Was there nothing before the Big bang?

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Timi_Celcer

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What evidence do we Catholics have that there was nothing at some point?
 
There could not have been an infinite past.

This has been gone over again and again.
 
Since you cannot observe or measure “nothing” there is no such evidence.

However, the only measuring we can do begins with the Big Bang … which was SOMETHING! 😃

So if there was something before the Big Bang (which is not likely since time began with the Big Bang) we will never know from science.

We can get lots of speculation and theories. Those are cheap. But no observable facts.

Since Catholics believe God created the universe, there was Something before the Big Bang.

But since God exists outside of time, even saying he existed “before” the universe is not right.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
What evidence do we Catholics have that there was nothing at some point?
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That is one of the big questions and one that generally boggles the human mind. Seems that most of us are ill-equipped to deal with infinity or nothingness.
 
belorg said:
None whatsoever.
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And no evidence in science either since it cannot be observed, measured, or repeated by experimentation. We simply don’t know if anything existed before our universe. Of course, this has nothing to do with the existence of God since he, being the Creator and not a creation, exists outside creation/the universe. He simply is–that’s his definition of being.
 
As far as the universe is concerned, there was no “before” before the Big Bang. There “was,” of course, God, but He exists/existed on a completely different plane. He is not part of the universe.
 
There was something before the Big Bang.

The evidence is Reason.

The “Big Bang” was an explosion. There had to be stuff that could be exploded and it had to come from somewhere. As we can now see much of the Universe, that was a lot of stuff.

That stuff had to come from somewhere, something.

There has to be a first cause that was not caused by something before it.

That First Cause is God. First cause is understood by Reasoning. See St Thomas Aquinas.

God made the stuff, caused the explosion, and set in place the physical laws we have discovered.

A 4 year child has no idea how he or she was made, much less anything about his or her ancestors back to the first humans. That lack of knowledge only proves a lack of knowledge. It does not disprove first cause. We humans are discovering more and more about how God created the Universe.

Through Science we have discovered many facts and laws of behavior. Consistent, predicable behavior of the physical world - obeying certain laws if you will - cannot happen by itself. The odds of getting just the right mix of “stuff” that performs in just the right are so extremely remote as to be impossible. Scientific Laws have to come from intelligent design.

That intelligent design is God. Again by reasoning.

The reasoning I tried to present simply has been written more eloquently by other highly respected authors. Whether we understand it and accept it is another matter.
 
I agree with the above that we cannot know what occurred before the BIg Bang.
Even from a scientific perspective, any information that we are able to collect currently begins absolutely at the Big Bang - and in a cosmological sense, any information that could have come before (from an alternate universe? from a previous time in the cycle of Big Bangs?) would have been destroyed in being compressed to the point of infinite energy and infinite density.

I also agree that God is the Creator. We may not know always exactly how. We may not even be able to ask relevant questions about it. ie, is there really a “before” in any meaningful sense? Is it necessarily so?
 
Timi_Celcer said:
What evidence do we Catholics have that there was nothing at some point?
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None. There have been some attempts to prove philosophically that infinite regress is impossible, but I haven’t come across any that seem convincing.

That said, the truth of Catholicism, so far as I know, does not depend upon our having this evidence, or even upon the truth of this claim.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
What evidence do we Catholics have that there was nothing at some point?
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We should clarify what we mean by “nothing” here. Creation was created “ex nihilo,” meaning that God did not have to make use of any prior material to create the universe. On the other hand, there cannot be a point when there was absolutely nothing, because before the creation of the universe, God has existed for all eternity.

As Catholics, we only believe by faith that the universe had a beginning (that it began at some point). But we can prove by reason that the universe necessarily has a first cause, who is God. Take note that these two concepts 1) that the universe began and 2) that there must be a first cause are distinct. Theoretically, the universe could also exist eternally if God so willed to cause it to exist simultaneously with him for all eternity. But since Scripture reveals to us that God willed the universe to have a beginning (“In the beginning…”), we believe it by faith.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
What evidence do we Catholics have that there was nothing at some point?
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Frankly, I’m not sure what nothing would mean; however, it is an act of faith for Catholics, other Christians, and Jews, among others, that G-d at some point in what we regard as time and space created everything. Other than that, there is no scientific evidence so far that I know of. In fact, some scientists speak of a prior Big Bang period consisting of little bangs, but how can anybody be reasonably certain of this?
 
raikou said:
Theoretically, the universe could also exist eternally if God so willed to cause it to exist simultaneously with him for all eternity.
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To “cause to exist” logically requires that the universe could not exist simultaneously with God through all God’s eternity.
 
Logic tells us that an infinite past is not possible, and that the universe had to start somewhere.
 
meltzerboy said:
In fact, some scientists speak of a prior Big Bang period consisting of little bangs, but how can anybody be reasonably certain of this?
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They cannot even be unreasonably certain of this! 😉

Science is not supposed to deal with beings or events outside the natural order. There is no evidence whatever of a natural order before the Big Bang, since there was no “before.”

There is among atheists a movement to account for Creation as an infinite series of Bangs, big or small. This is to escape the awkward conclusion (for them) that there might be a supernatural Creator behind the Big Bang. But then this kind of speculation becomes not science, but rather an
a-theology required to counter theology.

This may be what is meant by those who refer to atheism as a religion.
 
N0X3x said:
None. There have been some attempts to prove philosophically that infinite regress is impossible, but I haven’t come across any that seem convincing.
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If there were an infinite regress, we could not be at any point in time, because it would have taken an infinite amount of time to get to that point.
 
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