Atheists, please explain this argument for me?

Question

I've heard it said that God cannot exist because nothing created God and something cannot come from nothing. Could you please explain how that makes any sense?

Using that argument, there should be no planets, no stars, nor any matter whatsoever because something cannot come from nothing. How then, did the planets and, eventually, people come to be? If nothing created them, where did they come from? Were they ALWAYS HERE?? Using that argument, is it best to have the belief that nothing and nobody actually exists and the world we are living in is simply a simulation? But then... who created the simulation?

Pheonix- you didn't answer my question. Where did the matter come from? You can't just say it was always there and then use the same argument to prove that God can't exist.


This question is not meant to be offensive- I'm simply curious as to how you can justify this as a logical argument.

Mad Cloud- I understand the Big Bang. All matter compressed upon itself, until the pressure and heat... etc, etc. Original question still stands- where did the matter come from.

Balaam- untrue. I have seen Atheists on R&S use this argument to say that God cannot exist.

3- Why would you assume that God does not exist and use the assumption to condemn yourself to Hell?

Hector- the science seems to be too complex for you to understand of explain, if that's the best you can do.

Saergant Gork- If the planet came from pre-existing matter, where did the pre-existing matter come from

@$%%$@ - I'm not asking myself who I am. I know who I am- a child of the King.

tehabwa- You assume that stuff always existed and complexity came from it. I assume that God always existed and He created stuff.

rt66lt- Some of your answer makes sense (which is more than I can say for many others). There was no time for the Big Bang. But something had to enable the matter to come so close together it was able to burst outward. This must have taken time- time before the big bang occured. I'm not saying that your answer is flawed- but the big bang theory is. The second part of your answer: why does something have to create God? I believe that God always existed. Where did God come from? I don't know, but it is as easy to think that He was always there as it is to think that matter was always here. Can't there be both infinite matter and that which is created?

peaceful light- I don't picture God as a grumpy old anything. Your image of God is distorted by human attempts to blame God for the destruction mankind has brought on themselves. If someone crashes a car, you don't blame the car maker for making a broken car- you blame the person who owned it for ruining it. Thus it is the same with our lives.

Thank you for all the answers. I think, then, the conclusion we have reached as a group, is that this argument doesn't make sense in any respect, as it can be used both to prove and disprove each respective postion.

Answer 1

I think that it's a flawed argument because any speculation about what occurred before the big bang is a total guess. There is even talk about the laws of physics themselves being suspended during the initial moment of the big bang to explain how the universe expanded so quickly, so it's ludicrous to think that some physics law would apply before the big bang event, if it did not apply during the initial moment of the big bang.

Answer 2

Believing in God means believing in a uncreated, infinitely complex and powerful being, that has always existed.

Not believing in God means believing that there was stuff, and that complexity slowly emerged from it.

The first is a whoppingly huge leap; the latter, not.

There's no space here to give the history of the universe up to man, but, simply:

Yes, there was "stuff" in an unstable state. It blew up (in a sense, that's sort of a metaphor-- it's not as though there were TNT or something).

Simple elements were formed in the energy of that explosion, which also hurled the matter apart.

Bits of the matter, drawn together by gravity, collected. When enough matter collects, it becomes so dense that the elements break down and thermonuclear reactions occur. This is what makes stars.

Over time, the star using up it's simplest source of energy, and "burns out" so to speak (in the process making somewhat more complex elements).

Since the burning slows, collapse again proceeds until the star either fires up the next level of burning, or it collapses completely. These process also produce more complex elements.

Now we've got a universe with more complex elements, created by stars, flying about. They coalesce into solar systems, with some of the matter becoming starts, and the heavier stuff coalescing into planets and other stuff (comets, moons, meteors).

Whew!

That was a longer answer than I intended.

You could study about the universe and stars stuff at
http://www.nasa.gov

Here's a site for learning about evolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

As you can see, we don't postulate an infinitetely complex being to start with. Complexity takes time to develop. That's why naturalist views make more sense than an infinitly complex and powerful thing that Just Is. That's no explanation at all.

Answer 3

Who says there was nothing? I speculate that there has always been something. It may have been in a different form at some point in the past but I figure it was still around.

The idea is that at the point of the big bang there wasn't solid matter so to speak. It isn't like planets, stars, and black holes just popped out of the big bank pin head. These things formed from the molecules that did burst forth. Consider that the universe is expanding this leads us to believe it will contract. When that happens at some point things will start to break down again. Think of a pendulum and how it goes back and forth, back and forth. The universe may be on a similar cycle. Lucky for us it is on its forth and not it's back swing.

Answer 4

Not an atheist, but according to the "Big Bang" Theory, the universe began at the Big Bang (more of an expansion than an explosion). There is no such thing as "before the Big Bang" any more than there is no such thing as north of the North Pole. Time is a dimension like length, width, or heighth; it constitutes the fourth dimension. In other words, going backwards in time, you run out of it at the Big Bang, much as I run out of it if I go back in my life to the time of my birth.

Actually, the creationist argument is the one to me which makes no sense - if you need a God to create the universe (that is, by "design"), then you must need someone to create God (who would have to be designed as well), it becomes an ad nauseum argument. I believe in God, but not as a designer.

Answer 5

Your statement: 'it best to have the belief that nothing and nobody actually exists and the world we are living in is simply a simulation' is profound and may be the closest thing to reality.

Why does 'something' have to create something else? How does knowing the beginning of the 'visible' universe help you live? What will you be able to do better for survival with that knowledge?

What are you actually experiencing other than your memory of what has occurred milliseconds ago?

You are looking in a mirror asking yourself what you are. What a waste of energy.

Answer 6

You're missing something. That argument is used to counter the "watchmaker" argument for the existence of god. In case you're not familiar with it, when you look at a watch, you don't assume it came into being on its own, you realize that it was designed and put together by someone or something else. Thus, when you look at humanity, Earth and the universe, you should think the same thing. The argument is that everything that exists needs to have been created by something. The counter-argument is that if you follow this reasoning, you are duty bound to apply it to god as well, thus meaning that god needed a creator, as did god's creator, and so on and so on.

Answer 7

All of the matter inherent in the Universe was, at one time, coalesed within a singularity that exploded with an enormous amount of energy which resulted, over millenia, in the formation of stars-filled galaxies and planets. So, the Universe did not come from nothing.

Answer 8

The point to this argument is to refute the claim that the universe must have been created as something cannot come from nothing. It illustrates the flaw in this logic.

There is another point that should be made, there is no reason that we should assume that at any point was there "nothing". Making this assumption is a purely christian idea and does not fit the facts.

Answer 9

The first Law of Thermodynamics says that matter and energy can't be created or destroyed. That implies that the the matter and energy in the Universe was always here in some form.

Sticking a god in there doesn't give you a free pass. First off, you only delay the question because you are still left with were did God come from. Then you say he created the Universe out of nothing violating the First Law.

Answer 10

Matter is infinite.

It doesn't appear to be, but if you think it through it actually is.

There is no evidence that nothingness exists. It is a religious theory. "God created the universe from nothingness."

What we have learned, is that matter doesn't appear to be finite. If you burn a peace of paper, it changes and appears to no longer exist. But the matter that the paper was made from, only changed, it didn't cease to exist. It is now in the form of gases, and carbon based ashes. We don't have the ability to take something and turn it into 'nothing'.

As a result we don't have any reason to believe that at some point there was 'nothing'.