression that most scientists accept the idea that, when it comes to what we know as opposed to the sum of all there is to know about the universe and the laws of nature, we as a species are just beginning to understand how things work--you might say, as self aware beings, we are still in our infancy or early childhood. I certainly agree that when it comes to forms of life like ourselves, the lifeforms we are familiar with here on this tiny rock in the middle of nowhere, most of what we have observed of the universe is not suitable for that life--but this is based on the assumption that we have defined what life is clearly and exclusively, and I was under the impression that was still an arguable matter. How can we know that the sort of life we are familiar with is the only sort of life that could possibly exist in the entire universe--especially when one considers the practically unimaginable extent of said universe? Is it not at least conceivable that there could be forms of life out there so alien to us that we cannot as yet even imagine what conditions might be necessary for their existence in comparison to ourselves?

Is it not arrogance to assume we know everything there is to know about something like the phenomenon of life (are living structures not some of the most complex structures the universe has so far produced that we are aware of?--I'm thinking of the human brain here as an example) and what is required for it to exist, that there could not possibly be more to learn that may in future expand our definitions of such terms/ideas?

Why do you ask?

I was surprised to read your responses on this thread, acceptance of primordial ooze as a possibility for the beginning of life and acceptance of the age of the universe.

@starvingartist, yes it is possible that there exists a multitude of non corporeal lifeforms thriving outside of the 4.9% of the universe that is normal matter, not sure how plausible life living in dark matter or dark energy would be, but its certainly possible. But this is not the point, creationists continually point out how perfect the universe is for life as we know it to exist. All I am saying is that this is a fallacy.

I accept that God can use whatever mechanism He chooses as a means of creation. If God chose to make the first cells out of soap bubbles, that's His business. Neither Christians nor non-Christian scientists really know what happened, and I accept conjecture as such.

The age of the universe is not a problem for a Creationist. It's Gap Theory, which I believe unless I'm mistaken goes back as far as Scofield.

Evolution and the words millions and billions of years do not compute in the minds of young Earth Creationists for they cannot count that far! They can only count to 6000.

In practice, I betcha you can't either. I know I certainly can't.

Let's do some simple arithmetics:

There are 60 seconds a minute.

There are 60 minutes an hour.
60 × 60 = 3,600 seconds an hour.

There are 24 hours a day.
3,600 × 24 = 86,400 seconds a day.

There are 365.25 days in a Julian year.
86,400 × 365.25 = 31,557,600 seconds a Julian year.

On the assumption that we can consistently count a number a second throughout, we have:

1,000,000 ÷ 86,400 ≈ 11.57 days.
It will take ca. 11.57 days to count to a million.

1,000,000,000 ÷ 31,557,600 ≈ 31.69 Julian years.
It will take ca. 31.69 Julian years to count to a billion.

The universe is supposedly 13.82 billion years old.

13,820,000,000 ÷ 31,557,600 ≈ 437.93 Julian years.
It will take ca. 437.93 Julian years to count to 13.82 billion.

It would take a group of schoolkids about 15 minutes to sing "A Hundred Bottles of Beer On the Wall".

So...

To sing "A Million Bottles of Beer On the Wall" would take about 2500 hours, or about 104 days (without taking breaks for sleep, nor eating).

So...

To sing "A Billion Bottles of Beer on the Wall" would take about thirty some years.

Yes. It is rather humbling to contemplate.

If you use a calculator and use the multiplication method it will take less time!

Philosophically this is an angle of multiverse theory. Theosophically this would be Stanzas of Dzyan.

Although I am not necessarily saying that there are an infinite or a multitude of universes currently in existence but more contemplating upon the idea that there may have been more than one big bang and in fact there may have been billions of big bang(which is very odd to think) about and if the Big Crunch happens(which some physicist think it will while others dispute it), then the possibility of another one will happen again. Thus we are the inevitable by-product of billions of big bangs and yet think we are somehow special. Of course, our minds find this difficult to comprehend since our minds are based on cause and effect even though our universe may be infinite in its age. The big bangs could have been caused I suppose by what scientists would cause 'fluctuations'. Much like particles pop out of existence in the ether, so to could have the particle that contained the universe could have appeared from a quantum vacuum.

This may explain why some eastern mystics did not refer to the universe as having a beginning or a start but just referred to it as solely 'existing'. Mystics often say that it is fallacious to see the universe consisting of a beginning and end, however this seems to be the basis of western rationalism, and instead they see the universe as one continuous cycle of birth, death and rebirth- this is represented in the eternal dance of Shiva. Shiva represents the duality of creation and destruction and perhaps this actually represents big bangs occurring infinitely to be destroyed again to create other ones. Perhaps when mystics speak about experiencing the 'infinity' of god, they are actually experiencing the 'infinity' of the universe.'

I think a scientist has actually calculated as an argument against the fine-tuning argument and has found that there may be millions of other stars that could host life. Of course, it would probably not be like ourselves, though we like to think it might be, it might just be bacteria, however it proves that life is not incredible coincidence we think it is. We are not 'special' in anyway since there are millions of other places in the universe where life could be created. Plus, through technological breakthroughs, we are beginning to genetically engineer life. We are becoming the fine tuners. Seeing that we are not special as a species I suppose is quite liberating though since worries and anxieties seem like they are part of a larger cosmic game.

Sorry to ramble on like an idiot.

What if there is just no beginning? Only transformations?