The Universe will always be: explain?

Question

This isn't to antagonize or upset anyone, but due to previous complications with a particular person on Yahoo!ANSWERS, I came to wonder:

Why is it so easy for many people to believe that God "always was and always will be" but it's much, much harder for these people to believe that the same could apply to the universe?

I just thought it was kind of funny that it's reasonable to beleive that God didn't have a creator and just "always is", but it's much harder to believe that the universe didn't have a creator and "always is".

Any suggestions? Explanations?

Why is it that God can be eternal, but the universe cannot?

AF107, you're an absolute coward. You send me message after message of hate towards my belief in evolution and then remove the ability to message you a response, and when I finally do get my very kind message sent, you block me.

You should be ashamed of yourself, calling other people dense when you yourself are no better..

Answer 1

It is a logical fallacy called special pleading.

The fact that god would have to be far more complex than his creation (the universe), and yet people still believe this infinitely more complex being is MORE likely to exist than the simpler universe proves that logic and religion are not compatible.

Answer 2

Answers to questions like these will be mostly opinions because it brings together two different ideas: the universe vs. God. If you think about it, God Himself cannot be proven, only supported. The universe is here, now, and can quite easily be proven. Having to figure out which is eternal isn't really the problem. Although it does raise a good question about how the universe may or may not be infinite and eternal. Everything that has a beginning has an end at one point or another. The idea that the universe as we know it started from a massive explosion of a ridiculously dense amount of energy (the Big Bang) is backed by more evidence than other theories. The eternal entity that people refer to so much may actually be what the universe was before the Big Bang. The thing that bothers me is that people always have to firmly believe in something. Beliefs are sometimes okay but it would be better if people just had ideas, they're less dangerous. You can believe in your own ideas rather than believe in someone else's beliefs. But I have way to much to say on these kinds of topics to put into one answer, and I probably didn't really answer your question. Sorry.

Answer 3

Quite simply, matter cannot be created or destroyed. It will not always be around in the same form it is now, but it will be (although it may change form-I.E. energy). Theologians cannot PROVE differently. It is a non-relativistic concept that, for matter, time holds no bearing.
On the flip side, we simply cannot PROVE the existence of God. But that doesn’t mean She does not exist. Why then, do these non-relativistic concepts not apply to God as we know/feel her. Why then is there such separation between religion & science.
Both can exist simultaneously.
The speed of light is not slowing down.
Dinosaurs bones were not planted here by the devil (or any other source).
The moon landing is real.
The holocaust was real.
…and the Earth as we know it will someday cease to exist.


But the Universe, in it's ever changing flux, will continue to be here to house all of the matter contained within (even though that relative MASS will continue to change).

Answer 4

Well I'm agnostic so I'm not going to answer this question as if it's the capital "G" god. Just any infinite god could fall with in the theory I'm about to put out.
If there is a god with infinite power wouldn't be possible for him to go back in time to create himself? Kind of a paradox but I'm not sure how that would apply to an infinite being.
It's the only thing I can come up with aside from the universe was just here.

Answer 5

It might be that their minds have already settled on the idea that the universe was created and by their own paradigms they can't imagine the universe always being there.

They are so accustomed to the idea that the universe "must have had a cause" that they balk at the idea that it could have always been here. Even though the universe always having been here is decidedly more probable than there ever being a god.

Answer 6

I think it's perfectly reasonable. Although I'm not sure how to define eternity, as the concept of time can be quite confusing sometimes. I think any idea that is based on almost no scientific evidence or none at all is all speculation and we should just wait for science to come up with answers rather than make up stories and hope they are right.

Answer 7

Jeepers, I almost had an arrhythmia reading that long winded rant about "energy being used up". Somebody forgot to take high school physics.

Until we are able to view space-time with a different perspective, we will continue to see the universe as it is, with a big bang and people wondering "hey, what happened 1 second before the big bang".

"It Always Was" works for me. And 1 second before the big bang: then it simply existed under much different conditions than it was 1 second later.

Answer 8

The universe is not eternal, it had a begining and science tells us the same thing. I will list several things that tell of or supports the universes begining. I will not go into detail about them but you can study them on your own and find out for yourself what they state about the universe having a begining is true or not.

1. The second law of thermodynamics
2. The universe is expanding
3.Radiation from the Big Bang was discovered in 1965.
4.The accuracy and precision of the ripples in space as shown by COBE in 1992.
5. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

All five of the these point toward the universe coming forth from nothing, the real question is what cause the universe to come forth from nothing, was it nothing or God?

Answer 9

In a sense, the universe MUST be eternal, or at least timeless at the origin, because at the point of the Big Bang singularity, it was infinitely dense, meaning that space and time were infinitely compressed.

Answer 10

The real question for me is just:

Why could something seemingly limitless and exist? How did the laws of physics come to be(not discovered)?

Energy decided to form matter?

As for the eternity of the universes existence, I often think of the chicken and the egg situation with Deity's.