Atheists : I need your help?

Question

Since it is thought that the Universe is roughly 13.8 Bil years old, could you please explain to me in brief and lament terms (Since i'm appearantly a retard according to some) the accepted theory in which the Universe came to be, and what was there before it's start.

thank you.

If you're gonna say Big Bang, could you please explain how the Prime atom came to exist?

PS: this is not a loaded question, i really want to know.

Answer 1

I can tell you what I believe... the universe has always existed, it is without beginning or end. It changes in form, how particles of matter join, and what it might look like. There have probably been countless "big bangs" and probably some other shifts in the organization of the universe that we cannot measure.

Therefore... no "start" to the universe. (No God, no prime atom).

This is based on current accepted theories of the "origin' of the universe. (there's more than one "accepted" theory).

I believe this was done in common terms, but if you can ask a question like that, then at least you're thinking. Forget the spelling, thinking is more important.

Edit: Stephen Hakings is a great thinker, as someone stated below, and his revised work "A Briefer History of Time" is a good read, easier to understand.

Answer 2

OK. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
The actual void has always existed and will continue to do so after our planet is gobbled up by the expanding sun.
Some long time ago, while all that space was littered with matter - let's call it dust - it is clear that everything, however small or large, has a gravitational pull on everything else.
So, over time, all this stuff gradually gathered together in one place. As zillions of years went by, the collection of stuff grew and grew. As it got bigger, it became more and more dense, compressing itself more and more. Eventually, the compression and the heat generated caused the whole thing to explode, sending molten particles off into the distance.
Again, it took a LONG time for much of these molten blobs to come to a balance. Galaxies were formed, suns continued to burn, planets were formed (all globular you will notice) and some were far enough away from their giant suns that they were able to cool sufficiently.

OK, the story from then on has been told many times and I won;t bore you with all that.

Now you have the choice of accepting that very likely explanation or of seizing the opportunity of latching on to a story of magic and supernatural beings that comes to us from a few thousand years ago, when the populace at large needed an explanation (ANY explanation) and those in power fed them a story that would guarantee their obedience and fear.

Choose one. Choose wisely.

Answer 3

In the Summa theologiae St. Thomas Aquinas records his famous five ways which seek to prove the existence of God from the facts of change, causation, contingency, variation and purpose. These cosmological and teleological arguments can be neatly expressed in syllogistic form as below:


Way 1
1. The world is in motion (motus).
2. All changes in the world are due to some prior cause.
3. There must be a prior cause for this entire sequence of changes, i.e. God.


Way 2
1. The world is a sequence of events.
2. Every event in the world has a cause.
3. There must be a cause for the entire sequence of events, i.e. God.


Way 3
1. The world might not have been.
2. Everything that exists in the world depends on some other thing for its existence.
3. The world itself must depend upon some other thing for its existence, i.e. God.


Way 4
1. There are degrees of perfection in the world.
2. Things are more perfect the closer they approach the maximum.
3. There is a maximum perfection, i.e. God.


Way 5
1. Each body has a natural tendency towards its goal.
2. All order requires a designer.
3. This end-directedness of natural bodies must have a designing force behind it. Therefore each natural body has a designer i.e. God.

Answer 4

To quote Terry Pratchett, "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."

Your question assumes that time is a constant, which it is not. There would not neccessarily have had to be anything "before" a big bang, since there wouldn't have been anywhere for a before to happen, since there wouldn't have been anywhere yet.

The standard answer to "Who created god?" seems to be "God always was.", so why to theists balk at the suggestion that "the universe always was.".

The universe could be cyclic, and if dark matter exists in sufficient quantities to stop the universe's expansion, it most likely is. In which case, the answer to what existed before the big bang would be "a universe untold billions of years old.".

Answer 5

You have to accept that our brains are not sufficiently developed to understand such major concepts yet.
If you look at the history of knowledge you will see that it is a slow progession over a long time.
At one time people thought that an eclipse was an angry god swallowing the sun and performed human sacrifices to get the sun back. When these seemed to work they were confirmed in their belief.
Well we know better now and realise through scientific discovery that it is merely the moon passing between the Earth and the Sun.
So it is with all knowledge , and , although it is tempting to invent gods and demons to account for those phenomena that we are incapable of understanding, we should be patient and honestly admit that these things are still beyond our mental capabilities.

Answer 6

That may be a little above my pay grade so to speak,tell you what go ask Stephen Hawkings? Actually he has done things covering that very subject,and I got it pretty well at the time but for me to try to explain it without notes in front of me would quite frankly be folly. The answers are out there from smarter people than I,and I'm talking about real scientists,not these guys on TBN who just make up facts as they go along.

AD

Answer 7

you mean "layman's terms"

There are two popularly accepted theories. I don't believe either one.

1) God made the universe, and before the universe there was God, and God always was.

2) The Big Bang made the universe, and before that, there was nothing.

Answer 8

1)The accepted theory is called the Big Bang theory.

2) "Before" the universe means, literally, before the emergence of space and time.Since time is necessary to concieve of "before", that part of your question is, in technical terms, nonsense.

Answer 9

I'm an agnostic. I don't really believe in God. ...but that doesn't mean I know what happened 14 billion years ago. On the contrary, it pretty much means that I don't care.

Answer 10

That's a physics question; it's in the wrong category.

And it's not just atheists who are allowed to study and read up on science.