If atheists do not believe in God, then how do they think the universe came about?

Question

It would take a lot of faith to believe the we all came from nothing but a little molecule that also came from nowhere.

Answer 1

Academics viewing the universe through a narrow scope should rethink assumptions
Dallas Morning News
By Roy Abraham Varghese
December 15, 2004

Last week, The Associated Press broke the news that the most famous atheist in the academic world over the last half-century, Professor Antony Flew of England's University of Reading, now accepts the existence of God.
Mr. Flew's best-known plaint for atheism, "Theology and Falsification," was delivered in 1950 to the Socratic Club, chaired by none other than C.S. Lewis. This paper went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades and set the agenda for modern atheism.
Now, in a remarkable reversal, Mr. Flew holds that the universe was brought into being by an infinite intelligence.
"What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together," he said. "The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence."
Given the conventional wisdom of some psychologists that people rarely, if ever, change their worldview after the age of 30, this radical new position adopted by an 81-year-old thinker may seem startling.
But Mr. Flew's change was consistent with his career-long principle of following the evidence where it led him. And his newfound theism is the product neither of a Damascus road experience nor of fresh philosophical arguments, but by his sustained analysis of scientific data.
Mr. Flew's conclusion is consistent with the actual beliefs of most modern scientific pioneers, from Albert Einstein to quantum physicists like Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg. In their view, the intelligence of the universe - its laws - points to an intelligence that has no limitation - "a superior mind," as Einstein put it.
Not a few of our men and women of letters, it would seem, have been looking for God in all the wrong places. Those who dismiss God as a product of psychological conditioning or pre-scientific myth-making have not come to terms with the essential assumptions underlying the scientific enterprise.
Science assumes that the universe follows laws, which leads to the question of how the laws of nature came into being. How does the electron know what to do? In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking asks what breathes fire into the equations of science and gives a universe for them to describe. The answer to the question of why the universe exists, he concluded, would reveal to us "the mind of God."
Last May, I helped organize a New York University symposium on religion and science, with the participation of Mr. Flew and others. Our starting point was science's new knowledge that the universe's history is a story of quantum leaps of intelligence, the sudden yet systematic appearance of intrinsically intelligent systems arranged in an ascending order.
Many people assume that the intelligence in the universe somehow evolved out of nonintelligence, given chance and enough time, and in the case of living beings, through natural selection and random mutation. But even in the most hardheadedly materialistic scenario, intelligence and intelligent systems come fully formed from day one.
Matter came with all its ingenious, mathematically precise laws from the time it first appeared. Life came fully formed with the incredibly intelligent symbol processing of DNA, the astonishing phenomenon of protein-folding and the marvel of replication from its very first appearance. Language, the incarnation of conceptual thought with its inexplicable structure of syntax, symbols and semantics, appeared out of the blue, again with its essential infrastructure as is from day one.
The evidence we have shows unmistakably that there was no progressive, gradual evolution of nonintelligence into intelligence in any of the fundamental categories of energy, life or mind. Each one of the three had intrinsically intelligent structures from the time each first appeared. Each, it would seem, proceeds from an infinitely intelligent mind in a precise sequence.
We can, if we want, declare that there is no reason why there are reasonable laws, no explanation for the fact there are explanations, no logic underlying logical processes. But this is manifestly not the conclusion adopted by Einstein, Heisenberg and, most recently, Antony Flew.
Roy Abraham Varghese of Garland is the author of The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God (Tyr Publishing). He helped organize presentations by Antony Flew in Dallas on two occasions. Readers may contact Mr. Varghese through tyrpublishing.com.




In his book "Surprised by Joy" a leading atheist by the name of C.S. Lewis (The Chronicales of Narnia) talks about something he calls "The Hound of Heaven" that constantly pursued him. The more he tried to shut out the idea of God, the more this "Hound" pursued him, and the more angry he became. Finally he could stand no more. In his own words, he became one of the most reluctant converts in England. It was then that a most unexpected thing happened. He was flooded with true Joy. The book is very interesting.

I suspect that many of those atheists that you refer to, are being pursued by "The Hound of Heaven"

Answer 2

Just because we don't have explanations for questions doesn't mean we need to believe in the fantasy explanations offered by religion. Kinda like people who once didn't believe that diseases were caused by demons, as organized religions once taught.

Those skeptics didn't know what did cause disease, but they were sharp enough to realize that it was something more mundane and understandable than demons. As it was with disease, so it is with the origin of the universe and other questions to which we don't know the answers.

IMHO, God is the ultimate placeholder for all great unanswered questions. Some people really need certainty to feel secure. For such people, the answer to the great unsolved questions invariably is "God." To atheists, the answer is simply "we don't know yet and possibly never will. But let's keep searching for a rational explanation."

Answer 3

Heh, nice revision.

I believe currently that the big bang hypothesis is the best one we have and the most logical, if some new data comes along, I'll take a look at it.

Again, we've known about the big bang for less than 100 years, Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in the early 1900's. Give us some time to master the physics this implies.

Answer 4

Atheists usually don't care or lose any sleep over it because it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Humans have always invented gods and stories to explain things they didn't understand - the Christian God is no different.

Your assumption that atheists believe the universe came from nothing is faulty.

Answer 5

And you think that some guy rolled up a ball of mud and set it into space- - - bingo, there's planet Earth. Roll another ball-- - Pluto, then Youranus. Boy that sounds really believeable.
The church people always bring up that- - - something can't come from nothing. They never say where it came from according to their beliefs.
Where did this God guy get the materials ? How did he make the planets stay in place ? How big is this guy who can set things in space zillions of miles apart ? And above all, where's the evidence ? A tiny tiny bit of evidence ? Please don't say, " I read it in a book ".

Answer 6

Naturally. Do you have a better answer?

If theists think that the Universe needed a creator and that creator is God, then who created God? If God didn't need a creator, then neither does the Universe.

Occam's Razor applied. No God needed.

By the way...if anyone wants to see a completely ignorant response, look no further than Deb M's.

Answer 7

I disagree. I think it takes more faith to believe that a "god" created everything. And I think most of us realize that we have no idea how the universe came about. But we do not believe a supreme being was involved.

Answer 8

Don't really know how the Big Bang happened but there are many theories. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean that we have to jump into having faith in a supernatural being.

I think that science will eventually find an answer.

Answer 9

Little molecule?

I'll tell you how God came about. He was built by Biggod.

Church people deny the existence of Biggod. They are nothing more than atheists in drag.

Now go to sleep.

Answer 10

There are the multiverse theories. Accordion universes, etc.

Where do Creationists think God came from?