Question: Do you all believe that the world began with the big bang?
Comments
-
Where did the energy/mass for the big bang come from…. Fine to say that energy turned in to mass.. but where did the energy come from to start with?
-
It’s an extremely good question. Nobody knows. The trick is to say that there was no time before the big bang, and you have to seriously rethink what “comes from” means. Maybe things like this “just happen”. Maybe when the universe gets older it’ll shrink back to a single point and the whole thing will go again. But to be honest we don’t know.
-
profbunsen
Yes. Well, the universe, and then the Earth. The evidence suggests this is what happened, and there’s a LOT of evidence.
You know the cool thing about the big bang? At the start of everything, there was only hydrogen and helium. The other elements – the ones we’re made up of – only formed when the first stars went supernova, exploded and the debris re-formed into planets and us. This, incredibly, means that you are made from the debris of exploding stars.
My brain just exploded.
0
The evidence does point that way. If you are really trying to ask a question about religion, I’ll make two points: firstly, many scientists are spiritual, which is different from believing or belong to a mainstream religion. why? because we see and experience the wonder and beauty of the world around us. it is truly awe-inspiring. secondly, when you talk to your very young brothers and sisters, you often use simplified ideas and words because they will not understand difficult words and ideas. if you read the creation “myths” in judio-christian tradition, or those in other cultures, in the first time period, there was darkness. then in the second time period light was created (the big bang created stars and planets). in the third time period, the surfaces of planets formed, and so on. it is surprising how consistent these creation “myths” are, across many, many cultures and religions, and even more amazing how they correspond to the SEQUENCE of events that modern science tells us about the big bang, the formation of the planets, the evolution of life and so on.
0
For the moment I do. The scientific explanation for me makes more sense to me than anything else out there.
Though if you’re asking me from the angle whether I believe more in the big bang than I do with stories from religion where there was darkness before there was light and then everything else. Like Kieran, I think that some of these stories match really well to what the big bang is said to have been. I see it as the beginning of explaining the stars in the night sky and everything around us.
And these stories were collected over time and passed from generation to generation so these stories have stayed the same. Though with science, people are looking for answers to their questions and are asking why things are the way they are which is different from what I understand religion to be which involves faith and accepting things for the way they are and not asking why. I could be entirely wrong here when it comes to religion as it isn’t an area that I have studied since Year 12!
To be a scientist it doesn’t mean that you need to stop being religious or vice versa. It is important not to combine the two because they come from different angles on life and focus on things very differently.
0
Sure, I think it’s a good explanation for how our Universe began. If someone came up with a different theory though and had good evidence to support it then maybe I would change my mind, but the big bang theory makes sense to me.
What I wonder though, is how did it ‘go bang’? What was there to begin with and where did it come from?
One suggestion is that there was no ‘before’ but that time began with the big bang. Still, that doesn’t explain what made it happen and I wonder if science be able to explain it one day, or if we will never quite understand.
0