What Happened Before the Big Bang?

The Bad Astronomer writes to tell us that a recent advance in Loop Quantum Gravity theory appears to allow the mathematics of cosmology to be extended to the time before the Universe underwent the Big Bang. Bad Astronomer also attempts to simplify things a bit with his own explanation of the new discovery.

Comments

Re:The punchline

[Cadallin]

Please note: It's the creationists who start this stuff. Science just goes along and does its thing. Scientists, go out, collect data, form hypotheses, test them, ad nauseum. They just chug along ya' know? The trouble is, you've got these religions that make these ridiculous absolute statements. And sometimes, Science discovers that shit just ain't true. As in, "Noooo, we're about 99.999999999999999....% sure the world is more than 6000 years old." Or, "Huh, Who'd a thunk! Diseases seem to be caused by these tiny little animals and crystals! NOT the wrath of God after all!" (By "crystals", I mean Virus, noting that some can be crystallized out of a solution and still be functional) So the religions get all uppity because their turf is being infringed upon, and they go and start some shit.

I'm sorry, but as for good things religious people could be doing, for a lot of them in the 'states that includes coercing ignorant young girls that have made a mistake that "God wants you to have this baby..." Completely ignoring that means never going to school, living in poverty for the rest of their life, probably marrying some drunken abusive douchebag. Abrahamic religious nuts are a bunch of sick fucks and the world would be better off without them.

Re:The punchline

[Seraphim_72]

At the same time though science asks for as much if not more faith. Not of itself you are correct, but of the unwashed masses. Science as a whole trumps out their giant PhD's and says "You may not have the intelligence we do, but what I speak is 'The Truth'. Believe. (to which the Angry Anti-Religion folk add) Oh, and put down that book of lies you half wit"

Now certainly, I am never going to get the education to really understand what goes on at CERN. But I have the belief that they know what they are doing and not going to anything stupid, and that they are pushing the bounds of human understanding. Read that again. Yes, I have "faith" in them, though I have never seen them, don't know how they do what they do, and I trust they are doing good. Sounds like the roots of most religions to me. 'But wait', you say, 'others know, their are others that can explain, I can draw a diagrams, here is a binder full'. Priests, prophets and a bible. How honest scientists ever got goaded into this debate by the rabid religious and the rabid Atheist/Anti-Religion crowd I will never know.

This is the dichotomy that has been thrust upon science as a whole. Remember the quote about no sufficiently high enough technology and magic? This is the beginning of that. The unwashed masses have a choice of what are in their eyes two priesthoods, They are going toward the one that they feel will take care of them. Remember, baby monkeys will stave on a terry cloth 'Mommy' rather then feed on a cold wire one. Most of what I see is some version of "Your Sky Man is stupid, and you are brain damaged if you believe in him" Yeah, that's going to change their minds about science. Theism |-----| Atheism is a continuum, Theism |-----| Science is not.

Sera