Atheists...help bring me back? (CLARIFICATION)?

Question

I DO NOT BELIEVE IN A GOD.

Here is what i'm saying in its simplest form.

My thought processes operate on a cause and effect approach. I have no doubt about the validity of the Big Bang theory, however regardless what theory anyone can ever put forward it will ultimately operate on a cause and effect logic. At some point something without cause must have occurred for anything to come into existence.

However to accept that something without cause must of happened, for anything to come into existence, basically runs on the same logic as the belief in a god, that something can happen without a cause which is essentially the principle behind religion. That last sentence is what i find perplexing, i am not suggesting i believe in a god, merely that at this level it is as rational as me saying something happened without a cause.

Please DO NOT confuse what i'm saying with a belief in a religious system such as christianity etc.

Answer 1

The creation of the universe is an event outside of our physics so it is evidence of God. Evidence.

Answer 2

OK, there are only two possibilities:



1. Time is eternal and there is no first cause. If we say that something caused the Big Bang then something must have caused the something.... and so on ad infinitum.



2. Time is finite. If you go back far enough in time you will reach a point where you simply cannot go back any further because there is no time for you to go back into.



I go for option 2.

From what we know about the universe time seems to be a property of it. The flow of time emerges as a side-effect of the second law of thermodynamics. In that case, speaking of a time before the Big Bang is meaningless.

The problem that most theists and some atheists (like yourself) have is that they are thinking about the Big Bang as if it was an event that happened within a flow of time. It wasn't, it started the flow of time.

In this viewpoint the universe does not begin, it simply is. The universe as a whole is timeless; time is something that happens inside it.

Answer 3

I understand what you are saying. Just because we dont know everything at the moment does not mean we have to rush headlong to the supernatural for an answer. And we can show how the universe can be created from a point of pure energy. No matter. No mass. Just energy. Of course we do not yet know where that energy burst came from. But we will. I am confident and it will not be from a Creator.

After all to create a being that is so perfect that it can read the minds of 6.5 billion people simultaneously whist running the rest of the Universe requires a creator far more powerful than a few laws of physics. Infinite regression again I'm afraid.

Answer 4

If you want to argue for your limitations you get to keep them...



Consider that the initial moment of the big bang may simply be an arbitrary boundary condition. What if the nature of space-time was just not discretely quantized in the primal singularity state? So then Cause and Effect do not exist as separable or distinct - So what? Why is that so hard to imagine?



We are pretty sure that in the first few moments of the big bang, the basic forces like weak atomic force and electromagnetism were unified as electroweak force and that fractions of a moment before that, strong atomic force and electroweak force were probably unified. And before that, most likely all four forces were united under incomprehensibly high energy conditions and the dimensions of space and time themselves were not meaningfully separated. So why would it be so hard to imagine that causal relationships might be non-discrete as well?



Time, space, mass and energy are -all- simply the result of that primal singularity collapsing into quantization like a Bose–Einstein condensate changing state back into non-bosonic matter. Asking what caused the collapse ignores the fact that if space and time were not discretely quantized into Plancks then events could not be discretely defined as cause or effect either. The cause and effect would be synonymous. Just as the four forces would be a unified force and all matter and energy would be indistinguishable.



If it makes you feel better to assume some cause outside of our frame of reference until we know a little more - that's fine - just don't give up trying to grasp what really happened and asking questions or looking for answers. I personally think the fact you have addressed this to atheists and said "bring me back" means you may be either a troll or just too lazy to think for yourself - I hope I'm wrong to even contemplate either of those implications.

Answer 5

While the origin of the cosmos is fascinating to contemplate, any discussions on the matter are merely speculation, and it is likely that it will always be so.



The gravest flaw with the theist exploitation of this point is to assume that not knowing the answer somehow justifies jumping to the "god" conclusion, which is, at best, laughable.

Answer 6

Believing something happened without cause is one thing, believing that the first cause is a supernatural uber intelligence is something else.



The second is a huge leap away from the first



PS the quantum physics answer doesn't assume something has always been there, I just said things pop into existence for no reason, not that they have always been there.



I assume you mean Hawking radiation, I meant quantum fluctuations.

Answer 7

People have this silly inane concept of the big bang....



Understand that all galaxies are moving, and we know

the universe to be expanding, Take the distance formula

or D=R(t) you can rewind their progression in the universe

and see that they were @ a single point in space and time.

This is the origin of our understanding of "Time."



What caused it?

We do not know...

Does That mean God did it?

No, sorry, I am afraid not, only means:

We do not know....

Answer 8

Nobody knows what happened before the Big Bang, stop worrying so much about it. Those that claim to know are wrong, and those people who claim to know are religious people.

Answer 9

It's pretty damned simple: pick one of 35000 gods and go with it or don't pick one at all.



Edit: Matthew T - Prove that god created the universe. The Onus is all yours.

Answer 10

Here is a video on YouTube created by a popular atheist video maker who can answer your specific question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANtpsunRYIs