Universe Race

I can't really add anything beyond the answers of Chiroptera and Rahvin. As Chiroptera said there could be anything preceding the point where we can't model. The universe may have existed for billions of years before that and time itself might break down as a concept. I don't know anything about the period before GR breaks down. So I don't know:
(a)The answers to your questions.
(b)If your questions make sense, as the future theory might render such questions inapplicable.We can't establish anything about T=0. The Big Bang is not a theory of origins.

Hi Son, If it was there prior to T=O which is as far as GR can go, then it had to exist in a state of timelessness.So if it had been there in a timeless state why all of a sudden did it start to expand? There has to be a cause, as there was a timeless nothingness except the minature universe.Same thing if it was sitting there in Hawking's imaginary time why did it all of a sudden start to expand?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

It didn't have too. There could be time that is less than zero... negative time, if you will. You seem to be thinking of the singularity as hanging out for a while within some "place" and then one day it just starts expanding. This is not within the Big Bang model. Perhaps the sigularity didn't exist for any amount of time and the universe has been exanding for all of time. Perhaps a 'different' universe existed before T=0, which was collapsing into a singularity, and then immediatly after reaching a singularity began to exand again into the universe we are experience this time around.The point is, there did not have to be a cause.Besides, even if there did have to be a cuase, that cause doesn't have to be god.

Hi CS You inject the bounce theory as a cause of the expansion and then turn around and say there did not have to be a cause.What kind of double talk is that? Everybody keeps telling me this.
That is why I keep asking for a scientific answer and I am getting none.If I say: "In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
Everybody says where is your proof? I say it says so in the book of Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. Everybody says the Bible is a lie, it can't be trusted, it is just a myth, it is not a book of science.
Then everybody says where is your proof Goddidit?I am asking the same questions I would be asked.What caused the minature universe to start to expand?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

I don't know.

Heh.Anyway, even if there is a t=0 point in time, there probably wasn't anything before t=0. Not even nothing.

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If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
-- The Barenaked Ladies

Wha-wha-what! Es imposible!If there was not nothing, then it must have been God.[/sarcasm]

A physics textbook is no more proof than a bible. We don't believe in science because it's written in a textbook. We believe it because it can be verified and/or duplicated. We're also not going to tell you that you can't believe in god, but we are going to insist you don't call the existance of god a fact.

Well, be a little more accurate. People are telling you that there is no scientific answer, at least not yet.And some, like me, have been saying that there may not even be a scientific answer in principle.But because there isn't an answer doesn't mean that one can just believe whatever one wants. When there isn't an answer, then one simply accepts that there isn't an answer.Well, okay, one can always believe what one wants; one can even believe what one wants even when there is a scientific answer. We see this all the time here, where people believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old even though it is very clearly billions. Of course that is foolish, believing what one wants despite the actual answer being very clear. But I don't think it's much less foolish to believe what one wants even when there is no clear answer whatsoever.

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If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
-- The Barenaked Ladies

Umm...ICANT, "We don't know." is a scientific answer.If we didn't know, but nonetheless asserted that the answer was {insert fantasy here}, then that would be unscientific.What part of this is troubling you?

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Mutate and Survive

The part where we're not saying, "Omigosh! Materialist atheism is completely wrong! There must be a God!"

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If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
-- The Barenaked Ladies

Not specific enough. He wants us to agree that Genesis 1:1 is accurate - meaning the Christian god exists.

Even more specifically, he would like you to agree his version of the Christian god exists.
Good luck with that ICANT.

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Mutate and Survive

What caused the minature universe to start to expand?CS says:

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I Don't Know

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correct answer.Calypso says:

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We don't believe in science because it's written in a textbook. We believe it because it can be verified and/or duplicated.

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Then verify.Chiroptera says:

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Well, be a little more accurate. People are telling you that there is no scientific answer, at least not yet.

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Yes, some, but I did get other answers. Like it just is.Granny Magda says:

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"We don't know." is a scientific answer.

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I call it the only answer.Son Goku says:

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We can't establish anything about T=0.

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Hawking says on page 40: Here

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There is, however, a second and more serious objection. Cosmology can not predict
anything about the universe unless it makes some assumption about the initial conditions.

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So to trust the Big Bang Theory I have to make some assumptions concerning how it happened.That sounds like I got to believe it happened the way Science says it was just because Science says it was.That is faith.Not when I have a problem with a statement cavediver made HereNothing can travel faster than the speed of light as it would be going back in time.Unless you invoke a special exception and call it inflation.
Thats a neat fudge factor.If space is expanding between every quarks & leptons at light speed, how did anything get together to form anything?That would also mean the the universe is round, wouldn't it?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hawking does not mean initial conditions in the sense of "how the universe began". He is making the fairly simple statement that dynamical laws evolve an initial state. However that initial state doesn't have to be the beginning of everything.However at this point your questions have become overtly ridiculous. You have been repeatedly told that science says nothing about what was going on at T=0 and yet in your previous post you ask: Even though science says nothing about the "way it was", you somehow feel you must accept the "way science says it was". You (somehow) reject an explanation that nobody has offered.In my opinion the statement "Science doesn't know, because we have no evidence" is simply too scientific for you. Instead, you want there to be some materialist/atheist origin story, which you can then ridicule. I can tell you now; there is no point, because such a thing does not exist. There is only the experimentally verified Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe from 13.7 billion years ago to today and that theory is not a theory of origins.Either you come to an understanding of this or this thread will simply be a collection of synonyms of "We don't know what went on at T=0".