The Biblical Big Bang

[JimL]

The universe is indeed not nothing. It is the idea of an 'essence' sitting behind the universe that is nothing.



That comes close. All descriptions of nirvana have to be false; they are descriptions, they are not nirvana. Vimalakirti probably came closest:

Then the Bodhisattva Manjushri said to Vimalakirti, "We have all given our teachings, noble sir. Now, may you elucidate the teaching of the the entrance into the principle of nonduality."

Thereupon Vimalakirti kept his silence, saying nothing at all.

The Bodhisattva Manjushri applauded Vimalakirti: "Excellent! Excellent, noble sir! This is indeed the entrance into the nonduality of the Bodhisattvas."

-- Vimalakirtinirdesa sutra, Chapter Nine

Okay, I think we're basically in agreement in that the eternal universe is that which exists and that the temporal forms are one with the universe. I must be a Buddhist at heart.

[rossum]

Okay, I think we're basically in agreement in that the eternal universe is that which exists and that the temporal forms are one with the universe. I must be a Buddhist at heart.

Put like that, we do not agree. There is no "eternal" anything. Everything changes, so cannot be eternal. Whatever changes cannot be eternal and whatever is eternal cannot change. You can never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same you.

All that exists are the transient temporal forms.

[JimL]

Put like that, we do not agree. There is no "eternal" anything. Everything changes, so cannot be eternal. Whatever changes cannot be eternal and whatever is eternal cannot change. You can never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same you.

All that exists are the transient temporal forms.

Okay, I guess I'm not a Buudhist then. In my opinion the existing temperal forms change but the substance out of which they are formed is eternal.

[shunyadragon]

Put like that, we do not agree. There is no "eternal" anything. Everything changes, so cannot be eternal. Whatever changes cannot be eternal and whatever is eternal cannot change. You can never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same you.

All that exists are the transient temporal forms.

Actually from my Buddhist perspective I could draw most of the conclusions you describe above.

True, everything changes, but we do not know wthether there is even an eternel or not.

'Whatever is etenal cannot change?' Our existence is transitory and nothing is necessary, but no one can say what is eternal or not.

[rossum]

'Whatever is ete[r]nal cannot change?' Our existence is transitory and nothing is necessary, but no one can say what is eternal or not.

If something is eternal then it exists for all values of time. If something changes then there are at least two different values of time when the object at T1 is different from the object at T2: Object@T1 != Object@T2. If the object were eternal then Object@T1 = Object@T2 for all possible T1, T2.

By definition change means difference in time. If there is a difference then there is an inequality. Hence whatever changes in not eternal because there is a time when it does not exist. Change requires difference in time; being eternal requires no difference in time. Something cannot be both different and the same in time.

QED.

[lee_merrill]

Drawing parallels between ancient mythical Creations as in Genesis and the cosmological science of the origins of our universe is an attempt to justify a religious agenda by the misuse and misrepresentation of science.

But "God created the heavens and the earth" is stated as a fact, not a myth.


"By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap;
He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the LORD;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast." (Ps. 33:6-9)

Now here we admittedly have poetic language, but the meaning is clear, "He spoke, and it was done". This statement has consequences, we should fear him, because he spoke, and it was done. Therefore this statement should be taken as a statement of fact.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

But "God created the heavens and the earth" is stated as a fact, not a myth.

"By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,

And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap;
He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the LORD;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast." (Ps. 33:6-9)

It is a Theistic believe that we share, but nonetheless a 'belief,' and not an obective verifiable fact. The Genesis version is based on ancient mythology not science, and one of the many mythical versions of Creation.

Now here we admittedly have poetic language, but the meaning is clear, "He spoke, and it was done". This statement has consequences, we should fear him, because he spoke, and it was done. Therefore this statement should be taken as a statement of fact.

This clear, but this has nothing to do with the Creation account being in harmpny with the science of the origins of our physical existence including our universe. Any parallels are highly interpretive, selective of scripture. and selective of the science and cosmology to justify a Biblical agenda, and science cannot be used, ah . . . misused to do this.

The contemporary view in cosmology and physics of the origins of the universe is not a Big Bang

[rossum]

But "God created the heavens and the earth" is stated as a fact, not a myth.


"By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap;
He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the LORD;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast." (Ps. 33:6-9)

Now here we admittedly have poetic language, but the meaning is clear, "He spoke, and it was done". This statement has consequences, we should fear him, because he spoke, and it was done. Therefore this statement should be taken as a statement of fact.

If God "spoke" then He did not make air, because air is needed to transmit speech. Without air there can be no sound of speech.

And this passage gives Him a physical body: "mouth". Are Christians wrong when they say that the Father is immaterial and does not have a physical body?

If you are going to take Genesis literally then you can't pick out individual words in a passage to be non-literal.

[shunyadragon]

If something is eternal then it exists for all values of time. If something changes then there are at least two different values of time when the object at T1 is different from the object at T2: Object@T1 != Object@T2. If the object were eternal then Object@T1 = Object@T2 for all possible T1, T2.

By definition change means difference in time. If there is a difference then there is an inequality. Hence whatever changes in not eternal because there is a time when it does not exist. Change requires difference in time; being eternal requires no difference in time. Something cannot be both different and the same in time.

QED.

Actually no, and a very confusing use logic, which in my view is not compatable with Buddhism. I believe you are paying too much attention to time.

Our universe may not be eternal, if it is not a cyclic universe, which is a possibility.The Quantum World is in a constant state of fluctuating change and is likely eternal.

[lee_merrill]

It is a Theistic believe that we share, but nonetheless a 'belief,' and not an obective verifiable fact. The Genesis version is based on ancient mythology not science, and one of the many mythical versions of Creation.

My point is that the creation account is not myth, we are to fear the Lord because he created all things, and myths are stories which do not have such direct implications.

The contemporary view in cosmology and physics of the origins of the universe is not a Big Bang

Oh, but I think it is.

Source: NASA

The big bang is how astronomers explain the way the universe began.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

If God "spoke" then He did not make air, because air is needed to transmit speech. Without air there can be no sound of speech.

And this passage gives Him a physical body: "mouth". Are Christians wrong when they say that the Father is immaterial and does not have a physical body?

Again, this is poetical language, but the meaning is clear.

If you are going to take Genesis literally then you can't pick out individual words in a passage to be non-literal.

Well, this quote was from the Psalms, which are poetical.

Here is a prose description of creation:

"You alone are the LORD.
You have made the heavens,
The heaven of heavens with all their host,
The earth and all that is on it,
The seas and all that is in them.
You give life to all of them
And the heavenly host bows down before You." (Nehemiah 9:6)

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

My point is that the creation account is not myth, we are to fear the Lord because he created all things, and myths are stories which do not have such direct implications.

I believe it is well documented as an evolved Creation myth through well documented much older Sumerian, Babylonian, Canaanite and Ugarite Creation mythologies. The records of the Hebrew Biblical Creation is very late in this literary history. The Hebrew language did not exist before ~1000 BCE. The earliest known writings are a primitive Canaanite/Hebrew script, and very scarse.

Oh, but I think it is.

Source: NASA

The big bang is how astronomers explain the way the universe began.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Incomplete one liners do not justify your claim, nor does 'I think.' The current physics and cosmological view is not that the Big Bang in any kind ofabsolute beginning, but several hypothesis are more likely from the scientific perspective is a cyclic universe and/or a multiverse.

[shunyadragon]

From Reasons to Believe...

Source: Reasons to Believe

The Hebrew verb translated “created” in Isaiah 42:5 is bara’ which has as its primary definition “bringing into existence something new, something that did not exist before.”7 The proclamation that God created (bara’) the entirety of the heavens is stated seven times in the Old Testament. (Genesis 1:1; 2:3; 2:4; Psalm 148:5; Isaiah 40:26; 42:5; 45:18). This principle of transcendent creation is made more explicit by passages like Hebrews 11:3 which states that the universe that we humans can measure and detect was made out of that which we cannot measure or detect.

...

The characteristic of the universe stated more frequently than any other in the Bible is its being “stretched out.” Five different Bible authors pen such a statement in eleven different verses: Job 9:8; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:13; 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12; 51:15; and Zechariah 12:1.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

So the universe was created from nothing, and is continually expanding, is the Biblical view.

Blessings,
Lee

The scientific view is not 'created from nothing. The cyclic universe is gaining traction in Physics and Cosmology as more evidence becomes available.

Source: https://physicsworld.com/a/microwave-anomalies-strengthen-the-case-for-loop-quantum-cosmology-say-physicists/

COSMOLOGY RESEARCH UPDATE

Microwave anomalies strengthen the case for loop quantum cosmology, say physicists

A theory of quantum gravity that describes the universe as beginning in a “Big Bounce” rather than a Big Bang has succeeded in explaining several anomalies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.


Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is an alternative to string theory, and describes space itself as being quantized at the smallest scales, known as the Planck length, about 10–35 m. According to LQG, space cannot be crushed down any smaller than this, and the application of LQG to the broader Universe is known as loop quantum cosmology (LQC).

In standard Big Bang cosmology, were we to run the history of the universe backwards so that it collapses rather than expands, the universe would contract into an unknowable singularity. However, in LQC, the collapsing universe would stop collapsing at the Planck length, and then rebound. This suggests that if LQC is correct, there was no Big Bang singularity, but a Big Bounce resulting from the collapse of a previous universe.

Anomalous features
Now, new research by a team led by Abhay Ashtekar at Pennsylvania State University, has found that LQC can explain several anomalies in the CMB that have eluded explanation by other theories. The research is described in Physical Review Letters and the team includes Penn State’s Brajesh Gupt and Donghui Jeong, as well as Vijayakumar Sreenath of the National Institute of Technology Karnataka in India.

The work addresses two anomalies. One relates to the CMB’s power spectrum, which plots the tiny temperature variations in the CMB against their angular size. The other anomaly studied related to lensing amplitude, which is the degree by which the CMB light has been gravitationally lensed as it has travelled through the universe. Lensing is a result of the distribution and density of matter it passes through, which in turn is related to quantum fluctuations that rippled through the very early universe, prior to inflation.

If LQC is correct, then the Big Bounce should have influenced the properties of the CMB. In particular, LQC describes how, at the moment of the Big Bounce, the curvature of space-time was greater than at any other point in cosmic history.

“Loop quantum cosmology predicts a specific value for the curvature at the bounce,” Ashtekar tells Physics World. “This value is critical to get what we are seeing, namely that there are certain modifications of inflation, precisely at these large angular scales, that come from the specific nature of loop quantum cosmology.”

Imprint of the Big Bounce
The large curvature of space at the Big Bounce imprints specific fluctuations in the CMB that are of a wavelength far greater than the size of the visible universe, and so we cannot directly detect them. However, they also correlate with smaller wavelength modes that have a discernible effect on the CMB, in the form of the apparent anomalies that the Big Bang model cannot adequately explain.

There are six fundamental parameters that determine what we see when we look back at the CMB. Two of these parameters are primordial, relating to the end of inflation, and their values influence the power spectrum of the CMB. Two more relate to the time between the end of inflation, when the universe was about 10–32 s old, and the moment that the CMB light was emitted, some 379,000 years later. The final two parameters describe what happens between the time the CMB was emitted, and now. Although the Standard Model of Big Bang cosmology is able to determine values for these parameters, LQC modifies their values in such a way that the anomalies come naturally tumbling out of the data as products of the imprint of that extreme curvature at the Big Bounce.

“It’s pretty amazing that with these six parameters, cosmologists are able to predict what we see today,” says Ashtekar.

A third anomaly is a hemispherical one – the two hemispheres of the CMB have different average energies. Work by Ivan Agullo, of Louisiana State University, has already been able to address this anomaly in similar fashion, within the constraints of LQC. Agullo describes the work of Ashtekar’s group as “fantastic,” adding that “It proves that physical processes occurring in the remote past, before the inflationary epoch, can leave observable imprints in the sky.”

A fourth anomaly – the tension between measurements of the Hubble constant depending on whether you calculate it based on the CMB or via more local standard candles such as Type Ia supernovae – still awaits an explanation. However, Ashtekar points out that work by Alejandro Perez of Aix–Marseille University in France is taking the first steps at using LQC to solve this.

© Copyright Original Source

[lee_merrill]

The scientific view is not 'created from nothing. The cyclic universe is gaining traction in Physics and Cosmology as more evidence becomes available.

Well, interesting, we'll see! But I think the consensus view is still the Big Bang.

Blessings,
Lee

[Stoic]

Well, interesting, we'll see! But I think the consensus view is still the Big Bang.

The consensus view is still the Big Bang, but the cyclic models (of which there are many) are compatible with the Big Bang.