ATHEISTS: What is your explanation of the origin of the Universe?

Question

I am seriously considering becoming atheist. This is not meant to mock you in the least. For a while now, I have been a materialistic Deist- the only thing I believe in that can't be proven by empirical evidence is a passive Creator. One who created the universe and now does not intervene. Now I am considering shedding even this beleif. But their is only one thing that stands in my way- that is the question of the origin of the Universe, and that which lay within, the building blocks; energy and matter. I do believe this is the lasthurdle that stands between me and atheism. Can you help me?

eldad9:

I couldn't decide if this belonged in the physics category (because of the Big Bang) or Religion & Spirituality (because it dealt with atheism), so I posted it in both!

Answer 1

Don't have one, don't need one, doesn't matter to me one way or the other.

The term "atheist" refers ONLY to a disbelief in the existence god(s) - it has NOTHING to do with the origin of the universe. You can be an atheist without joining everyone else in making up an explanation for that.

Answer 2

I considered Deism myself when I was in the process of leaving my religion and thinking about my belief system.

These are my own personal reasons for not going the Deism route.

1. The Big Bang was the start of the Universe. We simply do not know what happened before that. "I don't know," is therefore the truth.

2. I shed religion because there was no evidence for it. There is no evidence for a Deist god, either. Why shed all those other beliefs, and retain that one?

3. Any number of things could have come before the Big Bang. At this point, it's all conjecture, of course... but there are ideas about multiverses floating around.

4. If some being did start the universe, why must that being be a god? Why must that being even be a creator - it could have just been an accident. Etc.

All in all, though... I really don't have a problem with Deism. It's just that I'm OK with "I don't know," until (and if, as it's not likely) I find evidence of what actually happened.

Answer 3

I've got your answer right here. *chuckles*

Okay, here is the situation: we've got an issue (where did the Universe come from). Now, the scientist (atheist or not), right now, with the evidence we have, generally leans toward "the Universe was always there."

Now, a theist would quickly jump in and claim that it takes more faith to believe in that than believe in a "Creator" who, well, created the Universe. But what isn't realized by most people is that this argument not only DOESN'T address the issue, it actually COMPLICATES it; that is, makes it worse.

As we understand things, the progression has always been from more simple to more complex. With all of the complexity that exists today, one must realize that claiming that a "Creator" poofed it all into existence postulates that something MORE complex than the entire Universe (after all, God would have to be more complex than his own creation) created it. This creates two BIG problems:

1. How would one explain the ULTIMATE complexity (for what is more complex than God?) being FIRST in the timeline, when everything else works in the opposite direction?

2. The argument replaces the complex Universe as the 'thing to be addressed' with the infinitely MORE complex "Creator." So now what do we do? We've got an even BIGGER problem now, because now we have to explain where this MORE complex thing came from (i.e. God).

Of course, a theist will commonly say that "God always was" or something like that. But that is the logical fallacy of special pleading--they'll scoff at the suggestion that "the Universe always was," but somehow "God always was" is no problem for them. There is no logical reason to magically take away that possibility for the Universe and yet retain it for God, and because the concept of God is more complex than the Universe (among other reasons), Occam's Razor; that is, the simplest explanation, points to "the Universe always was" as being exponentially more likely than a "Creator."

Answer 4

There really is no knowing anything broadly or completely. You can always step the "how" question back and never get to the "why". The philisophical questions "what is existance", "how did anything come to exist", "what is my relationship with the rest of the world" those aren't going to be answered any time soon. There is impossible depth to any of this. I would say that the workings of the human mind are much more important explanation of the universe than anything in physics since our mind and body is how we experience the universe as it relates to us.

You'll never know anything important with any depth, outside a very narrow slice. The more you "kind of know" the less you really know. In science the devil is in the details, therefore to conclusively prove anything important to yourself is impossible. Therefore, we must rely on what other people say. We believe, we don't know.

What is real? The fact that millions of people structure their lives around the teachings of men long dead is real. The good done by people in the name of God is real. The longing in the human heart for answers or something more than our mundane lives is real. God exists therefore, if nowhere else, in the thoughts and prayers of believers. I believe God is more than that, but I know there is no evidence.

Atheism is belief, not certainty. It is not the religion of the truth of science, but instead a belief that man is purely natural and humanity is truly alone. Where an agnostic admits to knowing nothing and therefore believing nothing, the atheist believes that there are no gods. The question in my mind isn't how the universe began, it is "what gives lonely man the hope to keep going?"

Answer 5

Any answer I give you would be speculation, as would the answer of the most brilliant astrophysicist, but I can still offer one compelling reason to choose atheism.

Religions don't ALLOW you to ask the question.

There is an explanation for the origin of the universe, and as long as you believe that humans are intelligent and curious enough to keep searching, then you can rest comfortably knowing that one day we will find it. It may not be in your lifetime, but DURING your lifetime, while we continue to search, you are FREE to believe whatever answer is most attractive to you (or no answer), today or twenty years from now.

The freedom to question everything is the defining quality of being a human being. The moment you place a subject off limits, you are curtailing your basic right to be innately human, and you might as well go swim with the salmon.

Answer 6

You mean before the Big Bang? I tend to believe that energy and matter has always existed, black holes have always existed, and are constantly creating new universes. I feel like there might not be a start or end point to the entire universe at all.. it is not like a line drawn from one point to the other, it is like a complete circle. I know it isn't very satisfying... but really, to try to comprehend the infinity of the universe is almost impossible for human beings at this point.

Answer 7

Believe it or not, we can survive without KNOWING everything. Humans created God so they'd have something to watch over them, someone to look to for their history, someone who created everything.

Personally, I feel the big bang theory makes much more logical sense than God molding it all and saying VOILA, LIFE! Besides, the Big Bang has nothing to do with the beginning of the universe, but the gradual growing of it over time. This is from talkorigins.org:

"The simple statement "something can not come out of nothing" is, in itself, not very convincing. From quantum field theory, we know that something does indeed come from nothing: to wit, "vacuum fluctuations". In the simplest case, an electron, a positron and a photon can appear effectively out of nowhere, exist for a brief time and then annihilate, leaving no net creation of mass or energy. Experimental support for this sort of effect has been found from a number of different experiments. See, for instance, the Wikipedia page for the Casimir effect.

"The common point for all of these effects is that they do not violate any known conservation laws of physics (e.g., the conservation of energy, momentum, and charge). Something can indeed come out of nothing as long as these conservation laws permit this. But people often argue that the Big Bang theory violates the conservation of energy (which is essentially the first law of thermodynamics).

"There are several valid counterarguments against this: first, as already pointed out, the BBT is not about the origin of the universe, but rather its development with time. Hence, any statement that the appearance of the universe "out of nothing" is impossible has nothing to do with what the BBT actually addresses. Likewise, while the laws of thermodynamics apply to the universe today, it is not clear that they necessarily apply to the origin of the universe; we simply do not know. Finally, it is not clear that one can sensibly talk about time "before the Big Bang". "Time" is an integral part of our universe (hence the GR term "spacetime") - so it is not clear how exactly one would characterize the energy before and after the Big Bang in a precise enough way to conclude it was not conserved."

Hope that helps.

Answer 8

I highly recommend Brian Greene's books "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos".

I'm curious why you feel this need to 'shed your [deist] belief'. The difference between your deism and my atheism is small, and even if the accelerating increase of scientific knowledge continues as Ray Kurzweil predicts, the odds are pretty good that science won't be able to determine which of our beliefs is correct in our lifetimes.

Answer 9

Honestly, I don't know. But I put a "thinking being" very, very very, very, very far down on the list of possibilities.

I think Atheists start with no assumptions about the universe and what we can not explain. We make our conclusions based on the best evidence we have. If we can not explain it it means we need to keep looking for answers.

Theist construe this to mean we are trying to disprove their concept of god. The problem with this line of thought is you are working the problem backward, you have an answer and now you need to find facts to fit that answer.

Answer 10

If we can know the origin of the universe, we do not need science anymore.

Science is still trying to trace the origin of the universe. There are lots of theory, but no conclusion so far. The one the Christians like to use is Big Bang ...... there are others, but I am quite sure they are not interested to know.