Simple question for Atheist?

Question

Ok let's say I agree with you that Adam and Eve and all that is hogwash. Just tell me how the universe was created? I mean what was there before the universe existed? Surly science has these answers right?

My point here is that we don't have all the answers to rule out anything. I mean we've got a couple thousand years of scientific knowledge and understanding. I'm sorry that's just not enough to rule out the existence of God. What if God just set the creation of the universe in motion and nothing else.

What if Adam and Eve were microrganisms for a distant galaxy. Can you say for sure that God didn't create them for the purpose of traveling to earth and creating a race of people?

Answer 1

If we were meant to understand the rational behind all of GOD's works or deeds or miracle, we would have been created just like him instead of simply in his image. Faith requires you to step out of your comfort zone and trust in something larger than yourself. It entails being able to sit back and say I'm not sure how it was done but I can certainly see it was in fact done. Everyone has to Question their faith in order to read further and find the answers for themselves in order to grow in their faith. GOD said you would know all when you are able to fully grasp it. It is quite possible that we cannot possibly wrap our mind around all the possibilities, much less the realities that GOD has in store for us.

Answer 2

Simple question? ??????

What is the origin of the Universe....please look up "simple" in a dictionary. Since you agree that the bible is hogwash, you might get a better answer if you ask this question in physics or astronomy, rather than religion.

Having said that, no scientist professes to know how the universe came to be. (Only xians "know") There are a lot of hypotheses, and many different lines of evidence seem to support that it came into being roughly 15 billion years ago. This is the so-called Big Bang. But there is not universal agreement among cosmologists, it is just the most popular working hypotheses at present. If the BB occured, what caused it is of course the next logical question, and there are a lot of hypotheses about that, some religious types think that the BB is evidence for god. Science has no opinion on that.

At the time of the BB, theory would also suggest that the current laws of physics, time and space also came into being and changed rapidly to what we can see today. Before the BB is just a complete guess. Science does not profess to have all the answers, just a method for investigating the universe.

Whether the universe is static or expanding, or will reach a certain point then collapse to start the whole thing over again is one of the most argued ideas in cosmology. Perhaps one universes collapse results in a big bang that starts another universe.

This is far too big a question to ask here unless you want a superficial answer, and there are lots of excellent books on this very complicated and fascinating topic. But that would of course take some effort on your part.

Answer 3

Can Science explain it?

Not yet.

Never the less, the creation story does have many flaws. For example, dinosaurs did exist. We can prove that humans weren't alive when the first dinosaurs were. This suggests that Adam and Eve (AKA mankind) would have come along a long time after the dinosaurs, not just 2 or 3 days laters.

It is also written that Adam named every single animal. Despite the fact that the animals he 'named' didn't even exist yet. And, y'know, that's just two lame examples because I can't think straight right now.

Sorry, it's late and I'm finding it hard to organise the facts.

What I'm basically trying to say is this. We can't prove the big bang theory or any other scientific theory. But we CAN prove that the creation story is just a story. Allegorical and important as it may be to people, it is unlikely to be fact.

Answer 4

There is no definitive answer to the problem of the "creation" of the universe. The big bang is one theory, i don't necessarily agree that that is the beginning of the story but it answers several questions in the field of astrophysics. I believe that all of the matter in the universe has simply existed all along. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. The truth is i really can't answer your question and I'm OK with that.

We as humans strive to have total knowledge of our world, our universe... this is a good thing, but why do we need to have all of the answers right now? Things are learned over time... science doesn't just look into some truth-tome and pluck them out, it takes the skill and hard work of dedicated individuals who toil for years over these problems.

What religion does is create non-answers to satisfy our curiosities. Take a look over time... people used to think diseases were caused by demons or vengeful spirits... we now know that they are caused by micro-organisms and because of this we know how to treat most cases of illness. Simply saying "i don't know how it happened so god must have done it" doesn't make it so.

Answer 5

Not necessarily.

One possibility is there is not enough evidence to answer the question.

Another is that it's meaningless. The creation of the universe might have created time, too, so there would have been no "before".

Some interesting speculation says that the cosmos might be explainable as something quite probable under the laws of physics if they are understood a certain way. In this approach, a quantum fluctuation could have given rise to the Big Bang (the event that appears to have precipitated the universe we live in). I think this may stay as nothing more than speculation, however, because it depends on a guess as to which of the laws of physics we observe, would apply "outside" or "before" our universe. We can only observe within our universe, and some of what we observe as laws of physics, may really be just facts of our universe (or conceivably, characteristics of a largish locality).

Answer 6

According to scientific mathematical theory, if you take the "Big Bang" back in time, you'll reach a point where existing physical laws (gravity, magnetism, time) breakdown so we cannot understand. We don't have the reference to interpret something that doesn't exist now.

There is an interesting postulate as an off-shoot of the String Theory that multiple universes exist, some with nothing in them. Sometimes those universes will touch and create energy within the empty universe. Is that the "Big Bang"? I don't know , but it's interesting.

Answer 7

Us little humans that matter not a bit to that universe will never be able to know. But I have a hard time believing that other life out there will has any concept or belief in your god, especially when people place human attitudes on a believed deity and it is thought of as being at least partly a human resemblance...like an old man and whatnot...

IMO the closest thing to a 'god' is the universe itself, considering it does have final say over if we exist or not.

Answer 8

bateria came to earth in metora showers and comets, the bacteria formed the basis of life, at the end of this is me and you, so there for, adam and eve has to be "hogwash".

the universe started with the big bang, and guess what, apparently it isnt "god" who will destroy it, the universe will either collapse in on itself, tear itself apart, or just simply stop growing

Adam and Eve is an old Sumerian Story about evolution. The explanation is when humans lived in innocence like animals, they lived in harmony with everything around them. It was a veritible paradise...a garden of plenty and peace. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil is a metaphor for the development of our humanity and coming to consciousness. After Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, they became aware of themselves as humans and were then conscious of Good and Evil. They were no longer innocent, thus had forced themselves out of the paradise of Eden.

adam and eve are simply metaphors, not actually real.

Answer 9

Einstein's theory of gravity, which gives us the Big Bang theory and black holes, was subjected to the most stringent test yet and passed with flying colors. In the latest (Oct.) issue of Physics Today, astronomers from Harvard, MIT, and the Haystack Observatory proudly announced that they had confirmed Einstein's theory to within an astonishing .04% accuracy by measuring the bending of radio waves from the quasar 3C279 near the edge of the visible universe.

But there is some irony in this announcement. Each success only highlights a yawning gap. Even as scientists hail ever more accurate tests of Einstein's theory of warped space, Einstein himself knew that his theory broke down at the instant of the Big Bang. The theory had feet of clay.

Relativity was worthless, he realized, when it came to answering the most embarrassing cosmic question in all of science: What happened before the Big Bang? Ask any cosmologist this question, and they will throw up their hands, roll their eyes, and lament, "This may be forever beyond the reach of science. We just don't know."

Until now, that is.

A remarkable consensus has been developing recently around what is called "quantum cosmology," where scientists believe that a merger of the quantum theory and Einstein's relativity may resolve these sticky theological questions. Theoretical physicists are rushing in where the angels fear to tread!

In particular, an appealing but starting new picture is emerging in quantum cosmology which may be able to synthesize some of the great mythologies of creation.

There are two dominant religious mythologies. According to Judeo-Christian belief, the universe had a definite beginning. This is the Genesis hypothesis, where the universe was hatched from a Cosmic Egg. However, according to the Hindu-Buddhist belief in Nirvana, the universe is timeless; it never had a beginning, nor will it have an end.

Quantum cosmology proposes a beautiful synthesis of these seemingly hostile viewpoints. In the beginning was Nothing. No space, no matter or energy. But according to the quantum principle, even Nothing was unstable. Nothing began to decay; i.e. it began to "boil," with billions of tiny bubbles forming and expanding rapidly. Each bubble became an expanding universe.

If this is true, then our universe is actually part of a much larger "multiverse" of parallel universes, which is truly timeless, like Nirvana.

As Nobel laureate Steve Weinberg has said, "An important implication is that there wasn't a beginning; that there were increasingly large Big Bangs, so that the [multiverse] goes on forever - one doesn't have to grapple with the question of it before the Bang. The [multiverse] has just been here all along. I find that a very satisfying picture."

Universes can literally spring into existence as a quantum fluctuation of Nothing. (This is because the positive energy found in matter is balanced against the negative energy of gravity, so the total energy of a bubble is zero. Thus, it takes no net energy to create a new universe.)

As Alan Guth, originator of the inflationary theory, once said, "It's often said there is no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe itself may be a free lunch."

Andre Linde of Stanford has said, "If my colleagues and I are right, we may soon be saying good-bye to the idea that our universe was a single fireball created in the Big Bang."

Although this picture is appealing, it also raises more questions. Can life exist on these parallel universes? Stephen Hawking is doubtful; he believes that our universe may co-exist with other universes, but our universe is special. The probability of forming these other bubbles is vanishingly small.

On the other hand, Weinberg believes most of these parallel universes are probably dead. To have stable DNA molecules, the proton must be stable for at least 3 billion years. In these dead universes, the protons might have decayed into a sea of electrons and neutrinos.

Our universe may be one of the few compatible with life. This would, in fact, answer the age-old question of why the physical constants of the universe fall in a narrow band compatible with the formation of life. If the charge of the electron, the gravitational constant, etc. were changed slightly, then life would have been impossible. This is called the Anthropic Principle. As Freeman Dyson of Princeton said, "It's as if the universe knew we were coming." The strong version of this states that this proves the existence of God or an all-powerful deity.

But according to quantum cosmology, perhaps there are millions of dead universes. It was an accident, therefore, that our universe had conditions compatible with the formation of stable DNA molecules.

This leaves open the possibility, however, that there are parallel universes out there which are almost identical to ours, except for some fateful incident. Perhaps King George III did not lose the Colonies in one such universe.

However, I can calculate the probability that one day you might be walking down the street, only to fall into hole in space and enter a parallel universe. You would have to wait longer than the lifetime of the universe for such a cosmic event to happen. So I guess the United States is safe for the present!

As J.B.S. Haldane once said, "the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose."

Answer 10

Well, I've asked christians the same thing about their God. If God created the Universe, where did He come from? The common answer? "Well, he's just always been there."

The Universe? It's just always been here.

If you're interested in the actual scientific theories, you can google "The Big Bang Thoery."

Answer 11

March 16, 2006, 8:06PM
Scientists: Find explains how universe formed


By MATT CRENSON
AP National Writer

Physicists announced today that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

The discovery — which involves an analysis of variations in the brightness of microwave radiation — is the first direct evidence to support the two-decade-old theory that the universe went through what is called inflation.

It also helps explain how matter eventually clumped together into planets, stars and galaxies in a universe that began as a remarkably smooth, superhot soup.

"It's giving us our first clues about how inflation took place," said Michael Turner, assistant director for mathematics and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. "This is absolutely amazing."

Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist, said: "The observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning."

Researchers found the evidence for inflation by looking at a faint glow that permeates the universe. That glow, known as the cosmic microwave background, was produced when the universe was about 300,000 years old — long after inflation had done its work.

But just as a fossil tells a paleontologist about long-extinct life, the pattern of light in the cosmic microwave background offers clues about what came before it. Of specific interest to physicists are subtle brightness variations that give images of the microwave background a lumpy appearance.

Physicists presented new measurements of those variations during a news conference at Princeton University. The measurements were made by a spaceborne instrument called the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe, or WMAP, launched by NASA in 2001.

Earlier studies of WMAP data have determined that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few hundred thousand years. WMAP also measured variations in the cosmic microwave background so huge that they stretch across the entire sky. Those earlier observations are strong indicators of inflation, but no smoking gun, said Turner, who was not involved in the research.

The new analysis looked at variations in the microwave background over smaller patches of sky — only billions of light-years across, instead of hundreds of billions.

Without inflation, the brightness variations over small patches of the sky would be the same as those observed over larger areas of the heavens. But the researchers found considerable differences in the brightness variations.

"The data favors inflation," said Charles Bennett, a Johns Hopkins University physicist who announced the discovery. He was joined by two Princeton colleagues, Lyman Page and David Spergel, who also contributed to the research.

Bennett added: "It amazes me that we can say anything at all about what transpired in the first trillionth of a second of the universe."

The physicists said small lumps in the microwave background began during inflation. Those lumps eventually coalesced into stars, galaxies and planets.

The measurements are scheduled to be published in a future issue of the Astrophysical Journal.