Atheists, do you think you can answer a few questions for all of us here on R&S?

Question

1) What caused the Big Bang?
2) Why is there gravity?
3) What did cells and Amoeba evolve from, or were they just always here on earth?

Eh. Just thought of these for Atheists, since, y'know, a lot of them (not all, just a lot) tend to question Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Pagan, and pretty much everybody's thought patterns.

So, you guys, have a merry ol' time responding to these.

For the third question, if they weren't always just "here", please explain where they came from, or what they evolved from.

For the record, I'm not a Christian, nor do I follow any book religion. A quick peek at my profile should tell you that.

Someone has commented "asking what caused the Big Bang is like asking what happened before time."

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed." -- Something for you to think about.

Someone has commented "asking what caused the Big Bang is like asking what happened before time."

Here, ponder these:
"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed."
"Something cannot come from nothing."

Answer 1

Let's assume that answers are not known to all of your questions (that is true of the first one).

What would you have us do?

Should we just insert "God did it" to every unknown or unknowable problem?

Don't you want to find out?

If scientists took your approach to everything we would know almost nothing. Atheist are not content to just say "we don't know exactly what happened here so we'll just say X did it" without having reason to do so.

I would rather know the truth, and not make up what ever answer seemed pleasing to me.


EDIT: The Big bang do NOT say that matter and energy came from NOTHING. (Before the singularity, the total net energy of the Universe may have been negative).

Answer 2

Inflation caused the big bang. That is, all around you there is the vacuum. In the vacuum you have energy that has no source, but sure enough the energy is there. It's called dark energy. Dark energy is constantly creating matter in some part of the universe. All the while black holes are eating it up. Dark energy is what is continuing to make the universe expand even faster than it was 13 billion years ago, just after the big bang. In a single tiny part of this dark energy the universe was the size of an atom. The dark energy for no known reason forced space and time away from itself, thus the big bang...though there was no real "bang". There is a good amount of evidence that this dark energy exists. The fact that we are continuing to expand and the Casimir Effect.

Gravity is here due to the fabric of space and time. Imagine space and time being the surface of a trampoline and you put something on it so it sinks a little bit. But gravity works slightly differently. Where as you dip all the way down, gravity has ripples and curves due to objects that have mass. Those ripples cause orbit to happen. We can observe orbit on the moon, the sun affecting the other planets, and our satellites. Also since gravity warps space and time you can see the effects of time dilation. So objects closer to the most central part of a massive object actually age slower and time does in fact go slower. They performed an experiment where they took a 2 clocks and synchronized them exactly to I Believe .00000000001ish. Took one to the top of a tall building and left one at the base. The one at the top was faster than the one at the bottom after a few hours. Thus providing massive amounts of data to support gravity.

Cells evolved from amino acids and the building blocks for RNA and DNA. The amino acids clumped together and faced inward to better protect themselves. So they linked together to create a circle to assist them in surviving. This formed the outer part of the cell. Then with time a nucleus formed and you have your first cell. This is the rather abridged version.

I hope that helps a little bit.

Answer 3

Sure, if you can answer some in response:
#1) What caused the Big Bang?
ANSWER: I don't know. I don't know, I'm a teacher, not a scientist. I've read about it, but I can't say I entirely grasped them.
QUESTION: What caused God?

#2) Why is there gravity?
ANSWER: Has to do with planet stuff. I learned about it in astronomy class. Lots of math. Again, I'm a teacher (and not of science!).
QUESTION: Why is there gravity? --I ask this, but if you research this, you'll have the same answer. It's an answer that does not require a supernatural explanation.

#3) ...cells and Amoeba...
ANSWER: Wow, again, not a scientist. Let me put it in the way I understand it as a layman. The universe is infinitely expanding, right? Do we all agree on that? Okay, in an infinite universe every possibility would exist. For example, the chance that this planet could sustain life would exist. Further, if places such as this existed infinitely, then there would be some which would have chemicals (i.e. hydrogen, carbon, etc.) in such a combination to initiate life and in one of those instances, life would occur.

QUESTION: Why, if you fail to except the evidence provided for these scientific answers, would you except a supernatural entiry on no evidence whatsoever?

Answer 4

1) The cause is unknown and cannot be known based on present technology.

2) Why there are four fundamental forces is a question that cannot yet be resolved either.

3) Cells have not always been on Earth. The oldest sedimentary rocks contain no fossil cells. The earliest fossil life is 3.8 billion years old. The most popular hypothesis in the scientific community is abiogenesis -- chemicals accumulated in the oceans until one gained the ability to catalyze the formation of similar chemicals. Others hypotheses include panspermia intervention.

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed."
"Something cannot come from nothing."
1) That is a rule in our observed universe. We do not know that it applies outside the universe.
2) The rule does not apply at the quantum level. Short term violations of conservation of energy exist.
3) How do we know that the mass-energy of the universe was not eternal and the big bang was not a "spontaneous release?

Answer 5

These questions are not for only atheists. Just because atheists are "without God", does not mean they have answers. Here are the answers based on science (not revelation).

Big bang is a scientific theory that explains how the universe became. There is no cause and effect, is merely states that someone can from nothing. The scientific facts (observation by men independent of location) are explained by this scientific theory. If the scientific facts change, the scientific theory may change as well. This is the scientific method, how facts are explained by theories.

Gravity is another scientific theory that explains scientific facts. You can find gravity described in any science (physics) class. There is no "why". It is an explanation not a rationalization.

Evolution is a scientific theory that explains how cells (Amoeba is a single cell living organism) evolve. Once again these are scientific facts are explain by this theory as described in any science (biology) class. All biological discussion use matter on the planet earth. This discussion defines the criteria of life and looks for other locations other than the Earth. The Earth came from the big bang.

Enough of the "without God" (science) questions. The word science comes from the word "know". It is what we can observe.

If you are going to ask a question for atheists to explain start with Genesis 1 Verse 1 and 2.

Verse 1: God existed before He created everything you can observe. That simply means that there exists something unobservable before the "big bang.” What does science tell us about the unobservable?

Verse 2: The earth became chaos. What does that mean?

Answer: God reveals and man observes. The atheists know about revelation and they reject it. Maybe your efforts would be better served by reading about non belief in the Gospel of John and following Jesus' lead on this topic.

Answer 6

Are you assuming that all atheists are scientists? That we somehow have all the answers to everything? Sorry, I don't have that sort of arrogance, that is reserved for Christians.

The Big Bang is observable, what caused it is not known.

If you would like one physicist’s philosophical answer as to “why” there is gravity, it is simple - without gravity there would be no universe or solar system and we wouldn’t be here to ask the question.

Other than that, the question of Why is there gravity has no more meaning than Why is there light? Why is there energy?

As for what did cells and amoebas evolve from, there are several ideas:

For example:

* Perhaps the original energy molecule was very different from the mechanism found in living cells today, and the energy molecules happened to be abundant and free-floating in the environment. Therefore, the original cell would not have had to manufacture them.
* Perhaps the chemical composition of the Earth was conducive to the spontaneous production of protein chains, so the oceans were filled with unimaginable numbers of random chains and enzymes.
* Perhaps the first cell walls were naturally forming lipid spheres, and these spheres randomly entrapped different combinations of chemicals.
* Perhaps the first genetic blueprint was something other than DNA.

Now, did I just know all of that? No, I did a search in google. The answers are out there, you just have to want to know them!

Answer 7

I'm Pagan, but I'll answer for you.
The Big Bang has been defined as resulting from the accumulation of time and matter in a Singularity in a previous universe. This was expelled into a void which became our universe.
Gravity is a bend in 4dimensional space cause by a large mass at a location in that space. The 3d motion caused by gravity is the human perception of the 4d motion along that bend.
All microorganisms, including viruses, prions, bacteria, amoebas, and others, arose from organic materials present in water on clay. This particular question is very broad and betrays your own lack of understanding of simple biological processes.

Note that none of these scientific answers (the word theory, in science, means "this is what the facts and results of experiements support") contradicts any rational religious belief.

Answer 8

1. It's meaningless to ask what caused the big bang. Causality requires time, and time did not exist before the big bang occurred.

2. You could say that it's due to the mass of the earth. That could so easily lead into another 'why', but that's the simplest answer there is. Without gravity there would be no universe or solar system and we wouldn't be here to ask the question.

3. The newest theory states that single cells evolved from ancient bacterial cells.

You probably won't accept these answers because you'll be stubbornly holding on to your own theories, whatever those may be. But nevertheless here they are.

Answer 9

1.) Nothing... there was no explosion. The dimensions took shape and one of these entailed shrinkage - continual shrinkage and therefore an infinite largeness of the Universe from an initial infinite smallness. The universe emerged from a really hot dense and hot state. Space itself has been expanding ever since, carrying galaxies with it.....and thats a short version.
2.) Without gravity matter wouldnt have formed into large masses like stars and planets (big bang). It also is responsible for keeping the planets rotating around the sun.
3.) Please look up the defintion of the word "cells" and "Amoeba" you pretty much answered your own question.

Answer 10

Number one: the cause of the big bang is, of yet, unknown.
Number two: Gravity is the result of the spinning of the earth.
Number three: The atoms of chemicals which are a part of the universe, and in the water which covered our planet, bonded and created molecules. The molecules bonded at the sites created by electrical differences, and became matter. The matter evolved into the life forms called blue green algae. The blue green algae evolved into life forms that specialized and these life forms evolved into vegetation. etc. etc. etc.

Answer 11

I will give you my educated opinions based on a graduate level physics (including general relativity and cosmology ) and math background as well as years of study ( including working at NASA on the Einstein observatory ) .

1-2. Reality is based on mathematics. Nothing is really caused as such. Causality is really kind of an illusion resulting from observing mathematics from within itself rather than as it really is. Rather the reality we observe is selected from the infinite variance of necessary mathematical truth. The laws of physics including those resulting in gravity are those mathematical structures consistent with our existence. All other mathematical structures also exist but do not result in our existence so we don't observe them.

3. Likely the first "living" organism was some sort of self reproducing RNA strand. Obviously this is conjecture however because no one was there to see it. Nor are there any remnants still around. The first reproducing organism would have been microscopic and have existed some 3.6 billion years ago ( plus or minus 400 million years).

In response to your comment about energy conservation. What you probably don't realize is that the total sum of mass-energy in the universe is likely zero. The positive mass-energy we observe is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy. Mass/Energy formed after the big bang in conjunction with the huge negative gravitational potential energy resulting from the rapid inflation.