Side-Lines

"In the beginning was The Word..."

I recently finished David Berlinski's Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. He discusses at length the problems physicists have had, ideologically, with the Big Bang and the contortions they will put themselves through (The Landscape and multiverse concepts) to eliminate the possibility of a "beginning." Is this the latest attempt or is this guy really onto something?

I highly recommend Berlinski's book - it is accessible to non-science types and very fun*ny.

A commenter on the site with much more science education than I wrote this:

When you give yourself the liberty of treating constants as variables you can start creating models that fit pretty much anything. Now it's
all well and good that Prof. Shu's model solves three big problems in cosmology (Big Bang singularity, cosmic acceleration/CC, and the flat
horizon), but it does so by creating problems that are far worse, IMO.

There's more, and then this last line:


"Sounds like somebody really needed to publish or perish."

Thanks Donald. Saved me a trip.

To speak of beginning in this context is unsustainable. Beginnings and ends pertain to human existence. Knowing does too. You can't know God because that is necessarily a projection of your humanity onto the deity. Likewise you can't know ontological beginnings or endings. We are trapped in our bodies and our bodies are necessarily the measure of all things. The ancient Greeks knew this. See Protagoras.

You must have heard this one: What is the Big Bang? The moment atheists suddenly appeared.

does this eliminate the need for a theory of everything?

Red Carolina:

The Theory of Everything - by definition - is always needed in cosmology.

First question to be answered by any cosmological speculation is "Does this speculation fit in with General Relativity?". If not, forget about it...

Multiverse - alas - is consistent with Second Law of Thermodynamics...and hence is to be taken seriously. Juggling "constants" around becomes meaningless under Second Law constraints.

Pretty sure when people talk about the origin of the universe, they are talking about this particular universe. Maybe this one banged, maybe it didn't. God knows. When humans find out, the answer will be both amazing and amusing if Albert's famous formula is any guide.
This fellow may be committing no sin that Einstein or Feyneman wouldn't approve of. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." That's how Al got to the speed of light squared. The known facts didn't fit, so he juggled the facts. Turned out the speed of light is relative.
When the twentieth century thought to apply that little gem to politics and philosophy it greatly disturbed Albert, and now politics rules science as well. Maybe he just should have stayed a patient clerk and left Newton alone.

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Anything to avoid the possibility of a creator. When it comes to the cosmologist, Occam's Razor is just a nuisance.