A question for Atheists ....?

Question

This is not a question to put anyone down, but a question to find what you really believe the answer to be ... if there is no God, or higher being, and there was nothing before the Big Bang, how did the materials involved in the Big Bang come about? Just curious, and for any religious bullies out there, if you can't make an answer without criticizing others answers ... please do not answer. I am a Christian, and I do believe that God created the world as we know it, but I also believe that there was such a thing as the Big Bang, as this would signal the start of time from whence God first said let there be light. Thank you for your input :)

So far thank you for your answers, they have all been enlightening, as for those that stated I should educate myself before asking a question like this ... another question for you ... if one does not ask a question about something ... how are they supposed to recieve an answer? And for the ones that asked me about where did God come from ... good question, I've asked that myself. Keep them coming, and thank you for a new look at theories, and what facts the scientifc world has produced for us so far.

Answer 1

It's a common Christian mindset to assume that the universe had to be "created". I don't think this is a proper assumption. Even Christians believe in infinity, right?

Well, infinity has no beginning, or end. The universe has simply existed, period. The Big Bang is a fine theory, but I believe most scholars agree that if the Big Bang happened, it probably wasn't the beginning of the universe, but was instead a large "change".

Energy cannot be created or destroyed... it merely changes form. So it is with everything.

No atheist claims to know the true origin of the universe, if there ever was one. But that's what separates us from the theists. The theists claim to KNOW the origin of the universe, because of what some simple farmers wrote in their book 2000 years ago.

This is foolishness. The bible's creation ideas are nothing more than early scientific hypotheses. These ideas have long since been debunked, as our knowledge of science has progressed. Scientists change their theories as new discoveries are made. Religion does not. And that's why religion is not even remotely related to the realm of science. It is fantasy, and does not belong in the same discussion.

Modern Christians either need to accept this, and attempt to update their beliefs, or do the rational thing, and do away with them entirely. But there is no way the Christian mode of thought will survive another 100 years of inquiry. Ignorance of the facts does not make them untrue. But many Christians today are so comfortable in their ignorance, that they refuse to do the research.

In my opinion, that's very sad. It amazes me that people will choose to remain ignorant, out of fear that their comfort zone might be broken.

Answer 2

Another Universe.

Or

The "Matter" as you Should Have Put It, Was Always There And Just Got Reorganized By the Natural Workings Of The Universe.

"If there Was Nothing Before The Big Bang" is Not Correct Anyway. So Your Question Is Totally Invalid, You Should Educate Yourself More Before Asking A Question Like This. otherwise you just come across as a person desperately trying to validate His/Her Religion.

(The Big Bang Theory Is Tied With The Precept That There Was Matter There Before Hand And Not the Other Way Round As You Claimed.)


HOPE THIS HELPS

Answer 3

Just because we don't have enough knowledge to thoroughly explain the universe today doesn't mean that a super human being referred to as God must exist and have created it.

A cannibal looking up to the sky and seeing a person parachute from a plane might think that the person is a God or a messenger from God. Why? Because based on the knowledge he's attained so far, he can't provide any other answer. That doesn't make his answer true. We, in a developed country, understand what parachutists are, so we are not tempted to claim that they must be Gods or messengers from God.

If we don't understand how the materials involved in the Big Bang came about, that doesn't mean that a super being referred to as God must have created the universe. It just means we don't understand how the materials involved in the Big Bang came about yet.

Answer 4

The best speculation these days is that the 'medium' was the physical vacuum. We know that an empty vacuum is far from being empty because in quantum mechanics, particles are free to appear and disappear within it, and this activity actually gives the vacuum 'state' a latent energy. So, the vacuum of space is far from being an inert and passive object and acts like a peculiar medium.

There is much we do not know about the vacuum 'state', and the natures of all the fields that it might contain. Extensions of Big Bang cosmology developed by some physicists seem to attribute many very unusual properties and phenomena to this state. In any true fundamental way, no one really understands enough about space-time and the quantum dynamics of the vacuum state to be able to predict what the implications are for cosmogenesis. How one goes about testing such predictions is equally unknown

Answer 5

You know very little about the Big Bang. Before the actual "Bang" the universe was still there in the form of a gravitational singularity. It was just so compacted that the entire size of the universe was likely much smaller than a grain of sand. There was a "before," as the Big Bang doesn't claim that something came from nothing like you seem to think.

Also, I'd turn this question around and ask you... what came before God? How did He come about? Who was His creator? Neither science nor religion will ever be able to answer this very fundamental question: "Why does anything exist?"

Answer 6

One theory is that the big bang is a zero-sum event. In other words, if all the matter, anti-matter and energy were to shrink back into the primordial egg, it would add up to... nothing.

In the 50,000 years that homo sapiens has been the dominant humanoid species, a faint understanding of the universe has been considered for just 150 years. The first crude tools to research particle physics and radiation were invented 100 years ago. Radio telescopes have existed for just 50 years and computers have been common for only 20 years.

Let's ask your question in 100 years and see what we know. However, nothing I know indicates that there must be a god to make it work.

Answer 7

I'm agnostic, but........I don't claim to know how everything was created. I DO think that the world is very complex - I don't quite get all that stuff about atoms, and everything about biology. I think that many things about the world are too complex for most people to even comprehend. The whole idea about God making everything, seems to me, an answer that people can understand (Poof! God is all powerful and made the world! Hooray!), and is therefore accepted. Whatever way the world came about, I'm sure it is much, much more complicated than God just creating it out of nothing. Saying that is a simplified version of the way the world was created is a HUGE understatement.

If you think God created the world, where did GOD get the materials to create the world? God just is so magical that god can create everything out of thin air? That seems far-fetched.

Answer 8

A fair question.

There are many excellent theories--including one which says that the universe has always existed and the Big Bang simply began the most recent phase of universal expansion after a period of universal contraction--but the truth is that we honestly don't know how the universe began, or if it even had a beginning.

But not knowing is no reason to assume that there is a supreme being that created the universe. That may be a simple, comforting answer for some, but it isn't logical or supported by any facts.

Answer 9

There were no 'materials'. There was only energy. There was no 'explosion' in the sense that we normally understand... there was an 'inflation', of energy-filled space.. and the space expanded to a volume of billions of light years. (Issues related to the speed of light are irreelevant at this point, since 'time' did not exist in the sense that we now conceive it.) As it expanded, it 'cooled', and a 'quark soup' emerged. With more expansion, it cooled further, and simple elements... primarily hydrogen, but some helium... condensed from the quark soup. Gravity began to assert itself, and the gasses began to condense into huge clumps, warm up under the heat of compression, and ignite... massive 1st generation stars. These were very short-lived, compared to 2nd and 3rd generation stars. In their interiors, they formed heavier elements... oxygen, carbon, etc., and then blew up, spreading those elements about. 2nd generation stars and nascent galaxies then began to form, leading to the creation of still heavier elements.

Our sun is a 3rd generation star. All of the atoms in your body were born in the firey furnace at the heart of a star.

Matter pops in-and-out of existence all the time in the form of particle-antiparticle pairs (look up 'zero-point' energy), which exist brisfly, and then annihilate one another. It is concieveable that our universe exists inside such a particle within a higher dimension. In any case, the 'energy balance' of our universe is exactly 'zero', which neatly solves the 'energy can neither be created or destroyed' problem.

The bottom line, though, is simply that "... we don't know... yet." But we've only just started to work on the problem... just over 100 years. Give it a little time. Everything that we have seen, though, and figured out, supports the idea that there is nothing more than natural processes at work... no need to invoke a special 'creator'.

Answer 10

The universe is big, mind-boggeling big, to quote Douglas Adams. And, it's my belief that Man's mind is not so much. The concept of time, creation, et cetera are larger than Man, not able to be contained in his puny brain, so many give it the moniker of God. I believe it was St. Anselm who defined God as "that which no greater can be conceived," which says perhaps the same thing.

The thing I see to do is to keep trying to understand, broadening not just knowledge and understanding, but potential as well. And not simply on an individual level, but as a species. Maybe in that way humanity will eventually be able to contain such ideas as the universe, as God. So far we cannot, but that's ok, just means there's still work to do....