Tiassa,
Well, I wasn't going to go as far as the actual origins of matter, since that didn't seem to be the point of MoonCat's question.
However, let me respond to you as follows: yes, and no, and what??
The inhomogeneity of the universe has indeed been a problem for the classical Big Bang. However, it's been quite a few years since that particular controversy was settled with the theory of inflation. According to that theory, at the start the universe underwent a period of hyper-fast inflation where there actually were parts of the universe between which the distance growth rate exceeded lightspeed. Because the universe expanded so rapidly from Planck-scale (~1x10^-33m, at which spacetime is a roiling foam of chaos) to macro-scales, the spacetime distortions of the 'foam' got near-instantly stretched into huge structures which are subsequently "frozen" onto the fabric of the cosmos (they were formed at superluminal rates, and thus, following inflation, never had a chance to collapse back to their natural size.) Because the immense curvatures that exist at Planck scale got stretched out into gigantic structures, their local curvature is pretty gentle (akin to the local curvature of a large sphere, such as a tennis ball enlarged to the size of the Earth for example, being nearly unnoticeable compared to the curvature of a normal tennis ball.) These "dimples" in spacetime served as gravitational wells and mounds that corralled the rapidly cooling energy and matter into basins, which subsequently gave rise to the galactic clusters and superclusters (and maybe even to the first galactic nuclei.) Hence, the present intergalactic-scale picture of "walls" of matter separated by great "voids", as if all matter of the universe is deposited on the surfaces of horrendously gigantic "bubbles" -- is neatly explained away by inflation. Inflationary theory got a major verification when the cosmic microwave background radiation (the 'fossilized' afterglow of the Big Bang) was mapped for the first time at high sensitivity, and turned out to be blotchy just at the scales, power spectra, and magnitudes predicted by inflation. But, none of this really has anything to do with evolution or creationism.
I suspect, but am not sure, that you are trying to hint at a certain consequence of determinism (to which I personally adhere, but much of modern physics doesn't). That is, if all energy and matter interacts in strictly predictable and mechanistic ways, then one can trace the present state of the universe back some 12-15 billion years to the very first, "arch-state". This initial state possessed a particular configuration, which subsequently unraveled itself in time into the very particular universe we observe. Were the initial state even a tinsiest bit different, that small change would have cascaded and echoed through time to result in a substantially differently-looking universe (in particular, you and I probably would no longer exist at this point in time; we might simply be different as persons, or we might not be human, or Earth might be lifeless, or the solar system might not even exist, etc. -- you get the idea.) This might appear like an opportunity for creationists to claim that God's plan does, after all, have an actual manifestation -- in the shape of that initial configuration of the universe from which everything we know emerged. However, the picture doesn't agree with much of the remainder of creationist ideas about the universe. In this picture, the universe is like a deterministic computer program, or like a vinyl record, just playing itself out. There is no free will, no choice, no alternatives -- fate is absolute, and predestination all-encompassing. Of course, we will never be able to predict the future, since in the grotesquely multivariate function that computes the next state of the universe based on the current state, there are at least on the order of 10^100 individual variables (number of atoms in the universe) -- and thus to predict the next time-step we would have to accumulate an impossible amount of data (not to mention that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents us from knowing precise parameters even of a single atom, and not to mention that as inhabitants of the universe we can't completely encode all of the universe's structure (the omniscience paradox I addressed in the Contradictions thread).) So, while this scenario states that the future is absolutely predetermined by the past, it gives us no hope of ever knowing the future until we get to directly experience it as the present. This, at least, is how I perceive the state of things.
A great many modern physicists (but not all of them) would dispute my opinion, stating that the universe is fundamentally nondeterministic, and at its most basic level governed by randomness and chance. Thus, no function exists to deterministically map the state of the universe at one moment onto the state of the universe in the next moment. However, I have many philosophical (not physical, mind you) reasons to disagree with such a position (reasons I've discussed on other treads over a half-year ago, and also having nothing to do with evolution.) To my delight, there seems to be a developing resurgence of determinism at the avantgarde of physics, so at least I no longer feel so lonely.
To that end, I'll share with you an intuition I successfully used in one of my Senior philosophy essays. Given my description in the last paragraph, imagine that the universe itself (including all space, matter, energy, and us) is indeed a computer simulation. (actually, a nice fit given my model: quantized fundamental entities that collectively constitute the universe, changing state from time-step to time-step according to the states of all the other entities and using deterministic (computable) laws...) Then whoever built the computer, programmed it, and started the program can be construed as "God". However, this "God" and its computer exist in yet another universe (call it "God's realm"), and observing the emergence of life and intelligence on one of the simulated planets, "God" begins to wonder: what if God's realm is also but a computer simulation? And so on, and so forth indefinitely. Actually, I used that particular allegory to demonstrate the theoretical nature of all knowledge, since, for example, imagine what would happen to the universe if the simulation got invaded by a computer virus. The very laws of nature could change, 2+2 could become 10, the Sun might start absorbing light and orbiting the Earth, broken glasses spontaneously re-assemble themselves, etc. Just goes to show you that there is indeed a possibility of an arbitrarily deep hierarchy of forever unknowable and inaccessible realities beyond our reality, which nevertheless precisely determine what we are and how we work. And the hidden processes of those hidden realities may turn the entirety of our perceived universe on its head at any moment. This is but an illustration to the unprovable nature of the mother of all hypotheses -- The Fundamental Principle of Induction -- upon which all knowledge (and indeed all life!) is built -- that reality is regular and continuous both in space and time. But I digress...
As to your metaphors linking the story of the Devil to the Big Bang -- I'm just plain not getting it. (Sorry!)
------------------
I am; therefore I think.
[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 01, 2000).]
Well, I wasn't going to go as far as the actual origins of matter, since that didn't seem to be the point of MoonCat's question.
However, let me respond to you as follows: yes, and no, and what??
The inhomogeneity of the universe has indeed been a problem for the classical Big Bang. However, it's been quite a few years since that particular controversy was settled with the theory of inflation. According to that theory, at the start the universe underwent a period of hyper-fast inflation where there actually were parts of the universe between which the distance growth rate exceeded lightspeed. Because the universe expanded so rapidly from Planck-scale (~1x10^-33m, at which spacetime is a roiling foam of chaos) to macro-scales, the spacetime distortions of the 'foam' got near-instantly stretched into huge structures which are subsequently "frozen" onto the fabric of the cosmos (they were formed at superluminal rates, and thus, following inflation, never had a chance to collapse back to their natural size.) Because the immense curvatures that exist at Planck scale got stretched out into gigantic structures, their local curvature is pretty gentle (akin to the local curvature of a large sphere, such as a tennis ball enlarged to the size of the Earth for example, being nearly unnoticeable compared to the curvature of a normal tennis ball.) These "dimples" in spacetime served as gravitational wells and mounds that corralled the rapidly cooling energy and matter into basins, which subsequently gave rise to the galactic clusters and superclusters (and maybe even to the first galactic nuclei.) Hence, the present intergalactic-scale picture of "walls" of matter separated by great "voids", as if all matter of the universe is deposited on the surfaces of horrendously gigantic "bubbles" -- is neatly explained away by inflation. Inflationary theory got a major verification when the cosmic microwave background radiation (the 'fossilized' afterglow of the Big Bang) was mapped for the first time at high sensitivity, and turned out to be blotchy just at the scales, power spectra, and magnitudes predicted by inflation. But, none of this really has anything to do with evolution or creationism.
I suspect, but am not sure, that you are trying to hint at a certain consequence of determinism (to which I personally adhere, but much of modern physics doesn't). That is, if all energy and matter interacts in strictly predictable and mechanistic ways, then one can trace the present state of the universe back some 12-15 billion years to the very first, "arch-state". This initial state possessed a particular configuration, which subsequently unraveled itself in time into the very particular universe we observe. Were the initial state even a tinsiest bit different, that small change would have cascaded and echoed through time to result in a substantially differently-looking universe (in particular, you and I probably would no longer exist at this point in time; we might simply be different as persons, or we might not be human, or Earth might be lifeless, or the solar system might not even exist, etc. -- you get the idea.) This might appear like an opportunity for creationists to claim that God's plan does, after all, have an actual manifestation -- in the shape of that initial configuration of the universe from which everything we know emerged. However, the picture doesn't agree with much of the remainder of creationist ideas about the universe. In this picture, the universe is like a deterministic computer program, or like a vinyl record, just playing itself out. There is no free will, no choice, no alternatives -- fate is absolute, and predestination all-encompassing. Of course, we will never be able to predict the future, since in the grotesquely multivariate function that computes the next state of the universe based on the current state, there are at least on the order of 10^100 individual variables (number of atoms in the universe) -- and thus to predict the next time-step we would have to accumulate an impossible amount of data (not to mention that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents us from knowing precise parameters even of a single atom, and not to mention that as inhabitants of the universe we can't completely encode all of the universe's structure (the omniscience paradox I addressed in the Contradictions thread).) So, while this scenario states that the future is absolutely predetermined by the past, it gives us no hope of ever knowing the future until we get to directly experience it as the present. This, at least, is how I perceive the state of things.
A great many modern physicists (but not all of them) would dispute my opinion, stating that the universe is fundamentally nondeterministic, and at its most basic level governed by randomness and chance. Thus, no function exists to deterministically map the state of the universe at one moment onto the state of the universe in the next moment. However, I have many philosophical (not physical, mind you) reasons to disagree with such a position (reasons I've discussed on other treads over a half-year ago, and also having nothing to do with evolution.) To my delight, there seems to be a developing resurgence of determinism at the avantgarde of physics, so at least I no longer feel so lonely.
To that end, I'll share with you an intuition I successfully used in one of my Senior philosophy essays. Given my description in the last paragraph, imagine that the universe itself (including all space, matter, energy, and us) is indeed a computer simulation. (actually, a nice fit given my model: quantized fundamental entities that collectively constitute the universe, changing state from time-step to time-step according to the states of all the other entities and using deterministic (computable) laws...) Then whoever built the computer, programmed it, and started the program can be construed as "God". However, this "God" and its computer exist in yet another universe (call it "God's realm"), and observing the emergence of life and intelligence on one of the simulated planets, "God" begins to wonder: what if God's realm is also but a computer simulation? And so on, and so forth indefinitely. Actually, I used that particular allegory to demonstrate the theoretical nature of all knowledge, since, for example, imagine what would happen to the universe if the simulation got invaded by a computer virus. The very laws of nature could change, 2+2 could become 10, the Sun might start absorbing light and orbiting the Earth, broken glasses spontaneously re-assemble themselves, etc. Just goes to show you that there is indeed a possibility of an arbitrarily deep hierarchy of forever unknowable and inaccessible realities beyond our reality, which nevertheless precisely determine what we are and how we work. And the hidden processes of those hidden realities may turn the entirety of our perceived universe on its head at any moment. This is but an illustration to the unprovable nature of the mother of all hypotheses -- The Fundamental Principle of Induction -- upon which all knowledge (and indeed all life!) is built -- that reality is regular and continuous both in space and time. But I digress...
As to your metaphors linking the story of the Devil to the Big Bang -- I'm just plain not getting it. (Sorry!)
------------------
I am; therefore I think.
[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 01, 2000).]
