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[Sowelu]

That's respectable.

[wurli]

I'd like to say that being an atheist does not require you to believe that there is no God (although some do - see Strong Atheism).

Personally, I have no belief in any kind of deity, but no belief that any of them cannot exist.  I also attach no special significance to the existance or non existance of any of them, and as such, throw them on the pile of "unprovable stuff that isn't really relevant".

The only problem is that strong believers are determined to "spread the word" and start to annoy the crap out of everyone. And that goes for theists and atheists.
And sadly, the more they scream the more attention they get. Best example is the discussion of ID.

[Bauglir]

I'd like to say that being an atheist does not require you to believe that there is no God (although some do - see Strong Atheism).

Personally, I have no belief in any kind of deity, but no belief that any of them cannot exist.  I also attach no special significance to the existance or non existance of any of them, and as such, throw them on the pile of "unprovable stuff that isn't really relevant".

The only problem is that strong believers are determined to "spread the word" and start to annoy the crap out of everyone. And that goes for theists and atheists.
And sadly, the more they scream the more attention they get. Best example is the discussion of ID.

Hey, look, it doesn't matter what your belief system is, if you're going to be driving a car you really should have your license on you.[/misunderstanding]

[Siquo]

throw them on the pile of "unprovable stuff that isn't really relevant".

But... then you must have a solid definition of provable (I don't have one so that pile contains... everything in my life). Care to share it? I promise I won't attack it, I just like to hear if it's new or not (and if it is, I might learn something).

[Leafsnail]

Hmm... maybe unprovable is the wrong word.

More like... you can never observe its effects.  You can never perform any kind of test to see if it's there.  You cannot make any predictions based on it.

To all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter, even if it exists.  And, while not invalid, it's no more valid than any other thing that could exist through a devil's proof.

---

Or, to be in character for my avatar, THERE'S NO WAY SOMETHING THAT SCREWED UP CAN EXIST!

[MC Dirty]

Hmm... maybe unprovable is the wrong word.

More like... you can never observe its effects.  You can never perform any kind of test to see if it's there.  You cannot make any predictions based on it.

To all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter, even if it exists.  And, while not invalid, it's no more valid than any other thing that could exist through a devil's proof.

Actually, I'm pretty sure science doesn't have a definition of "provable", either. In fact, the thing about widely accepted scientific theories is not that they have been proven. They haven't. The thing is that they can be falsified! No sensible scientist would claim that any theories are absolute truth. But these theories have been tested numerous times by people who actively tried to disprove them. It didn't work.
It can also be falsified that the universe started with a big bang and all evidence points towards it, but anything "beyond" or "before" (if such terms even make sense) is infalsifiable.

[Sowelu]

but anything "beyond" or "before" (if such terms even make sense) is infalsifiable.

I doubt that.  We can't quite fathom it yet, but we can imagine finding it out SOMEday.  Unless you want to move the goalposts of "universe" to include "whatever caused the Big Bang".  If we somehow do discover some kind of weird multiversal effects (incredibly doubtful--but conceivable), then looking at when and where they impact us could tell us a lot.  Does the Big Bang of a neighboring universe happen further into our timeline than our own Big Bang?  If so, hot damn that speaks volumes about whatever medium our universe came from!

although that DOES get really really fuzzy about the definition of 'universe'.  ugh.  half the time 'universe' means 'everything in this bubble that was initiated by the Big Bang', but if Big Bangs cascade, is that multiple universes?  is universe membership symmetric?  if there's something outside the bounds of the bubble created by the Big Bang, is that still by definition part of the universe, or not?  parallel universes seem like more of a 'bluh bluh other dimensions in the same universe' thing anyway...

For the record, I've been swayed away from the necessity of a Prime Mover.  Still not sure what to make of math, though.

And what I never did bring up here but some may have noticed in other threads:  I'm hella religious, but it's more of an 'I dig the ritual aspects' thing.

[Il Palazzo]

See, multiple universes are like god - there is nothing in the observable universe that would hint at their existence*, unless you're going to baselessly interpret whatever unexplained piece of information you can find, to appear to prove your point of view. And yet some people build their own, personal cosmologies around that hypothesis.
Unless some experimental evidence appears to support the idea, saying that a parallel universe "caused" something is equal to saying "god did it", and similarly rooted in one's religiousness.

Now, take the General Relativity theory - it makes observable predicions, is mathematically coherent, and as of yet not falsified. For as long as it stays so, it's only sensible to accept it's predictions regarding the beginning of the universe, that is: there was not "before" Big Bang, just as there is no "outside" universe - the BB was where(when?) space-time begun, and it makes no sense whatsoever to talk about cases external to it.

Sure, the GR has it's share of problems, but none of them substantial enough to prove it wrong. While some scepticism is(as always) welcome,
(this is where I finally make a subject-related statement:)
when it comes to cosmology, bringing parallel universe in from the area of thought experiments and wild imagination is not scientific, but religious.

*Feel free to prove me wrong by showing some evidence that I've missed appearing recently

[Andir]

the BB was where(when?) space-time begun,

Personally, I'd love for someone to put all the "evidence" of the BB together and tell me where it happened.  If all this evidence is proof, someone should be able to nail down a general idea on where the epicenter of that event was.

[Phmcw]

You seems to fail to understand the very concept of bing bang.

The answer is everywhere at once. But back then that was a tiny, tiny place.

[Il Palazzo]

Exactly. The whole idea of BB is not that there was some amount of space in the beginning, in which an "explosion" of matter happened - rather it's about the whole lot of space, matter and everything that you'd call "the universe" expanding from a singularity. This primordial universe could contain infinitely large amount of space and matter for all we know.
Check out this site:
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/cosmology.php#questions
It explains the ideas behind current cosmologic model much better than I ever could.

[Andir]

If it's expanding out in all directions... there has to be a center.

Also, that site pretty much sucks.  It sounds like someone trying to prove the Big Bang and they don't cite specific items for proof... they just say, "trust me!"

[Bauglir]

If it's expanding out in all directions... there has to be a center.

Also, that site pretty much sucks.  It sounds like someone trying to prove the Big Bang and they don't cite specific items for proof... they just say, "trust me!"

Except space is curved such that it probably has no edges. How do you define a center given that geometry? Any center you could refer to (say, by mapping space onto the surface of a sphere or whatever other shape is more appropriate) would be outside the 3-dimensional space we occupy anyway.

[Andir]

If it's expanding out in all directions... there has to be a center.

Also, that site pretty much sucks.  It sounds like someone trying to prove the Big Bang and they don't cite specific items for proof... they just say, "trust me!"

Except space is curved such that it probably has no edges. How do you define a center given that geometry? Any center you could refer to (say, by mapping space onto the surface of a sphere or whatever other shape is more appropriate) would be outside the 3-dimensional space we occupy anyway.

If it's outside the space we occupy, it occupies some other space.  (All the hand waving I see on this topic is gross as well.  There just isn't... but we have no proof.)

I'm not sure what you mean... are you saying that our universe is like the atmosphere of Earth if the Earth were expanding where the Earth is a void of emptiness and space is also a void of empty?  That's not the gist I got from reading this guy's stuff.  He thinks that the dough of space is expanding, but all the raisins are staying in the same spot...

So if you are stuck inside the dough, and have no way to see anything except the dough, and if you are so far from the "edge" of the dough that you can't see it and it can't have any effect on you, then what difference do you notice between the point where you're at and the point that is actually at the geometric center of the entire blob of dough? The answer is that there is no difference, absolutely none. The concept of the "center of the universe" loses all meaning, so we don't even think about it.

In fact, we can go a step further and imagine that the center isn't even there at all! How? Well, what if instead of just being really really big, the dough were infinitely big - that is, you could walk forever in a straight line and never reach a place where the dough ends. In that case, there really would be no center of the universe - the only way you can define the center is to mark out the edges and find the point that's equally in between all of them. So if the universe is infinitely big and has no edges, then it also has no center, not even on a theoretical level.

Because...
If I'm sitting on the edge of something that is expanding in all directions, there would be a bias in the movement in a direction to the left or right if looking along the tangent.

ie:
   |edge2         target                                     edge3|
|edge1        me                center                          edge4|

The edges are "getting farther apart without moving" idea is total bunk... sorry, but it is.  It relies on our basic understanding of light and makes massive assumptions that light gets red because the wave is being pulled apart, and not some other reason.

So If the edges are getting further apart from each other that means that the target and center are moving away from each other.  That would also mean that the distance delta between target and center should be different than the distance delta between center and edge2 by twice as much.  (ie: If A is moving away from B and B is moving away from C then A is moving away from C at the rate of both.)  That's measurable and you can reverse that formula to get the center.

Now, the "experts" get all "religious" on me and say "The galaxies aren't moving so you can't measure that."  I feel like I'm talking to a religious nut about God at this point.  (You can't see him, he's everywhere!)  He even goes into saying that if you could put a tape measure between galaxies the the tape would stretch simply because we are expanding... but still standing still.

I'm seriously beginning to think these physicist are nuts or just fudging the rules to make their ideas right.

Also, by his hand waving gesture that we are too small to even be able to measure the center makes me think the whole background radiation "proof" is not valid.  That radiation could have been caused by an astronomical event somewhere nearby.  (Like solar flares can be measured by their radio disturbance.)  Heck... they could be picking up interference from a "galactic ray emitter" pointed straight at us.

[Sowelu]

Andir, I'm sorry, but you're contradicting a huge field here with very well-established theories and terminology.  I respectfully request that you read a book ASAP before I have to bash my head on my desk so hard I knock myself out.  This is completely aside from the theism/atheism thing:  Saying "If it's expanding out in all directions... there has to be a center" shows as much understanding of science as saying "If evolution is real, why are there still monkeys".  You're a complete layperson here, and some time with a good Stephen Hawking book (or whatever) would do you good.  Just because it makes no sense to you, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.  But yeah, keeping this up isn't doing any wonders for your credibility in the eyes of anyone who knows anything about astrophysics and quite frankly it hurts to read.

...Er, sorry.