Neapolitan

So what do you think of Georges Lemaître?

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Scarlett O'Hara

I don't. It doesn't make any sense to me. I believe in God and believe he created Earth and the Universe.

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RVCA

As a "non-believer", I'm free to accept any truth assertion about nature that can be reasonably argued for. I don't believe that cups, chairs, or people can pop into existence from nothing. And indeed no evidence supports that claim. But once we look closer at the objects deeper into their structure, we see their micro components--the components all things we see are made of. These are the atoms of course. And the sort of world atoms inhabit is quite different than the one we live in. One mindboggling fact about them is that they are nearly pure empty space, but yet once they're bunched up together they can become hard, tangible objects (and liquid and gas). Looking even more closely, we see that an atom's nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of electrons (and these are virtually massless!). At this level, the weirdness of reality is truly apparent. No use of common sense could help us imagine what nature at bottom would look like. It takes complex technology, astute observation, and scientific creativity and imagination to try to come to an understanding of how to make sense of all this. Going even more deeply now, we see that electrons themselves are made up of even smaller particles. We've now entered the domain of hardcore quantum mechanics. Here, you must leave your common sense at the door. It will not help you. Quantum physics represents the furthest humans have gone in understanding the most fundamental aspects of nature. As of now, humanity does not yet have a satisfactory explanation for the observations of these quantum particles we are able to detect. We can see how they behave. We can see how they interact. But we don't understand the underlying cause, yet. In experiments these quantum particles DO pop into and out of existence. We SEE it happening. We're trying to understand the mechanisms that govern this strange behavior, but it is very hard and difficult.

And now I'm brought back to your initial claim that I believe things can come from nothing. As I have tried to illustrate (hopefully well enough), our universe, in it's most basic parts, is very, very weird and mysterious. It's crucial to appreciate this when thinking about what sort of thing the origin of the universe would be like. As of now, it's origin is thought to be some kind of crazy quantum event in which, yes, out of nothing something arises. BUT, it's based on observation and everything else we know about how the universe at bottom works. Trusting the method of science is the most intellectually honest stance to take. Accrediting things to god is the same thing as cheating yourself, and the rest of us, of knowledge.

Guybrush

Not much, really. I haven't read any of his articles, nor have I really checked out his background or scientific career. Why do you ask?

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Something Completely Different

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Matter comes from energy, not nothing. Something we know happens. Energy changes matter.

IE. Fire turns water into mist.

In fact, all organic matter is converted from sunlight. Sunlight is a type of energy, and matter comes from it.

As for what your saying, this line of thought is just pretentious. You're saying it's an absolute necessity that God be human-like, and must create with a humanlike pattern.

Labeling God as 'he' indicates an attempt to humanize the concept of the universe, which has shown 0% evidence of ever assuming a human-like entity, or will to work in a sense that benefits the motives of a human-like lifeform.

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Al Pacino = God

[MERIT]

Could you go into any greater detail as to what quantum particles "pop" into and out of existance? As matter can neither be created nor destroyed, aren't these appearances just the result of interaction between other particles?

I have been looking for sources regarding the Big Bang Theory that go into greater detail regarding matter and antimatter. We know that when the two come into contact, they react and produce immense amounts of energy. With them being so reactive, it's hard to believe that they were created at the same time and at the same place without annihilating each other and everything around them.

RVCA

Hopefully this article explains it better than I can.

Mr November

The question is where did it all start. Which to me means that you can't stop at the beginning of the universe, although it's apparently impossible to predict anything farther back than those first moments of the big bang, or whatever it is you choose to call it or believe happened.

Even if we could agree that the big bang was the start, we wouldn't have answered the question. What caused the creation of the universe, where did that cause come from.

If you're content to say that nothing created God/god/gods, or that God/god/gods have always existed, than why not save a step and apply the same lazy reasoning to the universe?

Neapolitan

Because an eternal God is not created, an eternal God is not made of matter, it's the matter in the universe that is created. An omnipotent eternal God created the matter in the universe. I'm too lazy to explain it any further. [yawn - stretch]

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

If you look at things in the sense the universe itself is God, and has no particular humanlike aspects, then there's truth to this. However, from a Western point of view, what makes God different from Existence is a 'motive'. There is no centralized motive to the universe. Therefore, Judeochristian theories of God are unlikely.

The big bang MAY be the birth of existence, or a continuation of a cycle.

Then again, I'm beginning to lean to the possibility that time is a human invention and the universe has no beginning or end. In terms of dimension, or time.

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Al Pacino = God