Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

What happened before the Big Bang is not really a science question

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Here’s an interesting vid that honestly admits that we do not and cannot know what happened in the earliest microseconds of the Big Bang because of the issue of whether the laws of physics were yet in force:

“Science offers a compelling, solid evidence” of how it began, we are told by Don Lincoln, a spokesman for Fermilab. But he makes clear that we have no data from 10 to the minus 43 secs. He covers the “always existed” theory, eternal inflation, and the multiverse but makes clear that it is all speculation and hard to test. He even goes so far as to say that, if we did find out, the actual story “won’t sound like popular science literature.”

This is worth comparing with the discussion between William Lane Craig of Stand to Reason and Alex Malpass:

In this livestream, Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Alex Malpass discuss Dr. Craig’s philosophical arguments in defense of the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (that the universe began to exist).

There are, as Craig doubtless explains, logical reasons for believing that the universe must have begun to exist, as opposed to always existing. For one thing, everything—including the universe ceasing to exist—would already have happened at least once, in which case…

Which raises the question of why such concepts, usually sponsored by atheist cosmologists, dominate so many people’s thinking. Whatever the answer is, it isn’t “science!”

Comments
We have so much to understand after the Big Bang. Why bothering with speculations about what could have been before? Do we know what the electromagnetic force is? Do we know what the gravity is? Do we know everything that is to be known about quantum physics? Quantum tunneling? Quantum entanglement? Can physicists work along with engineers and chemists, on improving computer memories, processors, WiFi, jet engines, hypersonic engines, different home appliances, air filters, water filtering, longer lasting materials, nanotechnology, nanotubes, airplane and car structures, car tires, electric cars, batteries, water desalinization, systems biology, etc?jawa
April 14, 2020
April
04
Apr
14
14
2020
01:58 PM
1
01
58
PM
PDT
Rob Sheldon, “ physicists straining for fame and glory deny there is any boundary at all between their opinions and what physics can demonstrate.” Excellent comment. Thanks.jawa
April 14, 2020
April
04
Apr
14
14
2020
01:44 PM
1
01
44
PM
PDT
Rob, I thought he sounded okay UNTIL he got into that stuff. He could have just said, "Because we can't have data, at least for the present, science can't answer these questions. You must look to philosophy and religion. But thank you very much for your interest in science! Good afternoon!" The fact that he couldn't do so helps us understand what's wrong.Denyse OLeary
April 13, 2020
April
04
Apr
13
13
2020
02:34 PM
2
02
34
PM
PDT
Thanks for linking this video! Yes, I watched it, and yes, none of it is science or scientific. Which raises the question of why a respected theorist at Fermilab would be willing to go on the record conjecturing various SciFi and scientism premises. There was a day and and an age when the high priests of physics never stooped to speculate on clearly religious ideas, repecting the boundary between physics and metaphysics. Yet today, exactly the opposite is the case, where physicists straining for fame and glory deny there is any boundary at all between their opinions and what physics can demonstrate. It is a very strange time indeed, since opinions change almost daily, so fame is never for longer than 15 minutes. On a random correlation, I just spent my quarantine watching old BBC historical programs. "The Wartime Farm" segued into "The Victorian Farm", and I learned that the Victorian age was much like ours, full of money (the Gilded Age), transformation (mechanized machinery), and sociological change (farming becoming industrial, mobile, and connected). So one of the responses was a heavy alcohol use--self-medication. In the same way, todays "physicists" are now moving off the farm, turning to YouTube to get their face more widely known. Machines are replacing many of them (computer aided theory, huge complicated simulation models), and incomes are falling (after racking up astronomical educational debts!) Where do we find our solace? Could it be marketing a YouTube channel? But what is clear to everyone, is that the present status quo is unsustainable. Cushy university positions are disappearing, the competition for all such positions has become truly global, and new theories are trivially derived and trivially important. Experiments are getting more and more expensive, and fewer and fewer in number. What other professions can make use of all that training? Even Wall St seems uninterested in overflow quants. Hence the religious bent to every desperate attempt for relevancy. It is a race to the bottom. And in the words of Richard Feynman, "there's plenty of room at the bottom."Robert Sheldon
April 13, 2020
April
04
Apr
13
13
2020
01:10 PM
1
01
10
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply