Atheists: What is your opinion about the existence of the universe and life? (NO MOCKING INTENDED)?

Question

I am not asking this question for the sake of disagreeing, ridiculing or mocking you guys. I just want to know what do you think about the origin of the universe, the human kind and all the living things.

Thanks

Well to add, I am a Muslim and believe in the existence of ONE God without any partners, who created everything. NOTE that it doesn't mean I am a creationist as in the formal defintion of creationism which says the world is 6000 or so years old. I am creationist in the sense that I believe God created the universe and every living thing. Hope it clarifies.

eldad, could you explain how can a bang result in an order? You do agree that an order exists in the universe I hope.

BANG results in a chaos, where does the existing order come from?

Nemesis, does an infinite chain of a creation-to-creator relationship make more sense or a finite one?

Good Times, Happy Time : You really need to study a little bit of astronomy to know that an order does really exist, and if that order gets disturbed a chaos will result.

Wonder Weirdo, I hope you are aware of Fermi's paradox, as for the life, how could you assume that a thing as complicated as a human being has no creator? If I suggest to you that a certain chair created itself or a laptop created itself, how absurd would that sound?

Nelli, you misunderstand (understand the christian) concept of God. God doesn't require us to worship Him. He doesn't need Us. We NEED to worship Him so that HE can differentiate between Us as to who among us are loyal to him or who aren't.

If there is one good person, who does all the good things, and there is another person who commits all sorts of evils, are they going to be the same?

sadistdave, your basic assumptions are wrong, how can you prove that time, space and matter are infinite? Just because we can't measure them doesn't mean they are infinite. The concept of infinity is relative in itself!

Answer 1

If you really want to know, ask the questions in the proper subject (like biology) or just pick up a book.

Short version:
Big bang
The earth forms
Abiogenesis
Evolution.

Answer 2

You are of course referring to the old watchmaker argument, that if you find a watch in the middle of the dessert, you don't assume that it just appeared. You assume that there must have been a creator. But the thing is, even if there was a watchmaker, we don't even have any evidence of its benevolence, or of its characteristics and that religion and our ideas of God become nothing more than wishful thinking.

But more than that, the argument of the watchmaker is itself flawed. Lets take the universe first and by its order, by which maybe you mean the laws of physics. But have you heard of Einstein's frustrated exclamation "God does not play dice with the universe!"? This was uttered at the face of new theories and evidence that "he" actually does. I'm not a physicist however and can't really comment on whether he does or doesn't he. But Einstein's statement is more a reflection of his and every human being's effort to find order in the universe that he perceives. He wants to make sense of all the madness. That's just how the human mind works.

Now as to the complexity of life. You probably would say that nothing so complex can possibly exist without a builder. But why not? If you can believe in God, why can't you believe in life's spontoneity? The problem with putting God into the picture is that things get very difficult to explain. Because he doesn't really talk to us. And he never gave us instructions. (I'd advise medical help if you disagree. :-) ) Religious people have thought of embellishing their images, like a fantasy gone wild. All those doctrines from the simple observation of a watchmaker? Talk about jumping to conclusions. Why not take the simpler explanation? That some amino acids reacted in ways that we still don't understand, and caused the existence of a living cells? This way, we don't close the doors to understanding the nature of that cause. (Another reason not to posit God everytime we meet something seemingly inexplicable, is the tendency that we give up trying to explain it.)

So as to their existence, it is simply just a happy coincidence. It does not need a watchmaker. Some things simply exists, and it is only the nature of our mind (and not nature itself) that requires a reason.

Answer 3

I don't mean to poke at your traditions, but all of the evidence that we have concerning the Earth points to it being around three to 3.8 billion years old. Science has pretty concrete evidence to show that the universee itself was formed approximately 15 billion years ago or so, give or take a few billion years. We know this because the mineral record shows specific minerals that take a known amount of time to lay down, and by measuring this mineral record we can date the age of the earth rather accurately. We're able to see the transition of bodies in the universe, and are able to calculate their speeds as they move outward. Thus giving us an approximate age for the universe. There is no evidence of anything controlling the process. There is evidence that the univers as we know it has gone through this process before where all the matter came back into the center, and then under extreme pressure, blew back out again. This may be the fate of our universe.

As far as life is concerned, life is not as complicated as you think it is, when the Earth had cooled down to the point where life appeared, we got our first organisms, and Science now thinks that it's a natural chemical reaction that is the result of sunlight, reacting with minerals and chemicals to form the first proteins. Odds are good that this isn't the only planet with life on it in our Galaxy.

Answer 4

Not one single person can tell you with a definite answer as to where the universe came from. There is always the big bang theory, but, the question that comes up next is what was before that?

My opinion is that the big bang happened for sure. They can still pick up the echos from it with dishes. But before that? It is possible that it repeatedly explodes and implodes and has always been here in one shape or another.

Religions fill this void by conjuring stories of a creator.

If you believe that the Earth is only about 6000 years old, why do you see so many stars in the night sky? Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Many of the starts that we see are millions of light years away. That means...light from that star has been traveling for many millions of years to reach this planet. If the Earth is only 6000 years old how is this possible? It is rather, quite possible, that the stars you see may very well not exist anymore and you are infact looking at the past with your own eyes in the present time that you live in.

Answer 5

A very good question. As a Buddhist I'm afraid you have me stumped for an answer but I'll give you my honest opinion if that's alright.

Your question has really got me thinking and pondering....

Buddhism really has no answer to the origins of the Universe or the origins of Man and Life in general, it is only really concerned with the reality of present existence and the causes of and the release from suffering. The Lord Buddha taught that our Lives (as opposed to our personality and other characteristics) had no discernible finite beginning but that is about the extent of the teaching. He was concerned more for the evolution of Life rather than its beginning.

In essence then from a purely personal and by no means correct perspective, I suppose that since I have no real way of knowing the real answer, I'd have to rely on scientific theory and speculation in this regard.

Thank you again for this very thought provoking question.

Peace to all ...from a Buddhist

Answer 6

Firstly, I hope you don't mind that I'm not an atheists, but an agnostic?
My opinion is that no one knows the truth (facts) about the origin of the universe. It remains one of the great mysteries!
One side says the big band, the other says poof - 7 days God created everything. Both sides ready to 'kill' for their opinions!
All said and done... they could BOTH be right. God created "all" in the Big Bang and evolution took place during the 7 days (God's time - meaning we mere mortals cannot measure it in our time) God took to finish everything up.
All the scientists have done is to show the process of God's handy work and what was accomplished.
There might be other more pressing questions that need to be answered. Such as "What is the nature of greed and how can we as a people combat it. "

Answer 7

I do not know what started the universe. There is not enough evidence to make a decision at the moment. The best evidence looks like there was a massive exapansion from a singularity, what is commonly referred to as the big bang. Saying this probably happens is NOT making claims about what started IT, we just do not know.

Life seems to have arisen from molecules bustling about on the early earth (which looks to have formed due to the physical laws after the big expansion) to form basic replicators. Anything that was capable of replicating itself is all that is needed to start the long process of evolution via natural selection. All this is saying is that if something is replicating, and there are errors in the replication, the earth will tend to fill itself with the things that HAPPEN to be best at copying themselves.

It is not clear what the first simple replicator might have looked like, onl that a much later version of it looked something similiar to RNA, and now the replicator that has filled the earth (it was apparently the most successful one) is DNA. Humans are just the byproduct of the fact that DNA is good at making copies of itself, through human bodies.

This, according to the evidence which we have, is what most likel happened, or something close to it. I could be wrong, I don't have all of the answers, but that is my best guess based on what i have learned.

If you would like to talk about this further, i would be happy to via my email ([e-mail]) or my blog (fishwithfeets.com). Good question.

Answer 8

I'm not so sure there has to be an origin . the Universe is unlike anything else to our knowledge why should it behave as it's integral parts when it is the entire thing .do the parts of many other thing behave as the whole no as a rule. plus scientific speculation seems to go well as a cyclical array of a time line that goes to oblivion as the black hole of it's sum and in turn back to the big bang what hangs me up is the origin aside from the black hole and energy for eons and eons could concievably
evolve into a field of matter . so it possible the cycle of the universe is like a merry go round which would follow Einsteins ideas of conservation of matter and energy.the incredible existence of human life is true ,quite amazing a one in a billion occurence but possible none the less. anyway we think it's a mystery that no one can really account for in the present. so what does it matter anyway ?

Answer 9

I am an atheist and I do not have all the answers. I think that the present theories of the "big bang" as origin of the universe, and evolution and chance as origin and factors of life, are valid and plausible scientific theories. As in all science, a theory will only hold as long as no better theory emerges.
I reject all creationist theories because they do not answer anything - they just bring forth another question "where did the creator come from?" (a question which all the creationists radically forbid, and that reveals that they do not accept scientific methods in the first place).

Answer 10

The origin of the universe, who knows. It's one of those amazing things that we cannot trace the origin of, not all the way back to the beginning. The difference between an atheist and a christian is ... we don't feel we have to. We don't make up some fairy tales to fill in the gaps that science or facts can't explain. We just accept that there are some things not yet explainable.

As for life, human kind and all living things ...... biology, cell division and evolution ... all proven with biological and factual evidence.

Answer 11

There is no definitive answer to how the earth was really created; most are theories. Having said that, I believe that scientific theories still have more support behind them than the Bible does. At the very least, it is semi-comprehendable, and isn't based on pure miracle.

I enjoy debates immensely, though I have found a lot of religious people to be touchy about such topics (understandable if someone else questioned something you had held belief in all your life); I therefore commend and congratulate you for opening your mind, and asking to hear an athiest's opinion.