Questions for atheists. Did the universe come out of nothing? What existed before? Did matter exst?
Question for theists: If the universe formed from nothing, does that necessarily lead to a creator (and specifically, the god that you personally worship instead of billions of other people in this world who also think their god is responsible)? I'm not entirely sure I follow that leap.
Well I guess we proved the believers here are more tolerant than the study. Hate to give props to the fundamentalists, but I give them props. They deserve it.
At the end of they day, they are good people.
The problem with religion is that it can entice good people to do evil things.
Questions for atheists. Did the universe come out of nothing? What existed before? Did matter exst? Did it come about be randomness?
You'll find that most atheists will have the courage to say, "We don't yet know the answer to those questions, and it's possible we never will," instead of making up a fairy tale that claims a space wizard created everything (and, of course, nobody ever states where the space wizard came from).
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Questions for atheists. Did the universe come out of nothing? What existed before? Did matter exst? Did it come about be randomness?
That's one speculation, that it did in fact come out of nothing; the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle requires that nothing can't exist; if you have nothing, a froth of virtual particles will still exist, popping into existence and cancelling each other out. The idea is that such a random fluctuation triggered an expansion of spacetime which we see as the big bang. The net energy of the universe (if looked at a certain way) appears to be zero, so this doesn't violate any physics. There are various ideas as to how this could happen many many times over as well, so that a natural selection type mechanism can account for the apparent fine tuning of some values.
There's also ideas which don't require a beginning at all, in the way that the earth's surface doesn't have a beginning (as unsatisfying as that is, but the universe is under no obligation satisfy our brains which evolved in the trees and plains).
What we do know for sure is that the current successful theories to describe reality (quantum theory at a small scale and general relativity at a large scale) while incredibly successful in accurately describing reality in their own domains, break down when they try to describe phenomenon in the others' domain.
So before we can get answers to your questions, we first have to have the language, the theory, that can even have the questions formed (in the same way that before Einstein you couldn't even ask the right questions about gravity).
So ultimately we have a good set of theories that describe the universe from very young to now, but until we can bring the quantum world and the macro world together with something we can't really begin to ask the question you have, or even determine if the questions are meaningful ("what existed before" might be as meaningless as asking what's north of the north pole, since time is a property of the universe and "before" necessarily is a question about time, so if there's no universe, there's no time, and the question is meaningless).
Some people find this lack of answer a good enough reason to insert god or gods into the unknown places, but this is the same kind of logic that led to the belief in river gods or Zeus to explain the flooding of the river or lightning; putting god in wherever something isn't yet understood (god of the gaps argument) is unconvincing and has the unfortunate effect of weakening god over time; as more and more phenomenon are taken away from being acts of god and are understood as being a natural phenomenon.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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Questions for atheists. Did the universe come out of nothing? What existed before? Did matter exst? Did it come about be randomness?
We don't know. It's okay that we don't know. Maybe one day we'll figure it out. Or we won't, and that's okay too. But we'll never truly find out if we're content to take any old answer as the real answer without sufficient evidence. That's my answer.
That's good but it took you five days to answer, do you see a problem?
I answered as soon as I seen the post.
Obviously my opinion is often in the minority on here which generates a lot of post directed at me. At some point I've got to walk away because of time restraints. I also, run out of things to contribute. No sense in repeating myself.
Believe it or not my primary reason for being on this site is interest in the Calgary Flames.
Well I'm glad to hear you acknowledge your potentual for "dong evil". That is the first step.
Hey now, I didn't say anything about whether or not I would accept such rewards.
Also, it is possible to partake in money, women, and politics in a manner where you accept the things you find ethical, and reject the ones that you don't. The "literal word of God" tends to be much more of an all-or-nothing proposition.
