I am a student of Geology and Chemistry, and beginning in Astronomy. I do not believe in the big bang. I am a Christain and have been called into the field of science. First off, there was a beginning to this cosmos. The initial construct of the heavens and the earth was probably more like an organized plot of cosmic strings.

These would be inert and void until God uttered the words, "Let there be Light", this vocalization would have caused the strings to vibrate harmonically and omnipotently, activating the inert material. He then divided the light from the dark, this probably means that the two were coexistent in a quantum state of unity before he divided them. This division was probably done with the addition of a specific dimension to the cosmos.

Then before any stars were set, the Earth was prepared such that there was a canopy of water placed floating very high in the sky. Then there was made the first life, the plant life, this was made before the sun and the other stars. I think that the universe must have been lit up like a fluorescent light bulb to support plant life on that day.

The next day he set the sun and stars which completed the division of light and dark. I believe that he condensed the light material and left the darkness outstretched. I believe that the entire universe, and time and space was under compression during the preflood days; everything was much closer together. When the flood occured, the entire universe had to be stretched out or dialated including time, because if it were not outsretched the radiation from the surrounding stars would fry the Earth, when the canopy was ruptured and fell to the Earth as rain.

Cosmic compression, I believe, is why man lived for a thousand years in preflood days, because the oxygen was much higher as it was compressed and pressurized. That though, is not enough to make a man live for a thousand years today. Why not? This is because time has been stretched thin thereby, speeding up the lives of everything and shortening their days. I don't think that it is still expanding and dialating, because our maximum lifespan would be getting evermore shorter by the day.

I believe that the cosmos will compress again, with the second Coming of Jesus, in order to live out the thousand year reign, in the fasion of the original creation, time compressed and all, where the moment lasts longer
and the lives are between eight and nine times longer. I base this idea of coming compression on the references in the Revelations of the Bible, especially when the heavens depart as a scroll and the stars of the heavens fall unto the Earth. The distances that these stars have to travel to get here, means that the Unverse will be folded up, in just the manner that it was unfolded or stretched.

I believe that Christ will be compressing time and space as he returns with the clouds of the heavens. I believe that He will restore the canopy upon the face of the atmosphere and pressurize the atmosphere, this will make the oxygen much thicker and plentiful for the Earths inhabitants.

I also think there may have been a hyperbaric hydrosphere of hydrogen metal, capping the waters that were set in pre-flood the sky, and this could only be formed at extreme pressures under compression. Hydrogen metal forms at such high pressures, that it can be found deep inside Jupiter and only forms under such high pressure.

I also believe in black holes and dark matter are one and the same, except the dark matter bodies are very massive and I believe they serve the function of transporting, via a supersized wormhole, entire regions of Galaxies, millions and possibly billions of lightyears away in the blink of an eye. This says that the entire Creation is really only six to seven thousand years old, yet possibly several billion lightyears across. As far as we could ever know, Earth is at the center of the known Universe, because we can only see the same distance in every direction.

Thesis
The world has a beginning in time.

Demonstration
In fact, let us suppose that the world does not have a beginning in time: that being so, up to any given moment there will have elapsed an infinite series of states of affairs of the world that follow one after the other. Now, the infinitude of a series implies that it can never be completed through consecutive syntheses. Consequently, an elapsed infinite cosmic series is impossible and, thus, a beginning of the world is a necessary condition of its existence, which is what we set out to demonstrate....



Antithesis
The world does not have a beginning in time.

Demonstration
In fact, let us suppose that it does have a beginning in time. Since the beginning is an existence that is preceded by a time when the thing is nonexistent, it is necessary that there will have been a time when the world was not, in other words, an empty time. Now, in an empty time it is impossible that anything can spring forth, because no part of that time bears, in respect of some other part, any distinctive condition of existence that is preferential as compared to nonexistence...consequently, even though various series of things can have a beginning in the world, the world itself cannot have a beginning and, thus, it is infinite in respect of time past.

(All this was to show that religion and philosophy have finally caught up with astronomers and physicists and have found them unprepared, yet those in the mainstream refuse to realize that they can’t move forward anymore unless they sit down and do their homework. Only when they study philosophy will they be able to understand what cosmology ultimately implies, but they’ll never do it because it scares them. They’re too literal-minded. There’s no way you can broaden their minds.

(I’m sorry about grabbing all that empty space. It was the only way to put across the idea. Abridgement was impossible.)
***

Originally posted by Macrento
some Greek thinker had reflected in a similar way. His reasoning: now, supposing I could walk over to the very end of the universe, and I poked my staff through the limit, what would happen to the end of my staff? Would it disappear?

That's a good example. When you find the "end" what's beyond it? hence it seems like there can be no ned.

Even scientists admit the universe is just too big for the human mind to comprehend the dimensions in the observable universe, and the infinite nature is even harder to grasp, perhaps impossible to fully grasp it.

Way better than the beginning of time example you quoted in your 2nd post, that seems harder to follow.

But since this thread is about the big bang, you never really said if you believe in the big bang or not and why, did you? or did I miss it?

[edit on 5-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]

You're only attacking one piece of evidence for the big bang with the redshifts, there are many. So until you can disprove every single one and have the science world review and agree with your theory you have proved jack.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur


But since this thread is about the big bang, you never really said if you believe in the big bang or not and why, did you? or did I miss it?

Olber’s Paradox

Part I – A Cat-and-Dog Fight

Maybe my “Location” hints at the answer?

Two members have been discussing here Olber’s Paradox, without ever naming it. It’s just another one of those things that Big Bangers claim is yet more proof. They’re making it necessary for someone to go into this at great length, so it’s their fault if I have to fill up even more space. Fortunately it’s infinite, no matter what they keep saying....

On page 1 “trace_the_truth” starts it going, thus:

“If there is an infinite amount of matter then there is also an infinite amount of stars. If the infinite stars have had infinite time for their photons to travel omni directionally across the infinite universe then every line of sight from anywhere would end on a star.

“Space wouldn't be black. It would be white.”

Then on page 2 “Watcher-In-The-Shadows” takes up the challenge and says, “Light gets dimmer as it travels.”

“t. the t.” then drags poor Poe into the matter:

“(...) if there are an infinite sources of light in an infinite area, then with infinite time, every where you look will end in light. It is very simple.

(...)

“As Edgar Allen Poe has said on the subject:

‘Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy, since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.’

“... and of course, he illustrates a universe so large (perhaps infinite in size) which can't possibly be infinite in time. This is compatible with the big bang theory due to the expansionary period and the speed of light.

“You say light gets dimmer as it travels. That is of no concern to an infinite universe with infinite stars and infinite time because the photons are spreading out over an infinite area infinitely. In an infinite universe, every single photon from every single star has reached, and its successors are continuing to reach, every single point in the universe until one star in the line of site has died.. but even then there are infinite stars in that line of sight.”

“Watcher” thinks Poe is amusing but out of his depth as regards these matters:

“So Edgar Allen Poe *I do enjoy his literary works but that is neither here nor there* is a credible scientific source? And no, the scenario you describe would not be the case. You assume that light can push light into the visible spectrum creating what you claim. Remember distant stars are harder to see *read dimmer* than closer stars and whether or not space is infinite doesn't even factor in.”

The discussion gets ugly, with both of them accusing the other of using “ad hominem” arguments. In rhetoric this is an unforgivable sin. It turns into a cat-and-dog fight.

Further ahead, on page 4 muzzleflash says, “why is the infinite universe not overflowing with light? several reasons

as mentioned earlier - light dissipates as it travels , or dimming

also, asteroids, planets, rocks, dust, gas , etc will block light

therefore it would be impossible to have a superluminous sky even in an infinite universe.”

Page 5 and beyond are still Terra Incognita for me but I’m working on it.
***

Part II: The Fur Flew and Now the Dust Can Be Expected To Settle

I’ll try and see if I can turn it into a decent fight.

Olbers put forward his notions way back in 1826. He thought that the night sky, instead of being dark, ought to be extremely bright, due to the light shed by all the stars in the universe, and so he assumed that the darkness was caused by the dust clouds that blocked out the missing starlight.

B. Bangers now claim that the universe is expanding and that as space expands it stretches the light rays travelling through it, just like you see the stripes on striped toothpaste stretching and warping when the paste is forced out of the tube. Thus their wavelength increases, and so their energy decreases. (These two factors are inversely related: the longer the w/l, the less energetic the electromagnetic radiation, which is why waves with minute w/l’s, like UV light, X-rays and gamma rays, are so destructive to living tissue and can be used to sterilize food and medical equipment.)

In a static universe, stars have always existed, and so their light has been accumulating during an infinite amount of time. The night sky, then, should shine with an infinite intensity. So why is it so dark?

The problem was stated even before Olbers, by none other than...Kepler. His way of doing so was different, but it amounted to much the same thing. He said: if the number of stars fills an infinite amount of space then the eye will always end up intercepting the incoming light of one of them, no matter in what direction one looks. (Centuries later “t. the t.” repeats this argument.) The light of faraway stars is dimmed by the distance (“Watcher’s” first reply), but this dimming is compensated by the vast number of distant stars. (Nowadays we would talk about galaxies, not stars.)

However, this reckoning is in need of rectification. Stars are not just points of light, objects with no extension whatever, which is how the naked eye sees them. They are extended objects, in other words, they have a surface. If they show up as disks on photographic plates it’s because of an overexposure effect on the photographic emulsion that covers the plate. (The most powerful telescopes can now make out the surface of some stars and make them appear like true disks.)

This means that, if you’re watching from Earth, the disks of the stars will overlap, like leaves on a tree, so that our eyesight can’t have an infinite reach...yet this rectification doesn’t solve the problem. Even if space weren’t infinite, the brightness of the night sky would still be overwhelming. It would have to be similar to the brightness of the Sun. All of space would then be as hot as the surface of the Sun (about 5,700-5,800 degrees Kelvin). None of the planets would’ve been able to condense out of the primordial stuff in the ditto nebula.

There are many ideas that allow a solution to the paradox without having to turn into a B. Banger. For example, in an infinite universe, just as there is an infinite amount of starlight, so, too, there is an infinite amount of dust and gas, and thus the probability that a beam of starlight will eventually be absorbed is infinite. If all the dust and gas were to vanish all of a sudden then maybe we would be blinded by the luminosity, just before it melted us.

The truth of this statement is suggested by the fact that astronomers think that the average number of stars we could see if there were no dust would be more or less constant in any one area. Consequently, when they see fewer stars in a part of that area, they assume that there’s dust absorbing the light of the stars behind it.

There’s also gravitational redshift to be dealt with. When light has to work against gravitational attraction it “tires”, like someone climbing a steep hill. This implies a loss of frequency and thus an increase in the w/l, in other words, a redshift. (W/l increases along the spectrum in the direction of the color red and radio waves.)

In an infinite universe light must eventually cross an infinite amount of gravitational fields. (Besides, gravity extends indefinitely in all directions, as you will see if you play around with Newton’s equation and watch how distance increases to infinity, but, of course, it weakens infinitely in the process.) One would have to expect it, then, to extinguish in the long run.

However, in the conventional model of the universe, it is claimed that this doesn’t happen to starlight travelling among the galaxies because they are more or less uniformly spread out (not locally, where they are unevenly placed and they form clusters like our Local Group, and then clusters of clusters, and Great Walls, and a spongelike network, but on a large enough scale), and so the gravitational forces cancel each other out.

...and then there’s the concept of intrinsic “light fatigue” (i.e., not due to outside factors). Light can be expected to grow tired and lose some of its energy (and thus increase its w/l) as it travels endlessly (?). In an endless universe, it would sooner or later simply fade away and vanish (but since matter/energy can’t be destroyed, but only transformed, in that case, would it revert to matter, and is light constantly turning into matter, just as matter is constantly being turned into radiation in the stars?). Along the way it would redshift, which would be another substitute explanation for the one involving the expansion of space.
***

Originally posted by Macrento
Where do you find that assumption, and where do you see “the God Complex” and “religious preconception” ???

My point is not an assumption, it is a philosophical perspective or a concept. The God complex or "that which is ineffable, i.e. unknowable," is thinking anyone could possibly "know the whole Universe" which is needed for the thought experiment to work as per your example. If you would like me to go into this further I could, maybe my assumption was that you were following my point.

The theory of the Big Bang requires one to have "Faith" in order for them to "Believe" in it because empirical evidence and observation is contradicting it in many ways. Scientific methods are not used to disprove a theory but the other way around, the scientific method is used to try and prove a theory which, in this case, is not happening.

Originally posted by Macrento
You reject the concept of infinite space, yet reason, as I tried to point out and failed, IS INCAPABLE OF HANDLING SUCH AN APPARENTLY ELEMENTARY CONCEPT AS SPACE, whether finite or infinite. The same goes for time

I can accept the concept of "infinite space" if they are defined as the same thing (both as a void, without measure and non-existence) otherwise they are in contradiction and beyond reason. So the term "Infinite Space" is either an oxymoron or superfluous. The definition of 'Space' is undergoing a change and therefore we need to be careful how it is used. Space as the medium between Earth and the Sun and the stars is not infinite nor is it empty or an absolute void. It has measure, it is full of particles, energy and is well within reason.

As for time, that is easy to define. Time is the measurement and comparison of moving objects.

These concepts I express here come from years of reading about many different subjects so I couldn't say where I exactly got them from. All that I would ask from anyone is to at least try and understand my point because I do enjoy debating these subjects.

Quote: “My point is not an assumption (...).”

Counterquote: I wasn’t saying that you were making assumptions. I was talking about the assumption you pointed out when you said, “The main problem with this philosophy is the supposition of one person knowing ‘All’ in a single point of time”. Besides, this was incomprehensible. Now you’ve explained it clearly: the “person” you were talking about is an omniscient God, which was not at all clear.
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Quote: “The God complex or ‘that which is ineffable’, i.e. ‘unknowable’, is thinking anyone could possibly ‘know the whole Universe’ which is needed for the thought experiment to work as per your example.”

Counterquote: What thought experiment? Kant’s reasonings concerning time?
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Quote: “I can accept the concept of ‘infinite space’ if they are defined as the same thing (both as a void, without measure and non-existence) otherwise they are in contradiction and beyond reason. So the term ‘Infinite Space’ is either an oxymoron or superfluous.”

Counterquote: You don’t realize that a “void”, or utterly empty space, is entirely unthinkable, inconceivable. There can’t be space without anything in it. What makes it possible to posit the idea of space is the fact that there are things in it, because, for the sake of argument, supposing there were nothing except space, how could you say there was any sort of distance? Distance can be thought of only between one thing and some other thing. As long as there is so much as a single object, you can already conceive space, because you can say there’s a certain distance between any two points on that object.

It could be easier to understand if you try this thought experiment: imagine a pure, disembodied consciousness in empty space. How could this entity conceive space, if it has no reference points?

So, space and matter are inseparable concepts. Just as you can’t have matter without space to harbor it, so, too, you can’t have space without a single reference point in its midst to define a distance.
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Quote: “Space as the medium between Earth and the Sun and the stars is not infinite nor is it empty or an absolute void. It has measure, it is full of particles, energy and is well within reason.”
.
Counterquote: When discussing the concept of “space” it is understood that one is referring to space in general, not to this or that portion of space. Any portion thereof is obviously finite and thus accessible to reason. The problem lies, not with the part, but with the whole, and the problem is this: that in this case, the whole is not the sum of its parts. This holds true both for space and time. No matter how many volumes or instants you add up, you will never be able to complete the sum, because both space and time are infinite series.

This is so impossible to grasp that only in the imaginary realm of mathematics have we been able to handle infinity, and even in this case it was so difficult that when someone --Georg Cantor-- finally managed to give mathematical expression to the concept of “infinity” with his “arithmetic of transfinite numbers” he was attacked viciously. Henri Poincaré described this new arithmetic as a “disease”, and Leopold Kronecker, one of Cantor’s teachers, called him a “scientific charlatan”, a “renegade” and a “corruptor of youth”. I think this last charge was precisely the charge for which Socrates was put to death. Modern-day mathematics is now inconceivable without Cantor’s notions.
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Quote: “As for time, that is easy to define. Time is the measurement and comparison of moving objects.”

Counterquote: No, it is NOT easy to define. What is maybe the best-known quote of St. Augustine goes like this: “What is time? If someone asks me for the time [of day], I know what it is, but if I want to explain time to him, I can’t do it”. Fifteen centuries later there is still no explanation that will satisfy everyone...yet it is at the very foundation of science...but science has no single definition of it.

For example, for a psychologist, it’s an element of conscience, and it will depend on your mood, but for a physicist it’s one of the three fundamental quantities, along with mass and distance, with which he or she can describe anything in the universe, and for a philosopher it can be other things. None of them will feel comfortable with the definitions beyond the scope of his own discipline.

A physicist was so sick and tired of hearing that time was so hard to define that he said, “It’s simple: time is what clocks measure!” Physics is a rock-hard, no-nonsense, down-to-Earth thing.

Anyway, at least what you say about movement hints at a solution, but it’s rather involved.

The principle that is the basis for the measuring of time is as follows: you take a natural periodic phenomenon (which by itself is already a clock) and then you choose a unit and you christen it. That’s all you need. Things that can be used as a basis for building a time scale can be, for example, a day, the interval between two identical consecutive Moon phases, or a year (the cycle of the seasons).

Thus the measurement of time is based upon the interval between two consecutive arrivals of a heavenly body at a certain point. For example, you can choose the interval between two successive crossings of Sirius over the meridian of the observer and call it the “Sirius day”. You can select any other object in the sky that moves in a predictable way, like, for instance, the Sun. The interval between two consecutive crossings of the meridian is called a “day”, and the name of that day will depend on the object you’ve chosen as a reference.

In fact, (...)

[edit on 7-9-2009 by Macrento]