All of these actions and reactions have to have an origin because each action is truly a reaction to another previous action.

There's the logic flaw. Nothing in the definition of reaction implies another action, i.e., reactions do not necessarily have their own reactions. As an example, if I kick a wall, the wall pushes back with the same amount of force, but this certainly does not always mean that my rebounding foot will hit someone's kneecap behind me. This may not have much effect on your thinking, however, because obviously there had to be a very first action. If we say that the reaction was the expansion of time and space, then what do you think the original action was?

Also, a few clarifications for you. In the "beginning of time" (really a misnomer, because there was no time), it was not a "small space". It was a singularity: an infinitely small, infinitely dense point, containing no space or time, but an infinite amount of matter. I'm not sure if this is right, but I don't think that there were no forces; I'm pretty sure physicists believe that the four major forces (gravitation, electromagnetic, strong, and weak) were unified into one force.

And one more: the beginning of time technically wasn't Planck time, but Planck time is the farthest back we can measure. Planck time is a natural unit of time, equal to 10^-43 seconds, and the smallest unit of time it is possible to measure. So, we cannot tell any difference between the time the universe started, and one Planck time after that. Information came from Link.

Not that I don't believe in God. I actually believe that science will one day prove the existence of God, but if this is going to happen, you have to go about your arguments and deductions scientifically and logically. Just helping out.

My faith is the only thing i need to believe in God.

Sorry i guess i'm not helping out at all!

"A reaction always causes another reaction".
Can you elaborate?

Since there were no forces at the beginning of time, and no beings to initiate the proposed expansion of space and time, a divine being, or some higher force that transcedes natural time and space must have initiated the initial motion of expansion

But what initiated the divine being's motions?

We can't prove God's existence, because our finite minds cannot comprehend the Infinite. (At least we won't be able to prove God in our present human state. I personally believe that we'll be able to prove God in the hereafter, where our perspective and awareness will be different.)

In the meantime, it's all a matter of faith. We can either believe that our existence is an accident and there is no purpose to anything; or we can believe that there is deeper meaning to life, and the cosmos has transcendent purpose.

The answer lies in our heart, as well as our head.

Saint Thomas Aquinas called it the First Mover (http://www.faithnet.org.uk/AS%20Subjects/Philosophyofreligion/fiveways.htm). The problem with this logic is that the first mover must also have a first mover... and that first mover must have a first mover... and on to infinity.

I think Zoomba says it best. Just for me, it's hard to see time as anything other than linear, and I know it is not.

I don't need science to prove that God exists. My faith is enough for me.

I just like the idea.

Peace,

Beebes

The great thing about this universe is that it is far stranger than we might think. For example, the laws of physics as we know them break down when applied to the first few seconds of the universe. Time itself becomes broken, and calculations concerning the dimensions we know fall apart. This has aggrivated Stephen Hawking to the point that he has developed the concept of imaginary time, which does not actually travel from the past to the future (re: a state of active entropy) to define the origin of the universe.
Using Hawkings imaginary time model, you basically lose a universal beginning point. The universe itself has no beginning, forming not a line with a starting point (that is often conceived by the religious and cosmologists) but instead forms a bowl shape, never reaching a beginning, but instead just existing. While sounding some what far fetched, the concept of imaginary time solves many of the problems of the universe during its first few seconds of existance. It's hard to wrap your head around because we live in a progressive time line. And yet as hard as this is to imagine, God is even harder to understand.
Every single individual that has ever lived has a unique concept of God (gods). My God is not the same as yours even if, by chance, we worshipped the "same God" in the same religion. We are each unique, and even atheists have dissimilar concepts of how they view the god they do not believe in. This leads me to belive that God cannot be completely conceived in the imagination of humanity to the fullest extent. Instead, we each see a small portion of God, relative to our experiences and teachings. Our God is not the complete God, because God is beyond us.
This in itself leads to many, many arguements about who is the real God, what God means to us, and how God interacts with us. Some will claim that faith alone is enough, as they view some notion of an active mystical man in the heavens, watching over us. Some will claim that God cannot exist, because their limited view of God does not work within the realm of understanding they have.
I think God is all this and more. The fact we as a species can conceive of God exposes that we are aware of some greater mystery to existance. It is within this mystery that we will find God. Science, which strips away the mystery, reveals a very limited and small amount of Gods 'footprint', but it can never destroy God... only reveal the mystery of this universe in which we live. Science is the ultimate search for God, it is sciences very nature to admit to the mystery of the universe.

Good luck with your search... I need more coffee.

I think we created the universe. And we made it so big because 15 billion years from now were going to need the space for all our stuff.

I don't know a whole bunch about science, but I think sometimes it works with relgion instead of against it. I have faith but its cool to learn about theories that help it along.

'So, the universe is accelerating, curved and open, what does that mean? It means Newton was wrong on a universal level because somewhere out there in the whole entirety of the universe, spontaneous creation is occuring.'

This is where your friend's explanation loses me, jeblackstar. Matter is flying apart at an accelerating rate, okay, but why should that suggest this idea of spontaneous creation?
Incidentally, Newton WAS wrong on a universal level; that's basically where Einstein's relativity comes in.

God does not play dice with the universe...

Shortly before Sir Issac Newton’s death in 1727 he said to himself: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

In Sir Issac’s profound possibly last words spoken some 278 years ago wisdom for us can be found today. Academia would have you kids believing that the words of your professors and their peer scientists are supposed to be taken as “gospel” or “cast in stone”. All of you seem to speak in absolutes rather than caveating or couching your words with IMO or IMHO. You parrot things of the “little boy” minds of mainstream science.

Take for example the latest finds of the ESA regarding Saturn’s moon Titan. It is proving to be an enigma for the planetary scientists who were so sure of their theories. Things they thought about the universe have been overturned by empirical data. Sir Issac was not so pedantic. He realized that mainstream Christianity was also incorrect in its assumptions about God (and still is) and performed an exhaustive search for the truths about God. (I.e. he proved that the Catholic dogma of "trinity" was bogus and very un-Christian).

He looked to the very book some of you choose to overlook as your mentors tell you, albeit incorrectly, that it is not a scientific book and full of contradictory myths (i.e. Holy Bible). How blind they are and now they try to lead you. Ever heard of the blind man leading another blind man? What happens to them? Read Matthew 15:14 for the answer.

If you wish to read an amazing scientific essay from God in His "users manual textbook" for us, read what God said to an Arabic man name Job and his ignorant highly critical friends starting at Job 1:1 to 42:17. I know it’s a lot of reading but there is a part around 38th chapter that will "knock your socks off". There you will see an amazing Old English (King James Version) essay on earth sciences, astrophysics, gravity, biology, etc. How could a simple-minded man from Egypt (I.e. Moses) around 1473 BC know this type of technical data? There is even a section in Job about the spherical roundness of our planet long before Pythagoras who lived about 540 to 500 BC postulated it (i.e. “He has described a circle upon the face of the waters, To where light ends in darkness.” - Job 26:10). Then there is Isaiah who in the 8th century BC said under God’s inspiration: “There is One God who is dwelling above the CIRCLE of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers.” (See Isaiah 40:22)

So you see it is good to research things on your own rather than believing that your august teachers are infallible. This is where organized Judeo-Christianity lost its way in the 4th century AD and science in rejecting that antiquated erroneous “root-causality error” model. Akin to “throwing out the baby with the bath water”!

Ok, to postulate the infinite about "who started what" is an intrinsic reason how we are NOT evolved animals with no intelligent creator and with no future hope. This is the empirical proof you desire, hiding in plan sight! Namely YOU! Also it stands to reason (or basic human logic) that any “created” system of things (or reaction as you so deftly put it) has to start at its beginning with a system that was NOT created. Omnipotence is the “missing link” you all seek. An extraterrestrial (i.e. above the earth) Great Omnipotent Deity (G.O.D.) has to be the reverse and forward infinite “link” which causes everything to “be”. In other words "no beginning and no end".

But you may ask: "What did He do before He created everything?". That question is in and of itself what PROVES the existence of God. As how could something so random and chaotic with "no missing link fossil evidence of itself" ever postulate such a complex neuron-synaptic born interrogative? Can a dolphin or a pig do that? So what’s the answer to the question of the ages? In my humble opinion the answer MAY be found in mathematic discoveries of August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868) - albeit unknown to Mr. Möbius. Look it up...

IMHO time does not exist. Time is an instinctive concept of the sentient mind. Animals are cognizant of it out of divinely programmed instinct. We can do that as well as ponder the infinite nature of that mental concept. IMO time can not be manipulated, bent, or curved, as it doesn’t exist. Hence Einstein may be wrong. The NASA experiments with Cesium clocks in jets may have another explanation that Newton postulated above as being like little boys playing by the seashore. The brilliant professor Dr. Ron Mallet at UCONN.edu will soon realize the folly of his so-called ring-laser time machine sooner than later…

Spooky

PS – Here’s something to ponder about Einstein’s “curved space” explanation for gravity: “If gravity can be explained by saying that space-time continuum is bent or curved and a sphere rolls around down towards the center. Then I still ask the very simple question 'what’s pulling on the sphere'? And don’t say gravity!”

My theory? Just like positive and negative ions, particles and anti-particles, north and south poles of magnetic flux, there may be sub-atomic particles liked gravitons and anti-gravitons, which attract and repel just like magnets. Boeing Aircraft has proven that you can BLOCK or shield gravity. Little boys at the seashore???