this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Thing is that there's no "before", because time itself started with the big bang. The questions to ask are: is there anything other than our universe, and does that even matter? If nothing can get in or out of our universe, then there's no way to prove the existence of anything outside of it and there's zero impact one way or another.
I saw some science stuff on YouTube the other day that explained that the expansion of the universe seems to have started before the big bang. Also that the expansion is what caused particles to come into existence from nothing and thus creating the big bang.
Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHdUFPAK7f0
Anyway, you're right that whatever was before or outside the universe is irrelevant to us. However, if we can get closer to understanding as much of the process as possible, it might still pave the way for something that we can use today.
"Thing is that there's no "before", because time itself started with the big bang."
Good to know modern science is catching up to fourth century theology:
"There was therefore never any time when you had not made anything, because you made time itself."
Saint Augustine posited in "Confessions" that before the Universe was created there was no time. Also, that the Universe was not made in any "place" because no place existed before the Universe existed(space is also created with the Universe).
For exact argumentation you can refer to the text, I suppose(chapter XI). I just think it is fascinating that conceptual tools and concepts developed by theologians and philosophers more than 1500 years ago are still incredibly useful.
They're not even a little bit useful. Using tautilogical arguments like this are actually a disservice to science, and anti-thetical to the scientific method.
I fail to see how this is tautological.
How is that antithetical to the scientific method? Science uses routinely uses manufactured conceptual instruments, theoretical objects and even applies mundane concepts in a metaphorical way. Science is a struggle to create theoretical frameworks that explain observations, and this is why in times of crisis science often turns to philosophy, since old frameworks might not be doing it anymore and philosophy provides new ones, as it happened with the crisis of classical mechanics, for example. This is a relevant example because it relates to the issues of space being absolute or relative and time as well.
If i have to explain to you why this is not helpful to science, I'm not sure you'd be convinced regardless of what I have to say.
Time as we know it started. That doesn't mean time as we don't know it wasn't around.