What started the Big bang?

JEEBUS!

God.

Lighting the Big Fuse?

Nobody knows. The laws of physics as we understand them stop working at the Big Bang. Science accepts that this is a limitation of our current knowledge.

This is a question I have often come across amongst philosophical discussions and my immediate, though admittedly rather uninsightful, answer is that I believe no one can ever be certain. If humans were to realise (by whatever means) that some manner of deity or ‘super big bang’ caused the ‘big bang’ then the immediate question becomes “what caused that to exist?”. Some may simply state that a deity need not have a creator and therefore their existence is the most logical possibility but can an act of science (or perhaps spirituality) not also possess this state of exception?
@Bluefreedom Lit by the big match? ;)

@Nially_Bob. Exactly. =)

Actually, science has some pretty good ideas about what started the Big Bang. What, exactly, are you not sure of in regards to it?

How can something come from nothing?

@Sners
The Big Bang doesn’t postulate something coming from nothing.

@Sners The only hypothesis I know of which would not indicate that “something came from nothing” is the steady state theory which has been discredited considerably.
One wonders if every beginning requires a beginning?

I think this might answer your question…

Here’s the answer: We don’t know.

Get used to it.

@Sners

Yes. The question is obviously as you put it.

The Big Bang theory does in fact not postulate where the matter and energy come from to enable a Bang in the first place. Very astute of you, actually.

@crisw can you explain more please… if it doesn’t postulate something coming from nothing then what does it…postulate?

Easy, I started it

@allen_o

Quite so allen_o…quite so

The Flying Spaghetti Monster. He did it right before he created all of the trees and the mountains.

It came from Satan’s deceit for the masses.

The question fundamentally misunderstands what the Big Bang is.

The universe contains all of space and time. (Einstein showed that the two concepts are part of the same fabric). Looking backward through time, scientists have found that the “earliest point” in the universe is a singularity, which they call the Big Bang.

Now, when most people think of the Big Bang (especially religious people) they have something like this in mind:

1:00 p.m. Nothing.
2:00 p.m. Nothing.
3:00 p.m. More nothing.
4:00 p.m. Still nothing.
4:20 p.m. BOOOOOOM!!! Big Bang! Universe begins.

It’s tempting to think of the Big Bang this way because we are used to thinking of time as this linear progression. In fact, our English language is structured based on this conception of time, so it’s very difficult to actually discuss the Big Bang without relying on this conception of time.

The problem is, that’s not how time works. Remember that the Universe contains all of time. Consequently, there was not time before the Big Bang. Time did not exist before the Big Bang. Or, in other words, there is no such thing as “before the Big Bang.”

The implication of this—as Stephen Hawking argues in A Brief History of Time, is that the Universe has simply always existed (much in the same way that religious people think God has always existed). This makes sense if you understand the Universe and spacetime as both finite and boundless.

Take the surface of the Earth. It has a finite area, but it doesn’t have any “edges.” You can’t fall off of it. The North Pole is the “northernmost” point of the Earth, but it’s not a boundary. It’s just a point. You can’t go further north than the North Pole—the concept literally does not make any sense.

Hawking compares this to the structure of the Universe as a whole. If you think of all of spacetime as the surface of the Earth—as both finite, and boundless—then the Big Bang would be like the North Pole. The Big Bang is the “earliest” point in the Universe—just like the North Pole is the “northernmost” point on Earth’s surface. But you literally cannot go “before” the Big Bang. The concept does not make any sense.

This is certainly a difficult concept to wrap your head around. But it’s important to try, and it’s important to understand that when you ask questions like “what started the Big Bang,” you are assuming something that literally makes no sense—namely, that something could exist before the Big Bang in the first place. There is no such thing as “before the Big Bang.”

Isn’t it wonderful that science doesn’t have answers for absolutely everything yet? The thing is there is a boatload of evidence supporting the Big Bang, although there are other theories such as the Ekpyrotic Model that deal with a different mechanism.

Interestingly enough, science has an answer to “God did it”. The answer is, “Okay, prove it.” Scientists are perfectly willing to accept a hypothesis that God flipped a switch. But then you have to be able to show the switch and show God in some sort of observation or experiment.

Great answer, @Qingu.

The concept of time “before” the singularity as Hawking argues is not something that can even be discussed in terms of our Universe, since the laws of physics break down. What we do know about matter and energy though, is that they can neither be created nor destroyed; they only change form. This law is consistent with the Big Bang theory since it doesn’t postulate that “something came from nothing”, rather that all the matter and energy in the Universe was originally compressed within a singularity.

If we assume, based on all knowledge of the Universe available to us, that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then we can say that matter and energy have always existed in some form. To take the additional leap by saying “matter and energy did not always exist, but god has always existed”, defies Occam’s Razor, since justification of that claim would have to meet substantial evidentiary requirements.

@Benny
The Big Bang theory also doesn’t postulate the cause of the Big Bang (the expansion of the Universe), so you’re way off the mark by saying that “scientists are perfectly willing to accept a hypothesis that God flipped a switch.” We know that something happened to trigger the expansion, but scientists don’t leap to the baseless assumption that “god did it!” If you want to make that assertion, you would first have to demonstrate how god’s existence can be tested using the scientific method.

@Vinifera7 I’m not saying that scientists leap to the baseless assumption that God did it. I’m saying that if there was reproducible experimental evidence and observation that a god threw a swtich, then a scientist would accept it. But the god hypothesis has to be given the same rigor as, say, a quantum fluctuation.

@Benny
In that case, I think I agree with you.

@Benny
It is funny then that Einstein, Hawking, and Planck would finally admit that there must be some force to start the big bangs rolling…and they agree as to who or what that force must be!

@dalton, please do not bear false witness.

Einstein did not believe in a personal God.

Hawking said the exact opposite of what you claim he said, saying in A Brief History of Time that a creator is “not needed” to explain the universe, and that physics actually seems to leave little room for one.

I’m unfamiliar with Plank’s views on religion, but based on your dishonest attribution to these other two scientists, I’m going to have to ask for a source.

@Qingu

I always like to hear from those who actually swallow the lies and propaganda, and refuse to believe the truth. Hahaha

@dalton,

“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.” [Albert Einstein, The World as I See It American Institute of Physics Online]

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
[Albert Einstein, 1954, from “Albert Einstein: The Human Side”, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]

Quotes taken rom here.

From Hawking’s A Brief History of Time : “But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, (note: this is what Hawking is proposing in the book) it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?”

So are these quotes from the people you said believed that God caused the Big Bang “lies and propoganda”? It sure looks like you’re the one who’s lying.

@Qingu Actually, I don’t think he’s lying (guessing on the gender). I think he’s simply uninformed. I’ve seen a lot of people who misquote Einstein and Hawking to advance theistic agendas. It’s kind of sad, really.

Regardless of whether of not he’s intentionally being deceptive, he is certainly bearing false witness. He clearly does not know what Hawking and Einstein actually think about God and is simply parroting what he’s heard 3rd-hand, without bothering to check if it’s remotely accurate.

@Qingu That’s fairly typical behavior of people who are debating a theistic point of view online. They will often dip into creationist websites and quote them. Crisw is extremely good at rooting stuff like that out.

@Qingu
In addition to what Benny said, don’t forget that creationist websites repeat these false statements over and over. Many creationists have such a rabid distrust of science that they refuse to read any actual science and rely on such websites, such as Answers in Genesis, for all of their science knowledge. They usually don’t understand the scientific method and have faith that what they read on such websites must be true.

@Benny
Looks like you beat me to it!

@Qingu
BTW, a quick search showed that Planck appeared to be somwhat of a Christian pantheist.

@Benny Thanks for the defense.
@Qingu. Nice. Unfortunately those blurbs of yours are not the whole of either gentleman in question’s realities. The Einstein book you quote was edited…and also rewritten by Albert’s son. The one not in the insane asylum.

I have not received any of this information over the internet, as I only just recently became involved with computers about 4 years ago.

Haha….but it is nice to se you folks here judge and libel others so easily.

Interesting.

@dalton Actually, I am not trying to defend anybody but defend the truth. In this case, Qingu is correct. Besides, you are the one who said: “I always like to hear from those who actually swallow the lies and propaganda, and refuse to believe the truth. Hahaha”. In another thread, if I think you’re right, I will defend you just as vehemently.

As someone who is interested in cosmology, relativity, astronomy, and physics, I have read Einstein and Hawking quite extensively. I have attended lectures by Hawking. I have read everything he has written. I have read the original “Relativity” by Einstein and a lot of stuff about Relativity, Einstein, and the philosophy of science over my years. Quingu’s quotes are correct, I’m sorry.

@dalton
“The Einstein book you quote was edited…and also rewritten by Albert’s son. The one not in the insane asylum.”

What were you intending to imply with that rather unnecessary crack?

Oh my another quarter as yet unheard.

Stick together with your outdated notions if you will…ta

@dalton

It always amuses me when people of your ilk run away rather than actually presenting any actual evidence for what they profess to be true.

The Universe and Mother Nature decided to take they’re relationship to the next level. BANG!

God sneezed.