Beep.
Looks like scientists have found something new to replace God with.
And they laugh at us for believing in Him.
Their option is better because.....????
Thanks for the ping!
Yikes! The title asks, "Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang?"
Unequivocal answer: NO.
There is no "before" the Big Bang for the simple reason that time (and space, presumably including cosmic phase space, not to mention matter itself) "began" with the Big Bang.
On this point, we must bear in mind that at the heart of the Big Bang is a Singularity (such as also found in black holes, only evidently of vastly greater power). Because it is thought that no light — meaning no signals — whatever can escape from a black hole, we have no way of directly knowing what is going on at the level of their singularities.
Similarly WRT the Big Bang, whatever was going on with its Singularity to bring forth and order the Universe that we observe is utterly hidden from our view (and quite possibly may remain forever totally "opaque" to human understanding; i.e., the mind of man, unlike the Mind of God, is limited, finite, and contingent). In other words, it seems the condition of "cosmic censorship" holds equally well at the Singularity of the Big Bang as it does with black-hole singularities....
So physical cosmologists — like the great mathematical physicist Roger Penrose — must conjecture about the early cosmic conditions using a sort of "cosmic workaround." What has emerged is the Standard Model, often referred to as the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric. FLRW describes a simply connected, homogeneous and isotropic universe that is either expanding (Big Bang) or contracting (leading to the end state of the black hole). Its great glory is that it satisfies Einstein's relativistic field equations. (In effect, its truth depends on Einstein's theory being correct.)
Its great defect — so far at least — is that it cannot integrate quantum gravity into its picture, simply because quantum gravity remains an elusive beastie to this day, notwithstanding the amazing number of brilliant minds and the plethora of different approaches devoted to "discovering" it. [I imagine quantum gravity remains such an intractable problem because of the task it has set for itself: It has to integrate Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics, in such a way that Newton's Laws are not "violated." A very tall order....]
Against this background, a "boom and bust," or "Big Bang–Big Crunch" cosmological model has been "plausibly" advanced — plausibly, if one agrees simply to overlook the causal and logical problems indicated above. [E.g., it is senseless to speak of a time "before" time existed. Penrose totally avoids questions of origin here by simply postulating the universe as "eternal" — which to me simply kicks the can of original causality down the road.... But IF you are arguing (as Penrose does), in effect, that the universe is no accident (i.e., is not the product of random phenomena), then how long can you evade the question of original causality?]
In this article, Penrose is paraphrased as saying, "...the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place." [emphasis added]
Note the word "apparently." I gather that's the best one can do when a condition of cosmic censorship obtains. The article avers his objection is that "the Big Bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution — that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each Big Bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before."
The Big Bang model can't explain the (logically necessary, it seems to me) initial low-entropy state — due to the "cosmic censorship" problem. That's the whole point!
But then the next question becomes: If one cannot explain the origin (or initial conditions) of the universe we do observe and inhabit, then of what value is any speculation WRT to universes "before" or "after" the one we live in?
Penrose is not averse to "putting God in the docket." He speaks often enough of the Judeo-Christian view of God as the Creator of all that is —space, time, matter; not to mention natural laws, and mathematics itself. But when he does so, his concept of God is so reduced as to be unintelligible. I imagine this has something to do with trying to locate God somehow within scientific categories.
To illustrate this point, I refer you to Penrose's not-so-modestly-titled but brilliant book, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (2004). On page 730, he presents a figure representing the divine creation of the universe, in "fanciful description!" The caption reads: "The Creator's pin has to find a tiny box, just 1 part in 1010123 of the entire phase-space volume, in order to create a universe with as special a Big Bang as that we actually find."
Of course, such a statement makes God subject to the ordered rules of science, and more generally to the laws of the Creation He made. It seems Penrose conveniently overlooks such a hypothetical being could not be God. Penrose's caption makes God subject to a phase-space volume, which limits divine action from the get-go; and moreover overlooks the practical fact that God probably doesn't go running around putting pins into tiny holes of yet-to-be-existent spacetime in order to make human scientific theories work out properly.
Penrose writes:
....it is indeed misconceived to seek reasons of the above nature, where suitable universe conditions are supposed to have come about from some kind of random initial choice [Choice itself invokes the very idea of a conscious actor, BTW.] There was indeed something very special about how the universe started off. It seems to me that there are two possible routes to addressing this question. The difference between the two is a matter of scientific attitude. We might take the position that the initial choice was an "act of God" [as depicted in the illustration mentioned above], or we might seek some scientific/mathematical theory to explain the extraordinarily special nature of the Big Bang. My own strong inclination is certainly to try to see how far we can get with the second possibility. We have become used to mathematical laws — laws of extraordinary precision — controlling the physical behavior of the world. It appears that we again require something of exceptional precision, a law that determines the very nature of the Big Bang. But the Big Bang is a spacetime singularity, and our present-day theories are not able to handle this kind of thing....Notwithstanding, if Roger Penrose is following his great colleague Stephen Hawking into "eternal universe," boom-and-bust, Big Bang–Big Crunch cosmologies, then it seems he is prepared to advance to this stage without having first ascertained the nature of the Big Bang and its Singularity in this particular cosmic "cycle".[p. 764–765]
Question: Is that "good science?"
Or has Penrose frankly taken a "short cut," by crossing over into metaphysics?
Bear in mind Penrose is a self-described mathematical Platonist. Plato himself believed in the "eternal universe" model....
If Penrose has crossed over into metaphysics, then all I can say is: Philosophy and the natural sciences have been "cross-pollinating" for millennia: Philosophy had learned much from science, and does "course corrections" accordingly; just as science has learned much from philosophy — particularly with respect to its foundations in the laws of causation and logic....
And finally the question for Penrose is: This magnificent mathematics that he evidently trusts more than he trusts God — where does he think that came from? I.e., what is its cause, its Source?
He acknowledges the extreme unlikelihood that the universe has a "random" source. Accordingly, it strikes me as entirely likely that he'd be the last to claim that mathematics could have had a "random" source....
I'll just leave the problem there for now in its JMHO FWIW status....
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear YHAOS!