One question Atheists can't legitimately answer?

Question

Okay, so we've understood how the earth and universe around us works, and we've found answers to many questions that weren't answered in the past, but how was the universe created? Where did it come from?

please, don't say it was just there. that's just pathetic.

god created everything. god is not matter. god's almighty.

OK, god created time. the universe was created by a power, god. and penguin dude, i'm not giving a bad name to SOAD fans. you are.

OK, god created time. the universe was created by a power, god. and penguin dude, i'm not giving a bad name to SOAD fans. you are.

Soulful kris, FOR THE LAST TIME; god is not a being!!!!

Answer 1

Most will just be sarcastic. Look how they tried to answer this one:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AuU5cQsU0sSPpBknKZvdg3Hty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071128184534AAjLFVa

Answer 2

It is not a war between atheists and religious people...and atheists are not clamining that they have all the answers.
Difference is this: believers normally are raised in their religion. A few change to a familiar religion, fewer change to a unkwon religion. Some become atheists.
Atheists normally become atheists after a long journey of questioning and awareness. And mostly, because they don't usually accept the explanations coming from "authority", they make more and more questions and if the answer does not sound logical or have a proof, they reject it and keep asking.
When religions try to "explain" the origin of the Universe, life and everything just by saying that "God" created everything, that's not enough for atheists...because there is still the question: what created "god"?
If you say that god is not a "being", so explain why religions give "personal characteristics" to god. Why did him (her?) set rules and what is right and wrong? Obviously it is conceived as something that has a "consciousness", isn't it?
If you say that time and space began with god, that's ok. That's very close to the big band theory...you can say that god invented itself, so you'll have the same "explanation" that science currently has: that you can't ask what was "before" the big bang, because "time" began with the big bang (there is no "before" if there is no time).
The problem is with that god being a consciousness...
And when you can't stop asking questions, you become an atheist.

Answer 3

this is a problem that is being worked on. this will most likely be a question that wasnt known in the past. way back when you could said the earth wasnt the center of the universe, much less the center of the solar system and you would have been hard pressed to prove it with the knowledge of the time. after all, try proving the earth revolves around the sun when it is clear the sun moves across the sky. this at the time was proof of god. what i am saying is, we (i use the term we loosely) dont yet have the ability to solve that problem. we are trying but are a ways yet from the solution. and prove to me the universe wasnt always there. i know the universe is expanding but does that only means there was a single point where everything was gathered. prove to me this single point wasnt always there.

Answer 4

I can provide a legitimate answer:


I don't know.


Not a particularly good answer, but an honest one.


But rather than declaring God Did It! and decreeing that any further investigation is not only pointless but heresy, I am quite willing to let the scientists keep looking.

I am glad that you admit that saying "It always was" is a pathetic argument. Bearing that in mind, where did god come from? If you can't answer that why should I believe in him?


Edit:
Saying "God created time" does not answer the question of where god came from. It is just a cop out.

If you can say that I can say that the big bang started time, and I have a LOT more evidence backing me up that you do. However, the scientists are not happy with that. They want to go back before time started and see what caused the big bang. M-Theory is the current front runner. What is the best explanation of where your god came from? You already said that stating 'he was just there' is pathetic.

Answer 5

It created itself, not as a conscious being would. It is itself the creative process. We don't really know how this came about, since the question contains within it the idea that there IS something or someone that created it, and then the question becomes who or what created that which created it.

As such it is not answerable. The whole thing need to be thought of differently, as something without a "creator" or as something which came from something else. That just leads down this endless spiral going no where.

I think that however it got going, the question is unanswerable for us, because we can't conceive of a "thing" with no beginning and no end, since those are inevitable occurrences for us. We are born, we live, we die.

I don't think we can grasp it, but, to the credit of homo sapiens, we keep trying!

Lady Morgana )0(

Answer 6

You're missing a salient point. It's easy enough to say, "I don't know;" but it DOES NOT FOLLOW that 'It must have been God' because you have no evidence for that either. One might as well say, "I don't know, so therefore it must have been leprechauns."

There is evidence for the Big Bang, even if there's no way to tell what actually caused it; there is NO evidence for the existence of God. Ergo, even if imperfect - and falsifiable, as all science must be - the Big Bang theory is the one most consistent with available evidence (so far).

One should also note that the Big Bang theory does not specifically exclude a God; it merely refutes the literal Creation myth of the Bible. In fact, science makes no representation one way or another about God; precisely because there is no evidence to work with. (It seems Christians are awfully sensitive about 'defending' their faith against an 'attack' that does not even exist.) Maybe if your God would get off His fat lazy butt and prove He exists, we could start considering Him as an actual entity. Unless or until that happens, He has no more place in scientific discussions than unicorns, bigfoot, honest lawyers or other mythical beings.

Answer 7

While I am not atheist I am not religious either. I do not know what the answer is and feel that we are not meant to know it. How about a question with a question..... If there is a higher power who created the universe who created the higher power..where did he/she/it come from? No one really knows for sure. We will know when it is our time to go and not a minute sooner so it is a huge waste of time trying to figure it out. It is like a bunch of sheep standing around discussing rocket science.

Answer 8

Hi.
St. Thomas of Aquinas introduced some very interesting proofs of the existence of God. They are very good.
Also, we musn´t think we know everything or can understand everything. There is a limit to what our brain can do, there are some things that our brain just can´t handle, just like a child can´t handle abstract concepts!! So let´s not pretend to know things we don´t know and let´s not pretend we know as much as the Lord does!!
Also, the big bang theory simply explains how the Lord created the universe, it does not proof (if it is indeed correct) that the universe was not created by the Lord.
Perhaps the Lord will let us discover where the universe came from later on.
The Lord has been kind enough to let us discover algebra, statistics, calculus, ODE´s, PDE´s, complex analysis and many other interesting phenomena that have enabled us to understand so many things. Who knows what He has in store for us?

Answer 9

The first problem is that you ask how the Universe was "CREATED" which means that your question is not sincere at all. You have a preconceived notion that you will stick to. Your answer of "GOD DID IT" is as weak of an argument if not weaker than that of science. One theory is that of a gravitational singularity. No one knows this answer so NO ONE can legitimately answer this question. We are all left to guessing for now. I am confident that science will discover the series of events that caused this. It may be a long time from now though.

Answer 10

Well don't say god was always there. That's just pathetic.

See the problem is that the only answer that is consistent with the First Law of Thermodynamics is that the matter/energy of the Universe was always here.

You only add a problem. Not only do you have the same issue with where god came from, now you have to explain what he made the matter FROM. Be careful, because you guys always say that it can't come from nothing, and I actually agree with that. That would violate the First Law. So now instead of eternal matter, you have an eternal god AND he starts off violating the laws of Physics.

Answer 11

Well ... if god created us in his image, which your bible says he did; and we are comprised of matter, which we are -- than god is, in fact, matter. "Almighty" or not.

Yeah, we don't know the answers to every question. But a hundred years ago, we didn't have the answers to all the things we know now. Instead of being content to say "god did it", ambitious people took the time to search for the truth. The same thing is being done now.

And not knowing the answers is not a legitimate excuse to say that it was the work of an all-powerful god.