[Vision2020] [Bulk] Re: Kai's False Dilemma (Was "Dennis Avery. . .")

[Paul Rumelhart]

Kai Eiselein wrote:
> Paul stated that science has not tried to explain the "Big Bang". That 
> statement is wrong. Why has the History Channel run a program entitled 
> "The Universe: Beyond the Big Bang"?
> The following is a program description from the HC website:
> /The universe began with a massive expansion, billions and billions of 
> years ago, and it continues to expand with every passing second. The 
> idea that the universe, and man's very existence, began with a "Big 
> Bang" is no longer a topic of debate among most scientists--it is 
> essentially taken as fact. How has man come to this conclusion, and 
> how has our knowledge evolved so that we can recreate the very first 
> seconds of our universe and all that has developed since? Interviews 
> with the world's leading physicists and historians are woven together 
> with animated recreations and first-person accounts to explain 
> concepts such as the formation of galaxies, the creation of elements 
> and the formation of Earth itself./

What I hope I stated (you never know what kind of day you're going to 
have until you've had it) is that the Big Bang Theory says nothing about 
what happened before time t=0.  The theory doesn't state how the 
singularity came to be, just what happened after it started to expand.  
Thus, the theory does not say "there was nothing, then it exploded".  It 
says something more like "the universe exploded, and it happened 
something like this".  The difference between the two being that there 
is no attempt at an explanation of how it exploded, or what might have 
happened "before" the Big Bang.  I put "before" in quotes, because if 
I'm understanding Einstein correctly (which is definitely doubtful), you 
can't have time or space before spacetime existed.  They are two sides 
of the same coin.  No space, no time.  So the question of what happened 
before the Big Bang is similar to the question "what is north of the 
North Pole?"  However, the phrase "First there was nothing, then it 
exploded" makes a good sound bite.

If I misstated that in a previous post, I apologize. 

Paul