It appears I am in the single minority here as to the initial conditions and the event being theoretical and unprofitable.
No, you're just making that up. Bertrand Russell said something like this: "When the experts are agreed, the layman does well not to hold a contrary position. And when the experts disagree, the layman does well not to hold any opinion."
I believe the experts are agreed that the universe is flying apart like a big explosion. I agree with the experts.
Now let's consider questions like these:
- What happened before the big bang?
- Did anything happen before the big bang?
- Does it make sense to talk about "before the big bang"?
- How (if time only arose when the big bang began) could a cause exist?
If there is a scientific consensus on any such questions,
I don't know about it. Therefore, per Russell, I do well to avoid forming vain opinions on such subjects.
In fact, much of the time, when scientists talk about such things, I not only don't smell consensus,
I can't even tell what they're saying.
Here's what I do know: Asimov hedged when he talked about the beginning of the universe. He said something like, "The universe began at the big bang -- or at least we can
say that it did, because we don't know what happened before that."
In
A Brief History of Time, Hawking made a very similar move.
So my position on whether the universe began is that
I don't know, and as far as I can tell, nobody else knows either.
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More to come. I have to break for dinner. Don't respond to this until I finish.