You mean, he can do that with a theory that isn't based on science? And make it work every time?
Explain those new theories please.
(I refer you to the * and ** in my post, which basically says that in my post "Scientists = scientific theories. Priests = rival theories")

Actually, given relativity, aren't all reference points valid? So its perfectly valid to describe the sun going around the earth from the reference point of earth. It is also valid to go the other way around. You could describe the motion of the solar system from the perspective of earth but its far easier to do it from the sun.

That's not relativity, it's just defining your frame of reference. But your point is reasonably valid. If I stand on earth and watch the sky then I'll see the sun go around it. But I take it they meant "going round" as in "orbiting".

Nobody says it wasn't. The big bang theory just states that all the matter in it used to be compressed into an unmeasurably dense point and at some point started shooting outwards. For the purposes of measuring stuff, they define that time to be t=0.

There's no reason to believe the matter has gone anywhere. Just because we can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't still all there.

Cite your evidence. I think most intelligent people would accept not only that there are things they don't know, but that there are things they can't know for sure. So we all walk around basing our beliefs on the most convincing evidence while accepting we may be wrong. With that in mind, a simple assertion isn't very convincing.

Incidentally, I read an argument the other day (in some mainstream media, so quite possibly a load of populist rubbish that someone more knowledgable can debunk easily) that it may not be helpful to model the big bang as t=0 because there is some incompatibility between the amount of mass that was crammed together and quantum physics. They claim it makes more sense to think that the big bang was just some sort of transition between a previous overall format of the mass and the current universe.

Where did the unmeasueably dense matter come from? Lets say this matter came from matter X, where did matter X come from? Lets say matter Y. Where did matter Y come from? Lets say matter Z. You get the point, this would go into infinity.

And so, if you believe that something has to be 'created' then the chain that I described is infinite. Is that possible? The chain is only finite if something can just 'be'.

This thread makes me want to watch through Star Trek again.

We essentially agree. But here's my commentary anyway:

There's no reason to assume it came from anywhere. It only came from somewhere if it wasn't there originally. And we have no evidence on that either way.

Only if you believe that everything has to be created.

I have no basis on which to answer that question.

This comment is why I think we agree.

My main point re: the big bang is that it's just a theory about what is happening to the observable universe. Once you have a model of how the universe is progressing, you've worked an idea of time into your model and can predict what you think the universe did at your time 0. Time 0 is inherently the start of the trends you can observe, and not necessarily a beginning in itself.

For example, suppose I see a box sitting on the ground, completely still. Then I can make the prediction that it won't move in the future unless it is disturbed, i.e. it is stationary. I can use the fact that it is stationary to work back and conclude that at time t=0 it came to rest there. That doesn't mean I can predict how it was moving before it became stationary. And it definitely doesn't mean that I claim I can predict how it was moving before it became stationary. So saying that I don't know how it became stationary doesn't mean that my assertion that it become stationary and is evolving from having become stationary is invalid.

Sorry! Very contrived example, I know.

I think the real problem with all this speculation is that it seems extremely unlikely that there aren't a million forces in play that are unimaginable and imperceivable to humankind. So we probably aren't operating on all the information. Which is likely to make some things unknowable, and make everything else subject to acceptance of that fact.

It's one of the many reasons that science is completely compatible with religion.

Sure, since beliefs formed before the scientific method was even conceived are relevant, because... wait, they aren't.

I will now leave this thread for good, to weep for the death of reason.

Exactly. To sum it up, we're trying to theorize without evidence, which goes completely against the scientific method.

By scientific theories I mean theories that are falsifiable, reproducible, etc. Believing something because "scientists sez so" isn't real smart, and for more reasons than just that ...

First: Science can be wrong. That's why it's science. It tries to do the best job it can with what we know at the time. I don't know why it's somehow perceived as a negative thing that theories change when they're found to be wrong.

Second: The Big Bang Theory only seeks to explain the state of the early universe -- not where matter "came from".

Third: You can't apply the same logic of matter changing state to the creation of matter itself.

When we say that we create something, we don't actually create anything at all. There is no new energy and (most likely) no new matter -- just changing what already exists. But somehow our intuition tells us that for every painting there must be a painter, every book must have a writer, blahblahblahblah....

So we ignore logic and say that the energy had to come from somewhere -- a double leap of faith, because we don't even know that energy has the ability to "come to be", for all we care it may as well be another dimension by which to measure the universe, no more a tangible quantity than your height; and not only that it can come to be, but that it must, to satisfy our misplaced intuition. (Oh, hey, and then we even invent something else to attribute the creation to -- a third leap of faith... Kierkegaard would be proud!)

It seems to me:

Everything we know suggests that matter and energy are neither created or destroyed.
It seems very problematic to suppose that matter exists into the infinite past.

However, those two statements come to a contradiction, ergo one of them must be false. Either energy/matter were at some point "created" or it must actually be possible for energy to exist into the infinite past.

From my perspective, it seems much more plausible to suppose that matter came into existence then to suppose an infinite past, but I'm not sure I have a really good reason for that.

That's my point. Somewhere at least once the rules were broken.

One might say that God always existed (by his nature), but matter didn't (by definition). So it doesn't really imply infinite recursion.

However, you still have the same two fundamental problems:

• If God or matter always existed into infinity past, then how exactly have we gotten to the present?

• If God or matter requires a creator, then we have an infinite series of creators and nothing is resolved.

No matter how you look at the "beginning of the universe," you have to make some assumptions and build off of that. Of course not all assumptions are scientifically equal; some let you build with science, while others require you to invoke more faith.

But I have to laugh at anyone who thinks it's as simple and true as the "Big Bang Theory" (or whatever your favorite one is), as if it were as true as the theory of gravity. The "OMG!@!@ It's a theory just like the theory of 'you have to breath or you die'!!!" line.

And of course scientific uncertainty does not imply that there must be an "unscientific" answer. But I think atheists are sometimes too stuck up on their scientist overlords to admit that the details of the beginning of the universe are far from being "known"... and may never be known.