what caused the big bang?

Question

if not God?

Answer 1

any number of things. the cause of the big bang, if there was one, is unknown (although there are various hypotheses, they are apparently untestable with current technology). there is no particular reason to invoke god to explain this - particulary since invoking god doesn't actually explain it: how did god cause the big bang? how does god exist? ... magic?

Answer 2

It is probably meaningless to ask what caused it. Although this is a major pain in the butt for physicists, I think we have to resign ourselves to the probability that this whole thing was acausal. There was a first event, with nothing before it. We are not able to perceive the Universe in its entirety or at its extremes. It is unlike anything in it because it is the only thing that's everything.

Now some think God gets around this dilemma, but it doesn't. It is fair to ask what caused God. If God could come from nothing, then why not the Universe?

So by default, science opts for the uncomfortable, but physical explanation which requires no divine will or supernatural miracles. It is the only theory which is consistent with the evidence. When you think about it, it's really kind of arrogant for us to assume that just because we can't understand something, it must be because of some God.

PS: people who still believe that Noah's great flood (some 3500 years ago), wiped out the dinosaurs, really need to jump in a time machine and go back to the 13th century.

Answer 3

The big bang was caused by a finite potential that produced a single quantum space-time pulse of minimum size and duration that had all the ingredients to evolve into the universe we experience today.

Answer 4

In theory, there was a singularity which had infinite density and when it just had WAY to much density, BANG.
But there really was no loud bang, there was no air to make it.

Answer 5

nothing did. the great flood is what wiped all the dinos out