How Did the Universe Come to Be?

[viole]

In your understanding, how did the universe come to be?

Was it created*? If so, by what?

If you don't think it was created, how did universe come to be as we experience it?


*For the purpose of this thread, we will define 'create' as 'to bring into existence.' Also, let's please not jump to the conclusion that 'creating' automatically assumes intelligence.

i am a supporter of the ontology of time which is most natural, if relativity is true. Namely, the B theory of time.

under this ontology, the question is meaningless, for the Universe cannot possibly have come to be. For the same reason, spacerime blocks, which are not abstract contexts, but true physical objects, cannot be born, evolve, die. They just are.

ciao

- viole

 

[Twilight Hue]

Elephant in the room?

What if you're the elephant?

 

[MonkeyFire]

I believe the universe has been forever before and after. No creation except for Satan, everyone else had been for an preternity.

 

[blü 2]

In your understanding, how did the universe come to be?

Was it created*? If so, by what?

If you don't think it was created, how did universe come to be as we experience it?


*For the purpose of this thread, we will define 'create' as 'to bring into existence.' Also, let's please not jump to the conclusion that 'creating' automatically assumes intelligence.

At this stage of our understanding, the universe necessarily consists of the contents of the Big Bang. I take it that the contents of the Big Bang were mass-energy, and that this universe, its dimensions, forces, particles, processes and phenomena, are all mass-energy or properties or consequences of mass-energy.

If it be correct that at Time zero the Big Bang was a singularity, then indeed at present we have no access to information about any earlier state.

This has sometimes led to the claim that the Big Bang brought the universe into existence ex nihilo ─ out of pure nothing. With a pure nothing, there's no energy, no dimensions, no time or space or place or structure, there's just utter absence. I don't see how that can be correct. It seems necessary, instead, that mass-energy pre-existed, and was instrumental in forming, the Big Bang. How? There are clever guesses, but no answer.

So the universe exists because mass-energy exists, and time, as part of our universe, is therefore a property or consequence of mass-energy. So ex hypothesi time too pre-existed the universe. Since on this basis time exists because mass-energy does, and not vice versa, there's no ultimate problem about beginnings.

 

[blü 2]

Mathematical Universe seems as good or better than any other.

The Mathematical Universe

Fie! 'Tis but Platonism!

 

[Audie]

Fie! 'Tis but Platonism!

Oh? How is that?

 

[Terry Sampson]

1. In your understanding, how did the universe come to be?
2. Was it created*?
3. If so, by what?
4. If you don't think it was created, how did universe come to be as we experience it?

*For the purpose of this thread, we will define 'create' as 'to bring into existence.' Also, let's please not jump to the conclusion that 'creating' automatically assumes intelligence.

• Theory A:
  • The cosmos consists of stuff constantly moving through infinite space over time. It always has been thus, and always will be thus.
    
  • The cosmos, as a whole, is boundless and eternal.
  • Subsets of stuff accumulate in various locations over time, and either crash into each other or fizzle and dissipate , in either case scattering the stuff in many directions.
  • The "thing" astronomers refer to as the "universe" is just one of the subsets of accumulated stuff that has formed, some 13.5+/- billion years ago.
• Theory B:
  • There is just one universe, consisting of stuff constantly moving through space over time.
  • Some can be seen or inferred; the rest can't be seen and tends to be unacknowledged except by the clever.
  • Subsets of the stuff traveled from there, there, there, ...., and there; accumulated here, and formed a larger subset which is currently and incorrectly called "The Universe", under the mistaken notion that the puny thing that moderns "think" they can see or infer is all that there is.
  • The whole is boundless and eternal; the puny thing is neither boundless nor eternal.
• The question that occasionally intrigues me is: If either theory is true, then what things/events are impossible?

 

[Salvador]

In your understanding, how did the universe come to be?

Was it created*? If so, by what?

If you don't think it was created, how did universe come to be as we experience it?


*For the purpose of this thread, we will define 'create' as 'to bring into existence.' Also, let's please not jump to the conclusion that 'creating' automatically assumes intelligence.

Please allow me to hypothesize time as having been bent; time has infinitely approached closer to nothingness, but has never actually been totally nothing. Basically, there was never a "Big Bang" that produced something from nothing; it just appears that way from humankind's perspective.

 

[blü 2]

Oh? How is that?

Maths exists nowhere but in working brains (and not necessarily in all of them) because concepts are only found in working brains. The entities of maths are all abstractions, and abstractions are a form of concept with no real counterpart (eg the difference between 'this chair', real counterpart possible, and 'a chair', no real counterpart).

That's why you never find uninstantiated twos running round naked in the wild. Or real uninstantiated π's or e's or i's and so on.

(And you never find real points, real lines, real planes, either. They too only exist as concepts with no real counterpart.)

Not only that, but before you can count to (an instantiated) two, you must first make two choices: what things you're going to count, and the field you're going to count them in. How many sheep in the barn? How many animals in the barn? How many kinds of grass / blades of grass / seeds of grass in this nook / lawn / golf course &c. The choices don't exist in nature ─ the onlooker has to make them.

Plato's theories of 'forms' says that each instantiation eg 'this chair', gets its quality of being a chair ─ 'chairness' ─ from the form 'perfect chair', which has, if not objective existence in the sense of being found in nature, some kind of existence independent of the onlooker with some kind of access to the chair in question.

And the idea that maths exists independently of the concepts of maths found in brains is called 'mathematical Platonism'.

Since in preferring the 'concept' concept, I reject Plato's 'forms', for the same reason I disagree with the mathematical Platonists too, including your Max Tegmark, and Roger Penrose, and not a few others.

 

[shunyadragon]

Ah, I meant logical causation as in the universe's cause lies in God even if that's not a temporal event, so allowing for the universe to theoretically be a metaphysically necessary co-eternal thing, though one causally dependant upon God.

This same logic assumes the existence of God as far as the your argument goes . . .

 

[shunyadragon]

In your understanding, how did the universe come to be?

Was it created*? If so, by what?

Naturally regardless of whether God exists or not. Created by natural methond.

Was it created*? If so, by what?

naturally regardless of whether God exists or not.

*For the purpose of this thread, we will define 'create' as 'to bring into existence.' Also, let's please not jump to the conclusion that 'creating' automatically assumes intelligence.

The existence of God cannot be equated to an anthropomorphic assumption of intelligence.

 

[Galateasdream]

This same logic assumes the existence of God as far as the your argument goes . . .

Well, yes. I not presenting an argument for the existence of God, merely stating what I believe about the universe.

 

[Mock Turtle]

What if you're the elephant?

Probably am, feeling more Dimbo than Dumbo though.

 

[Audie]

Maths exists nowhere but in working brains (and not necessarily in all of them) because concepts are only found in working brains. The entities of maths are all abstractions, and abstractions are a form of concept with no real counterpart (eg the difference between 'this chair', real counterpart possible, and 'a chair', no real counterpart).

That's why you never find uninstantiated twos running round naked in the wild. Or real uninstantiated π's or e's or i's and so on.

(And you never find real points, real lines, real planes, either. They too only exist as concepts with no real counterpart.)

Not only that, but before you can count to (an instantiated) two, you must first make two choices: what things you're going to count, and the field you're going to count them in. How many sheep in the barn? How many animals in the barn? How many kinds of grass / blades of grass / seeds of grass in this nook / lawn / golf course &c. The choices don't exist in nature ─ the onlooker has to make them.

Plato's theories of 'forms' says that each instantiation eg 'this chair', gets its quality of being a chair ─ 'chairness' ─ from the form 'perfect chair', which has, if not objective existence in the sense of being found in nature, some kind of existence independent of the onlooker with some kind of access to the chair in question.

And the idea that maths exists independently of the concepts of maths found in brains is called 'mathematical Platonism'.

Since in preferring the 'concept' concept, I reject Plato's 'forms', for the same reason I disagree with the mathematical Platonists too, including your Max Tegmark, and Roger Penrose, and not a few others.

Yeah.... but, reasonable or not, afaic, math exists entirely independent
of the universe.

Plato's forms, not so much.

 

[syo]

The universe is the gift of the Gods to us.

 

[Audie]

The universe is the gift of the Gods to us.

Me, actually.


The Egg by Andy Weir

 

[PearlSeeker]

Everything must have a cause unless it is the first cause (to summ up Aquinas).

I don't know if this universe is the only. I don't know if big bang is it's (only) beginning or is it a part of an endless cycles.

I don't know if this is the first cause of this universe, it just seems to me some Cosmic Mind likes beauty, order, variety... and polarity (yin-yang). And maybe it likes an orchestra of tiny strings (if the theory is true)...

 

[Ancient Soul]

I regard the phrase 'the universe' to include all matter and energy throughout space and time.

As such, it did not 'come to be'; time is part of the universe and 'coming to be' requires time.

As far as I can see, the universe 'just is'.

You could have just stated:

"I don't know."

And saved everyone some reading time.

 

[blü 2]

Yeah.... but, reasonable or not, afaic, math exists entirely independent
of the universe.

So you are indeed a mathematical Platonist! And I have a serious question for you: how and where, exactly, does maths exist 'entirely independent of the universe', and how is it possible for humans nonetheless to have access to it?

 

[Audie]

So you are indeed a mathematical Platonist! And I have a serious question for you: how and where, exactly, does maths exist 'entirely independent of the universe', and how is it possible for humans nonetheless to have access to it?

Sorry aaahh! I dont know, it is just
what I think!
I love to argue but I cannot meet you
on the field of honour on this!
No horse, lance or armour!