Athiests - If god never existed, how do you explain the big bang?

Question

Can someone please explain how the universe could come into existance without an intelligence or force to start it?

This is not a debate about if god exists or not - its a plain question - if the universe had a beginning, who or what pushed the button? How can something start from nothing?

Answer 1

This is essentially a variation of St Thomas Aquinas' famous "first mover" argument that anything that exists needs a creator (or a "mover") and as you follow the sequence back, the first mover is God.

The argument has a major logical flaw in that if everything needs a creator then it is not valid to arbitrarily except God from that rule. Therefore you are left logically with an infinite series of creators (a God created by the God before him who was created by the God before him etc. etc.). It is now widely rejected by theologians, philosophers and scientists alike.

If you can't accept that the big bang could just happen without a force to start it, how can you then accept that God can exist without something else to create him?

Answer 2

In physical cosmology, the Big Bang is the scientific theory of how the universe emerged from a tremendously dense and hot state about 13.7 billion years ago. The Big Bang theory is based on the observed Hubble's law redshift of distant galaxies that when taken together with the cosmological principle indicate that space is expanding according to the Friedmann-Lemaître model of general relativity. Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity (for reporting on some of the more notable speculation on this issue, see cosmogony).

The term Big Bang is used both in a narrow sense to refer to a point in time when the observed expansion of the universe (Hubble's law) began — calculated to be 13.7 billion (1.37 × 1010) years ago (±2%) — and in a more general sense to refer to the prevailing cosmological paradigm explaining the origin and expansion of the universe, as well as the composition of primordial matter through nucleosynthesis as predicted by the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow theory [1].

One consequence of the Big Bang is that the conditions of today's universe are different from the conditions in the past or in the future (natural evolution of universe constantly takes place). From this model, George Gamow in 1948 was able to predict, at least qualitatively, the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) [2]. The CMB was discovered in the 1960s and further validated the Big Bang theory over its chief rival, the steady state theory.

The universe was in a sort of sphere of hot matter. The matter got so dense, that it exploded, creating the universe.

This is a much better thoery than God. There is no physical evidence of God ever existing. there is absolutely no evidence. There was a book. God seems to explaine the problems of the universe, it is the easiest answer. Thif there had been a god, how did he start, come into existence. Everything has a beginning, and an end.

Answer 3

Are you saying you believe in both God and the Big Bang? That's unusual. If you acknowledge that there was a Big Bang surely that contradicts the whole 'seven days' creation theory put forward by the bible doesn't it?

Both are really just theories anyway and have very little evidence to support them. I don't see any reason to assume that there was ever a time when nothing existed, and that a grand creation was ever required. It's probably just a case of gravitational forces acting on the whole universe, getting weaker as it expands and then causing everything to collapse in on itself, therefore causing contraction until the point where it creates enough potential energy to expand again (hence big bang/big crunch, like a spring) I think there's more logic there than the idea of something coming from nothing. I also think it's very unlikely that we know anywhere near enough about the universe to guess at this.

Answer 4

- In physics matter and energy cannot be created, neither destroyed. Explode a human body and it will scatter in millions of pieces. Build a house by using existing materials and combining them (moving their location). Every event in the universe occurs by a motion of particles. Matter can be converted to energy and vice versa (by motion of particles). This is a very powerful argument to assume that the universe was never created, as it will never be destroyed.
- If you claim a God created the universe, I ask you who created God? If you say God was not created, I say the universe was not.
- As you know from the prior argument the matter and/or energy always existed (in my opinion). The problem now is to explain how the prior event (if there is one) has occured. Every action causes a reaction, which makes it hard to believe for some that the universe was not initiated. It is not necessairy to assume this, as there are two possibilities.

1 There was a prior event.
2. We are infinite far in time.

If you think it is illogical to assume that a god did not create the universe, then you are wrong. If God initiated the universe, who initiated him? If you say he was not initiated (events), then I say the universe was not initiated.

One question: Why would you assume the universe had a beginning event? Does it have an ending?

Answer 5

As a broader answer than most which you'll get here...

.. inability to fully explain the Big Bang does not mean it did not happen. No, we don't know everything about the scientific origins of the universe. But at least we're investigating it. We have theories which seem to hold true given other observed phenomenon. We may be wrong.

But at least we're not just sitting back, not looking for the truth, and letting our parents and their parents tell us that the only explanation is an invisible one, and seemingly accepting that as the blind truth simply because it's what we're told.

How is that proof? Frankly science is closer to investigating than religion ever has been -- whether it's currently right or not.

Answer 6

Believers - If time is truly infinite, what created God and what was before that creator?

The above line is meant to highlight that there are questions which are far outside of the grasp of the feeble minds of human beings. Asking such questions, although highly valuable and a fun philosophical exercise, can become dangerous when one uses it as a means to challenge others' belief systems.

There are a variety of interesting theories on the subject of what came before big bang, but I lack the necessary intelligence and verbal acumen to do them justice. For now, I would suggest doing some reading on string theory, it might help lead you into a direction that could be fairly illuminating.

Answer 7

I don't explain it. It's beyond comprehension. Religions always attempt to explain everything and it's meaning. That's fine for people who have to have a meaning for incomprehensible things, and that's been part of human nature for thousands of years, making up stores to explain the unexplainable. The ancient Egyptians believed the sun was a God riding in a chariot, and that he died every day at sunset and was reborn every morning at dawn. That was a belief for more years that Christianity has even been around! Some of us are satisfied that some things cannot be explained, and feel that scientific theories will someday become fact, and I don't think it's fair for others to browbeat us by demanding that we prove that God doesn't exist with that "If....then how..." nonsense.

Answer 8

A Carl Sagan quote:

"In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?"

Answer 9

Big bang is a thoery just like everything else, I personally do not believe the universe as a whole has ever had a beginning, or will have an end. its the hight of arrogance to think that the entire universe was created just for mankind to play around for a bit. get over yourselves.

Answer 10

How did GOD come into existence without an intelligent force to start it?