Could the Universe have Created Itself?

[polytropos]

My “as little as possible” was an attempt at a joke about Lemaître’s hypothesized singularity, which being infinitely small wouldn’t be big enough to contain any space at all.

I’d have thought claiming that trillions of stars and everything that exists was once an infinite small dot is as huge a claim as can possibly be made. Surely by comparison it’s a mere detail to deliberate whether matter came out of the dot alongside the space, or just space came out which then produced matter? (And it sounds more likely to me that at that point (pun) everything was the same “stuff”, and we might as well call that stuff space as anything else).

My bad if you did not intend to express your own views. Although while you may have been quipping in your fourth bullet (post #541), it does not seem as though you were in your third:

1. So in principle all you need to start the universe is some space. Your OP question then simplifies to “could space create itself?” and the answer is yes, as we know the universe is expanding and therefore space is creating more space all the time.

So the point stands. Nothing I said was deliberating about whether matter or space came first from the “dot.” If all the universe needs to start itself is space, which, as you rightly claim, is not nothingness, then you have not at all answered the question of whether the universe can create itself from nothing.

 

[JamesCaruso]

No, it’s not, it’s just causaly correlated to something that is. “Attached” isn’t really a good word.

What’s a good word then? It cannot act independently of the body until death, and then it is out of time and no longer tied to the material world. I am not even sure we don’t experience time after death, however. Consider the fact that we refer to time in Purgatory as days and years, if only symbolic, and consider also that change occurs in our soul as purification proceeds. Actually, all that is necessary to record time is change, and changes in our souls, no matter that they are invisible, are changes nevertheless. I wonder, too, if we do not experience change in heaven-- do we not grow in love, or do you think we have reached a certain level based on our life on earth and that’s it, cast in stone. I would like to think that we get to know God more and more as we spend eternity with him, just as a wife gets to know her husband more and more as their marriage continues. God being infinite, we will never know Him completely, but isn’t it a good thought that we might be able to know and love Him more and more each day? Sorry for rambling off point.

 

[spina1953]

What’s a good word then? It cannot act independently of the body until death, and then it is out of time and no longer tied to the material world. I am not even sure we don’t experience time after death, however. Consider the fact that we refer to time in Purgatory as days and years, if only symbolic, and consider also that change occurs in our soul as purification proceeds. Actually, all that is necessary to record time is change, and changes in our souls, no matter that they are invisible, are changes nevertheless. I wonder, too, if we do not experience change in heaven-- do we not grow in love, or do you think we have reached a certain level based on our life on earth and that’s it, cast in stone. I would like to think that we get to know God more and more as we spend eternity with him, just as a wife gets to know her husband more and more as their marriage continues. God being infinite, we will never know Him completely, but isn’t it a good thought that we might be able to know and love Him more and more each day? Sorry for rambling off point.

Ypu make a fine point. I like what you wrote!

 

[SentinelofTruth]

spina1953:

When we look at the space around us does it seem that it is expanding, that it is moving. if one takes out all the matter and energy etc. what is left? just a void, which I call nothingness.

Aha, so space is nothingness.

JamesCaruso:

What’s a good word then?

There is no perfect word. That is why it takes more than one clause to explain the truth.

JamesCaruso:

It cannot act independently of the body until death,

Yeah, actually it can. It is possible to make a free will decision that does not produce an effect in the body or brain.

JamesCaruso:

I wonder, too, if we do not experience change in heaven-- do we not grow in love, or do you think we have reached a certain level based on our life on earth and that’s it, cast in stone. I would like to think that we get to know God more and more as we spend eternity with him, just as a wife gets to know her husband more and more as their marriage continues. God being infinite, we will never know Him completely, but isn’t it a good thought that we might be able to know and love Him more and more each day? Sorry for rambling off point.

I think an eternal realm cannot contain change. IMO that is the whole point of creating time and space - so we could grow in virtue (necessary because God creating us already with virtuous status would be a contradiction in terms).

 

[spina1953]

Aha, so space is nothingness.

There is no perfect word. That is why it takes more than one clause to explain the truth.

Yeah, actually it can. It is possible to make a free will decision that does not produce an effect in the body or brain.

I think an eternal realm cannot contain change. IMO that is the whole point of creating time and space - so we could grow in virtue (necessary because God creating us already with virtuous status would be a contradiction in terms).

If as I say space without anything in it matter, energy etc, what if left but space, but is this space I call nothingness expanding? I tend to think space as nothingness, or void, sort of before creation as nothing had ben created. make sense or not? I don’t know

 

[yppop]

If as I say space without anything in it matter, energy etc, what if left but space, but is this space I call nothingness expanding? I tend to think space as nothingness, or void, sort of before creation as nothing had ben created. make sense or not? I don’t know

Spina,
What existed before the big bang could only have been “spatial” in character; it certainly could not have been material. Furthermore it had to be both eternal and infinite. Otherwise, if not eternal, it would have had a beginning and if not infinite it had to be finite. The existence of anything from which the universe emerged that had a beginning and was finite merely redirects problem to a preexisting situation and its creation.

Here is how I explain the situation. The universe emerged with the BB from infinite nothingness, but not a void. A void is inert! I define infinite nothingness to be an “active” substrate that has the property of not only being infinite in extent but also infinitely divisible, like continuous space. The space that emerged from the infinite nothingness would have had to be discrete space. It is discrete space that expanded to define the dimensions of the universe. (Okay, here is where I lose all of the other readers of my past posts). Who has ever heard of discrete space? How can it be real? Well it is not my idea.

Richard Dedekind the great mathematician, along with Georg Cantor formalized the study of space in the late 19th century had this to say: (note: “discontinuous”, "digital, and “discrete” are interchangeable in regard to space)
“If physical space has at all a real existence it is not necessary for it to be continuous; many of its properties would remain the same even if it were discontinuous. And if we knew for certain that physical space was discontinuous there would be nothing to prevent us, in case we were so desired, from filling up its gaps, in thought, and thus making it continuous; this filling up would consist in a creation of new point-individuals and would have to be effected in accordance with the above principle.” (World of Mathematics, pg 530)
The principle he was speaking of was his way of presenting a ‘working definition of the principle of continuity:

Gregory Chaitin, the modern mathematician that solved the Halting problem, had this to say:
**“Nevertheless, there are some intriguing hints that this particular universe may in fact be a discrete digital universe, not a continuous analog universe the way most people would expect. In fact these ideas actually go back to Democritus, who argues that matter must be discrete, and to Zeno, who even had the audacity to suggest that continuous space and time were self-contradictory impossibilities. Through the years I’ve noticed many times, as an armchair physicist, places where physical calculations diverge to infinity at extremely small distances. Physicists are adept at not asking the wrong question, one that gives an infinite answer. But, I’m a mathematician, and each time I wonder if Nature wasn’t really trying to tell us something, that the real numbers and continuity are a sham, and that infinitesimal small distances do not exist!” – Meta Math, The Quest For Omega – pg. 91-2
**
I’ll not burden you with more quotes, I merely used these two to show that discrete space is not my idea, but I do make it the keystone of my thesis. Discrete space simplifies many of the questions discussed in this forum. Dedekind mentions filling the gaps in the “discontinuous space” with continuous space. I interpreted that to mean that what fills the gaps is the same as the continuous infinite nothingness from which the discrete space emerged. The infinite nothingness that provided the impetus for the creation of universe and its expansion and is omnipresent throughout the universe can only be the spiritual component of reality, the Mind of God.

And as Erwin Schroedinger had to say:
"What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). … Life and Thought,1989

I agree with Schroedinger (and Innocente) about the spatial nature of matter and what all that boils down to is that we are nothing more than appearances in the Mind of God.
Yppop

 

[spina1953]

Spina,
What existed before the big bang could only have been “spatial” in character; it certainly could not have been material. Furthermore it had to be both eternal and infinite. Otherwise, if not eternal, it would have had a beginning and if not infinite it had to be finite. The existence of anything from which the universe emerged that had a beginning and was finite merely redirects problem to a preexisting situation and its creation.

Here is how I explain the situation. The universe emerged with the BB from infinite nothingness, but not a void. A void is inert! I define infinite nothingness to be an “active” substrate that has the property of not only being infinite in extent but also infinitely divisible, like continuous space. The space that emerged from the infinite nothingness would have had to be discrete space. It is discrete space that expanded to define the dimensions of the universe. (Okay, here is where I lose all of the other readers of my past posts). Who has ever heard of discrete space? How can it be real? Well it is not my idea.

Richard Dedekind the great mathematician, along with Georg Cantor formalized the study of space in the late 19th century had this to say: (note: “discontinuous”, "digital, and “discrete” are interchangeable in regard to space)
“If physical space has at all a real existence it is not necessary for it to be continuous; many of its properties would remain the same even if it were discontinuous. And if we knew for certain that physical space was discontinuous there would be nothing to prevent us, in case we were so desired, from filling up its gaps, in thought, and thus making it continuous; this filling up would consist in a creation of new point-individuals and would have to be effected in accordance with the above principle.” (World of Mathematics, pg 530)
The principle he was speaking of was his way of presenting a ‘working definition of the principle of continuity:

Gregory Chaitin, the modern mathematician that solved the Halting problem, had this to say:
**“Nevertheless, there are some intriguing hints that this particular universe may in fact be a discrete digital universe, not a continuous analog universe the way most people would expect. In fact these ideas actually go back to Democritus, who argues that matter must be discrete, and to Zeno, who even had the audacity to suggest that continuous space and time were self-contradictory impossibilities. Through the years I’ve noticed many times, as an armchair physicist, places where physical calculations diverge to infinity at extremely small distances. Physicists are adept at not asking the wrong question, one that gives an infinite answer. But, I’m a mathematician, and each time I wonder if Nature wasn’t really trying to tell us something, that the real numbers and continuity are a sham, and that infinitesimal small distances do not exist!” – Meta Math, The Quest For Omega – pg. 91-2
**
I’ll not burden you with more quotes, I merely used these two to show that discrete space is not my idea, but I do make it the keystone of my thesis. Discrete space simplifies many of the questions discussed in this forum. Dedekind mentions filling the gaps in the “discontinuous space” with continuous space. I interpreted that to mean that what fills the gaps is the same as the continuous infinite nothingness from which the discrete space emerged. The infinite nothingness that provided the impetus for the creation of universe and its expansion and is omnipresent throughout the universe can only be the spiritual component of reality, the Mind of God.

And as Erwin Schroedinger had to say:
"What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). … Life and Thought,1989

I agree with Schroedinger (and Innocente) about the spatial nature of matter and what all that boils down to is that we are nothing more than appearances in the Mind of God.
Yppop

I am not sure that I really understand what you wrote, but I will have to think about it a little to try and understand the nature of what you are saying. I do like the end tag- “nothing more than then appearnaces in the mind of God.” That somehow makes sense to my rather small brain.

 

[yppop]

1. So in principle all you need to start the universe is some space. Your OP question then simplifies to “could space create itself?” and the answer is yes, as we know the universe is expanding and therefore space is creating more space all the time.
2. And how much space is needed to start the universe? Monseigneur Lemaître, who proposed the big bang, says as little as possible, thanks all the same.

I calculated that to create the observable universe God only needed 2x10^184 points of discrete space. No additions needed.

Yppop

 

[inocente]

Which says nothing of whether it is coherent for a thing to create itself. How could God have the universe create itself if it did not exist? Can God make that which does not exist, act - or does he need to create first? If that is a logical impossibility, then it would seem that we need not speak of power but of coherence, which seems to be lacking in your “nice idea.”

We’re talking science here, and God never appears in any equations or laws of nature, God is always hidden. I think that will always be the case. As Lemaitre said, God is not a scientific hypothesis. So in scientific terms, in terms of experiment and evidence, it will always appear that the universe created itself (or else is eternal).

Philosophically we can interpret that to argue for or against God, but not scientifically.

Did he? Or did he say that certain Thomist commentaries from which he learned were decadent, while the Church should strive for brilliance and genius like that of St. Thomas?

Yes he did, everything the Pope said in that interview is about finding God afresh (“The tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open new spaces to God”).

If you remember, I made a (not too hot) translation of part of that interview and posted it - forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11268909&postcount=106

 

[inocente]

I have to agree with you as to what you say concerning Genesis I. I rather think that the writer or author of Genesis was trying to explain to the best of his understanding who and what God is and what He did to answer the age old queston How did we come to be. Also at some point God revealed Himself to man, but we do not really know how He did that. When did man first come to think that there was a God, someone greater than himself? We do not know, just as we do not know when man first started to bury the dead. Also why did man look at the stars; the sky, and think that somehow it gave him the idea as to when to migrate with the anamals he was hunting as well as the grains he was eating and gathering and when it would again appear for him to eat. Somehow the author of Geeisis I was trying to explain that it was God who created whether it be the universe or man and all that man lived in. The universe as we think in understanding it was not concieved by the orginal author of Genesis I or to those who he was addressing the story to.

Pope Benedict wrote a book about Genesis and when men first stumbled towards a relationship with God. Part of it used to be online but I can’t find it anymore, couldn’t find it in the CA shop either. If you’ve not read it, it’s very good - In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall - Joseph Ratzinger

 

[inocente]

I calculated that to create the observable universe God only needed 2x10^184 points of discrete space. No additions needed.

One of the facts that got me is that atoms are virtually all space. If I remember correctly, if the proton in a hydrogen atom was on the same scale as the Sun, the electron would be beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Then of course it turns out that 90% of the mass of a proton comes from the space between its three quarks. Krauss does two minutes on nothingness here (with some speculation) - youtube.com/watch?v=UemhCsaeGgc

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Pope Benedict wrote a book about Genesis and when men first stumbled towards a relationship with God. Part of it used to be online but I can’t find it anymore, couldn’t find it in the CA shop either. If you’ve not read it, it’s very good - In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall - Joseph Ratzinger

Thank you, He is always a good read.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

One of the facts that got me is that atoms are virtually all space. If I remember correctly, if the proton in a hydrogen atom was on the same scale as the Sun, the electron would be beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Then of course it turns out that 90% of the mass of a proton comes from the space between its three quarks. Krauss does two minutes on nothingness here (with some speculation) - youtube.com/watch?v=UemhCsaeGgc

First there was the eternal God and that was all. Outside of his eternal Now there was no being at all, not even the " space " of which Krauss speaks. Could then a literal nothing create something? No. But God did, contrary to the wild speculations of Krauss and other fanciful cosmologist of his type. And the laws of physics existing before creation! I must say, these people have the wildest imaginations. And they dismiss Thomas with a smirk! Not quite up to date with modern physics they say. Perhaps he is more up to date than they dare to suspect, he at least was a realist.

Linus2nd

 

[yppop]

One of the facts that got me is that atoms are virtually all space. If I remember correctly, if the proton in a hydrogen atom was on the same scale as the Sun, the electron would be beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Then of course it turns out that 90% of the mass of a proton comes from the space between its three quarks. Krauss does two minutes on nothingness here (with some speculation) - youtube.com/watch?v=UemhCsaeGgc

Inocente,
Thanks for the link. I have developed an an argument that is intended to counter the materialist non-believer that is based on the assumption that universal space is discrete. When properly understood can shoot a hole in the very subtle six minutes of Krause’s presentation. His unspoken conclusion is that since space is filled with quantum mechanical activity, the universe can pop into existence, i.e., create itself.

Krause mentions two kinds of space, but he leads you to believe that the space of physics that is the foundation of the universe excludes the space that the bible describes. I believe both forms of space subsist concurrently. Discrete space that Krause talks about is the foundation of the universe and its 4 main physical elements (space,time, energy and matter). The preexisting nothingness that has the properties of continuous space, provides the OMNIPRESENT spiritual aspect of reality. It is from the preexisting nothingness (the Mind of God) that the universe and the space that defines its dimensions was created

It is the discrete space in which gravitational fields; zero-point energy, the Higg’s field and all sorts of other space-like aspects of science exist. For example ever try to “curve” continuous space in your mind, it’s like curving water. On the other hand, discrete space is easily curved in one’s imagination. Einstein’s curvature of space could only be accomplished with discrete space.

Here’s another idea to which I subscribe:

“Fredkin told me that he spent years trying to make Feynman take digital physics seriously, and was very pleased to see his ideas reproduced in this passage in Feyman’s book ! For an idea to be successful, you have to give it away, you have to be willing to let other people think that it theirs! You can’t be possessive, you can’t be jealous”… - Gregory Chaitin Meta Math, The Quest For Omega – pg. 90

Now I’ve go out and rake leaves.

Yppop

 

[spina1953]

Pope Benedict wrote a book about Genesis and when men first stumbled towards a relationship with God. Part of it used to be online but I can’t find it anymore, couldn’t find it in the CA shop either. If you’ve not read it, it’s very good - In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall - Joseph Ratzinger

Thank you for your info on Joseph Ralzinger’s book. I had not read it but will try to find it to read as it seems to me to be an interesting read. My thoughts that you quoted for your reply is only my own thinking as to what might have happened, but do not say it is so, but only that it remains a queston and will we be able to answer it fully I do not know. It is worth asking any way as we are all learning and the more we learn the better.

 

[spina1953]

To yppop: I still do not really understand what you have written but I will not refute it because that would not be fair to you when I do not understand it to agree or disagree with the statement you posed. That being said, we have gravity, energy, matter, and time as part of the Big Bang theory. So is space if as you say If I understad you correctly, to also be created, than space needs to be added also to the above four. So far as I understnd the Big bang theory is that so far science still does not know What Banged? Why it banged? and What was before it Banged? Another question to ponder: How do we know it was a Big Bang? Could it have been a little Bang? and since there was no atmosphere to carry sound, how do we know it Banged? Science tries to understand the How, and Religion tries to understand the Why. Science tells us how the heavens go and religion tells us how to get to heaven.

 

[yppop]

To yppop: I still do not really understand what you have written but I will not refute it because that would not be fair to you when I do not understand it to agree or disagree with the statement you posed. That being said, we have gravity, energy, matter, and time as part of the Big Bang theory. So is space if as you say If I understad you correctly, to also be created, than space needs to be added also to the above four. So far as I understnd the Big bang theory is that so far science still does not know What Banged? Why it banged? and What was before it Banged? Another question to ponder: How do we know it was a Big Bang? Could it have been a little Bang? and since there was no atmosphere to carry sound, how do we know it Banged? Science tries to understand the How, and Religion tries to understand the Why. Science tells us how the heavens go and religion tells us how to get to heaven.

Spina,
At the end of the 19th century astronomers thought that the our galaxy was the entire universe. William Herschel, the preeminent astronomer at the time had thought that the fuzzy objects called nebula might be separate galaxies but changed his mind

1908 - Henrietta Leavitt, doing the grunt work usually assigned to females discovered a relationship between luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars

1913 - Vesto Slipher, studying spectra of nebula, noticed that the spectral lines were shifted towards the red

1916 - Einstein published his general theory of relativity and applying it to the universe concluded that the universe was expanding, promptly added a constant, the so-called cosmological constant, to cancel out the expansion

1922 - Alexander Friedman, a Russian scientist, repeated Einstein’s calculation and found that Einstein made a mistake, and even with the cosmological constant the result was an expanding universe.

1924 - Edwin Hubble used the new 100 inch Mt. Wilson telescope to observe the several nebula and applied Henrietta Leavitt’s Cepheid variable relationship between luminosity and period to measure the galactic distances and found that nebulae were much farther away than the most distant stars in the Milky-Way galaxy. The nebulae , in fact, were galaxies.and the universe was far greater than had previously been thought.

1929 - Hubble, in analyzing red-shift data, discovered that greater the distance to a galaxy the greater the red-shift and the faster it was receding from us. This was proof that the universe was immense and expanding.

1931 - George Lemaitre, a Catholic priest, realized that an expanding universe implied that the universe was expanding from something. Extrapolating the universe backwards in time, he concluded that the universe had emerged from an infinitesimal object he called the “primeval atom”.

1948 - Ralph Alpher and George Gamow calculated what the remnant of Lemaitre’s primeval atom would be like in an expanding universe and predicted the relative levels of hydrogen and helium in the universe. and also concluded that the afterglow (the cosmic microwave background radiation, CMB) would be about 5 degrees Kelvin.

1949 - Fred Hoyle, a British cosmologist, the developer of the “Steady State” theory, which required addition of space to the expanding universe, hence no beginning, coined the name “Big Bang” to demean (he denied it) the LeMaitre interpretation.

1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at BTL’s Holmdel Laboratory, while developing antennas for satellite communication, were troubled by a background noise coming from all parts of the sky. Since the noise could not be attributed to any particular cosmic object, they assumed that the problem was associated with their equipment. They worked for over a year to find its source. They disassembled and rebuilt the equipment, scraped pigeon dirt from the antenna, and repainted to no avail. They measured the level of the background noise and found it to be about three degrees Kelvin.

1964 - A group of physicists led by Jim Peeples and Robert Dicke at Princeton university, a short distance from Holmdel, were setting up to search for a signal from space. The Princeton group had deduced that the remnants of the explosion should be present as an extremely low temperature radiation spread throughout the universe. The signal that the Princeton group was looking for was the one that Gamow had proposed earlier. Eventually, Dicke’s group heard about Penzias and Wilson’s “noise” observation; the two groups made contact and realized that the noise that Penzias and Wilson were trying to eliminate was the signal the Princeton group was looking for. The signal that caused so much consternation in Holmdel came to be called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), the remnants of the big bang. It put the steady state theory to rest and established the big bang theory as accepted science.

Since then. additional verification has been made when the predicted values of hydrogen, helium, and lithium were confirmed by measurement. Also a standard model was developed by relating the events that occurred to the calculated energy.

Yppop

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Well, this is turning into a scientific debate, and I’ve already given my philosophical arguments, which have gone largely unanswered. So I guess I’m leaving this thread.

 

[spina1953]

Spina,
At the end of the 19th century astronomers thought that the our galaxy was the entire universe. William Herschel, the preeminent astronomer at the time had thought that the fuzzy objects called nebula might be separate galaxies but changed his mind

1908 - Henrietta Leavitt, doing the grunt work usually assigned to females discovered a relationship between luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars

1913 - Vesto Slipher, studying spectra of nebula, noticed that the spectral lines were shifted towards the red

1916 - Einstein published his general theory of relativity and applying it to the universe concluded that the universe was expanding, promptly added a constant, the so-called cosmological constant, to cancel out the expansion

1922 - Alexander Friedman, a Russian scientist, repeated Einstein’s calculation and found that Einstein made a mistake, and even with the cosmological constant the result was an expanding universe.

1924 - Edwin Hubble used the new 100 inch Mt. Wilson telescope to observe the several nebula and applied Henrietta Leavitt’s Cepheid variable relationship between luminosity and period to measure the galactic distances and found that nebulae were much farther away than the most distant stars in the Milky-Way galaxy. The nebulae , in fact, were galaxies.and the universe was far greater than had previously been thought.

1929 - Hubble, in analyzing red-shift data, discovered that greater the distance to a galaxy the greater the red-shift and the faster it was receding from us. This was proof that the universe was immense and expanding.

1931 - George Lemaitre, a Catholic priest, realized that an expanding universe implied that the universe was expanding from something. Extrapolating the universe backwards in time, he concluded that the universe had emerged from an infinitesimal object he called the “primeval atom”.

1948 - Ralph Alpher and George Gamow calculated what the remnant of Lemaitre’s primeval atom would be like in an expanding universe and predicted the relative levels of hydrogen and helium in the universe. and also concluded that the afterglow (the cosmic microwave background radiation, CMB) would be about 5 degrees Kelvin.

1949 - Fred Hoyle, a British cosmologist, the developer of the “Steady State” theory, which required addition of space to the expanding universe, hence no beginning, coined the name “Big Bang” to demean (he denied it) the LeMaitre interpretation.

1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at BTL’s Holmdel Laboratory, while developing antennas for satellite communication, were troubled by a background noise coming from all parts of the sky. Since the noise could not be attributed to any particular cosmic object, they assumed that the problem was associated with their equipment. They worked for over a year to find its source. They disassembled and rebuilt the equipment, scraped pigeon dirt from the antenna, and repainted to no avail. They measured the level of the background noise and found it to be about three degrees Kelvin.

1964 - A group of physicists led by Jim Peeples and Robert Dicke at Princeton university, a short distance from Holmdel, were setting up to search for a signal from space. The Princeton group had deduced that the remnants of the explosion should be present as an extremely low temperature radiation spread throughout the universe. The signal that the Princeton group was looking for was the one that Gamow had proposed earlier. Eventually, Dicke’s group heard about Penzias and Wilson’s “noise” observation; the two groups made contact and realized that the noise that Penzias and Wilson were trying to eliminate was the signal the Princeton group was looking for. The signal that caused so much consternation in Holmdel came to be called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), the remnants of the big bang. It put the steady state theory to rest and established the big bang theory as accepted science.

Since then. additional verification has been made when the predicted values of hydrogen, helium, and lithium were confirmed by measurement. Also a standard model was developed by relating the events that occurred to the calculated energy.

Yppop

I knew that already, it still does not answer the question did the universe create itself or not.

 

[polytropos]

We’re talking science here, and God never appears in any equations or laws of nature, God is always hidden. I think that will always be the case. As Lemaitre said, God is not a scientific hypothesis. So in scientific terms, in terms of experiment and evidence, it will always appear that the universe created itself (or else is eternal).

Philosophically we can interpret that to argue for or against God, but not scientifically.

I was responding to you saying, “A God so powerful He has the universe create itself is a nice idea.” I am just saying that that seems to be a contradiction. The universe can’t create itself if it does not exist. I agree that no matter how hard one looks experimentally, you aren’t going to find God staring at the other end - but nor could the evidence even in principle justify the inference that the universe created itself (unless, perhaps, someone could articulate how “the universe created itself” is not a vacuous statement).

Yes he did, everything the Pope said in that interview is about finding God afresh (“The tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open new spaces to God”).

That is a good quote. I find it inconsistent with your other interpretation on this thread:

Ye olde worn-oute theologies do, but as the Pope said recently, they’re decadent anyway.

The pope thinks that tradition and memory of the past can be and are helpful. He does not find theology and philosophy of the past to be generally “decadent.” Certainly it can be, but what the pope says seems to support that what is decadent is simply philosophy done poorly, which is to be contrasted with that of Aquinas (which can be and has been built upon in the last century, by, for example, great philosophers like Elizabeth Anscombe).