Is The Universe An Illusion??

[NoY]

maybe everything exists because it dident


:NoY:

[Taoistguy]

A Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist stand next to each other watching a flag.
The Confucian says the wind is moving the flag.
The Buddhists says the flag is moving the wind.
The Taoist says Mind is moving.

[grzazek]

.

[Taoistguy]

Interesting. Can you please provide any links to wesites of these scientists where they make their claims and give verifiable proof of their theories?|

[personalreality]

The universe is NOT an illusion. It is a real tangible thing held together by strict physical laws which again, have not changed throughout the life of our universe. I know it is not an illusion because I could kill every part of life on this planet, and the universe would continue, un-phased. We are like a single atom from a speck of dust in a giants eye, we know very little about the big picture.

that's all a pretty tall claim for knowing very little of the big picture.

everything we think about reality is dictated by the biases of our survival on this planet, around this sun, in this galaxy, in this cluster, etc. etc. on into infinity.  our paradigm of reality is what we, as a species, see through our unique perspective.  we are collectively viewing the whole of reality from one very specific scale and position.  one amongst as many as you can imagine.  interpretation of data can never be the unbiased glory that it is before we look at it.

[CFTraveler]

Regardless of the information/ideas/theories that have been presented in this thread, I feel I have to clarify something.  It was said above somewhere that the Big Bang Theory says that things (matter) came out of nothing.  That is not what the theory said- it said that before there was matter, there was infinite (or near infinite) potential.  That's not 'nothing', it's just not matter- yet.
Because of the similarity between the cosmology of the Baghavad Gita (Or one of the Vedas, ICRC) and the Big Bang theory, I think the ideas presented are sometimes confused, and one is presented as the other- they are not.  They can be said to support each other, but from a strict point of view, no.

Cheers.

[Taoistguy]

It was said above somewhere that the Big Bang Theory says that things (matter) came out of nothing.  That is not what the theory said- it said that before there was matter, there was infinite (or near infinite) potential.

I stand corrected. I forgot all about the 'potential' that I learnt about in Scinv=ce lessons at school and still read about in New Scientist as being a real verifiable substance. So where did this 'potential' stuff come from? Was it born from an egg?

[CFTraveler]

Scientists wouldn't dare to try to go as far as explain how it got there in the first place.  If "there" or "place" are even valid words to describe any pre 'big bang' scenarios.
That's what philosophy and/or religion are for.  Which is where Indian cosmology comes in handy- The idea of God becoming conscious is as good as a description as any, and fits so well with the B.B.T., that they often get confused with each other.

Or, Sheldon becoming conscious.  (bad joke, see if you get it you're a nerd, and so am I for coming up with it).

[personalreality]

What the "big bang" really is is a cop out.  We can't go farther than the singularity at the beginning.  All known science breaks down at the singularity and from our perspective we can't speculate.

[Othos]

Perhaps you can halve time infinitely, but surely time would stop at some point, wouldn't it?
Let's say we have 2 meters distance to walk. If you think about it logically, there is an infinite distance between the starting point and the 2 meters mark. How many points are there between 0 and 2? Infinite? What about between 1.9 and 2? Infinite. 1.999999 and 2? Infinite. But still, you're able to advance that 2 meters with no trouble whatsoever. Maybe you are confused by the way people perceive maths.

[CFTraveler]

There is a difference between infinity and eternity.  Math gets into the concept of infinity (that is, numbers that never stop dividing, or that cannot finish dividing conceptually- that possibly define division, without being defined themselves, like pi (as far as we know) but eternity is a philosophical concept, which can be applied to math, because if we could exist eternally (which IMO is an oxymoron) then the infinite number could continue to divide...
But since eternity implies 'no beginning either', it is beyond the scope of infinity.
  Or something. 

[Astral316]

Perhaps you can halve time infinitely, but surely time would stop at some point, wouldn't it?
Let's say we have 2 meters distance to walk. If you think about it logically, there is an infinite distance between the starting point and the 2 meters mark. How many points are there between 0 and 2? Infinite? What about between 1.9 and 2? Infinite. 1.999999 and 2? Infinite. But still, you're able to advance that 2 meters with no trouble whatsoever. Maybe you are confused by the way people perceive maths.

Just because you can divide the distance between two points infinitely doesn't mean the distance is infinite... you are just redefining (increasing, more specifically) the intervals within the original distance.

[Summerlander]

Yes...^^

Besides...the universe could still be finite. Even though scientists have actually solved the Olbers's Paradox by saying that stars don't form fast enough or live long enough to light up the dark sky at night, we might find that beyond the cosmic microwave background radiation the universe is curved onto itself when we find that the same object can be seen when we look in opposite directions.

Let's not start assuming that our universe is infinite without having proof.

[personalreality]

we may not be able to test it either.  we have a boundary that we can't see beyond because of the speed of light.  when you look out into the universe you're looking back in time because of the time it takes light to reach our telescopes.  at a certain point, there is a boundary where we can't see any further because the light hasn't had enough time to reach us and it never will because we are also moving.  so, for all intents and purposes, you could call this a multiverse that we can never experimentally test.  so all we have is the speculative....sorry....theoretical math that implies infinite expansion (and, if you're on board with Einstein, eternity).

[ZeroTime]

Close your eyes, think of nothing.

What color is it, black?

Before the Big Bang there was no black, there was no void, no space, no time, no emptiness, no vacumn. The human mind has difficulty in comprehending complete and utter nothingness its not a concept we are comfortable with. Yet because the great and good have hung modern science on this we have suspended our disbelief.

The Big Bang theory is central to fabricating an argument to fit what we can currently measure to explain our Universe and is fundamentally good science and theory. However I still believe it to be nonsense, I believe that we cannot and will probably never be able to perceive the realities of the Universe but as is our way will make a damn good stab at it. One thing is certain science will shift as our understanding grows, theories such as a concave and convex are intriguing but while science and research chases the start of the How the Why goes unanswered.

[Stookie_]

The big bang is a theory on the beginning of the physical universe, not necessarily the beginning of everything. Something would have to create the big bang. Scientists know this, which is where things like quantum science and string theory come into play.

Just "nothing" and then a big bang doesn't make sense and is probably the biggest misinterpretation of it, most likely because of christians and the creation story.

[Summerlander]

There was really a Big Bang. There is evidence of a massive explosion having taken place. But it was probably only a local explosion in a myriad universes and certainly not the beginning of everything...simply the beginning of an idea in my mind. Our local known universe is an explosion in slow motion (at least from our perspective).

[Xanth]

There was really a Big Bang. There is evidence of a massive explosion having taken place. But it was probably only a local explosion in a myriad universes and certainly not the beginning of everything...simply the beginning of an idea in my mind. Our local known universe is an explosion in slow motion (at least from our perspective).

Actually, there isn't any actual "evidence" of it... just background data in the form of radiation which they ASSUME and GUESS was caused by the supposed "big bang".  There's no actual supporting evidence that shows it had anything to do with an explosion of such magnitude.

You should watch some interesting videos that I found on Adrian's other forum, Our Ultimate Reality:  http://www.ourultimatereality.com/forums/everything-in-science-is-wrong-t1314.0.html;msg15238#msg15238

It's quite an eyeopener, that what current scientists spew as the "big bang theory" is really nothing more than just another religious belief... the modern day religion of science.

[CFTraveler]

The thing is, Xanth, that the theory came first, and the calculations indicated that there should be this radiation.  It stayed in the 'maybe' stage, until the Hubble telescope was built, and-lo and behold- the expected radiation was found.
Does this prove something?  No, but it certainly supports it.

[ZeroTime]

The Big Bang theory is simply an explanation of how the Universe came to be. No matter how deep we have been able to look into the vastness of space hoping to see the aftermath of the big bang all we see is more space.

[dotster]

Before reading, keep in mind that these are all theories. Nothing is set in stone, because no one really knows for sure, so keep an open mind please.

The concept of the big bang theory is often misunderstood by many to mean that something exploded somewhere and that that explosion has expanded to where we are now, but this is not at all what is meant by the big bang theory. According to the big bang theory, before the big bang there was no space or time, so there was nothing "outside" of the big bang, the universe simply expanded from a small volume to a huge volume, and this expansion is occurring even now. One thing that needs to be understood is that we are not expanding into some new part of "space". Where we are now corresponds to some place in a very small volume in the very early universe, so the big bang, according to theory, happened EVERYWHERE in the universe, even the exact place that we are right now. Looking into space to find evidence of the big bang sort of seems redundant knowing that it happened everywhere does it not? According to the theory of inflation, which is the commonly accepted theory by most astronomers these days, the universe underwent exponential expansion 10^-30 seconds after the big bang. This exponential expansion that occurred could be compared to an atom being expanded to about the size of the solar system. It got pretty big, needless to say.

Now how on earth (<-- haha get it? oh how I love irony) would something be able to do that? Most people think that the vacuum (and by vacuum I don't mean just "outer space", I mean the void between matter so on a quantum level as well) is empty, and they might be right, but for internal self-consistency of quantum mechanics and relativity theory there is an energy requirement and that energy requirement is the equivalent to 10^94 (100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) grams of mass energy, each gram being E=MC^2. So if we were to take the vacuum found in ONE hydrogen atom, that would be about 10^-23 cm³ (<--extremely small if you didn't notice) , if we were to take that amount of vacuum and take the latent energy within that vacuum, there is a trillion times more energy there then in all of the mass of all the stars and all of the planets within a radius of 20 billion light years out from the earth. Imagine if consciousness allowed you to control even a tiny fraction of that energy. Creating a big bang doesn't seem all that outrageous if this were to hold true. Again these are all just theories. There is evidence that supports these theories, but not enough evidence to be considered undeniable fact, so like I said, keep an open mind!

All the best,
dotster

[Jon_88]

well you know something is UP when science has gone so far that checking the result influences the outcome.