Reddit mentions: The best astrophysics & space science books

Friend asked for a similar list a while ago and I put this together. Would love to see people thoughts/feedback.

Very High Level Introductions:

• Mr. Tompkins in Paperback
  
  • A super fast read that spends less time looking at the "how" but focused instead on the ramifications and impacts. Covers both GR as well as QM but is very high level with both of them. Avoids getting into the details and explaining the why.
    
    
• Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution (Great Courses lecture)
  
  • This is a great intro to the field of non-classical physics. This walks through GR and QM in a very approachable fashion. More "nuts and bolts" than Mr. Tompkins but longer/more detailed at the same time.
    
    
    Deeper Pop-sci Dives (probably in this order):
    
    
• Quantum Theory: A Very Brief Introduction
  
  • Great introduction to QM. Doesn't really touch on QFT (which is a good thing at this point) and spends a great deal of time (compared to other texts) discussing the nature of QM interpretation and the challenges around that topic.
    
• The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces
  
  • Now we're starting to get into the good stuff. QFT begins to come to the forefront. This book starts to dive into explaining some of the macro elements we see as explained by QM forces. A large part of the book is spent on symmetries and where a proton/nucleon's gluon binding mass comes from (a.k.a. ~95% of the mass we personally experience).
    
• The Higgs Boson and Beyond (Great Courses lecture)
  
  • Great lecture done by Sean Carroll around the time the Higgs boson's discovery was announced. It's a good combination of what role the Higgs plays in particle physics, why it's important and what's next. Also spends a little bit of time discussing how colliders like the LHC work.
    
• Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time (Great Courses lecture)
  
  • Not really heavy on QM at all, however I think it does best to do this lecture after having a bit of the physics under your belt first. The odd nature of time symmetry in the fundamental forces and what that means with regards to our understanding of time as we experience it is more impactful with the additional knowledge (but, like I said, not absolutely required).
    
• Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics
  
  • This is not a mathematical approach like "A Most Incomprehensible Thing" are but it's subject matter is more advanced and the resulting math (at least) an order of magnitude harder (so it's a good thing it's skipped). This is a "high level deep dive" (whatever that means) into QFT though and so discussion of pure abstract math is a huge focus. Lie groups, spontaneous symmetry breaking, internal symmetry spaces etc. are covered.
    
• The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
  
  • This is your desert after working through everything above. Had to include something about string theory here. Not a technical book at all but best to be familiar with QM concepts before diving in.
    
    Blending the line between pop-sci and mathematical (these books are not meant to be read and put away but instead read, re-read and pondered):
    
    
• A Most Incomprehensible Thing: Intro to GR
  
  • Sorry, this is GR specific and nothing to do with QM directly. However I think it's a great book acting as an introduction. Definitely don't go audible/kindle. Get the hard copy. Lots of equations. Tensor calculus, Lorentz transforms, Einstein field equations, etc. While it isn't a rigorous textbook it is, at it's core, a mathematics based description not analogies. Falls apart at the end, after all, it can't be rigorous and accessible at the same time, but still well worth the read.
    
• The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics
  
  • Not QM at all. However it is a great introduction to using math as a tool for describing our reality and since it's using it to describe classical mechanics you get to employ all of your classical intuition that you've worked on your entire life. This means you can focus on the idea of using math as a descriptive tool and not as a tool to inform your intuition. Which then would lead us to...
    
• Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum
  
  • Great introduction that uses math in a descriptive way AND to inform our intuition.
    
• The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
  
  • Incredible book. I think the best way to describe this book is a massive guidebook. You probably won't be able to get through each of the topics based solely on the information presented in the book but the book gives you the tools and knowledge to ask the right questions (which, frankly, as anybody familiar with the topic knows, is actually the hardest part). You're going to be knocking your head against a brick wall plenty with this book. But that's ok, the feeling when the brick wall finally succumbs to your repeated headbutts makes it all worth while.

I'd like to give you my two cents as well on how to proceed here. If nothing else, this will be a second opinion. If I could redo my physics education, this is how I'd want it done.

If you are truly wanting to learn these fields in depth I cannot stress how important it is to actually work problems out of these books, not just read them. There is a certain understanding that comes from struggling with problems that you just can't get by reading the material. On that note, I would recommend getting the Schaum's outline to whatever subject you are studying if you can find one. They are great books with hundreds of solved problems and sample problems for you to try with the answers in the back. When you get to the point you can't find Schaums anymore, I would recommend getting as many solutions manuals as possible. The problems will get very tough, and it's nice to verify that you did the problem correctly or are on the right track, or even just look over solutions to problems you decide not to try.

Basics

I second Stewart's Calculus cover to cover (except the final chapter on differential equations) and Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics. Not all sections from HRW are necessary, but be sure you have the fundamentals of mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, and thermal physics down at the level of HRW.

Once you're done with this move on to studying differential equations. Many physics theorems are stated in terms of differential equations so really getting the hang of these is key to moving on. Differential equations are often taught as two separate classes, one covering ordinary differential equations and one covering partial differential equations. In my opinion, a good introductory textbook to ODEs is one by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. That said, there is another book by V. I. Arnold that I would recommend you get as well. The Arnold book may be a bit more mathematical than you are looking for, but it was written as an introductory text to ODEs and you will have a deeper understanding of ODEs after reading it than your typical introductory textbook. This deeper understanding will be useful if you delve into the nitty-gritty parts of classical mechanics. For partial differential equations I recommend the book by Haberman. It will give you a good understanding of different methods you can use to solve PDEs, and is very much geared towards problem-solving.

From there, I would get a decent book on Linear Algebra. I used the one by Leon. I can't guarantee that it's the best book out there, but I think it will get the job done.

This should cover most of the mathematical training you need to move onto the intermediate level physics textbooks. There will be some things that are missing, but those are usually covered explicitly in the intermediate texts that use them (i.e. the Delta function). Still, if you're looking for a good mathematical reference, my recommendation is Lua. It may be a good idea to go over some basic complex analysis from this book, though it is not necessary to move on.

Intermediate

At this stage you need to do intermediate level classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics at the very least. For electromagnetism, Griffiths hands down. In my opinion, the best pedagogical book for intermediate classical mechanics is Fowles and Cassidy. Once you've read these two books you will have a much deeper understanding of the stuff you learned in HRW. When you're going through the mechanics book pay particular attention to generalized coordinates and Lagrangians. Those become pretty central later on. There is also a very old book by Robert Becker that I think is great. It's problems are tough, and it goes into concepts that aren't typically covered much in depth in other intermediate mechanics books such as statics. I don't think you'll find a torrent for this, but it is 5 bucks on Amazon. That said, I don't think Becker is necessary. For quantum, I cannot recommend Zettili highly enough. Get this book. Tons of worked out examples. In my opinion, Zettili is the best quantum book out there at this level. Finally for thermal physics I would use Mandl. This book is merely sufficient, but I don't know of a book that I liked better.

This is the bare minimum. However, if you find a particular subject interesting, delve into it at this point. If you want to learn Solid State physics there's Kittel. Want to do more Optics? How about Hecht. General relativity? Even that should be accessible with Schutz. Play around here before moving on. A lot of very fascinating things should be accessible to you, at least to a degree, at this point.

Advanced

Before moving on to physics, it is once again time to take up the mathematics. Pick up Arfken and Weber. It covers a great many topics. However, at times it is not the best pedagogical book so you may need some supplemental material on whatever it is you are studying. I would at least read the sections on coordinate transformations, vector analysis, tensors, complex analysis, Green's functions, and the various special functions. Some of this may be a bit of a review, but there are some things Arfken and Weber go into that I didn't see during my undergraduate education even with the topics that I was reviewing. Hell, it may be a good idea to go through the differential equations material in there as well. Again, you may need some supplemental material while doing this. For special functions, a great little book to go along with this is Lebedev.

Beyond this, I think every physicist at the bare minimum needs to take graduate level quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. For quantum, I recommend Cohen-Tannoudji. This is a great book. It's easy to understand, has many supplemental sections to help further your understanding, is pretty comprehensive, and has more worked examples than a vast majority of graduate text-books. That said, the problems in this book are LONG. Not horrendously hard, mind you, but they do take a long time.

Unfortunately, Cohen-Tannoudji is the only great graduate-level text I can think of. The textbooks in other subjects just don't measure up in my opinion. When you take Classical mechanics I would get Goldstein as a reference but a better book in my opinion is Jose/Saletan as it takes a geometrical approach to the subject from the very beginning. At some point I also think it's worth going through Arnold's treatise on Classical. It's very mathematical and very difficult, but I think once you make it through you will have as deep an understanding as you could hope for in the subject.

Thank you for the effort! I'll try to do you justice with a thorough response.

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> 1. God says what he needs to say to us through the Bible.

Sure it's the Bible and not Harry Potter? To anyone without your obvious bias, the Bible looks like a collection of fanciful but poorly edited fiction. God's message hasn't reached me and it hasn't reached 5 billion other humans alone among the living. In other words, if this is an omnipotent's idea of effective communication, God sucks as a communicator.

> 2. God is not inert, he sometimes does miracles

Prove this and I'll leave you alone. Has God ever healed an amputee? Has God ever accomplished a miracle that has no natural explanation?

No wait, references to the work of fiction mentioned in #1 don't count. There is not the slightest bit of evidence that your precious Bible is anything more than a stack of useful rolling papers. I've addressed this before. J.K. Rowling has Harry Potter performing scores of miracles in her books, it's really easy to create a miracle with pen and paper.

> 3. The evidence is not inadequate. If you want evidence of his existence, there is evidence everywhere, and in sheer necessity, it is pointed out that God must exist.

So you say. Your following arguments are... sorely lacking. Here we go:

> 3.1 The need of a creator
If you saw a car in the forest, you wouldn't say it randomly came into existence and over time came together by itself, because it is too complex for that to have happened.

Correct. That's easy for me to say because I know exactly what a car is and how it's made.

> In the same way, this universe and everything in it is far too complex to randomly explode into existence and come together by itself, a creator is needed and that creator is God.

Your analogy doesn't hold. The universe is not very complex conceptually, it's been satisfactorily explained how all heavenly bodies resulted from the expansion of space followed by the clumping of clouds of primeval hydrogen. Suns and the nuclear process in them? A natural consequence of packing a lot of hydrogen with gravity. Heavy elements? The ashes of nuclear fusion. Planets circling around suns? That's what happens when heavenly bodies nearly collide in a vacuum, influenced only by each other's gravity. Finally, the complexity of life on earth is neatly explained by evolution from very primitive beginnings from substances that occur -naturally- in the void of lifeless space. No magic is required to explain any of this. But I see we get to talk about this in greater depth in #4.

Still, for your interest, this video refutes Craig's Kalam Cosmological argument and is thoroughly captivating while presenting modern cosmology. Highly recommended!

> 3.2 The need for an original mover/causer
You know nothing moves by itself correct?

No, I don't know this, because I have a solid education in physics. Atomic nuclei spontaneously explode and particles fly from them - movement without a mover. Plato's Prime Mover argument dates back to a time when people didn't know anything about physics and science was done by sitting on your butt, guessing and thinking.

> 3.3 The need of a standard
When you call something, for instance let's say "good", there has to be a standard upon which good is based.

This response of yours -so far- is sounding suspiciously like a copy of a William Lane Craig debate argument. Please note that all of his arguments have been successfully refuted - though not necessarily within one debate or only within debates. But regardless, I can easily address your arguments on my own.

Now then. Basic moral behavior has been shown to emerge naturally as a result of evolution. Yes, this is why theists hate evolution so much. It explains a lot of stuff that used to be attributed to God. Animals in the wild show moral behavior such as altruism, fairness, love, cooperation, justice and so forth. Even robot simulations, given only the most minimal initial instructions, develop "moral" behavior because that turns out to be a successful selection criteria for survival.

If you try to point out that humans display and think about much more complex moral situations than animals, I'll agree. But you know who invented those extensions of purely survival-oriented moral behavior? Humans did, not God. Humans look at the behaviors that promote survival and well-being in animals and humans and call it "good." They see behavior that hurts and kills animals and people and makes them suffer, and they call it "bad." Your five year old kid can grasp this concept - you insult your god when you claim this is so difficult it necessarily requires divine intervention. I recommend Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics, a thoughtful and thorough discussion of morals far more nuanced and acceptable to a modern society than the barbaric postulates of scripture. Rape a virgin, buy her as a wife for 50 shekels, indeed!

> 4.1 About the Origin of Life/Finely tuning a killer cosmos

> Anyway, for life to come together even by accident, you would need matter

Correct.

> now the universe is not infinite and even scientists know that.

I'm not sure that's certain, but it's probably irrelevant. Let's move on.

> that scientists say made the universe would need matter present.

Correct. We certainly observe a helluva lot of matter in the present-day universe (to the extent we can observe it).

> Where do you expect that matter to have come from?

An empty geometry and some very basic laws of physics (including quantum physics). This is very un-intuitive, which is why people restricted to Platonic thinking have trouble with it. But you know that matter and energy are equivalent, via E=mc^2 , right? Given the raw physics of the very early universe, matter could be created from energy and vice versa. OK, that still doesn't explain where the (matter+energy) came from. Here's the fun part: it turns out that the universe contains not just the conventional "positive" energy we're familiar with, but also negative energy. And it turns out that the sum of (matter + positive energy) on one hand and (negative energy) on the other are exactly equal and cancel out. In other words, and this is important, the creation of the universe incurred no net "cost" in matter or energy. This being the case, it becomes similarly plausible for for the entire universe to have spontaneously popped into existence just like those sub-atomic particles that cause the Casimir Effect. Stephen Hawking has explained this eloquently in his book The Grand Design but you may prefer Lawrence Krauss' engaging lecture A Universe From Nothing.

> I know for a fact that people are smarter than an explosion and even they have been unsuccessful in making organic life forms from scratch

Wrong again. It took them 15 years, but Craig Venter and his project recently succeeded in constructing the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell.

By way of interest, people making the kind of claims you do were similarly amazed when Friedrich Wöhler, in 1828, synthesized the first chemical compound, urea, that is otherwise only created by living beings. This achievement torpedoed the Vital Force theory dating back to Galen. Yet another job taken off God's hands.

> let alone have them survive the forming of a planet.

Now this is just dumb. First the planet formed, then it cooled down a bit, then life developed.

> Because of that, I doubt an explosion could do it either.

So you're right there: The explosion just created the planet and the raw materials. Life later arose on the planet.

> Chance doesn't make matter pop into existence.

Yes it does. The effect I was mentioning earlier is called quantum fluctuation.

> 4.2 The human brain

(skipping the comparison of man with god. I don't see it contributing anything. All of this postulating doesn't make God plausible in any way)

> 4.3 The Original Christian Cosmos

> 4.3.1. Maybe because we are after the fall, we have already lost that perfect original cosmos Paul imagined.

Wait, this contradicts your next point.

> 4.3.2 You have to give Paul some credit for trying. He didn't have any the information or technology we have today.

Thank you, this confirms my assertion that the Bible and its authors contain no divinely inspired knowledge. The Bible is a collection of writings by people who thought you could cleanse leprosy by killing a couple of pigeons.

Now, about that original cosmos: either Paul was too uneducated to conceive the cosmos as it really exists, or what he imagined is irrelevant. In any case, what you consider the "after loss" cosmos is trillions of times larger than Paul imagined; it would be silly to call this a loss.

The fact remains that the world as described in the Bible is a pitiful caricature of the world as it is known today. And Carrier's main point remains that our cosmos is incredibly hostile to life; and if man were indeed God's favorite creation, the immensity of the cosmos would be a complete waste if it only served as a backdrop for our tiny little planet.

On science and evolution:

Genetics is where it's at. There is a ton of good fossil evidence, but genetics actually proves it on paper. Most books you can get through your local library (even by interlibrary loan) so you don't have to shell out for them just to read them.

Books:

The Making of the Fittest outlines many new forensic proofs of evolution. Fossil genes are an important aspect... they prove common ancestry. Did you know that humans have the gene for Vitamin C synthesis? (which would allow us to synthesize Vitamin C from our food instead of having to ingest it directly from fruit?) Many mammals have the same gene, but through a mutation, we lost the functionality, but it still hangs around.

Deep Ancestry proves the "out of Africa" hypothesis of human origins. It's no longer even a debate. MtDNA and Y-Chromosome DNA can be traced back directly to where our species began.

To give more rounded arguments, Hitchens can't be beat: God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist (which is an overview of the best atheist writings in history, and one which I cannot recommend highly enough). Also, Dawkin's book The Greatest Show on Earth is a good overview of evolution.

General science: Stephen Hawking's books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time are excellent for laying the groundwork from Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity through to the modern discovery of Quantum Mechanics.

Bertrand Russell and Thomas Paine are also excellent sources for philosophical, humanist, atheist thought; but they are included in the aforementioned Portable Atheist... but I have read much of their writings otherwise, and they are very good.

Also a subscription to a good peer-reviewed journal such as Nature is awesome, but can be expensive and very in depth.

Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is also an excellent look at the human mind and genetics. To understand how the mind works, is almost your most important tool. If you know why people say the horrible things they do, you can see their words for what they are... you can see past what they say and see the mechanisms behind the words.

I've also been studying Zen for about a year. It's non-theistic and classed as "eastern philosophy". The Way of Zen kept me from losing my mind after deconverting and then struggling with the thought of a purposeless life and no future. I found it absolutely necessary to root out the remainder of the harmful indoctrination that still existed in my mind; and finally allowed me to see reality as it is instead of overlaying an ideology or worldview on everything.

Also, learn about the universe. Astronomy has been a useful tool for me. I can point my telescope at a galaxy that is more than 20 million light years away and say to someone, "See that galaxy? It took over 20 million years for the light from that galaxy to reach your eye." Creationists scoff at millions of years and say that it's a fantasy; but the universe provides real proof of "deep time" you can see with your own eyes.

Videos:

I recommend books first, because they are the best way to learn, but there are also very good video series out there.

BestofScience has an amazing series on evolution.

AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism is awesome.

Thunderfoot's Why do people laugh at creationists is good.

Atheistcoffee's Why I am no longer a creationist is also good.

Also check out TheraminTrees for more on the psychology of religion; Potholer54 on The Big Bang to Us Made Easy; and Evid3nc3's series on deconversion.

Also check out the Evolution Documentary Youtube Channel for some of the world's best documentary series on evolution and science.

I'm sure I've overlooked something here... but that's some stuff off the top of my head. If you have any questions about anything, or just need to talk, send me a message!

Yes, I do believe it is by chance and I don't believe one needs to posit a god as the creator of the universe to explain its existence. And if one does, then where did that god come from?

E.g., one could explain the existence of the universe as the eminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist Steven Hawking did in The Grand Design.

>In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
>
>He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Source: Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe

I know it is hard for many people to accept that chance is involved in our existence. The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is reputed to have remarked about God in relation to quantum mechanics that "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice", which is commonly paraphrased as "God does not play dice with the universe." Supposedly, either Neils Bohr or Enrico Fermi remarked "Stop telling God what to do with his dice." - Source. And, Stephen Hawking remarked in a 1994 debate with Roger Penrose that "Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." Source.

Note: One shouldn't assume that the use of "God" by any of them means the notion of God commonly held by Christians today. But, their remarks do show that there has been much disagreement among eminent physicists regarding the role that chance plays in the universe.

If by chance most species of dinosaurs on earth had not been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, such as an asteroid strike on earth, 65 million years ago, the creatures posing the question "Do you really think that our existence is owed just to chance" might look something like one of the creatures depicted here.

We may simply be like that puddle mentioned by Douglas Adams.

>This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say.

Source: Is there an Artificial God?

As to why humans tend to find certain environmental features beautiful, well natural selection offers an explanation.

>One of the most important considerations in the survival of any organism is habitat selection. Until the development of cities 10,000 years ago, human life was mostly nomadic. Finding desirable conditions for survival, particularly with an eye towards potential food and predators, would have selectively affected the human response to landscape—the capacity of landscape types to evoke positive emotions, rejection, inquisitiveness, and a desire to explore, or a general sense of comfort. Responses to landscape types have been tested in an experiment in which standardized photographs of landscape types were shown to people of different ages and in different countries: deciduous forest, tropical forest, open savannah with trees, coniferous forest, and desert. Among adults, no category stood out as preferred (except that the desert landscape fell slightly below the preference rating of the others). However, when the experiment was applied to young children, it was found that they showed a marked preference for savannahs with trees-exactly the East African landscape where much early human evolution took place (Orians and Heerwagen 1992). Beyond a liking for savannahs, there is a general preference for landscapes with water; a variety of open and wooded space (indicating places to hide and places for game to hide); trees that fork near the ground (provide escape possibilities) with fruiting potential a metre or two from the ground; vistas that recede in the distance, including a path or river that bends out of view but invites exploration; the direct presence or implication of game animals; and variegated cloud patterns. The savannah environment is in fact a singularly food-rich environment (calculated in terms of kilograms of protein per square kilometre), and highly desirable for a hunter-gatherer way of life. Not surprisingly, these are the very elements we see repeated endlessly in both calendar art and in the design of public parks worldwide.

Source: Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology

Or see Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution by David Rothenberg

No, you certainly don't seem arrogant to me. I wouldn't assume just because someone has a different opinion on such matters that means he or she is arrogant. Nor do I downvote people just because their views don't match my own as I noticed someone did to your comments.

One of the reasons I visit reddit is to expose myself to others' viewpoints so that I can, hopefully, learn from doing so.

The claim that "time is exactly like space" is not true. Time is treated as a dimension in Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR), but it is very different from the "usual" spatial dimensions. (It boils down to "distance" along the time direction being negative, but that statement doesn't really mean anything out of context.) The central idea of relativity is that while the entire four dimensional "thing" (spacetime) just is (is invariant), different observers will have different ideas about which way the time direction points; it turns out to be convenient for our description of nature to respect the natural "democratic" equivalence of all hypothetical observers.

I can point you to a couple of good resources:

This
is a very good, book about SR, and some "other stuff". It's pretty mathematical, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't totally comfortable with college level intro physics and calculus.

This
is the "standard" text for undergraduate SR; it's less demanding than the above, but uses mathematical language that won't translate immediately if you go on to study GR. (I have not read this myself.)

This is the book that I learned from; I thought it was pretty good.

This is Brian Greene's famous popularization of String Theory. It has chapters in the beginning on SR and Quantum Mechanics that I think are quite good.

This is Einstein's own popularization, only algebra required. All the examples that others use to explain SR pretty much come from here, and sometimes it's good to go right to the source.

This is a collection of the most important works leading up to and including relativity, from Galileo to Einstein, in case you'd like to take a look at the original paper (translated). The SR paper requires more of a conceptual physical background than a mathematical one; the same can't be said of the included GR paper.

I don't know what your background is--the first three options above are textbooks, and that's probably much more than you were hoping to get into. The last three are not; the book by Brian Greene and the collection (edited by Stephen Hawking) are interesting for other reasons besides relativity as well. For SR, though, another book by Greene might be a bit better: this.

>"Don't be so quick to put us (theists/spiritualists) all in the same boat. There may be many more like me than you realize. Unfortunately, the more close minded, irrational among us tend to be the more vocal."

Also, more numerous: http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/hold-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx

>"Yes I realize that the latter hold place in certain historical religions, but I really don't care about them, as they don't have anything to do with my beliefs. I do get that you are making the point that my beliefs now, ultimately, are just as fictional as those beliefs then. But I would say that it is a false equivalency, a slippery slope, to compare them. Any belief must be tested and judged on its own merit."

It's not so much "Dead religions are untrue, so currently relevant religions are also untrue" as it is "If you exhaustively study other religions you will see pervasive shared themes and implied psychology that the "somewhat smart" mistake for proof that all religions are divinely inspired and that the slightly more clever realize is proof that they were all authored by human beings."

Part of judging a belief system, in particular a holy text on it's own merits is giving it a read-through without the a priori assumption that it's correct on some level. Look at it instead as an anthropologist and psychologist, it is very revealing.

>"In fact, I'm suggesting that contemplation of this other realm is purely optional, that you don't need it for fulfillment in this realm, and that any conclusions about this other realm should not fly in the face of what we know about this realm."

In an ideal world. But what you've said is another way of saying "Don't treat it as if it's true, and it won't create problems". Other sincere, devout religious people you try to convert to this approach will sense that about it right away, like a cow catching a whiff of the slaughterhouse it's being led into.

>"Who am I?"

A mostly hairless self aware primate, part of a thin film of primates currently coating the globe for however long the oil holds out.

>"Why am I aware of myself?"

You have a sufficiently complex brain.

>"Where does my experience as an individual come from?"

The fact that your brain is physically separated from others and does not exchange information with them except by speech and writing.

>"How did the universe begin?"

Spontaneous particle and antiparticle separation events in an endless sea of quantum potential. "Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that." -Richard Feynman

>"Why is there something instead of nothing?"

Nothingness is maximally ordered. Collapse into somethingness was guaranteed by entropy. As for why entropy still applied back then, see the Feynman quote above.

>"I don't think science can answer these questions."

It's actually explained most of that and is working hard on the rest. I recommend picking up a copy of http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/055338466X

>" It only simply gets at the fact that belief in a spiritual....something....may well satisfy certain philosophical questions that science can not. "

But does it? Simply offering up a story is not the same as explaining something. An explanation which cannot be shown to be true is not an explanation, it is a story. If you need to know a big bang occurred I can show you pictures of the lingering background radiation from it. If you need to know that matter and antimatter can spring from nothingness (insofar as we can tell at the moment) I can show it to you in a particle accelerator or at the event horizon of black holes in the form of Hawking Radiation. There's such a wealth of provable explanations on offer from science that the idea that some people take a story and treat it like an explanation because it's religious in origin is profoundly frustrating.

>"But I don't think these questions will ever be answered in any quantifiable, measurable way."

Even if that were true, it doesn't make a story legitimately equivalent to an explanation. Treating the story as true just because we don't have an explanation yet ignores the other, more sensible option of simply saying "we don't have it all figured out yet, and may never". I'll admit, "We don't know" is not satisfying. But that doesn't justify replacing it with pretend-knowledge.

>"But for those who chose to contemplate them, they must be answered spiritually. At least for now."

If, indeed, what they are doing can truthfully be called 'answering'.

> But if any one of them created something that is detectable, then I would have to say that the evidence of the existence of that entity would be the very things that they created.

Assuming you could show that the thing could only have been created by this otherwise undetectable thing. In practise, that's hard to do.

If we're speaking about the universe, cosmologists don't include a god in their calculations - they don't need one. You might check out Krauss' book A Universe From Nothing or a talk he did that has a lot of the same topics. Be warned - the talk is at an atheist convention so there are some jabs at Christianity. Stephen Hawking has an episode in the 'Curiousity' tv series where he explores whether or not a god is needed for a universe to exist.

> Who's to say that it won't be possible to create a "god microscope" that allows people to see god, someday in the future, if god is in fact see-able?

Well, if someone builds such a device and it provides credible evidence for a god, then you will never hear a religious person say "you just have to have faith" ever again. Until then, let's be reasonable and stick with what we have evidence for. For the rest we can be intellectually honest and say "we don't know."

> Who determines the value of the reasons? (Whether they're "good" or "bad" reasons?)

If you want to get really technical, there's epistemology which is the study of knowledge - how we know things and so on.

Ask yourself this: are some ways of gathering knowledge better than others? For instance, suppose I want to know how tall a particular building is. I could use:

• a rope suspended from the roof which I later measure with a meter stick
  
• divination (say, tea leaves or a crystal ball)
  
• a large number of people to estimate the height, then I take the average
  
• architectural schematics at the city records office
  
• numbers written on pieces of paper which put in a bag and pull one out at random
  
• surveyor's equipment (lasers, protractors, trigonometry)
  
• guessing
  
  And so on. Now, clearly, some of these are going to give me more accurate results, while some are going to be way off. Some might be sufficient depending on my needs. So if I tell you that I know the height of the 5-story building down the street from me because I divined it during a drug-induced trance, you're going to doubt my accuracy. If I told you that I had a trained surveyor use his equipment, you're probably going to think the number I have is reasonably accurate. If I'm a scientist, I might even give you error bars which tells you about how certain I am of my measurement.
  
  So, I think people, using knowledge and reason are sufficiently capable of judging whether the reason we know things is sufficient or not. This might sound like circular reasoning but consider that if we have good reason to think a particular design of plane will fly and later it does fly, we can validate our reasoning with empiricism.
  
  > But what would the point of existence be if there isn't something we're here for?
  
  Suppose God does exist. Where does he get his purpose from? Does he require a god of his own to give him a purpose?
  
  This question assumes there is a purpose. Why does there have to be? Why can't each individual person decide for themselves what they want their life to be about? As Sagan said,
  
  > The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.
  
   
  
  > I would suggest that it's pretty subjective in terms of what's "convincing" and what's not.
  
  There are plenty of things that exist for which we have non-subjective evidence. The evidence that supports the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun is pretty convincing. No educated, rational person does not tentatively accept this proposition given the overwhelming amount of evidence to support it.
  
  If you think a god exists, I would ask: what do you consider to be the most credible reason to think a god exists? If there are people who have examined your reasoning and have rejected it, what is it that is preventing them from holding your view? Is it stubbornness or a lack of information or experience, or is it something wrong with the argument itself, and so on?
  

I'm no physicist. My degree is in computer science, but I'm in a somewhat similar boat. I read all these pop-science books that got me pumped (same ones you've read), so I decided to actually dive into the math.

​

Luckily I already had training in electromagnetics and calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra so I was not going in totally blind, though tbh i had forgotten most of it by the time I had this itch.

​

I've been at it for about a year now and I'm still nowhere close to where I want to be, but I'll share the books I've read and recommend them:

• First and foremost, read Feynman's Lectures on Physics and do not skip a lecture. You can find them free on the link there, but they also sell the 3 volumes on amazon. I love annotating so I got myself physical copies. These are the most comprehensible lectures on anything I've ever read. Feynman does an excellent job on teaching you pretty much all of physics + math (especially electromagnetics) up until basics of Quantum Mechanics and some Quantum Field Theory assuming little mathematics background.
  
• Feyman lectures on Quantum Electrodynamics (The first Quantum Field Theory). This is pop-sciency and not math heavy at all, but it provides a good intuition in preparation for the bullet points below
  
• You're going to need Calculus. So if you're not familiar comfortable with integral concepts like integration by parts, Quantum Mechanics will be very difficult.
  
• I watched MIT's opencourseware online lectures on Quantum Mechanics and I did all the assignments. This gave me what I believe is a solid mathematical understanding on Quantum Mechanics
  
• I'm currently reading and performing exercises from this Introduction to Classical Field Theory. . This is just Lagrangian Field Theory, which is the classical analog of QFT. I'm doing this in preparation for the next bullet-point:
  
• Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell. Very math heavy - but thats what we're after isnt it? I havent started on this yet since it relies on the previous PDF, but it was recommended in Feynmans QED book.
  
• I've had training on Linear Algebra during my CS education. You're going to need it as well. I recommend watching this linear algebra playlist by 3Blue1Brown. It's almost substitute for the rigorous math. My life would've been a lot easier if that playlist existed before i took my linear algebra course, which was taught through this book.
  
• Linear Algebra Part 2 - Tensor analysis! You need this for General Relativity. This is the pdf im currently reading and doing all the exercises. This pdf is preparing me for...
  
• Gravity. This 1000+ page behemoth comes highly recommended by pretty much all physicist I talk to and I can't wait for it.
  
• Concurrently I'm also reading this book which introduces you to the Standard Model.
  
  ​
  
  I'm available if you want to PM me directly. I love talking to others about this stuff.

There's also the cyclic model; there's also a Wikipedia article on the cyclic model. That model seems to mesh better with Hinduism.

>If you are a Hindu philosopher, none of the above should surprise you. Hindu philosophy has always accepted the notion of an alternately expanding and contracting universe. In his book Cosmos, Carl Sagan pointed out how, in Hindu cosmology, the universe undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths, and its timescales are in the same ballpark as those of modern cosmology. Here is a quote from Cosmos:
>
>"There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the cosmic dream.
>
>Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps greater. It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."

Reference: The Conscious Universe: Brahma's Dream

Or for the Big Bang model, one might address the question as Steven Hawking has in his book The Grand Design.

>He adds: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
>
>"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
>
>"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Reference: Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

In any case, one can ask "where did God" come from as well. One can say "God has always existed", but one can say the universe always existed or there were other universes before this one, etc., also. Our limited intellects and knowledge of the universe may keep humans from truly knowing the answer indefinitely.

I. Sure, some forms of theism are coherent (Christianity is not one of those forms, for what it's worth; the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma being a couple of big problems), but not all coherent ideas are true representations of the world; any introductory course in logic will demonstrate that.

II. The cosmological argument is a deductive argument. Deductive arguments are only as strong as their premises. The premises of the cosmological argument are not known to be true. Therefore, the cosmological argument should not be considered true. If you think you know a specific formulation of the cosmological argument that has true premises, please present it. I'm fully confident I can explain how we know such premises are not true.

III. There is no doubt that the teleological argument has strong persuasive force, but that's a very different thing than "being real evidence" or "something that should have strong persuasive force." I explain apparent cosmological fine-tuning as an entirely anthropic effect: if the constants were different, we wouldn't be here to observe them, therefore we observe them as they are.

IV. This statement is just false on its face. Lawrence Krauss has a whole book about the potential ex nihilo mechanisms (plural!) for the creation of the universe that are entirely consistent with the known laws of physics. (Note that the idea of God is not consistent with the known laws of physics, since he, by definition, supersedes them.)

V. This is just a worse version of argument III. Naturalistic evolution has far, far more explanatory power than theism. To name my favorite examples: the human blind spot is inexplicable from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution; likewise, the path of the mammalian nerves for the tongue traveling below the heart makes no sense from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution. Evolution routinely makes predictions that are tested to be true, whether it means predicting where fossils with specific characteristics will be found or how fruit fly mating behavior changes after populations have been separated and exposed to different environments for 30+ generations. It's worth emphasizing that it is totally normal to look at the complexity of the world and assume that it must have a designer...but it's also totally normal to think that electrons aren't waves. Intuition isn't a reliable way to discern truth. We must not be seduced by comfortable patterns of thought. We must think more carefully. When we think more carefully, it turns out that evolution is true and evolution requires no god.

VI. There are two points here: 1) the universe follows rules, and 2) humans can understand those rules. Point (1) is easily answered with the anthropic argument: rules are required for complex organization, humans are an example of complex organization, therefore humans can only exist in a physical reality that is governed by rules. Point (2) might not even be true. Wigner's argument is fun and interesting, but it's actually wrong! Mathematics are not able to describe the fundamental behavior of the physical world. As far as we know, Quantum Field Theory is the best possible representation of the fundamental physical world, and it is known to be an approximation, because, mathematically, it leads to an infinite regress. For a more concrete example, there is no analytic solution for the orbital path of the earth around the sun! (This is because it is subject to the gravitational attraction of more than one other object; its solution is calculated numerically, i.e. by sophisticated guess-and-check.)

VII. This is just baldly false. I recommend Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" and Stanislas Dehaene's "Consciousness and the Brain" for a coherent model of a materialist mind and a wealth of evidence in support of the materialist mind.

VIII. First of all, the idea that morality comes from god runs into the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma pretty hard. And the convergence of all cultures to universal ideas of right and wrong (murder is bad, stealing is bad, etc.) are rather easily explained by anthropology and evolutionary psychology. Anthropology and evolutionary psychology also predict that there would be cultural divergence on more subtle moral questions (like the Trolley Problem, for example)...and there is! I think that makes those theories better explanations for moral sentiments than theism.

IX. I'm a secular Buddhist. Through meditation, I transcend the mundane even though I deny the existence of any deity. Also, given the diversity of religious experience, it's insane to suggest that religious experience argues for the existence of the God of Catholicism.

X. Oh, boy. I'm trying to think of the best way to persuade you of all the problems with your argument, here. So, here's an exercise for you: take the argument you have written in the linked posts and reformat them into a sequence of syllogisms. Having done that, highlight each premise that is not a conclusion of a previous syllogism. Notice the large number of highlighted premises and ask yourself for each, "What is the proof for this premise?" I am confident that you will find the answer is almost always, "There is no proof for this premise."

XI. "...three days after his death, and against every predisposition to the contrary, individuals and groups had experiences that completely convinced them that they had met a physically resurrected Jesus." There is literally no evidence for this at all (keeping in mind that Christian sacred texts are not evidence for the same reason that Hindu sacred texts are not evidence). Hell, Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Christ" even has a strong argument that Jesus didn't exist! (I don't agree with the conclusion of the argument, though I found his methods and the evidence he gathered along the way to be worthy of consideration.)

-----

I don't think that I can dissuade you of your belief. But, I do hope to explain to you why, even if you find your arguments intuitively appealing, they do not conclusively demonstrate that your belief is true.

How the universe was made?

I think the real crux of the question you're asking is how can something come from nothing? (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; I don't want to speak for you) Let me just start off by saying there is no definitive scientific answer to this question... yet. However, there are very prominent research scientists who have tackled the question and come up with very cogent theories (backed up by current mathematical models).

I won't pretend to understand most of these theories as I'm a biologist, not a physicist. There is one recent book written on the very topic called A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss (he is a published theoretical physicist and cosmologist). He posits that particles do in fact spontaneously come into existence and there is scientific proof and reasoning for how and why. I haven't gotten around to reading it myself (it was just published this year), but I've been told it's good for the layman on the topic.

Now let me move on to some of the problems with this question. Perhaps you yourself don't have this supposition, but the supposition many theists make with the question (where did the universe come from?), is that if it can't be answered than God must have done it. This is a logical leap that defies rational reasoning, and is a leap theists have been making for millenia. What makes the tides go in and out? We don't know; must be God. What causes disease? We don't know; must be God. Where did the universe come from? We don't know; must be God?

It's what's known as a God of the gaps; wherein anything that can't be explained is conveniently claimed to have a divine explanation. Until a rational scientific answer comes along and religion takes a step back. There will likely always be gaps in our knowledge base (most definitely in our liftetimes). That doesn't mean we should make the same mistake as our ancestors and attribute these gaps to God. It's okay to simply not know and strive to understand.

Another huge problem with your question is that the theist answer only serves to further complicate the original question.

1. How can something come from nothing?
   
2. Well it can't right? So God must have created that original something.
   
3. God is something. Go back to step 1.
   
   Theists tend to skip that third step, or explain it away as God just always existing. Yet the universe always existing is something that is logically unacceptable to them. If anything, throwing God into the equation only makes it more complicated. A sentient being capable of creating the initial state of the universe would be more complex than what it is creating (meaning God is more complex than the universe). Trying to explain than how God came into being is more complicated than the original question, so nothing has really been answered or solved.
   
   If you're really trying to stump atheists, the best common theist argument I've seen is the cosmological constants one (how are they so fine tuned?). No doubt there are answers, but that's one of the better arguments out there. I won't go into it here, just search for it.

It can be explained, though not simply, nor accessibly. Luckily, I'm not just an atheist, I'm also a theoretical physics student. Keep in mind that this of course can not be demonstrated empirically (science is the study of our Universe, so we obviously can't study things outside it in time or space).

Lets go back to before the Universe exists. Let's call this state the Void. It's important to note that no true void exists in our Universe, even the stuff that looks empty is full of vacuum fluctuations and all kinds of other things that aren't relevant, but you can investigate in your own time if you want. In this state, the Void has zero energy, pretty much by definition. Now, the idea that a Void could be transforms into a Universe is not really controversial; stuff transforms by itself all the time. The "problem" with a Universe arising from a Void is that the Universe has more energy than the Void, and it there's not explanation for where all this energy came from. Upon further investigation, we'll actually see that the Universe has zero net energy, and this isn't actually a problem.

Now, let's think about a vase sitting on a table. One knock and it shatters, hardly any effort required. But it would take a significant amount of effort to put that vase back together. This is critically important. Stuff has a natural tendency to be spread out all over the place. You need to contribute energy to it in order to bring it together. We're going to call this positive energy.

Gravity is something different though. Gravity pulls everything together. Unlike the vase, you'd need to expend energy in order to overcome the natural tendency of gravity. Because it's the opposite, we're going to call gravity negative energy. In day to day life, the tendency of stuff to spread out overwhelms the tendency of gravity to clump together, simply because gravity is comparatively very weak. There's quite a few more factors at play here, but stuff and gravity are the important ones.

Amazingly, it turns out that it's possible for the Universe to have exactly as much negative energy as it does positive energy, which means that it would have zero total energy, meaning that it's perfectly possible for it to pop out of nowhere, by dumb luck, because no energy input is required. Furthermore, we know how to check if our Universe has this exact energy composition. And back in 1989, that's exactly what cosmologists did. And it turns out it does. We can empirically show, to an excellent margin of error, that our Universe has zero net energy. Think about that for a second. Lawrence Krauss has a great youtube video explaining the evidence for this pretty incredible claim.

The really incredible thing is, given that our Universe has zero net energy, it's not only possible that it could just pop into existence on day, it's inevitable. It's exactly what we'd expect. Hell, I'd be out looking for God's fingerprints if there wasn't a Universe, not the opposite.

If you want to read more about it, by people who've spent far more time investigating this than I have, I suggest The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, and A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. Both go into detail about the subject, and don't require any prior physics knowledge.

tl;dr The Universe didn't need a "first cause". PHYSICS!

A little more than ELI5 but worth the effort, Kip Thorne, the physicist who consulted on the film, wrote a fantastic book that covers this question in depth.

You can read it here.

I recommend reading the entire Prologue since it's relatively short and pretty fascinating, and will give you the background to why it must be a very large black hole, but the part directly relevant to your question is the section entitled Gargantua on page 41. (Also relevant is the establishing of the problem on pp. 34-35)

If you like his writing, buy his book Black Holes and Time Warps. The link above is just some random PDF I found on a search.

To sum him up though, a super-massive black hole will have negligible tidal forces at its "surface" (event horizon). You therefore could hover just above it and not be spaghettified. Once you cross the horizon, you'd still be okay for a while, but now no amount of force could keep you from falling ever closer to the center. As you approached the center, tidal forces would increase exponentially until eventually you would be pulled apart. So yes, it would be gentle. At first. But once you go inside, spaghettification is inevitable, though not necessarily immediate.


TL:DR A big size to make it more gentle? Yes. Possible to enter without spaghettification? Temporarily yes, ultimately no.

Submission Statement: On November 2016, David Deutsch and Sam Harris did a podcast together. The purpose of that podcast was for David Deutsch to attempt to explain where Sam Harris went wrong or could improve upon his The Moral Landscape idea.

David is a Popperian and has built upon Popper’s work in his two books The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity. This podcast sparked my interest in Popper and at the time I did not understand the disagreement between David and Sam. I asked the question and Brett Hall who is an expert (doubt he’d enjoy that label) on Popper and Deutsche was kind enough to make a video explaining their differences.

The reason I decided to transcribe this video is that I have found that comparing and contrasting Sam’s epistemology to that of Popper’s has been super helpful in better understanding Critical Rationalism, which is what Popper called his Philosophy. I have read Popper and Deutsch for a year since and have barely scratched the surface.

You do not necessarily need to listen to the Podcast to get the meat of this content, Brett does a great job presenting both their ideas clearly and their differences as well.

Anyway, here are some interesting bits from the video.

>The majority of people who have an alternative epistemology, something other than what Karl Popper views knowledge as for example, they think that knowledge is about justified true belief. They think that you need to begin with the foundation and on that foundation then you accumulate knowledge, you build it up. And this is an anti critical vision about how knowledge is created. In the Popperian view, you simply have problems, you can start anywhere at all and you attempt to solve those problems when you have them. When you have ideas that are in conflict with one another by using a critical method, it's a completely different vision.

On What Morality is,

>So instead, just to preface, what morality really consists of, it's about solving moral problems. And in order to solve moral problems, we have to conjecture explanations about what might improve things. And they can always be false. We can always criticize them.

There is no need for bedrock,

>Okay. So again, David says that moral theory should be approached like scientific theories. They don't need foundations. They don't need foundations. There are a lot of theories out there, a lot of moral theories like, Kant's categorical imperative, or Rawl's fairness or stuff that comes out of the Bible the golden rule et cetera, et cetera. Whatever your moral theory happens to be or indeed Sam's wellbeing of conscious creatures. All of these, these principles, these ideas, these theories should be seen as critiques, as critiques of each other or as critiques of any other theory that someone proposes or as a critique of a solution that someone proposes.
>
>They shouldn't be seen as foundations from which you begin to build up everything else.

There is a lot of great information in here not just about morality, there’s a bit about politics, creativity, and perhaps most groundbreaking in my estimation, David’s explanation of what a person is.

I hope this is helpful!

Other Links:

• David Deutsch and Sam Harris Podcast
  
• Brett Hall's essay critique of The Moral Landscape for "The Moral Landscape Challenge"
  
• Artificial Creativity Podcast

> I mean from what I know scientifically is the big bang theory and that in itself is pretty questionable.

That couldn't be further from the truth. The Big Bang Theory is one of the most widely accepted theories in science because the evidence to back it up is too strong. Did you know that the theory made very specific predictions about what we would find if we looked for very specific data, and then we looked for it and turns out we would out exactly what the Big Bang Theory predicted we would? That's why scientists accept it as better than other theories. Because it makes good testable predictions, we have tested this predictions, and they every time, they confirm the Big Bang. In fact, the Big Bang Theory used to be widely discredited by scientists for many decades in favor of other theories, until we finally found actual evidence to support it. Then everyone changed sides. So it's not like scientists just believe on the Big Bang out of thin air. They accept it because it's by far the best theory we have today with the most evidence behind it.

You're making the classic mistake of confusing a "theory" with a "hypothesis". In science the word "theory" is not arbitrary, you can't call whatever arbitrary idea in your head a "theory". It has to go through meticulously high standards to be able to even be considered a theory. One example, is that it needs to make new observable predictions, or else, it's just a hypothesis, not a theory. "A wizard did it" is a hypothesis, Big Bang is a theory. A theory is necessarily always better than a hypothesis. And one theory can be better than others, one might have more stronger evidence to back it up. In the case of the Big Bang, it has a lot of very strong evidence.

> theres no scientific explanation for an actual starting point where nothing existedm just vaccuum.

Actually there is. That's part of the Big Bang Theory. It's not a simple explanation as it requires advanced modern scientific understanding. Basically "time" is not an infinite constant as we used to think centuries ago. Time is variable depending on speed and it has an actual starting point where there's nothing before that. That starting point is the Big Bang. The Big Bang is the beginning of time itself. So it doesn't make sense to ask what was "before" it, because there was no time for anything to be before about.

"Asking what was there before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the north pole." -- Stephen Hawking

It's also not "nothing existing just vacuum", it's the exact opposite of that. It was everything, not nothing. Literally the whole universe was in just this one spot called the singularity. That's far from "nothing".

You might be thinking "that sounds crazy, do we have any evidence of that?". Yes we do, a lot of it actually. For one example, the GPS in your phone would not be working if this theory wasn't true. Because the calculations to determine the position of satellites were predicted by the same theory, turns out they work. If you want to, you can read about it directly from the person who came up with the explanation and its predictions in the first place. Stephen Hawking explains the beginning of the universe on his book Grand Design:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/055338466X

Check out the Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism.

Check out a copy of the books The Greatest Show on Earth or Why Evolution is True from a library. You can also get one of them for free on Audible, but you will miss out on the citations and diagrams.

See if you can watch or read The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. I watched the miniseries, it's pretty good. It used to be on Netflix but no longer is.

Cosmos is great, and is on Netflix. If you want to watch videos about Cosmology just type in one of the popular physicist's names, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss (his Universe from Nothing book is really great, so are his lectures about it), Sean Carroll etc.

Let me know if you want to talk, I'm always up for it.

> If there isnt a creator then how did all this life get here?

Abiogenesis is our best working guess for now, but there's a lot of work left to be done. The key thing here though is to be honest and admit that we don't have all the answers rather than wave our hands and say that it was a magical sky faerie.

> I under stand the big bang, at one point all the matter in Universe was compact then it all expanded outwards, well from school I learned that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. How did all that compact matter get there in the first place? I dont know.

It's ok to not know - that's honesty. This excellent book by Lawrence Krauss is fascinating. If you don't have access to it, there's also a talk he gave a few years back.

> I guess I'm getting old enough where my own opinions are forming I'm just trying to decide what I want those opinions to be.

Remember that ultimately our opinions are just that - opinions. The universe is as it is regardless of what we may wish to be true and what we may believe.

I agree. :-) I figured I'd pick a fairly strong example of easily shot down attributes. (On the other hand, the fact that at least 1/3 of the voters in my country agree with the easily shot down version is quite scary, but that's a rant for another day ;-)

The reasons I reject Christianity as a whole are much larger, and not really applicable here, but since you brought it up:

I was born and raised an evangelical Christian, and remained so for ~25 years after my decision at 7 to accept Jesus's death as atonement for my sins and follow him with my whole life.

I am no longer for many reasons, starting with accepting evolution and the lack of an historical Adam, moving into biblical criticism and archeological study, studying other world religions and cultures and their similar claims to Christianity, studying cosmology, psychology, sociology, and cognitive science of religion, and ending at philosophy and specifically epistemology. I tried really hard to maintain my faith, but there is no grounding for it that I can find, and I gave it up with much grief.

Christianity is in no way exceptional to all the other religions. In that way I agree with Spong's 12 points of reform. If you don't know why Spong talks like that, his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die speaks at least as strongly as the atheist polemics. In addition, as I understand the reasons for apparent teleology and cognitive basis for religion which arose by co-opting the social mechanisms of our brain given by natural selection, and think there is a rising case for the universe spontaneously springing out of a quantum foam which is a much less problematic thing to pre-exist than a conscious, changeless entity of incredible knowledge, power, and perfection. Not to mention the issues of causality and intentionality existing in such a creature outside space-time and the entropic arrow of time, without which causality is incoherent. It is for this reason that much of the most interesting theology in the journals these days is on time issues.

Because of all these things we now have much simpler answers for than a supreme being, I see absolutely no reason to posit even a panenthesitic, pantheistic, or deistic god. The later two, even if existant, would by definition have absolutely no impact on my life, and the first no measurable impact.

In the end, if all religion can possibly discover is that we should to be nice to each other and feel awe of the universe and love, I'll take other moral theories that give me the same and yet come from grounding in the observable universe, thanks. Desire utilitarian theory is one of the more interesting ones.

I think the Atheist's Guide to Reality linked above is perhaps the most important book I've ever read which argues strongly goes against the typical arguments of the apologists, and I'm anxious to see more people critique it. Krauss's book linked above is one of very few I've ever pre-ordered, as his video with the same title was quite interesting. If he has a good basis for his claims, it might be the most important scientific theory since Darwin in relation to understanding ourselves.

Nothing about your claims of "self-evidence" is true in my case.

> These beliefs are ones you cannot help but believe; for example, the belief that you exist.

Descartes? "I think, therefore I am?" That's evidence, not self-evidence (though it is evidence for self.) I find it convincing; but then I have a strong bias. This isn't about sufficiency of evidence though; it's about evidence vs. self-evidence.

But how do you take it beyond that? How do you extend it to observations, to the universe, to reality? There are two choices there:

> Most of us also posses pragmatism as a self-evident belief.

"Most" people don't think about it at all. "Most" people are content to think their smartphones are magic. Scientists aren't most people. I'm no most people. And if you're thinking about this topic enough to have this conversation, you're not most people in this respect either. So let's look beyond the pragmatism of "not thinking about epistemology and empiricism won't get me eaten by a tiger, so why bother" and get on with the conversation.

I do consider the possibility the universe is a simulation, or that I'm a brain in a jar being fed stimulus (Actually it's hard to distinguish that testably from surfing reddit, but I digress.) Why not? But those avenues of thought don't lead very far; I feel I've considered them sufficiently. They haven't lead to useful insights yet (saving perhaps the holographic principle), but I remain open to the possibility. Pragmatism has it's place; you can't philosophies if you don't pay attention to things like not dying, but that's evidence for its necessity, not its sufficiency. Think further.

> Why is the sky blue? Because you see it as blue. How do you know that it actually is blue? You don't, but you [presumably] find it self-evidently more rational to assume that what you see is representative of reality, via pragmatism, or a similar philosophy.

And this is where I differ vastly from your preconceived notions of me. I believe the sky is blue because, when I was nine, I built a crude spectroscope and measured it (It's actually mostly white, by the way, with a small but significant increase in the intensity of blue light over what is expected of black-body radiation. Not counting sunset of course. And neglecting absorption lines - I was in third grade, the thing wasn't precise enough for that!)

So that's evidence the sky is blue (and that I was an unusual kid), not "self-evidence." Although in this case, actually observing the sky with your eyes is still evidence; our eyes may be flawed in many ways, but they are sufficient for distinguishing between at least a few million gradations between 390-700 nm wavelengths. That's quite sufficient for narrowing it down to "blue."

That's exactly what I mean about what people consider "self-evidence" actually being evidence they've seen so often they've forgotten it's evidence. You note the approximate visible wavelength of the sky many times a day; it's actually quite well established by repeated observation that (barring systematic errors in our visual processes) it's blue.

> But, if someone did not share this self-evident belief, they would find it quite irrational to assume that the sky is indeed blue in reality, as opposed to merely in your perception of it.

So let's say this happened - let's say someone said the sky was green. Well, there are two possibilities, and we can distinguish between them by showing them other objects with similar emission or reflection spectra. One is that they see these other purportedly blue objects as green. No problem! They simply use "green" to mean "blue." Half a billion people use azul instead, so this is no big deal.

The other possibility is that every other blue thing we can test looks blue to this person, but they still insist the sky is green. This again leads to two possibilities. One is that the sky really is green just for this individual and most of what we have determined about reality is false. The other is that this person has a psychological condition that makes him believe the sky is green. Do we have to accept that the sky is simply self-evidently green to him? Nope! Science!

Put him in a room, and through one slit allow in natural sunlight, and through another match the spectrum of solar light with artificial light as closely as possible. Vary which slit is which. Can this person regularly identify the "green" sky? (specifically compared to control groups?) If not, we can conclude he sees the sky as green due to a psychological condition, not something indicative of reality. This is surprisingly common - just read up on dowsing for instance. There are people convinced they can detect water with sticks, but every one of them fail in tests to do so at rates above random chance. (Dowsers got away with this in old days because when you dug a well, you'd only have to hit a state-sized aquifer.)

The alternative, if he can regularly identify the sky slit as green, and assuming that other possibilities have been excluded, is that reality really doesn't work the way we think it does. Maybe he's a separate brain in a separate jar. Maybe light waves like certain people better. Maybe what we thought were photons were just faeries and they're screwing with us for fun. Whatever the case, though, we'd now have evidence for it. Not "self-evidence" but actual evidence.

Now, you can argue that maybe reality doesn't matter - maybe that person's psychological condition that makes him see a green sky is just as important as the blue sky. Maybe it makes him happier or donate to charity more or whatever, so we should leave him alone. All fine arguments, but they would be separate discussions.

From your other link:

> I also concluded that by logic, existence itself is uncaused.

That remains to be seen. Well-tested theories still leave open other possibilities; though obviously we haven't yet tested these possibilities. But since your basis for belief, according to the other thread, was on the necessity of an uncaused creation in violation of natural laws, I thought you might be interested to know that there are some hypothesis regarding said creation that fit within those laws.

> I know counter points to the popular atheist verses

Umm, are you talking about the bible? Those are biblical verses, not atheist verses, unless you're saying god inspired atheist verses!

Anyway, that sounds like a challenge:

So, okay, what's the counter point to Luke placing the birth of Jesus^[1] at least a decade after Matthew did^[2]

[1] During the claimed (but nonexistent) Census of Quirinius - Quirinius wasn't governor of Syria until at least 6AD

[2] During the reign of Herod, 4BC at the latest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius

I'd love to know.

I have a bunch of others (some tougher), but that one will do.

---

Your reasons for lacking belief in a god are sound - and actually shared by a very large number of people here.

> However I don't feel like any of the current scientific creation theories have any merit.

Which theories are those? (Edit/hint: the big bang is not a 'creation theory')

You might find this book interesting reading, however. It does touch on ideas that are relevant.

> doesn't want to be an atheist.

What do your desires have to do with anything? Unless you're magic, what's true doesn't conform to your wishes.

Some here will disagree, yet I think your cause is a noble one.

My suggestion would be to keep encouraging her to be a freethinker, question everything, and learn all she can about science. If she can be at a point where she understands that "science is more than a body of knowledge, it is a way of thinking" (Carl Sagan), if she can fall in love with the wonders of the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on this world, then you'll be done, as those things will show any thinking person the absurdity of religion as a moral compass.

If she likes to read, here are some books you might consider getting for her:

• The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. An amazing argument for the use the scientific way of thinking in every aspect of our lives.
  
  
• A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. How math and science can fully explain the creation of the universe, and a powerful argument against the universe needing a creator.
  
  
• The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. The subtitle is The Evidence for Evolution. Meant as a book for readers your sister's age. Big plus is that if she likes it, she may want to read The God Delusion and/or The Magic of Reality.
  
  Edit: grammar

>You seem to be saying entirely different things each time you comment on this point.

I am saying the same thing. Philosophers, particularly before the advent of modern science, have often become so dedicated to concepts that they make faulty assertions about the natural world. Concepts derived from a limited understanding become impediments. Grand metaphysical systems of the past may impress with their internal consistency and complexity, but they do not describe the natural world with the accuracy or usefulness of modern scientific theories.

>but rather whether it is sound.

Soundness implies truth of the propositions used as premises in the argument. How would one test the premises of metaphysical arguments about prime movers and such? While I admit that such arguments may be interesting or internally consistent or even valid to the extent that they do not violate the rules of deduction, they are still built on definitions that do not allow for testing against the natural world and are thus not sound.

>No, physics doesn't suggest anything like this.

Lawrence Krauss would disagree.

>The ontological argument...

Depends on the definition of 'great' and whether such definition does or does not include existence. Descartes' goes on to include 'clear and distinct' ideas of supreme beings. These are very muddy concepts and to say 'well I guess god exists because this proof is valid' just seems silly by the standards of modern science. Grenlins exist because I have defined them as the 'greenest thing' and it is greener to exist than not to.

>science of course relying on the methods of logic.

Science relies on observation. Such observation has at times shown a world that does not conform with traditional notions of logic. It is the strength of science that it adapts to what is observed rather than attempting to squeeze the data into an accepted dogma.

>you seem to regard the meaning of time as being limited to physics

The OP asked about time in regard to cosmology which I believe is best dealt with by physics for reasons stated. If you mean by the 'meaning of time' how one experiences time, how it relates to human affairs, etc., then 'yes' other disciplines, from art to sociology, may have something to say.

Sooo many lol, here are some of my favorites.

ADHD

Smart But Stuck: Emotions in Teens and Adults with ADHD https://www.amazon.com/dp/111827928X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_1.Y9ybCSGW7GF

General Brain Stuff
You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, an d 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592407366/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_abZ9ybEHGSMEK

You are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592408796/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_vbZ9ybKY1636G

School/Study Help
A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) https://www.amazon.com/dp/039916524X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_gcZ9ybCDM8Q6K

Social/Relationship skills
What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061438294/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_1cZ9ybQJXS3BK

The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591846617/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_OdZ9ybBFRG9R4

Cosmology

Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400033721/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_GeZ9ybHP9J2J5

Each one of these books has had a big impact on me, as a side note I'm have become a big fan of audible since I normally have a hard time sitting still to read, so I'd recommend giving it a try if you never have. You'll be surprised how much of a book you can comprehend while listening to it as do you other random chores and stuff throughout the day.

I do highly recommend Genome by Matt Ridley and A History of God by Karen Armstrong. It looks like Before the Big Bang might be a great idea too.

However, I'm noticing a bit of redundancy in your stacks and don't want you to get bored! In the presence of the other books, I would recommend Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale in lieu of The Greatest Show on Earth. (Although, if you're actually not going to read all the other books, I would actually go the other way.) Similarly, I would probably choose either to read the God Delusion or a few of the other books there.

Other recommendations: how about The Red Queen by Matt Ridley, and The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes? These occupy niches not covered by the others.

The popular expositions on cosmology all look supremely awesome, but you should probably choose half of them. Another idea: read just The Fabric of the Cosmos by Greene, and if you love it, go ahead and learn mechanics, vector calculus, Electrodynamics, linear algebra, and Quantum Mechanics! Hmm...on second thought, that might actually take longer than just reading those books :)

Looking on their website it seems as if they do not let outside people borrow from their library, sorry :(.

I know many libraries have "partnerships" for the lack of a better word, where if you try to borrow a book from the library, and they don't have it, they will request it from somewhere else they are partnered with and get it for you.

Some ideas of books:

For my undergraduate astrophysics class I used - Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson, ISBN13: 978-0-321-59558-4

I have also used (more advanced, graduate level) - An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll and Ostlie, ISBN13: 978-0-805-30402-2

There are plenty of other undergraduate text books for astrophysics, but those are the only two I have experience with.

Some other books that may be just fun reads and aren't text books:

A Brief History of Time - Hawking

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter - Feynman

Random popular science books:

Parallel Worlds - Kaku (or anything else by him Michio Kaku)

Cosmos - Sagan

Dark Cosmos - Hooper

or anything by Green, Krauss, Tyson, etc.

Videos to watch:

I would also suggest, if you have an hour to burn, watching this video by Lawrence Krauss. I watched it early on in my physics career and loved it, check it out:

Lawrence Krauss - A Universe From Nothing

Also this video is some what related:

Sean Carroll - Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time

Hope you enjoy!

Edit: Formatting.

Lawrence Krauss has done ground breaking research on what may have initiated the big bang. I don't know what you are calling the "timeless unknown," but there are forms of energy beyond the outskirts of our universe that can cause "Big bangs." There maybe many universes beyond our ability and instruments.


https://smile.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468?sa-no-redirect=1

>Science is limited by the human mind and the senses through which the human mind perceives the universe.

Science most definitely is not limited to the human senses as our instruments have allowed us to observe much more. Much of science is actually quite contrary to our senses.

Sure it is limited by the human mind but there are many minds in history that have made amazing discoveries that the ordinary minds did not.

Also not a big fan of the word magical to describe things outside of fiction. It is very non-specific and has implications, whether you mean it or not. Very counterproductive in a debate forum.

>There is another way to explore and discover and this is the inner dimension which is ultimately non physical.

What's an inner dimension and what have you discovered about it? The human mind is quite creative and sees patterns where they don't exist and is quite capable of fabrication of whole worlds of things. How will you prove your so called, "inner dimension?"

I agree with rnally that in order to really get a hold of General Relatively you will need to know differential geometry (which in itself requires you to know calculus and differential forms, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and maybe a bit of tensor analysis). However don't be discouraged, with just high school math you should be able to figure our Special Relativity. It brings me back memories of when I was a high school senior trying to figure out relativity myself and read Relativity: The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein. It's a neat little book and you should be able to get through the first half on special relativity (the highest math I saw were square roots), but again don't be discouraged when you hit the section on general relativity and if you understand everything up to that point you would have gone farther than I have when I was your age :). Best of luck! and good choice of major! (Majored in physics myself)

If you want to learn all about physics I say forget easy and read Penrose's magnum opus The Road to Reality.

It is a hard book, and very long, but if you follow it at a comfortable pace and consult other works when you get stuck you will be left with a vast and wonderful comprehension of the physical world. You also get the pleasure of knowing you didn't take the easy way out, and that your knowledge of physics in general is as comprehensive as nearly anyone's.

This is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest scientific books of all time.

>No, we're talking about the general idea of an intelligent creator. How come something came up of nothing?

Thats where you are ;dont want to call wrong; but have a different view. There needs to be a beginning, a backstory with an intelligent creator too if there is one right?

To begin with; the universe might not even need an intelligent creator. Human's universe and time perceptions might be different than what we are thinking right now.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html

Its the same thing with myths; you think they are different but no. In the early history the science and technology wasnt this advanced. It was very, very basic life; sort of like animalistic. When there were lightning strikes people told eachother it was because they made the owner of the land(area, territory) angry.

2-3 thousand years ago people believed there is something like an intelligent creator, and earth is his backyard; a playspace.

Maybe 2 or 3 thousand years later people will look at us and laugh about our ideas/religions about universe and rest just like we find "lightning strikes" stuff weird, understandable; but not true.

I dont know how universe "started" for sure, there are theories about it but maybe they can change in the future; we dont know.

There is something missing in your wording too, its in grey area. Its just disbelief of religion and gods, no need to complicate it; it isnt necessarly an alternative theory to religion/gods. "Disbelief in something bigger" does not mean refusing to acknowledge anything about "beginning of universe, before the universe" stuff; its just disbelief of gods, creating creatures/testing them/punishing them/ kind of gods. And yes; gods can be your "something bigger" but also antimatter; big-bangs can be your "something bigger" in your wording. An agnostic tells me "you cant prove nonexistence of god"; but its just same like fairytales; i dont need prove to know that they arent true.

https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/

I also honestly dont have enough word/term knowledge to discuss these stuff advanced. You can look/search these.

https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/055338466X

Hey Lawrence! Huge fan of you work, thanks for everything you do.

Here's a link to the new book he mentioned for anyone who wants to pre-order:

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Well worth the $15 in my opinion, to learn about all sorts of cutting edge stuff about the nature and origin of our universe.

And here's the YouTube video to give you a taste for the content. It's a little long, sixty-five minutes total, but definitely worth it.

--

For my questions:

• What will the most important areas of physics to specialize in over the next ten-twenty years?
  
  
• What are some central debates that might be resolved in that time?
  
  
• How can we best further physics education in the US?

There's nothing really new here. Before anyone goes out and tries to use these points in an actual discussion, I just want to bring up the counter-points:

~0:18: How does it "shout" that there's a maker?
~0:21: Why does a beautiful creation necessitate a beautiful creator? (Also, define beautiful)
~0:26: Why should I listen to Einstein's assistant? Simply mentioning Einstein doesn't win any arguments
~0:30: Evolution through natural selection actually explains it pretty well
~1:24: "Before the big bang": There was no before, since the big bang was the beginning of time (I'm pretty sure Augustine pointed that out).
~1:28: See here
~2:07: He's defining the world as a "work" so he can say it had a maker
~2:45: It's not that 97% of the world is stupid, it's just that ~90% don't care
~2:55: "I don't know why there's a god instead of nothing." He's just punting the question one step down the line. What's the difference between saying you don't know why there's a god instead of nothing and saying you don't know why there's a universe instead of nothing? At least one can be studied.

I hope I don't get banned for the whole "no anti-Catholic rhetoric" rule.

I'm working on my BS in Physics with my Astronomy minor done and here's my 2 cents. If you love the hobby enough, the math and physics shouldn't bother you. On the same point, after intro courses in both Physics and Astronomy, it gets very math-heavy. If you have the determination and love for the subject, it's very doable :)

My Astronomy textbook that I used is Foundations of Astrophysics.

Check it out and see if you can find a site that previews the book. Good luck!

awesome, I am currently reading The grand design and I love to go out, smoke a bowl, get to a [4] and then start reading. My mind just wanders about for ages thinking about stars and planets. It's awesome

Uptokes for you and your afternoon xD

Book recommendation: The Fabric of Reality

Deals explicitly with how to think about a concept of time travel very similar to this. It’s framed in terms of Virtual Reality, but I think you could translate it for your own use easily. As a bonus, it’s a pretty fun tour of some really important ideas too.

I can not give you enough upvotes. I will also try to summarize the talk for those that are too lazy to watch the whole video.

Cosmologist are pretty sure that the right answer is the second one: energy came from nothing.

I'll try to explain it: we know that most of the mass of bodies does not come from quarks that form protons and neutrons, it comes from the empty space between them. We have theories that say that empty space is continuously bubbling with particles that pop in and out of existence, and experimental results confirm it. Actually, our best theory is accurate to 10 decimal places with experimental results, that is amazing.

So, what is the energy of vacuum space? Cosmologists calculated that and the answer was: energy of vacuum = 10^120 x mass of all the universe. That's scary, because if it were true, we wouldn't be here. So cosmologists knew that the answer was: the total mass of universe has to be zero (total mass is given by "normal" matter, energy and negative energy). And now we know that it is actually true: accurate measurements showed that our universe is flat, and that means that it was born from an exact balance of negative and positive energy. A flat universe is the only universe that can start from nothing, and our universe is indeed flat.

Dr. Krauss also wrote a wonderful book that I highly recommend: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing.

I'll try at ELI5 level.

Paper is a good analogy, but expand it to 3 dimensions. To see what flat means, you need to know what "not flat" means. Imagine a really large piece of paper covering the Earth. You mark an arrow on the ground then walk off in that direction, keeping in a straight line. Eventually you circle the globe and end up back at your arrow on the ground, approaching it from the tail of the arrow. You then pick a random direction and draw another arrow and do the same thing. No matter which direction you go, you always end up coming back to the same spot.

In this case, the paper is not flat; it is curved. Specifically, it is closed, meaning it loops back onto itself. However, locally it might look flat from any point you are standing. Imagine it on a bigger planet like Jupiter, or around the sun, or even larger. Locally you would measure it as being very flat, within a tiny fraction of a percent. So something that looks flat could actually be curved but with a very large radius of curvature.

But this analogy is only in 2 dimensions, covering the surface of a sphere of really large size. The curvature is in the third dimension in the direction of the center of the sphere (perpendicular to the local surface of the paper).

Imagine it now in 3 dimensions. You are floating in space at leave a real arrow pointed in some direction. You fly off in your rocket in that direction and eventually find yourself approaching the arrow from the tail end. It doesn't matter which direction you point the arrow, that always happens. That is a closed universe in 3D, meaning it is curved in a fourth dimension.

A flat universe would be one where the radius of curvature is infinite, meaning you'd never end up back at your arrow from the tail end.

I think this description is important because there is some disagreement on this. The measurement of the universe being flat within 0.4% does not mean that it is flat; it means the radius of curvature could be infinite (flat) but could just be very large. In fact, if you watch theoretical cosmologist Lawrence Krauss' talks on "A Universe from Nothing" or read the book, if you pay close attention you'll note a contradiction. At one point he jokes about how theorists "knew" that the universe must be flat because that makes it mathematically "beautiful", but then later describes how theorists "knew" the total energy of the universe must add up to zero as that is the only type of universe that can come from nothing, and yet also says that only a closed universe can have a total energy that adds up to zero. Hence is it closed or flat?

I attended one of these talks in person where this was asked and he confirmed that he thinks the evidence is strong that it is actually closed, but really, really large and hence looks flat to a high degree, and that the inflationary universe model explains why it would be so large and flat looking while being closed and zero net energy (and hence could come from nothing).

After going through all of what I know of the topic, including many other sources, I tend to agree with him that it makes the most sense that it is likely just very close to flat but is really slightly curved back onto itself at a very large radius of curvature. That also means our observable universe is only a very tiny percentage of the universe that exists.

>> If you do not have mass what do you have that you are measuring?
>
>Energy.
>
>
>>Are you saying energy came from nothing?
>
>
>According to Quantum Physics, that is precisely what occurs (Virtual particles, the Casimir Effect). Of course, you also have to define what you mean by the term "nothing". Lawrence Krauss has written books on the subject and has several videos lectures available online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wng6c0oLkQE)
>
>
>FYI, If the net amount of positive and negative forms of energy in the universe sum out to zero, then the sudden appearance of energy does not violate the Conservation of Energy Principle.
>

I don't disagree with this, I know this. I'm confused why someone who firmly believes something came from nothing is having a hard time picturing a conscious universe.

It's also worth pointing out that these are different fields of science that don't match up perfectly, for instance relativity breaks down at the quatum level. Quantum science is it's own science. Making it work cohesively with other science even math wise is tricky. That's what the whole unified theory of everything is that we haven't found, something that ties all these fields together.
>
>>Or that energy first exists without mass but then a picosecond later does have mass?
>
>
>Pretty much...

That's good and well. Provide one miracle and science will explain the rest. You are still saying something came from nothing and that science has shown that's not uncommon. the 'something from nothing' argument is always cast against theists when it turns out that is the fabric of our reality as we know it.
>
>>Even a photon has mass.
>
>
>What is the rest mass of a photon? Any guesses?
>



>>I said time depends on mass
>
>
>No. The passage of time is affected by mass, but time itself does not depend on mass.

Are you referring to relative time? I mean sure relative time never seems to change until you measure against the relative time of another observer at a different distance from the mass. That's time dilation, satellites are constantly re-syncing their clocks to ours due to special relativity.

>Space-time can exist entirely independent of mass.
>

Ah so you think space time was not created from the big bang? I think that's wrong. I may be wrong but my understanding was that the big bang created both. There was nothing, then all of a sudden something, which is what we've concluded is our scientific observation. That something came from nothing and that it's common.

We actually use the distances between really far apart things in the universe and make a "triangle" just like they were talking about on the surface of the Earth. The math is pretty complicated, but you might enjoy A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. It has a pretty good in depth but mostly understandable by mere mortals explanation of how these things are measured and determined.

Reported? For what? Baffling...

A Universe from Nothing

>One of the few prominent scientists today to have crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories that demonstrate not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing.

Of course, that's nonsense and he's been taken to task for his definition of "nothing" – but, yeah, he thinks "the Big Bang started from literally nothing..."

I'm honestly baffled why citing a scientist who premiumsalad claims doesn't exist is a problem for this sub. But, yeah, this will certainly be my last post here. Cheers.

If you think you can read an undergraduate textbook Ryden is a standard.

However, if you think that may be too advanced, start with some popular books on the subject such and The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku or the classic by Hawking A Brief History of Time.

If after reading those you want something more advanced but still not a textbook try The Road to Reality by Penrose. It reads like a popular book but he actually works through math (and the real stuff with like tensors etc...) to make his points so it is more advanced. Also, the Dummies Books are also a more intermediate step and are often decently good at teaching the basics on a lower technical level than a textbook.

the new stephen hawking book the grand design is pretty fantastic. it's a very interesting, easily readable explanation of modern physics as well as the history of physics. this book is where hawking finally comes out of the atheist closet in a very non-political way, basically explaining that while people can believe in a god our knowledge of physics doesn't have a need for it.

I have addressed every point you've made that wasn't complete nonsense. Buy this, and read it. If you need stronger fundamentals to understand it, buy books on those and read them too. You cannot spontaneously acquire pre-formed knowledge of physics, you must study it.

> If you define space as having structure, then what is holding that structure?

Space and space-time are already very well-defined, and this whole thread started with you simply denying that. Surely you don't doubt the existence of three spatial dimensions, commonly denoted X, Y, and Z. That is structure. The fact there are exactly three dimensions (plus time) in our universe in the first place is already pretty interesting in and of itself. Whether or not something exists to "hold" that structure or it exists spontaneously is also a fairly interesting question, but its answer is irrelevant. Space does exist, it has structure, and that structure can be described.

The structure of our space is the reason "left", "up", and "forward" are all mutually perpendicular, and it's impossible to point your finger in a fourth direction that isn't already composed of those three. It's the reason moving "towards" a black hole is the opposite of moving "away" from it, but this only holds true in flat space, and our space is only flat when it is "empty", or devoid of mass and energy. Whether something is an "object" or not is irrelevant, what matters is mass-energy. The presence of mass-energy changes the essence of directionality. Within the event horizon of a black hole, "away" ceases to exist entirely. Every possible direction points closer to the center, hence, nothing can escape, no matter how fast it goes, or whether it has mass or not.

Less intense gravitational fields behave similarly. Light always travels in a straight line, but the very meaning of "straight" changes in the presence of mass and energy. The structure of our space defines how distances are measured, and "straight" is simply the shortest path between two points. It doesn't always look "straight" in the traditional sense. So a photon will curve around massive objects as if it were pulled by gravity, despite having no mass of its own.

That's the question I was answering in the first place. Maybe space doesn't actually curve but light simply behaves as if it does for some other reason, as observed through the "sense faculties" which, incidentally, relies on light behaving in a predictable fashion. If whatever you are trying to posit as an alternative cannot account for that, then it is neither a meaningful nor useful distinction to make.

> Are there any current experiments in the works that might give us a better idea of the nature of this stretching? I fully accept that people smarter than me have worked on this model, but I just don't see how that conclusion was made?

There's a lot of factors involved (like the cosmic microwave background etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space#Observational_evidence ) in how we arrive at the conclusion and if the above overview doesn't convince you it will be the best if you go to a library and get a book on cosmology and read through it. These are several 100 page thick tomes that summarize the science that has gone into this (including experimental, also including alternatives that have been checked and ruled out). Obviously there's a lot of details involved in this (which will be hard to fit into a reddit post) and you will have to look into this research in detail to judge it. Wikipedia gives an overview over the experimental evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space#Observational_evidence

These are two good books that cover this.

https://www.amazon.com/General-Relativity-Introduction-Physicists-Hobson/dp/0521829518

https://www.amazon.com/Cosmology-Steven-Weinberg/dp/0198526822

> Many of these 'proofs' you mention are just oft repeated statements.

No, many of these "proofs" are agreed upon consensus from historians and biblical scholars. No offense but I'll take their word over some random guy/woman that IDK from the internet.

> I can find no references from historians or peer reviewed articles that support this view among new testament historians.

Really? Go read up on it. https://ehrmanblog.org/do-most-manuscripts-have-the-original-text/

>The manuscripts used to translate the ESV or the HCSB are wonderful translations directly from the earliest manuscripts. I honestly do not see any strange inconsistencies with the new testament.

Well, given that I've just recently finished up reading the ESV bible, I cannot understand how anyone, who's actually bothered to read the entire bible, can say that.

> The earliest manuscripts of Mark were written 7 years after the events of the gospel and I believe the parts that were in later manuscripts are true as well.

Again, not so. The consensus is that it was written ~30-40 yrs after Jesus's death.

http://www.bc.edu/schools/stm/crossroads/resources/birthofjesus/intro/the_dating_of_thegospels.html

>The thing we must all wonder is why? Why would these men die for something that they knew wasn't true.

This is a fallacy. Men will die for what they BELIEVE is true but that doesn't mean it is true. Happens all the time. 9/11 hijackers and Heavens Gate are two prominent examples. Just cause someone believes it true doesn't make it so. I use to believe Santa Clause was true. I had good reason to think so. Such as the yr we went away before Christmas only to come home and find presents under the tree. Even got into a fist fight over the whole "is Santa real?" discussion in grade school. Of course, it was later reveal that my parents had us simply wait in the car while they went back in the house to get something they "forgot". But I sure did BELIEVE that Santa was real.

>We have excellent historical accounts of these martyrs deaths and many many thousands more.

Again, not really. Only church tradition that I'm aware of. No contemporary accounts. If I recall correctly, the bible doesn't discuss their deaths either. But even if we did, that still doesn't prove their claims. And as far as "thousands" of martyrs, probably only in that it feed early christian's fetish for wanting to be like Jesus. There's actually no real evidence that there was this centuries long campaign to persecute christians. Hell, there is actual evidence that chrisitans DEMANDED to be persecuted. In one case, a group of christians went up to a Roman official demanding to be crucified only for him to basically say: LOL! Go home, you're drunk. There was another group (name escapes me) that would go on raids just hoping to be killed for Jesus. Very ISIS like. read up on by NT scholar Candida Moss.

> If you could get passed that you still can't explain the insanely fast spread of christianity from 12 men to millions in a few hundred years. No religion has seen such growth in so short a time.

Yea....'bout that...Doesn't seem to the the case. Islam spread far more quickly and rapidly than christianity did upon it's inception. And remember, christianity didn't necessarily spread out because of it's message but because of the sword. The Inquisitions, Crusades, Manifest Destiny, Salam witch hunts, etc. In some countries, like Ireland, it's still a crime to blaspheme Christianity. I think it was Seth Myers who was recently looking at 2 yrs in jail over there for that "crime". Hell, there was a kid just about 3 yrs ago that was basically brought up on blaspheme charges in Pennsylvania and sentenced for portraying himself receiving a BJ from a Jesus statue.

>My theory is that christianity especially in its earliest execution worked. It just worked. The miracles, the Holy spirit confirming, the whole thing worked, and people could see it for themselves.

I'll make you the same offer I make every christian who proclaims this. This is what Jesus allegedly said: He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt 17:20 (ESV)

If I see you walk outside and command a mountain to move in Jesus's name and it magically lifts up and flies off, I will give away everything I own to your church, done sackcloth and cover myself in ash. I will then go proclaim Jesus to the world myself.

To date, I've not had any takers but I sure have had a lot of apologetics and excuses given.

>Atheism requires far far more blind faith to believe than christianity.

No...No....that's not what it is. It's simply a rejection of your position that there is a god. Hell, you're an atheist for every god out there but one. I just happen to be an atheist for all the gods.

>Atheism is a religion, one that believes in chance.

No, again that's not what being an atheist is. I don't worship anyone/thing. There's no dogman associated with being an atheist. No religious text or rituals.

>Do the math. Do you know the odds of a universe coming into existance out of nothing? It's zero. Out of nothing, nothing comes.

How did you determine this? How did you determine that the universe came out of "nothing"? Because, to my knowledge, no-one knows that answer. But the fact is that a universe can come out of "nothing" but "nothing" isn't what you think it is. Yea, it's complicated. I've listened to the book a
few times on Audible and I think I have a grasp of it. But it's a pretty bold statement you're making there and I'll challenge you to tell me how you know what the initial conditions were at that time. It's the same reason I disagree with Stephen Hawkings reasoning on why he doesn't believe in a god. In short, time began when the universe did so therefore, there was no time for a god to exist in. Now I don't pretend to be on his level of intellegence but I would LOVE to sit down and discuss it with him and I would ask him the same I'm asking you: How do you know?

That aside, improbable things happen all the time. For example, what do you think is the probability of a specific leaf falling off a tree on a trail out in the middle of the woods in central Russia and hitting me in the face on Oct 12th, 2032 at 2:34:43PM? I would argue that the probability is so low as to be zero. You surely wouldn't make a bet of it I'm sure. However, it CAN happen, correct?

>The chicken very obviously must have come before the egg.

Nope, the egg came long before the chicken ever evolved. Dinosaurs laid them. We even have some fossilized dino eggs.

>Causes do not come from effects.

Ok. So what caused your god to come into being?

>While something can be used to make something else, we can't make something from nothing. It ain't do-able. Some people think you can, but you really can't make something from nothing and this is both observable, (confirmable), and obvious. You can change stuff into other stuff, but you can't create stuff from nothing. This is fundamental, basic, and important because it means Big Bang theory is incorrect, in so far as it states the Big Bang was the start of everything.

That’s wrong actually, physics is not as simple as you think. Here’s a decent read for the layman https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

”Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories that demonstrate not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing. With a new preface about the significance of the discovery of the Higgs particle, A Universe from Nothing uses Krauss’s characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations to take us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end.”

You're welcome!

To be honest, I went out of my way to take courses in Tensor Analysis and Differential Geometry before I started learning GR, and I can't say it was that useful. It didn't hurt, but if your interest is just in learning GR, then most introductory GR textbooks teach you what you need to know. I'd recommend Schutz as a good book with tons of exercises, or Carroll ,partly because his discussion of differential geometry is more modern than that of Schutz.

I've currently not a lot of time so i'm not able to give a thoughtfull answer but there are plenty of books which could teach you special relativity (Carroll takes it pretty much as a prerequisite).
Maybe one of the following helps (but don't be surprised it take a lot of hard work to get some knowledge about it...):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAurgxtOdxY and following

Spacetime Physics - Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler should be quite nice (i've heard)

http://www.amazon.com/A-First-Course-General-Relativity/dp/0521887054 maybe this is a good starting point.

Take one book after another till one suits you. I think the only important point is that they have equations inside.

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great & The Portable Atheist
  
  
• Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design & A Briefer History of Time
  
  
• Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth
  
  
• Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World
  
  
• Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape & The End of Faith
  
  
• Richard Panek - The 4 Percent Universe
  
  
• Robert Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
  
  
• Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
  
  
• Sean Caroll - The Making of the Fittest
  
  
• Spencer Wells - Deep Ancestry
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
  
  
• Alan Watts - The Way of Zen
  
  Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
  
  The more you know, the more confident you will be.

Well as I understand it there are a number of different kinds of multiverses that can exist. The one with the strongest evidence comes out of understanding of the inflation theory which is the currently widely accepted theory that fits with our observations. Inflation caused our universe to expand very rapidly shortly after its creation. After a short while that inflation stopped and created the universe that we see today.

However that stopping of inflation did not happen everywhere. We just happen to exit in a place where it did stop. Our pocket of reality exists in a still expanding...well I have no idea what that is, but whatever it is it is still expanding faster than the speed of light. From time to time other parts of the expanding...umm thing... will stop expanding and another universe will pop out. The point is that all these universes would be moving away from each other faster than the speed of light so there is no way they could interact with one another.

All of that comes as a natural consequence of our current theories of inflation which have substantial evidence to back them up. They are not proven, but they are our best current understanding. Other theories of multiuniverses come from string theory which I believe strive to be internally consistent but aren't backed by any physical evidence or observations.

Edit: I only know this because I just got done reading A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. I'm an atheist but the book is too preachy for my taste. It's author Lawrence M. Krauss says the book came about from debates with theist and it shows. I wish it had stuck with the straight physics instead of diverging from time to time into discussions like would be found on this subreddit. Still, if you want to know more I'd suggest picking it up.

Glad to help. He references a book of his, maybe you could check that out as well. Enjoy your day!
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468
P.S. - Good to know you are interested in science. The world needs more rational thinkers and discovering enraptures within it.

>without a God how did the universe come into existence?

I could rephrase that into a question that would be even more baffling:

>with a God, how did the universe come into existence?

The 2nd one is more crazy to explain, because now you need to know how a god was created, not just why there is or isn't more or less matter and energy.

If you are genuinely interested in astrophysics, here are some good books written by people who know more than me about the issues you mention:

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X

http://www.amazon.com/Briefer-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553385461

Remember, even if you don't know the answer to a question about nature, it's always OK to say "I don't know." It's not OK to pretend that a story about the supernatural explains an issue in the natural world, if embracing the myth about the supernatural wouldn't really explain how things work, and would really only raise more questions.

> Sorry there you are wrong

No, I'm not.

> Christianity says God created the universe.

Christianity says a lot of stuff but actually knows very little. Knowledge is based on evidence. The creation account in genesis is not evidence but a claim, which requires evidence itself.

So you don't know why the universe exists. You just believe that it was a god. And you believe it without evidence, just because an old book says so.

> The atheists problem

No, it's not really a problem, is it? Atheists are under no obligation to offer an explanation for the existence of the universe in order to dismiss the God-explanation.
That's because the God-explanation isn't even an explanation as it explains absolutely nothing. It's just a claim that is not even backed up with any evidence whatsoever.

> finding an explanation for absolute nothing causing something to happen.

There are indeed [some explanations] (https://www.amazon.de/dp/B004T4KQJS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). But these are just hypotheses, as we don't have the possibility to verify them through empirical experiments.

> This is made worse as he big bang theory points to the univese having a begining.

The universe as we know it began with the big bang. That doesn't necessarily mean that there was absolutely nothing before. It is entirely possible that the universe always existed, but was in a different state before the big bang.

> 1) Moral law implies a Moral Lawgiver.
(2) There is an objective moral law.
(3) Therefore, there is an objective Moral Lawgiver.

That's a fallacious way of reasoning like William Laine Craig would present it. It's based on the unsubstantiated premise that "There is an objective moral law".
No, there isn't.

What we call morality can be entirely explained through our ability to feel empathy. And empathy can be entirely explained by evolution. Groups in which empathy caused individuals to helped each other rather than killing each other had an obvious advantage in surviving and reproducing. And we are descendants of these populations from which we inherited the instinctive feelings of empathy. You can easily observe moral behavior among various groups of other mammals.

> "we know why science works. because we know how science works." That is nonsence on a parr with Dawkins,' evolution has been seen to happen, it just that we weren't there when it happened'.

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean, that it's nonsense.

Science works because it's open to change and improve. It's a self-correcting method in which better working explanations replace older ones.

> I ask how do you start it and you answer by discribing how the internal combustion engine works. That doesn't answer how the engine is turned on.

These are both "how" questions. One is on a technical level and the other on a practical one.

> The universe was created by a supernatural being that exists outside of time and space.

That's something you believe, but nothing you can possibly know with any certainty. It's also a completely unfalsifiable claim and needs to be dismissed for that reason alone.

> It accounts for there being a begining. It accounts for why science, maths, logic and morality exist and work as this super natural being is reasonable, consistent and moral and these characteristics are reflected in creation.

It accounts for everything you want it to account for but again, it explains absolutely nothing. "God did it" is just as good as an explanation as "Zeus did it" or "because Unicorns fart rainbows".

Also the God-explanation has been shown to be false on multiple occasions in the past. Ancient people believed that lightnings were thrown by Gods or volcanic eruptions were divine punishments. Today we know exactly why these things happen and God plays no role anymore in their explanations. To invoke God as an explanation for anything that is not yet explained by science is what is called the [god of the gaps] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytaf30wuLbQ).

> If you don't believe in God, what explanation do you have for the fact that there is a universe.

"The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. […] But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions. […] This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." -- Isaac Newton.

He would perhaps ask a similar question: if you don't believe in God, what explanation do you have for the fact that the planets proceed in such regular motions?

The continuation of Newton's work by French scholar, Pierre-Simon LaPlace, prompted Napoleon to remark on the absence of any mention of a creator in LaPlace's explanations of celestial mechanics; LaPlace famously replied, "I had no need of that hypothesis." Don't fall into the trap of God of the gaps reasoning as Newton did. Admit with honesty when you simply don't yet know the answer to a question and continue searching as LaPlace did.

To answer your question, however:

• The Late astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astrobiologist, Carl Sagan responds.
  
• Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss answers in book form and in a lecture.
  
• Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking answers in a brief video and in a more detailed lecture.
  
• Theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll answers and addresses these exact issues in a debate with William Lane Craig.
  
• Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin explains.
  
• Matt Dillahunty and Jeff Dee of The Atheist Experience responds.
  
  > Remember your basic maths/aritmatic, zero plus zero = ? or zero times zero = ?
  
  I want you to go do some research (you'll actually find it in many of the links I provided above). I want you to go away and find what the sum total energy of the entire universe is.
  
  Also, while playing with arithmetic, try it with imaginary numbers. If you add imaginary numbers, you only get more imaginary numbers, and if you multiply them, you get even less than nothing, if you see what I'm getting at.

We don't really know. It could be literally infinite, but it's too large to understand.

One interesting take I heard, while reading Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing was the idea that we're just a microverse within a grand universe.

I can't explain for shit, but picture it like this: you have a massive, single Universe. It's a whirling, unstable realm of probability and crashing dimensions, with an unfathomable size.

In this grand Universe, a eight separate dimensions collide and release a huge amount of energy. It bubbles outward for a hundred thousand years or so, then collapses. A separate location has six dimensions collide, creating some matter and antimatter, expands for a billion years or so, theb collapses. This is happening billions of times per second, with most of those little bubbles forming and immediately collapsing, a few others lasting for a billion or so years, and a very few stabilizing and lasting nearly indefinitely.

Our universe is that last one. Just a single, tiny expanding bubble. A galaxy in a larger universe. There are probably others, but they are so far apart that there is no way to imagine the distance (the nearest stable 'verse could be two trillion 'verse-lengths away).

Because nothingness is impossible, per ASU and Caltech research. There are a ton of books on this subject, along with JSTOR documents (which you should have a subscription too if you are in college). This one is especially easy to read and comprehend the material. Enjoy. I'll gift you the Kindle edition if you really have an avid interest in learning new things.

"Pure energy"

E = mc^2 means "matter can be converted into energy."

No... just, no.

As for interesting ideas, there's a thought experiment in the famous Gravitation textbook where they imagine a civilization living on the surface of an artificial ring around a rapidly rotating black hole. They drop their garbage into the ergosphere of the black hole and use the Penrose process to extract energy from the rotation of the black hole.

That's just freaking cool! Why hasn't anyone used that idea as a sci-fi setting yet?

Here are some back-of-the-envelope calculations for that:
If the black hole is about three solar masses (about the minimum required to form from gravitational collapse), a ring with a radius of about 1000 Earth radii (about 6 million km) would have a surface gravity of about 1g just due to the black hole's gravity. This would be well outside of the radius of the ergosphere (about 10 km). I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure it puts you well outside of any significant relativistic effects. And it's still less than 5% of the radius of a Niven ring.

Some of my favorites:

Brian Greene -- The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Elegant Universe, and The Hidden Reality. Greene is, to my mind, very similar to Hawking in his ability to take complex subjects and make them understandable for the physics layman.

Hawking -- I see you've read A Brief History of Time, but Hawking has a couple of other books that are great. The Grand Design, The Universe in a Nutshell, and A Briefer History of Time.

Same thing applies to Brian Cox. Here's his Amazon page.

Leonard Susskind -- The Black Hole Wars. Here's the basic idea behind this book. One of the basic tenets of physics is that "information" is never lost. Stephen Hawking delivered a presentation that apparently showed that when matter falls into a black hole, information is lost. This set the physics world on edge. Susskind (and his partner Gerard T'Hooft) set out to prove Hawking wrong. Spoilers: they do so. And in doing so, they apparently proved that what we see as 3 dimensions is probably similar to those 2-D stickers that project a hologram. It's called the Holographic Principle.

Lee Smolin -- The Trouble with Physics. If you read the aforementioned books and/or keep up with physics through pop science sources, you'll probably recognize that string theory is pretty dang popular. Smolin's book is a criticism of string theory. He's also got a book that's on my to-read list called Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.

Joao Magueijo -- Faster Than the Speed of Light. This is another physics book that cuts against the prevailing academic grain. Physics says that the speed of light is a universal speed limit. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Magueijo's book is about his theory that the speed of light is, itself, variable, and it's been different speeds at different times in the universe's history. You may not end up agreeing with Magueijo, but the guy is smart, he's cocky, and he writes well.

The basic theme of differential geometry is to take calculus in R^(n) and do it in a more general n-dimensional spaces (called manifolds) that are "locally" like R^(n). For example, think of a sphere: when you look at it close enough (like when you're living on the Earth), it looks flat, and you can do calculus with lines on the ground and everything works out. On a larger scale, though, things get messed up when you look at scales large enough for the curvature of the Earth to make a difference. So you always have to look infinitesimally close (that's where the "differential" part comes in). Feel free to ask more about that.

As for notes, I mostly learned from this guy, whose notes on differential geometry are available online. I also really like this book. If you'd prefer a more easygoing, computational approach, take a look at this book, or some other gentle introduction to GR.

ETA: If you'd like to think about non-Euclidean geometry using only basic linear algebra, take a look at these notes.

>In these previous posts, we have one of the world's leading cosmologists, Don Page, (who happens to be an Evangelical Christian) disagreeing with your assessment. We have another, Sean Carroll, who also disagrees.

Okay, let’s play dueling cosmologists! Stephen Hawking thinks the universe had a beginning. Lawrence Krauss wrote a book where he says the universe sprang from nothing.

So this line of argument is pointless.

>Even the BGV theorem states that “almost all” inflationary models of the universe (as opposed to Dr. Craig’s “any universe”) will reach a boundary in the past – meaning our universe probably doesn’t exist infinitely into the past.

You are incorrect, once again. See below.

>Alex Vilenkin further goes on to state…

But Alex Vilenkin also said this: If someone asks me whether or not the theorem I proved with Borde and Guth implies that the universe had a beginning, I would say that the short answer is "yes". If you are willing to get into subtleties, then the answer is "No, but..." So, there are ways to get around having a beginning, but then you are forced to have something nearly as special as a beginning.

This is where the “almost all” comes into play. The Aguirre-Gratton model and the Carroll-Chen model “get around” the BVG but their models fail for other reasons.

And what did Alex Vilenkin think of WLC’s handling of the BVG theorem?

During a debate Krauss basically accused WLC of misrepresenting the BVG theorem. WLC contacted Vilenkin to see if what he thought of the way WLC as using the BVG

Vilenkin: I would say the theorem makes a plausible case that there was a beginning. and I think you represented what I wrote about the BGV theorem in my papers and to you personally very accurately source

Furthermore Vilenkin, and graduate student Audrey Mithani, used mathematics to examine three potential logistical loopholes in the 2003 theorem, strengthening the original premise that the universe did, in fact, begin Or see a more technical paper

>So, I've shown leading cosmologists who disagree with you, and even the V of the BGV trio that you are using to support your claim disagrees.

You’ve shown 2 leading cosmologists who disagree with me and I’ve shown 2 that do agree with me. But I’ve also shown, right out of Vilenkin own mouth and via what he wrote, you are completely wrong about the BVG

>So, how can you claim you have a JTB about the origin of the Universe?

The BVG theorem, to start.

>The truth is, unless you have come up with a theory that harmonizes quantum mechanics with the theory of relativity, then nobody has the math to see past the Planck Epoch.

As Alex Vilenkin says the BVG theorem is independent of this.

>Thus, nobody can make a claim as to what existed or didn't exist prior to the Big Bang.

But we are talking about whether the universe began; it did according to the best data that we currently have.

Once we conclude that it did have a beginning we can then get onto what caused it.

So, your claim that the premises of the KCA are “unsupported” has fallen on its face, and thus the universe must have had a cause.

>This is what WLC claims it states, but as I quoted above that's not what the theory states. It says almost all inflationary models (not any universe as WLC erroneously claims) will reach a space-time boundary (not a "beginning" as WLC claims).

Refuted above by Vilenkin above on two counts. One, WLC represented the BVG well, and two Vilenkin says the universe began - in the last couple of minutes Vilenkin says explicitly that the universe began.

As I said your claim that premises of the KCA are unsupported can be dismissed as unintelligible.

>I have shown how this cannot be a JTB because we cannot have knowledge of what occurred before the Planck Epoch. We can speculate, but currently this is speculation only.

Since we have now established that both premises of the KCA are JTB’s based on what we currently know, therefore, the universe requires a cause.


>….I'm not claiming the Singularity existed for all eternity. Rather, I'm saying we can't know, with our current knowledge, the nature of the Singularity. I'm not saying it's eternal, or that it's not. I'm saying we don't know.

So you take no position. Why does this come as no surprise. But that doesn't matter. We know [JTB] that an infinite regress of causes is impossible, nor can something cause itself into existence, therefore there must be uncaused metaphysical necessity; a MNC.

We have no evidence of anything that existed before the universe. Thus we can say that this MNC caused the universe into existence. Why do I say this? Occam’s razor. We know the universe exists, we know that it must have been caused, we have no reason to think that is any intermediary between the two.

So, space, time, and matter began to exist. What could have caused them to begin to exist.

Whatever causes the universe to appear is not bound by time (temporal). There was no passage of time causally prior to the big bang, so the cause of the universe did not come into being. The cause existed eternally.

And the cause is not material. All the matter in the universe came into being at the first moment. Whatever caused the universe to begin to exist cannot have been matter, because there was no matter causally prior to the big bang.

So what could the cause be? Abstract objects, like numbers, sets and mathematical relations - but they have no causal powers.

Minds, like our own mind, can create things like poems and novels.

>The infinite regression? It may be a problem, sure. It's also not a problem that is solved by adding a deity, because if this deity is eternal, then it also extends infinitely into the past. The only way around this (that I see, at least), is to special plead the problem as not applicable to the deity.

You are confused. An infinite regress of causes is impossible, not an uncaused MN. And it isn’t special pleading since atheists the world over used to say the universe was this MN.

>Not exactly. Not only is the Universe having an ontological beginning (a cause is a different point) something we cannot know, this is dangerously close to being an "MNC of the Gaps".

If atheists accepted the universe as an MN, then it is special pleading on your part to try and disallow it now.

>Further, if the Singularity existed for all of eternity, and the initial conditions were sufficient to cause the universe, then why isn’t the universe eternal?
Why would it have to be eternal, even if the Singularity is?

If you are postulating the Singularity as the MNC why would it “decide” to create the universe ~13.8 billion years ago? If the cause is sufficient from eternity then the effect should happen at that point - from eterinty.

But if this MNC was a mind with a will then it could decide to create the universe ~13.8 billion years ago. Problem solved.

>something had to come from something

well, we know this to be true, but we do not know if something can come from nothing. Look up Lawrence Krauss' "A universe from nothing"

>For example, if you believe in the big bang wouldn't have something had to start the big bang (God).

for the sake of argument, i'm going to assume that your god did start the big bang. What caused god?

>So what do you believe was that first push in the creation of whatever the first think in the creation of the universe?

the correct answer is we do not know. Science doesn't make up answers like religion and assert them to be true. Currently, we have no evidence about anything before the big bang or what caused it. Therefore we cannot assume anything at this point.

This question gets asked all the time on this sub. I did a search for the term books and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:

How to Read the Solar System: A Guide to the Stars and Planets by Christ North and Paul Abel.


A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.


A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.


Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.


Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.


Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins.


An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield.


You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station by Chris Hadfield.


Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.


Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.


No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.


Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.


A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.


Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.


Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.


The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.


The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.


Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.


An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.


Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.


Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.


A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.


Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.


Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.


Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.


Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.


Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.


The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.


Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.


The Martian by Andy Weir.


Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.


The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.


Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.


The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.


Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.


International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.


The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.


How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.


This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.


The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.


Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz.


Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.


The end

PS - /u/DDE93 this list has all the links.

You should check out Stephen Hawking's "The Grand Design" . I'm not sure I agree with all of it and I'm really not sure about M-Theory, but he makes an interesting case for the big bang resulting from quantum effects and our universe resulting from Richard Feynman's theory of a sum of histories.

It's not a definitive work, but it's an interesting read and will introduce the lay reader to a series of fascinating concept in classical and quantum physics.

4. we dont know yet
   
   atheists dont know the answer and we are humble enough to accept and admit that. we actively support however, trying to find answers.
   
   
   if you really want to dive into this, one of the smartest men on earth (IMO) wrote a whole book on this one topic.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

>Where do I start?

Please read the FAQ.
**
>Where can I read why the big bang is the closest theory or idea of rightness. Where can I read about ideas of the particles that made up every atom or whatnot smaller spec to create the big bang?*

Start with:

• The Illustrated A Brief History of Time / The Universe in a Nutshell - Two Books in One By Stephen Hawking
  
  And
  
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition by Bill Bryson.
  
  No atheist bible exists. However many atheists arrive at their position from skepticism. A sort of mental filter used to make sure our beliefs align with reality and not some sort of snake-oil. The same filter you yourself use to avoid being scammed by "Nigerian Princes".
  
  You can consult the classic book
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark By carl Sagan, as a primer into skepticism.
  
  Or if you want a fast version from youtube.
  
  
• Open-Mindedness by QualiaSoup.
  
  **
  
  >Atheist, do you even acknowledge the idea of a God?
  
  Of course the question remains, which god? It's too easy to have a vague god with no definable attributes.
  
  I acknowledge the idea. But an idea can still be imaginary. If a friend told me dragons existed, and each time I said that was impossible, and then they changed the goalposts until "dragon" meant something entirely too vague to disprove, then we aren't getting anywhere in terms of actually proving my friend isn't mistaken, and just wants dragons to exist.
  
  See more here: [The Dragon in my Garage*](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRy3Kl_z5E). (4 min on youtube)

I can't believe no one has mentioned Einstein's book, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. Actually, people may have not mentioned it because it could be a little light for a math major, but if you "prefer to not work to hard in [your] casual readings" then it could be perfect for you. Einstein kind of glosses over the difficult math, but if you know that stuff already then this book will give you a great intuitive understanding of relativity.

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-The-Special-General-Theory/dp/0517884410

EDIT: Sorry man, someone already recommended this below.

Lawrence Krauss has a new book about this subject. I know, a book is a little much but it's a pretty important question.

Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X

Peace.

Yeah. Part of me feels like I've just been lucky in finding easy problems that the "real" scientists in my field hadn't bothered to try yet.

I still don't really understand linear algebra or vector calculus, for instance. I have Linear Algebra Done Right, Div, Grad, Curl, and all that, and the Princeton Companion to Mathematics on my wish list, which may help.

I'd recommend you to read this book, it provides some answers to great questions like these. Also, this video :)

You're assuming that we don't have evidence, though. That was more of less true even as recently as the 1980s, but there's been a ton of work done on cosmology since then.

I suggest A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing as a decent starting point. There are other good books on the subject out there as well, but I like Krauss' writing style. Echo of the Big Bang is good as well, even if it's getting a bit dated.

Anyway, I get it. Cosmology (and a lot of physics in general) is unintuitive. Which is why relying on intuitive experience is a Bad Idea™.

Recent Zen realization:

The sound of one hand clapping is a longitudinal displacement wave.

It explains BAO (baryon acoustic oscillation).

Zen explains quantum mechanics, superposition and entanglement.

Another Zen koan that is enlightening every day:

Infinity lies in a flower petal.

The best synthesis of mathematics and Zen is "The Tao of Physics". Capra needs to write a new book to consolidate the findings of the past few decades.
https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels-Mysticism/dp/1590308352

The Zen koan, "First there was a mountain, then there was no mountain, then there was" is like a mini-review of "A Universe from Nothing".
https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

It is also a synopsis of Schrodinger's Cat.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/05/27/schrodingers-cat-just-got-even-weirder-and-even-more-confusing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.31a786e1acd5

Physics is finding everything is nothing and nothing is everything, matter plus anti-matter equals nothing. Physics and Zen are on the same perfect circle path, a perfect circle with no beginning or end, with a center with no center.
A center with no center

(Simplification and semi-mediocre understanding of a high-school student)
Essentially, it's a particle that, through fundamental interactions with other particles such as leptons and quarks and the so called "Higgs Field" cause inertia (mass) to arise. I would consult Wikipedia if I were you and would check out some readings.

Warped Passages by Lisa Randall
A Brief History of Time+The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

Personally, I'd recommend the first because, if a little bit dry, Randall explains the Higgs theory better. (The second book was what got me obsessed in science two or three years ago.) Happy Trails!

Well, we know that the space & time are intricately woven together as a single fabric (what physicists call "spacetime"). If space itself was created in the big bang, then so was time... so to say that "it once was the reality" as if to imply that there is such a period as "before" the big bang (when in fact, it would seem, time itself did not even exist) would be fallacious...

There are, of course, models of the universe in which the big bang is only the beginning of the universe as we know it, but that it's actually eternal (or part of a larger multiverse). But true, absolute "nothing" implies no spacetime. It's hard to think about, to be sure.

I'd recommend reading Lawrence Krauss' book on the subject for one interesting perspective.

A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss was written only a year ago. It has a great summary of all the exciting discoveries in cosmology from Einstein to recent understandings of dark energy. He even covers an interesting explanation as to "spoiler" how the universe could come from nothing.

In order of likelyhood of pissing off your friends:

.

Christopher Hitchens: "God is not Great"

This is a brutal and unforgiving deconstruction of theism. It won't make you any new friends, and might alienate your existing friends. I really enjoyed it.

Sam Harris: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Another brutal deconstruction, this one is gentler and easier to stomach. Think mail fist in a velvet glove. This is only gentle in contrast to Hitchens.

Lawrence Krauss: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

A more positive, life affirming approach. Still ruthlessly atheistic, but less evangelical than Hitchens and Harris. Warning: Complex ideas, complex writing, it's not an easy read. Fun, but not easy.

Richard Dawkins: An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist

Similar to Krauss' book, but even easier to read. Dawkins does have a reputation for outspoken atheism, which will turn off some readers.

>If you know as much about science as I hope, then explain how everything came out so perfect out of (insert atheist way of creation)!

I will refer you to 3 books for that one, but then I will explain why that is not a valid argument and then explain why god does not answer that question either.

First the books: the first two will explain the big bang and inflationary cosmology (this is actually what took over or heavily modified the big bang theory from its original form) they are both by Briane Greene and I highly recommend them if you are interested in physics at all (they are not about god) the fabric of the cosmos and The hidden reality. There are also NOVA specials you can watch from the Fabric of the cosmos and his earlier book the elegant universe though I do not remember if they cover the big bang or inflation. The third book is specifically about the argument you just put forward. It is The fallacy of fine tuning:why the universe is not designed for us by Victor Stenger.

The reason that the argument you made is fallacious involves logical fallacies. Now, I don't want to seem like I'm talking down to you at all (I'm not) but I'm not sure how familiar you are with the intricacies of logic. Basically every argument has a premise, logical steps, and a conclusion. The argument you made (that the universe is perfect) has three flaws.

1: False premise - The universe is not actually perfect, far from it in fact. The reason why we are accustomed to the universe as it is is due to evolution. We evolved to fit the universe, not the other way around. If you mean something specific like how could the constants have got to the exact values we have please read the hidden reality, it answers that question by explaining multiple instances of how the universe can be fractured into slightly variable universes. The god delusion also answers this question but from my experience most theists are not willing to read it.

2: False premise - The burden of proof is not on me to prove or explain anything. I don't know is a completely acceptable answer if I had no evidence to put forward (We do actually have evidence, see the three books). Saying that I don't know how the universe came about does not immediately cede the argument to god. God has to answer to the same standards of logic and evidence that I would require of my own pet hypothesis. Burden of proof was explain in analogy by [Russell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot "This is why our logo is riding in a teapot")

3: Logical fallacy - Argument from ignorance. I already explained this one a little but basically this is the part that says you cannot use what we both do not know as evidence. If we come to a cave, and you ask what is in the cave and I say that I don't know but I bet it's a dragon then I would be using our shared ignorance to try and put forward the idea of a dragon as the inhabitant of the cave (sorry this analogy is bad, I have a flu right now so I'm kind of worn down)

Now, the reason that god fails the logic test (before he fails the evidence test, which he also does) is that if you say that god created the universe then you have put a terminator on the infinite regression that is causality (there are some hypothetical reasons that causality could be violated before the universe but I am skeptical of many of them and it would take me too far off track to get into them). The problem here is why do you give god a break from needing a cause? If we both agreed that there must be a first cause, why the hell should we give it sentience, and intelligence, and supernatural powers? If we also put forward a first cause that did not have those things then we would have an explanation that used fewer assumptions (many fewer assumptions). One of the best logical tools is occam's razor, which says that when we have multiple competing hypothesis we remove the ones with the most assumptions. Now it is only a logical tool and does not guarantee we will be correct but it is still a good probability chooser (remember how I said science is about probabilities).

So anyways, if you read this far I really hope that your takeaway is at least to read the three books i recommended (they are complicated but very interesting). I would also ask that you read the FAQ and probably The God Delusion (as it covers more of the faux science arguments for god than God is Not Great).

I have this sometimes (I also don't remember events but remember facts). Like something will happen and I feel like I dreamt it years before. But I kind of assume that I must just think that I had dreamt it years earlier. But now that I think about it, I guess it's possible I really did remember something that didn't happen yet in a dream, given what I read in The Grand Design.

Something weird is that I specifically remember getting out of a pool and walking towards a house -- and having deja vu about it -- thinking it had happened months before. And then, it happening again and remembering both deja vu times before. But the "3rd time", it was the first time I had ever been to that house.

If you're at all interested in this question, I HIGHLY recommend reading Lawrence Krauss's new book A Universe From Nothing. The answer to your question is a key to understanding the title question of the book. It's all explained clearly and is easy to read.

Lawrence M. Krauss wrote a whole book about how the Universe beget itself from nothing while ignoring the philosophical debate on nothingness.

To me, I wasn't sure if Dawkins was aware of the philosophical debate or not [as well], it seems Lawrence was for his book: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. I like to read up on arguments from various sides that are invested in the fields [i.e. philosophy and cosmology] and would hope they would be aware of the philosophical debates and not just the religious ones.

Interesting perspective [on Dawkins], because I've only heard of Dawkins rejecting modern day faiths, which is fine. However, not the deeper philosophical ones that those faiths are actually based on (~conjecture) that generally don't include the logical conundrums that faiths bring to the table.

>It claims He never began existing but rather always existed.

From Carl Sagan:

>If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding Universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the Universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly somehow created, how did that happen? In many cultures, the customary answer is that a God or Gods created the Universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question, where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step, and conclude that the Universe always existed? There is no need for a creation, it was always here. These are not easy questions. Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.

Oh, and this part?

>The more we learn about cosmology the more we realize that we actually NEED an uncaused first cause

You've been sadly misinformed. I recommend A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss, either the talk or the book. The more we learn about cosmology, the less it seems that a creator was required. Our current picture of cosmology is that the universe is geometrically flat, it has zero total energy, and thus could have spontaneously appeared from a state in which there was no matter or energy.

To learn about the cosmology, black holes and the fate of the universe, I recommend two superb books:

Kip Thorne: Black Holes and Time Warps (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254000781&sr=8-1)

Tony Zee: An Old Man's Toy (http://www.amazon.com/Old-Mans-Toy-Einsteins-Universe/dp/002040915X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254000896&sr=1-1)

Enjoy!

> People seem to tell me to just stop asking these questions because it's impossible to ever know...

It's definitely not that you should stop asking the questions, it's that the only people who are genuinely qualified to answer them are cosmologists. So while it's fun to speculate, the only way to make real progress on these questions ourselves would be to get a PhD in physics. Which I'm pretty sure I'm not going to do at this point in my life. :-)

It's interesting to read what people who actually do have a PhD in physics have to say about these questions, though. That's why I linked you to a few articles/debates in my other reply. And there are plenty of books out there that look at the origins of the universe and how it could have arisen (for example The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself by Sean Carroll or A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss).

One thing to keep in mind is that quantum physics is not just counterintuitive but wildly counterintuitive. So even though we may have beliefs like "everything needs a cause", and even though that principle is reasonable in everyday life, it doesn't necessarily apply in quantum physics, where the very notion of causality is debatable. That's why non-physicists (definitely including philosophers and theologians) are just not qualified to answer these questions -- because our intuition leads us astray, and the rules that work for us within the universe fall apart when we're looking at the origin of the universe.

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Lawrence Krauss

It is brilliant. I loved the lecture from him (with the same title) on youtube and the book takes it to the next level. I have gained so much knowledge just reading a chapter a day on the tube to work.

> How can something come from nothing?

Ask Lawrence M. Krauss, he wrote a whole book about it: http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

The summary beign that at the quantum level something can come from nothing. And at one point the entire universe was so small that quantum laws dominated. As far as I understand it the main evidence in support of this is that the sum of all energy in the universe today appears to be 0.
meaning that in effect there is still nothing, its just that its somewhat unevenly distributed.

> something caused it.

turns out that the conventional ideas about cause and effect don't apply at the quantum level. The most well know example of this is radioactive decay and half life. It is imposible to predict when an unstable molecule will decay, nothing causes it to decay, it just does.

> Doesn't some "god" have to have started everything?

Even if the universe did have a cause why are you assuming its inteligent, or self aware or even all powerful? There are many things which while they do have causes, in so much as we can explain how they come to be, do not appear to be the work of any inteligent agent. Natural disasters are the the perfect example here.

> My theory, is there are an infinite number of possibilities,

This does not mean that anything is possilbe there are plenty of constrained and yet infinite sets that we know of. The basic example is that the numbers 'e' and 'pi' do not appear in the set of natural numbers, even though the set of natural numbers is infinite.

> In one of these universes, a god or some sort of powerful being decided to create a universe

The logical problem here is that you just created an infinite regress. If god is in some other universe, then where did that universe come from?

Established Christian theology would not be your friend here either. Most theologians would argue that god is not inside any universe, but rather entirely outside of creation. Note that this also invalidates the if there is an infinite number of universes god might exist in one of them argument. If by definition god is outside of any universe then it does not matter how many of them happen to exist.

Please everyone, read this book.
It is written conversationally and with very simple mathematics, but is extremely thorough in explaining most of the WTF?! bits of relativity.

Also Einstein had a great sense of humor.

Well, first of all, "Hawkin" (I assume he means Stephen Hawking) didn't create the term "black hole," and it's actually fairly correct, at least in the sense that there's a "rim" (the event horizon) and things can "fall in" to the hole.

But the second paragraph is simply gibberish. There are things called black bodies, and black holes have some relation to them, but certainly not in the simplistic manner described. And black holes are an endpoint of stellar evolution, not the beginning: They* are formed when a massive star undergoes a supernova explosion and the remaining core collapses. About the only true statement in the second paragraph is, "Light bends around all bodies of mass, including stars and planets." In fact, this is a standard prediction of general relativity, first measured during a solar eclipse in 1919.

Kip Thorne, who was the science advisor for Interstellar, wrote a pretty accessible book on black holes if you want more details. He's also written a book on the science behind Interstellar.

* Caveat: This applies to stellar-mass black holes. There are supermassive black holes in the centers of many (most?) galaxies, including our own, and we don't fully understand how they form.

I would also like to mention "Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum" by Leonard Susskind.

Lectures are available online on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL701CD168D02FF56F

Lectures go nicely with the book of same name.
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Theoretical-Leonard-Susskind/dp/0465062903

I found this book and lecture series a nice and gentle entry into the field. Sort of like preparation for Mike and Ike.

I really liked The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. It gives you a perspective of string theory, multiverse, tons of stuff about the universe, origins of the universe, and the philosophy of science that is ment for more entertainment and informing than dense physics literature.

If your looking more for space stuff there is Space Chronicles by Neal deGrasse Tyson

Here are some suggestions :

https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

https://www.coursera.org/course/intrologic

Also, this is a great book :

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-Gullberg/dp/039304002X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1346855198&sr=8-5&keywords=history+of+mathematics

It covers everything from number theory to calculus in sort of brief sections, and not just the history. Its pretty accessible from what I've read of it so far.


EDIT : I read what you are taking and my recommendations are a bit lower level for you probably. The history of math book is still pretty good, as it gives you an idea what people were thinking when they discovered/invented certain things.

For you, I would suggest :

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Mathematical-Analysis-Third-Edition/dp/007054235X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346860077&sr=8-1&keywords=rudin

http://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Linear-Operators-Matrices-Bounded/dp/0415267994/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1346860052&sr=8-4&keywords=from+matrix+to+bounded+linear+operators

http://www.amazon.com/Counterexamples-Analysis-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/0486428753/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1346860077&sr=8-5&keywords=rudin

http://www.amazon.com/DIV-Grad-Curl-All-That/dp/0393969975

http://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications-Nonlinearity/dp/0738204536/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346860356&sr=1-2&keywords=chaos+and+dynamics

http://www.amazon.com/Numerical-Analysis-Richard-L-Burden/dp/0534392008/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346860179&sr=1-5&keywords=numerical+analysis

This is from my background. I don't have a strong grasp of topology and haven't done much with abstract algebra (or algebraic _____) so I would probably recommend listening to someone else there. My background is mostly in graduate numerical analysis / functional analysis. The Furata book is expensive, but a worthy read to bridge the link between linear algebra and functional analysis. You may want to read a real analysis book first however.

One thing to note is that topology is used in some real analysis proofs. After going through a real analysis book you may also want to read some measure theory, but I don't have an excellent recommendation there as the books I've used were all hard to understand for me.

You are not ready for a debate, but perhaps you are ready for an education. Read/watch these and then report back to us:

Universe from Nothing Video

Universe From Nothing Book

The Selfish Gene Book

How New Organs arise video

Why Evolution is true Video

Greatest show on Earth Book

When you say "clock in motion", you really mean in motion relative to an observer. The distinction is important, as it is the reason you can observe the time dilation phenomenon.


Example: I have a clock, and you have a clock, which are synchronized to begin with. You and your clock board a spaceship which after a relatively brief period of acceleration (this is to simplify the math), is traveling at 0.5c (that's 0.5 times light speed) relative to me. Now lets say that your spaceship passes by me, and I have a way to compare the ticks of your clock with those of mine. I will observe that your clock is ticking slow. However, you on your spaceship, at rest relative to your clock, will observe that my clock is ticking slow.


So which of us is right? Actually, we both are. By using the Lorentz transformation, we can convert our times to agree with each other. What it really means is that time can only be measured relative to frames of observation. There is no universal flow of time. Time and space are linked.



This is just one part of special relativity, and if you are interested in learning about it, I recommend Einstein's Relativity. It is written for the non-scientist and can be clearly understood, albeit with some difficulty and patience. If you really want to understand it, take a class.

Edit: spelling and grammar

If I recall correctly it's pretty good. The basic concepts behind relativity (and quantum mechanics) haven't really changed over the past, say, 50 years. Even the Standard Model, developed in the 1970s, is the best description of elementary particles we currently have.

The most important novelties would be the very "flat" Cosmic Background Radiation, nevertheless having small seemingly random fluctuation; and inflation, which is one attempt to explain those phenomena.

I would argue that many modern books are actually straying from accuracy in favour of speculating about solutions to open questions with for instance string theory and multiverses, for which there is no evidence. Hawking himself is guilty of that too:
http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371

1. Parallel Worlds - by Michio Kaku
   
2. very tough call - 7.5/10 if you're interested in theoretical physics, cosmology, 1/10 if you are not
   
3. Science; astrophysics, cosmology
   
4. Whether the ideas in this book are fact, theory, fantasy, fiction or all of the those is probably a matter of perspective. But, perspective is what it's all about. To date, it's given me the best window yet into a layman's understanding of multiverses, mebrane, micro and macro universes and string theory. Parts 1 and 2 give a good overview of what some physicists currently believe. Part 3, frankly, delves into speculative fiction.
   
5. Amazon link

> Clearly something can not be created from nothing, thats a rule of physics I'm pretty sure. If this can't be explained, than wouldn't that mean that some higher power must have put it there?

Who created the higher power, then?

You might find this talk (by theoretical astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss) about how the universe could have spontaneously came from "nothing" ("nothing" is purposely in quotes because it's not really nothing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EilZ4VY5Vs . He also has a book on the same topic: http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

I'm not at this level yet, but Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler is a well known for being a great and thorough book on the subject and you can get a used one for $28.

https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/0691177791#customerReviews

It is also known as MTW Black Book of Gravitation.

Also depends on what level of mathematics you're coming from: [Div Grad Curl] (http://www.amazon.com/DIV-Grad-Curl-All-That/dp/0393969975) is great for learning the multivariable calc.

When it comes to an introduction to quantum, [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Introduction-Robert-Scherrer/dp/0805387161/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341515102&sr=1-14&keywords=quantum+mechanics) is probably one of the best textbooks I've used.

There is a great book called A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss that goes into great detail.

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

>>which break pretty much everything about physics

>According to your understanding you mean

Well, sure -- but I'm in good company here. Physics as pretty much everyone knows it is described by partial differential equations - you can (in principle) calculate what will happen in a given place a little while from now by calculating the time-partial derivative of every quantity you can name, right now in the neighborhood of the particular place you care about. That property is called "locality", and it's fundamental. It means that (for example) the time it takes you to fry an egg doesn't depend on whether Aldebaran has planets.

Even quantum mechanics keeps that formalism, with the added caveat that after you evolve the Universe smoothly with your partial differential equation, you have to do collapse the final state/wavefunction probabilistically. Even that caveat is sort of toothless: quantum collapse is just an approximation to quantum decoherence, which itself is a smooth, local process that happens to migrate state from the outside world into your nicely controlled experiment -- collapse is not strictly necessary to the physics.

The problem is that, if you insert even one closed timelike path into the Universe, all of those partial differential equations cease to be solvable without reference to the global condition of the Universe. Locality goes out the window. Even worse, in cases where there are globally-controlled solutions, there are typically many of them -- so physics literally stops working, in the sense that it ceases to have predictive power. Not to argue by authority, but no less an authority than Kip Thorne has a really nice treatment of how closed timelike paths break everything -- in his popular level book on wormholes, he shows how and why classical physics stops being able to predict basic things like where a thrown baseball will go, if you happen to throw it anywhere near a closed timelike path. (Basically, there are an infinite number of ways the baseball can knock itself into the CTP as it exits the CTP quasi-later, and any of those trajectories is equally likely).

So, yes, "according to my understanding" pretty much everything would break. But that is an informed understanding based on 20 years of schooling and another 20 years of professional astrophysics, and if I'm not mistaken it's pretty well aligned with the scientific mainstream.

The Grand Design is pretty good.

Well I was trying to be cordial in correction, but you see this now as an opportunity to play a victim and call us a circle jerk. In fact, that's all you really seem to be doing is telling us that we should "stop hiding behind our beliefs", that there is "no reason to believe in the supernatural", and that we're "sad". I'm trying to reach out, as the 1 Peter verse you so appropriately quoted has said, in a spirit of gentleness and respect, but it seems you'd rather just mock people. The reason we have rule 5 is because there are enough people saying "gOD DON'T REAL" on reddit, and it's redundant to have people constantly coming in and saying:

> Everything we know about our universe can be explained through natural means, including the origin of the universe itself (see this book[1] ).

This sub exists to discuss Christianity. If you'd like to debate the value in a naturalistic philosophy, other subreddits exist for that.

For anyone interested, please read The Fabric of Reality, by David Deutsch it really delves into the Many World's theory and is an awesome read.

Mini physics lecture coming right up! I think /u/slugwind is our resident physicist so she (I think, sorry if otherwise) might be able to give you some more insight.

---------------------

At its core the uncertainty principle is telling you that you fundamentally cannot know both the velocity and position of a particle with complete accuracy for both. Knowing more about one means that you know less about the other. Here's a nice explanatory anecdote that I'm stealing from this book:

Say you've got a camera set up in a room, there's a fly buzzing around, and you can adjust the shutter speed of your camera. If you crank up the shutter speed and look at the resulting picture you can tell exactly where the fly is, but you don't know anything about its velocity (remember that velocity is a vector, it has a value for speed and direction). Conversely, if you slow down the shutter speed and look at the resulting picture the fly is very blurry, but you can infer from the shutter speed how fast it was going and in what direction.

That's pretty much the core of it. By sacrificing knowledge about velocity (increasing shutter speed) you can know more and more about the fly's position. By sacrificing knowledge about its position you can know more about its velocity. What you can't do is have great information about both simultaneously.

----------------------------------

Now, as this pertains to your post, I would argue that because decisions are made based on the information available to the agent at the time things like the uncertainty principle can be extrapolated upward, if only because knowing everything is impossible.

Book: Brian Green's The Hidden Reality

Movie: (slightly older than the book, but an easy intro) The Elegant Universe

> If you do not have mass what do you have that you are measuring?

Energy.


>Are you saying energy came from nothing?


According to Quantum Physics, that is precisely what occurs (Virtual particles, the Casimir Effect). Of course, you also have to define what you mean by the term "nothing". Lawrence Krauss has written books on the subject and has several videos lectures available online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wng6c0oLkQE)


FYI, If the net amount of positive and negative forms of energy in the universe sum out to zero, then the sudden appearance of energy does not violate the Conservation of Energy Principle.



>Or that energy first exists without mass but then a picosecond later does have mass?


Pretty much...


>Even a photon has mass.


What is the rest mass of a photon? Any guesses?


>I said time depends on mass


No. The passage of time is affected by mass, but time itself does not depend on mass. Space-time can exist entirely independent of mass.

There is no evidence that the universe has a beginning, or therefore a cause. Our universe could be an extension of a multiverse. The universe could be cyclical. The universe could be created by an alien race in another universe, which is sufficiently advanced so that they have complete control over time and space. The universe could be a lot of things. We can make theories about what those hypotheticals are, but we have zero way of testing them right now. That would require reach we don't yet posses.

There is no reason why the answer to those hypothetical situations is better served as "God" rather than any of a billion other possibilities.

Read A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss or interview a physics professor for more information. Maybe start an /r/askscience thread if you really want to know. The answer to this question is unconnected to whether or not Jesus could walk on water, if Elijah ascended bodily into heaven, or whether Mohammed could spit in a man's eye to heal it.

>I don't know any physicist who would say we "came from" nothing at all.

Me neither, but there are influential people out there writing books about the topic. I.E. A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss (although Krauss is a Theoretical Physicist)

>I should clarify that I mean "something that is self-existent" in the vaguest and most non restrictive way possible: quantum foam or universe generator of a sort of higher order multi verse space, for instance.

Of course :)

There are several detection methods when it comes to detecting extra-solar planets. These methods include:

Pulsar timings: Periodic variations in the pulse arrival time due to Earth-mass or smaller planets orbiting a pulsar. Angular momentum comes into play here.

Doppler Spectroscopy: A doppler shift, (In the case of light, objects moving towards you are blueshifted, and away from you are redshifted) in the wavelength of light recieved from a planet due to it moving towards or away from us.

Astrometric variations: A precise measurement of stellar position to find the wobble due to a planet orbiting a star. Though we say that planets orbit stars, they really orbit centers of mass, and the star orbits this same center of mass. For stars with very large masses compared to their orbiting planets this center of mass will fall within the radius of the star.

Transit photometry: Seeing a planet passing in front of its star causing the star to dimm slightly and periodically. This requires the planet to orbit in our line of sight.

Microlensing: Much like the gravitational lensing we see from having galaxies between us and a more distant target, planets also cause lensing by moving in front of the star, this effect is extremely small as you might imagine, thus the name.

If I understand your question correctly it would be like looking from above the plane in which the planets orbit, so the best method for detecting planets would be astrometric variations. We can see the star orbiting a common center of mass with the planet, which we wouldn't see if the star did not have companions orbiting it.

First time trying to answer a question here, hopefully I didn't mess it up!
These methods were taking from my astrophysics notes, these notes are without their own sources unfortunately (I'm an astrophysics student).

Edit: A relavent source (click the different methods to get a swanky gif of it in action!) 5 Ways to Find a Planet.

The textbook we use in astrophysics is Foundations of Astrophysics (Ryden & Peterson).

this really was a good book, if OP really wanted our best understanding of what "nothing" is, and why it is so hard to come by.


"A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss

Your god is 'something'and doesn't provide an answer. Also we've never demonstrated that nothingness is possible, so it's a faulty premise.

The short answer is, we don't know for sure (and regressing one level by saying 'god' is insufficient), but if you want the best current explanation, and to get into the meat of the question rather than the semantics, though, see; multiverse theory and the anthropic principle.

Furthermore, science is a self-correcting mechanism, not the end-all-be-all answer that religion claims to be. Not a 1-to-1 on the claims they make.

Edit: a more nuanced, actual physicist's answer to your question: https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

You didn't even begin to answer the question. Thank you for posting though.

Read some physics, there's a great new book by Laurence Krauss.

http://www.amazon.ca/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X

There are some very good ideas out there about the question I think you're asking, but it's so poorly phrased that I'm really not sure. Reading books other than the bible is a good start though.

I haven't read this, but this is from the Kip Thorns, the science adviser on the film

http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378

Also if it is half as good as his previous book, you're in for a treat

www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763/

All the ad hominem aside, can you explain your perception of the word "nothing"? You seem open to understanding the scientific side of the discussion.

If you're interested in exploring what is meant in science by nothing, there's a great book by Theoretical Physicist Lawrence Krauss, entitled A Universe from Nothing.

I think you'd find it to be a great read.

Very good advice. Another good suggestion on the origin of the universe: "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss. (http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451528265&sr=1-1&keywords=lawrence+krauss+books)

The "I just don't believe it could have come from nothing" argument is, according to her, the reason my mother keeps going back to the JWs. My husband and I gave her this book to read, but of course she didn't read it. Of course, how you get from, "Maybe we didn't come from nothing," to, "Therefore the JWs have the right religion" is a mind-boggling leap of conclusions to anyone who thinks about it. But then, they're trained explicitly not to do that. :)

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure this was the book.

Just watched the video at didn't find anything out of the ordinary with it.
Mind you I am not an astronomer or anything, I just find this stuff very interesting, so I read a bunch of books on the subject. I've recently finished Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe From Nothing" and I heartily recommend it, though it's not a particularly easy read.

If you haven't already you should really watch Krauss' talk of the same name (which later resulted in the book). It's my favorite talk on anything ever.

These might have too much mass appeal but:

The Big Bang -- I personally love this book.

The Hidden Reality

Anything by Michio Kaku.

I've heard pretty good things about Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind. I imagine it also has the added advantage of matching the Standford course he did that can be found on YouTube

For anyone that's interested, Roger Penrose has an excellent explanation for this in his book "The Road to Reality", that I cannot, for the life of me, remember at this moment. Here's the Amazon link for the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Reality-Complete-Universe/dp/0679454438

You can check out his book on the subject, or one of his lectures.

In brief, no matter or energy, time or space, but we still have a quantum foam. In this quantum foam, time and space, matter and energy can be created without cause. The non-existence of the quantum field can not exist, it always was and always will be. It is not dependent on time and space, matter and energy, and thus doesn't have a beginning or need a cause.

Thanks for your response. My understanding and phrasing came from these sources:

1. Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
   
2. Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes
   
3. The Inflationary Universe
   
4. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
   
5. Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
   
6. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
   
   Yes, I read all of those. Several of them more than once. I've been reading about inflationary cosmology for a little less than a decade. Wikipedia's page on eternal inflation is also an interesting read, though brief. Regarding ontology, I'd welcome any argument you'd like to make. I'm not an expert in the scholastics, but I've been reading apologetics on and off for a couple of decades. I was treating ontology as being "the study of what there is," to quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. If that's too broad for you, please make an argument, or clarify what you're claiming.
   

This is the only one I have experience with. I like it just fine. Google it yourself and you'll find the full text and can skim it if you want to. The problems I've done were actually pretty interesting.

The universe certainly does seem to have a 'route of least resistance' trend built in. But when it comes to something as obscure to us as the first moment of time and space, we have no way of telling if the route of least resistance was for there to be something or for there to be nothing.

Intuitively we'd say nothing, but there's no actual way to tell that. Perhaps "non-existence" is a fragile, precariously balanced state and the route of least resistance is for energy/matter to spill out of it. We know what went on microseconds after the big bang, but we have no concept of the first moment or of whatever came before it, if anything. Without knowing that we can't say what the route of least resistance was or if it was followed.

There's a good book that might interest you: A universe from nothing by Lawrence Krauss.

I don't have a theory of everything, no, but I am referencing books like Laurence Krauss's A Universe from Nothing amd Stephen Hawkings' The Grand Design


Here is a youtube video of Krauss explaining it.

Griffith's Electrodynamics has a decent introduction to special relativity. Otherwise, Hartle's book is geared towards the advanced undergrad. Also, Schultz is good too.

Instead of restating what's been said a million times, I would suggest reading books like A Universe From Nothing. Its a great book which explains things in language people actually understand.

If you want to understand the mathematics I would highly recommend General Relativity by Hobson et al.

It was our GR course text for 3rd year undergrad, and has a nice balance between physics and maths: as the title says it's specifically for physicists, so some of the tensor properties aren't derived completely rigorously. Nevertheless it's a thorough grounding in the maths of GR, and while focussing on GR it has several chapters on cosmological models and techniques.

So not one to buy but definitely a book to check out of the library if it's there.

If you like the video, I highly recommend you read the book as well. It's more comprehensive, and will blow your mind.

True, but even things explained simply are difficult for others to understand sometimes.

Good luck understanding relativity from reading Eisntein's book about it that he designed for the layman.

Here

Sometimes simply is simply not enough.

This is an incredibly complex topic, physicists have spent entire careers trying to answer this question. It would be really hard to give him a quick and easy answer. If you are interested in this topic I would recommend reading this book by Lawrence Krauss: http://amzn.com/1451624468

Parallel worlds by Michio Kaku is pretty good, if you're into the history of string theory and/or the universe. I read it about 10 years ago, so I'm not sure if it's outdated nowadays.

The world without us by Alan Weisman talks about what would happen to the earth if we disappeared, it talks about engineering marvels like the hoover dam, NY subway system, and nuclear waste storage sites and what could happen to these if humans were not around the maintain them.

I'm looking for a book about space if anyone has a suggesting. Particularly books that talk about neutron stars and other cosmic wonders.

The textbooks recommended in the intro Astronomy class here are An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie and Foundations of Astrophysics. I've never read through either, but apparently the first one is much more detailed.

The older edition of Modern Astrophysics is significantly cheaper and will fit your purposes just as well: 1st Edition Carroll

You are not using the correct definition of atheism. It is the lack of belief in the existence of any deities. That's it. Nothing else. It says nothing about any other types of "belief".

The only valid answer we have today for the origin of the universe is "we don't know". There are many very smart people pushing the boundaries of our current knowledge. My personal, mostly uneducated, belief is that we are on the right path with quantum mechanics. Physicists studying quantum mechanics do not seem particularly bothered by the "something from nothing" aspect. It is only theists and non-physicists that see this as an insurmountable problem.

You might be interested in A Universe from Nothing by Dr. Lawrence Krauss

One of my favorite ideas is from J. Richard Gott & Li-Xin Li, who have postulated a model whereby the universe can create itself.

I'm not sure these are directly applicable, but these some thoughts popped in to my head after reading your post. I'm linking to pages outlining the relations I mention:

1. In rederiving the Friedmann Lemaître Robertson Walker metric, Hobson, Efstathiou and Lasenby draw on an analogy to Newtonian fluid flow in the energy-momentum tensor. Perhaps this approach can be used when considering other types of fluid flow?
   
   
2. Consider for a moment the case of gas. Velocity squared plays a part in the non-relativistic Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. A relativistic generalization is the Maxwell–Jüttner distribution.
   
   
3. If the other two thoughts aren't applicable, perhaps Volume 10 of the Course of Theoretical Physics might help to answer your question?

For both subjects you'll need a solid mathematical background. You'll need calculus and linear algebra. I recommend starting with it if you haven't learned yet. I really can't stress enough the importance of mathematics in both fields.

For basic quantum mechanics: Quantum Mechanics - David Griffiths (https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Quantum-Mechanics-David-Griffiths/dp/1107179866) or Fundamentals of Modern Physics - Robert Eisberg, the later being just an introduction to Q.M.

For general relativity: Bernard Schutz's A First Course in General Relativity (https://www.amazon.com/First-Course-General-Relativity/dp/0521887054).

These are not fast questions, haha.

>What do you think is on the other side of the black hole?

Theoretically, if the black hole is part of a pair that were created from entangled subatomic particles, then they would be connected by an Einstein-Rosen bridge, and (again, theoretically) if you were to allow yourself to be sucked into one of them you'd emerge wherever the other one happens to exist. This could be in another galaxy, or yeah, some people think it's possible you could end up in another universe.

>Is there a lot of universes?

Theoretical physicists (particularly those working in string theory) are starting to think that yes, there are. Brian Greene and Michio Kaku have written reasonably accessible books on this theory, if you're interested.

>what about aliens?

Of course. It is highly unlikely that in a universe filled with billions of galaxies, each of which contains hundreds of millions of stars, only one of them would have a planet in its orbit that is capable of sustaining life. Robert Lanza hypothesizes that, in fact, the universe is biocentric - that life and consciousness are not mere accidents, but what the structure of the universe is based around. This, too, would suggest that life cannot then be confined to one planet.

>What happens to the infj emotion after their death? Are you thinking of reincarnation?

Not reincarnation exactly, no. My beliefs are pantheistic in a way that isn't really compatible with reincarnation in the traditional sense. My concept of "God" is, essentially, "the combined energy of the universe". Part of this energy is used to power my body and mind; what some might call a soul. But my "soul" isn't a discrete entity; it is made of energy, which is fungible. So, when I die, that energy (and therefore, I) will return to "everything". Of course, it will then be used to power other things... perhaps another life form, perhaps a star, or wind, or electricity. But it won't be the "same" energy - just as, if you pour a cup of water into the ocean and then fill another cup from it, it won't be the "same" water. It comes from the same source, but the individual molecules are probably going to be different. But I do think our thoughts and memories remain, as a sort of... resonance, let's say. They become part of everything, too. When people talk about remembering past lives, most likely they are accessing these resonating memories. But, not because your soul has moved into their body - rather, because you, and they, are part of the same whole.

Which, I guess, might sound like quibbling - it's not that different from reincarnation, not really. It's just that one view sees every soul as separate, and the other does not.

Here is a great book I just finished, while much broader in scope, will help you understand what is in that 'empty space'.

A Universe From Nothing. Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing.

I really like Lawrence Krauss' explanation - universes with certain characteristics, which our seems to possess, can have zero total energy. As it turns out, empty space acts, as if it didn't want to be empty - in a state of high vaccum, space suddenly starts to boil with virtual particles - particles and antiparticles, that spring into existence and annihilate each other instantly. If that happens in empty space, then it is reasonable to suggest, that in absence of space, such virtual spaces might spring into existence, and if certain conditions are met, rather than instantly collapse, they might expand and be filled with matter, gravity and dark energy, while having zero total energy at the same time.

You might learn more from his lecture, or his book on the subject.

His videos don't plug the related book(s), but I found them to be worthwhile as well. Everyone learns a little differently, your mileage may vary.

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Theoretical-Leonard-Susskind/dp/0465062903

https://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Minimum-Start-Doing-Physics/dp/0465075681

It is true, we don't know what's behind the event horizon. If the black hole would be sufficiently massive (like, really supermassive) then if you are far enough from the center you would not be able to tell that you are inside of a black hole. After all, galaxies are moving around in the universe, and for all we know they could be orbiting the center of a black hole. However, this is all speculation. A good book for a beginner is perhaps Kip Thorne's book http://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763

> It's inevitable and unavoidable.

David Deutsch (and I, being convinced) would argue that there is an infinitesimally small chance that it won't be unavoidable:
The Beginning of Infinity (I do wish he'd released it under a free license, but it was very much worth the $11)

Thats honestly why I dont like neil tyson either. he makes more about being a "that kid" prickly guy to generate tension than to actually educate people nowadays.

anyway, that aside, a really good read is Kip S. Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-Commonwealth/dp/0393312763/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374695711&sr=1-2

it is real physics slightly diluted to help understand, but he doesnt shy away from hard concepts, like Chandrasekhar limit.

Thanks for that; I wasn't aware of Roko's Basilisk but found a breezey explainer (on Slate ). It is interesting; the survey questions made me think about a 2011 Brian Greene book which runs through a bunch of theories of multiple or simultaneous universes.