From: sschaff@roc.slac.stanford.edu (Stephen F. Schaffner)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Science and God
Date: 27 Jan 93 05:55:58 GMT
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

In article <Jan.26.04.40.45.1993.14978@athos.rutgers.edu>, jnielsen@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (John F Nielsen) writes:

[clh's explanation of why it doesn't make sense to talk about what was 
"before" the Big Bang deleted.]

|> This sounds like a bunch of jargon to me, support your statements.

[...]
|> All this may sound nice. But, to me it simply does not make sense.
|> Either you have partial knowledge or are not telling the entire story.
|> 
|> Also, are you sure you are taking time zero to be too literal?
|> Time zero may just be another reference point(we use A.D. for after
|> zero and B.C. for before zero). Maybe there should be a BG for
|> before Big Bang.
|> 
|> My problem is this. I do not see how "higher-dimensionality" or
|> the rest of that jargon clarifies anything. 
|> 
|> You are claiming that we "know" there was nothing before the big bang.
|> How did one prove this? And, then how did the big bang come about in
|> the first place, if there was nothing, assuming there was not goldly
|> intervention.(I really doubt the physicists use GOD in their
|> equations, so if you contend this is common knowledge, you have
|> to come up with a non-godly version).
|> 

I am alarmed to discover that our moderator may know more 
about General Relativity than I do (I already knew he knew more 
about lots of other subjects).  No, he is not confused.  If you would 
prefer to have a cosmologist's word for it, here's Stephen Hawking: 
"Asking what happens before the Big Bang is like asking for a point 
one kilometre north of the North Pole."  In Hawking's model (in the 
unlikely event that I understand it: I also get my cosmology from 
popularizations), at least as it existed in the early 80's, from the 
perspective of a human being inside it our universe looks oscillatory, 
a series of Big Bangs and contractions: just as on 
a sphere, if you head north far enough you'll eventually find 
yourself heading south, so if you head backwards (or forwards) 
in time you eventually get to a place where the arrow of time 
changes direction (i.e. the universe is contracting instead of 
expanding).  That point is the Big Bang.  So you can think of the 
universe as either a closed 4-dimensional object, or as an expanding 
and contracting 3-d one, but on the other side of the Big Bang you just 
find the same universe.  In this model the universe needn't been 
embedded in a higher-dimensional space; other models, however, do have 
such a larger structure, but not usually one in which time is well-defined.  
	To return to a subject remotely related to this newsgroup, all 
such scenarios are highly speculative (and almost certainly wrong, 
at least in detail); they strike me as a pretty weak foundation upon 
which to build apologetics.  I don't remember how this sub-thread got 
started, but it worries me when I see arguments for Christianity based 
upon the latest scientific theory.  If we say that the Big Bang is an 
argument for a creator, what happens if new evidence comes along and 
most scientists decide the Big Bang model is wrong (which is far from 
impossible)?  It is of course appropriate to point out that a Big Bang 
cosmology is consistent with God's having created the world, but to 
do more than that seems dangerous to me.


-- 
Steve Schaffner        sschaff@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu
	The opinions expressed may be mine, and may not be those of SLAC, 
Stanford University, or the DOE.

[I got 3 postings of the same kind.  Since I think further discussion
of general relativity belongs elsewhere, I picked only this one, which
points us back into an area that seems more relevant.  I would again
refer people to Davies' book "The Mind of God".  I suspect his
attitude is typical of astrophysicists' reaction to current theories
in cosmology.  He is far from believing that there's any kind of
proof.  Indeed I don't get the impression that he's particularly
religious.  However he observes a number of really odd things about
physics and cosmology.  Aside from the big bang, a number of things
seem to him to suggest that the laws of physics are rigged in ways
that appear to favor intelligence.  As I commented before, it's been
20 years since I studied physics, so I'm not competent to comment on
the substance.  He feels, as I do, that it's bad form to have God
hiding in the gaps around our latest theory, only to be pushed further
away as we learn more.  And yet, there seem enough suggestive things
to be worth a book.  The tone of the book is "hmmm, how odd ...."  I
would hate for Christians to pounce on it and claim that it proves
things that it doesn't.  But I also think he's made some observations
that are interesting to look at.

For those who are curious, I was a physics major as an undergrad (with
a strong minor in religion), and spent a semester as a grad student in
physics at Princeton.  My Ph.D. is in artificial intelligence from the
business school (GSIA) at CMU.  Herb Simon was my thesis advisor.
Aside from work in AI, I am author or co-author of one paper in
physics and two in economics.  At this point I've been an
administrator long enough that I would hate to claim to be up on the
research literature in any of these areas.  I'm director of the
computer facilities used by the computer science dept. at Rutgers, as
well as one of a small group involved in design of the University
network and development of network-based services.

--clh]