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Is there genuinely good evidence that the universe could have been eternal/infinite into the past?

Meow Mix

Chatte Féministe
Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.

I'm at a keyboard now.

Cosmology doesn't have a direct answer to this. Direct observation into the past (by looking out to large redshifts) is limited by the time of last scattering, beyond which the universe was opaque. Everything beyond the surface of last scattering is extrapolated with well-understood mechanisms (some of which have made some of the best predictions to match experimental observation in the history of science).

So we already have the problem that there isn't direct observation, even though looking "out" is looking "back."

The other problem is that we do not have a working theory of quantum gravity, which would be necessary to really understand what was going on when the universe's size was on the order of the Planck scale. This includes understanding what would have been occurring around the Planck time after the Big Bang event.

Since time's arrow is given by the entropic gradient, and it's questionable what sort of entropic events would be happening on the order of one Planck time, it's not even really clear whether the concept of having a "time before the first Planck time" even has cognitive meaning.

This is a really roundabout way of saying "there isn't sufficient data, and the question might be wrong in the first place." Asking what was "before" the Planck time may well be like asking what's north of the North Pole.

Having said that, though, there is the concept of metatime. Temporal dimensions are always characterized by gradients, and there may be other gradients by which to give time an arrow than this universe's entropic gradient. For instance, the best way to understand this is by imagining a hypothetical multiverse where new universes are created: within each universe, there is a beginning to time (the entropic maximum for that universe), but overall there is a more encompassing metatime.

And this brings me to the most direct possible answer to your question: do we have good reasons to think there might be an infinite past?

The answer is "yes, but..."

The "yes" portion is that if inflation is true (and it has every appearance of being true), then it's really hard to avoid a multiverse because the inflaton fields decay asymmetrically, leading to "bubble universes" where it has decayed (and ours would be one such example). While inflation decayed here, it is still ongoing elsewhere, and has no reason to ever end, and no reason to have ever began.

The "but" portion is that while inflation is a scientific inquiry in terms of the local universe, I wouldn't strictly call eternal inflation elsewhere scientific because we can't empirically observe it: we have to leave the realm of pure science and enter the realm of philosophy to make those kinds of assertions. I am not saying that means the assertions are without evidence or without good reasons to think them, however.

Let me wrap this already-too-long response up by saying this: what we can say for sure is that there is zero evidence that the universe ontologically began to exist, even with the Big Bang (the most we can say is that its present local state began). This means that it remains a possibility that the universe is infinite and eternal. I am not sure how that could be shown, however.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
The observable universe seems to have been in its current state for about 13 billion years and seems to be able to maintain itself in that current state for at the very least a couple more billion years though I'm not a theoretical physicist so I can't give you any special information.

"In current state"? When has the universe been "in current state" other than only in the "current time"? And you say it will be "in current state" for "more billion years" in your own words? Based on what is that? I dont think I have heard that from any one in this day and age. Please provide your reasoning for that.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.

Science does not have conclusions in this matter.

Maybe you will find philosophical arguments.
 

MonkeyFire

Well-Known Member
If the universe began what was just hapening there that whole time. Imo, singularity is the most logical thing. I believe time space and living things are all infinite. In order to free yourself from samsara you had to have gone through some sort of creation.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Why? Could you explain?
You can't put borders on beginning and endings.

It's impossible. Because everything has dimension and dynamics which goes into infinity.

Essentially you cannot contain any beginning or ending like a box because there's always going to be an 'outside' of that box.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
You can't put borders on beginning and endings.

It's impossible. Because everything has dimension and dynamics which goes into infinity.

Essentially you cannot contain any beginning or ending like a box because there's always going to be an 'outside' of that box.

How do you think Stephen Hawkins makes the assertion that the radius of the universe is expanding at a critical rate?
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
.. particularly from William Lane Craig who says ..
Do arguments by William Lane Craig have that much worth that they should be considered? Theories range from no universe (Advaita Hinduism, my style) to universes cropping up at each Planck's moment.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Think of it like an nuclear explosion, ..
It was not a bang, it was a hissss.

Science does not have conclusions in this matter.
Maybe you will find philosophical arguments.
It is a pity that science does not have conclusions about it. Science is working on this, but to depend on philosophy alone will be stupidity. We have been doing that in all past human history.
In order to free yourself from samsara you had to have gone through some sort of creation.
Perhaps Samsara is only your imagination.
 
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RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Time before and time after exist only in the imagination. Beginnings and endings are functions of the manner in which we, subjective beings that we are, experience time. If time is not linear, then it may have neither beginning nor end. Why should it?

All we have is the now, the eternal expanding moment, but we are rarely able to experience that moment because we are distracted by two illusions; memories of the past, and anticipation of the future.

I don’t suppose that helps much with the OPs questions; except perhaps to suggest that the way we think about time, and everything we think we know about it, is limited by our imaginations, and probably does not reflect it’s true nature.
 
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Brickjectivity

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.
There is no final answer, yet. Therefore its possible, Scientifically speaking, that the universe has no age. The Big Bang shows some sort of age, but the existence of Quantum foam (which is not theoretical but definitely is measurable) suggests that we don't really know what space is or whether the universe has an age.

Also there is not a perfect relationship between Relativity and Quantum theory. Nothing is settled.
 

WalterTrull

Godfella
Well if we only know of the observable universe and know nothing then I guess it makes no sense for me to ask my question then :(
Well, yeah it does. Most everyone on this forum asks that question in one way or another.
My attempt to answer it is:
All we are sure of is the observation. It is quite possible that observation is all that exists and not its objects. If all that exists is now, then past and future are simply ways of structuring now. Since we appear to be many and we share observations, my question expands to whose or what's observation. I find the closest attempt to answer that lies in the prayer: "Our father who art in heaven...Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven..."
This seems to me a reference to a mental universe. I won't label the mentality. That just gets me into trouble.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.
I don't see how it cannot be eternal. I mean what would a border or end even look like? And it's got to have it's own dimension for it to be a border or limit. It kind of falls in with the multiverse and string theory in ways.

It just keeps going on and on that way.

That's why I'm mostly convinced we are residing in what can only be described as a neverending limitless continuum.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
i am not bright enough to contemplate such things

but if the universe didn’t have a beginning, it seems like we couldn’t be here now

doesn’t now have to be a point in time that follows from other points?

I think without a beginning there wouldn’t be a beginning point, for others to follow from

this makes me think of Spaceballs for some reason
Think of a number line. To make it a bit easier, let's constrain it to just the numbers between 0 and 1. To get from 0 to 1 you'd first have to pass the half point at 0.5 (or 1/2). Then you'd have to pass half of the remainder, another 1/4 to 3/4. There are infinite many steps to take, even if you have a beginning. It is impossible to reach "now" either way.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.
Can you imagine something infinite or eternal?
Can you imagine something beginning without imagining also that there is something beyond that point/time?
We simply lack experience with either. Everyday objects/events have limits in time and space and there is always something beyond those limits.
The only discipline that deals with infinities is mathematics. You have to ask a mathematician (@Polymath257 for example). He may be able to answer you, but if you aren't a mathematician yourself, you'd likely not understand the answer.
 

epronovost

Well-Known Member
"In current state"? When has the universe been "in current state" other than only in the "current time"? And you say it will be "in current state" for "more billion years" in your own words? Based on what is that? I dont think I have heard that from any one in this day and age. Please provide your reasoning for that.

Well we know that the observable universe is something that occurred after a period of rapid expansion and inflation that we commonly refer to as "the Big Bang". At the very beginning of the Big Bang, the universe was in a very different sate, much more dense and much more hot. The universe, according to all current reading, still expanding and that if it continues to expand it could change state once again hence theories like "Big Crunch" where the universe collapse on itself or the "heat death" where the universe simply dissolve itself into nothingness. The universe in its current state means a universe with spacetime, gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, electromagnetism, celestial bodies like planets, moons, stars, asteroids, etc.
 

Magical Wand

Active Member
are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it?

Hi, Jos! I have an argument for an infinite past.

So, most apologists claim we should accept the universe had a cause (if it began) because we never observe things beginning to exist without a cause and we always observe things being caused. Ergo, it is much more likely the first event also had a cause. (But not all say that; some say we have a metaphysical intuition against that possibility).

My argument is that we also never observed a moment that had no temporal predecessor. In fact, all moments we have observed have temporal predecessors. Therefore, we should conclude all moments have temporal predecessors. But if we conclude that, then an infinite past is necessary since a finite past would necessarily entail some moment had no temporal predecessor.

Now, this is prima facie reason to accept a beginningless time-line. Here apologists would try to argue against this possibility by saying an infinite past is impossible or that cosmology provides evidence of an absolute beginning.

However, these arguments are wrong. I've written an entire post (very heavy and extensive) refuting scientific arguments, and I also addressed philosophical arguments.

Cosmology: Does Modern Cosmology Prove the Universe Had a Beginning?

Philosophy: A Critical Examination of the Kalam Cosmological Fallacy

Feel free to check it out. Then tell me what you think about it. :)
 

Jeremiah Ames

Well-Known Member
You're in good company cause neither am I


I've heard of this argument before, particularly from William Lane Craig who says that an infinite past could never allow for the present to exist as it leads to contradictions but I never really got the gist of it. Why would that be so? Would an infinite amount of things have to happen all at once and thus the present could never arrive ie. all points in time playing out at once?

thanks for asking that

unfortunately I don’t get the gist of it either

I hadn’t even heard the concept before

i always thought the universe was around 13 billion years old, and had no reason to question it
 
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