see, this idea that there was no space or light or time and there was this spontaneous explosion that created everything out of nothing...this is as ridiculous as any religious thinking. it's just religion with more math. that needs to be explained before you can take the idea seriously.

i do think that you should take the idea seriously. i just think it's painfully incomplete, and we're deluding ourselves if we don't shift our thinking about it.

i think we need a philosophical shift in approach to a complex cosmos that is interrelated and consequently a universe that has multiple complex causes, rather than a closed universe with a single cause. it's a reclamation of naturalistic thinking away from religious thinking.

you don't need a lot of math to get your head around it, just an intuitive conception of probability. i think this change in approach is the solution to a long list of issues that have no apparent explanation in the context of a universe with a single cause.

i don't like the process of mathematically creating dimensions on a whim - there's no real reason for this. it's magical thinking. but, i think that the theoretical conclusions that m-theory have come to are the only really rational approach to this, and will no doubt eventually be arrived at through some other means. what this theory suggests is that the big bang was the result of an outside explosion - that there is energy and time outside the universe, although it might not exactly be comprehensible in the way that we understand it inside the universe. further, these explosions happen all the time. it removes the mystery from some kind of singularity, and suggests our universe is really nothing remarkable.

i can't take the idea that there are infinitely many universes seriously. but, the number may be unfathomably large. then, we don't need ideas like the universe "creating space". it would simply be expanding into space that already exists. we don't need an irrational universe that spontaneously combusts out of nothing. it would be the rational consequence of events outside of it. further, it opens up a number of questions as to how our universe might interact with other ones. for example, we can't explain why we have more matter than anti-matter; the big bang theory actually cannot explain why we exist. but, if we acknowledge that matter (and anti-matter) may possibly shift between universes, then we can maybe understand why there's an imbalance. that's not a proof. it's not even a hypothesis. but, it's an idea that is currently not acknowledged, and it's that lack of acknowledgement that is untenable. for, if there are multiple universes then they must interact in some manner or other. and it follows that our universe would not exist in a vacuum. and, if the universe does not exist in a vacuum, then this approach of explaining it with a single cause is hopeless - because it is wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKBkyN5os9s

think of it like this: imagine trying to explain the history of the earth with no understanding of things that happen outside of it. no concept of gravity, or comets, or any of the other things floating around out there. we don't have to speculate: we can look at history. and, we can see that the theories were limited by a lack of knowledge of how forces outside the earth effect what happens on the earth.

it could be centuries or millenia before we're able to grasp what is outside the universe. but, if we're to be serious in our theories, we have an obligation to recognize that our ability to understand the universe is drastically limited by our conception of it as a closed system. we may have little choice but to asterisk things for future research at some undisclosed point in the distant future. but, we should be thinking it through carefully and pointing out where outside forces may have a possible influence.

future generations may very well look back and laugh at us for believing the universe is flat, while historians argue that it's a myth, based on the writings of ancient relativistic philosophers.