So where did it all come from?

[Napoleon_Danneskjold]

Why am I confident? Hmm, I can't say that god in general does not exist, there are many many definitions of god. But all the definitions thus far presented to me are either pointless or impossible. For example the Biblical god.... if he existed I'd never have been born, because I would have been one of the Rebel Angels biggrin  

[iMito]

Who created the universe in the first place?

My question back to them is: Who created your god?

I have to agree with Dathu on this one. I think that the universe never had a beginning, which is very difficult for me because I have a very finite mentality. Everything has a beginning and an end and nothing, not even a god can overrule that, but most people have to be wrong on this question and no one has to be right - so who am I to judge my theory better or more correct than anyone elses?

Why are you so confident that God does not exist?

1) God -> gods, the christian god shouldn't be singled out when disowning all gods and deciding to become an atheist, in my honest opinion.

2) I'm confident because I've gone to literally all the major religions and looked at it as a possibility. Ok: Buddhism, Catholicism, Taoism, etc. What do they believe in? What are their rules? Why can/can't they be a religion. A basic deduction basis, frankly. Though I was biased, I suppose, looking at them originally through the atheist's perspective.

Why do I go to only the major religions? If a god did exist and it based its judgements - heaven/hell/reincarnation - on whether or not we believed in it, then it would make sure that its religion was a major religion to give everyone a fair chance, in my opinion.  

[Syrenka]

[ Message temporarily off-line ]  

[DivideByZero14]

I plan to become a physicist when I get out of college, so I've read up a lot on this subject. It is my personal conclusion that the Big Bang Theory is the best explanation for the creation of the universe. For what happened before the Big Bang, there was no differentiation between moment and the next, so you could say that time did not exist before the Big Bang. Think about it--if everything stayed exactly the way it was right now, forever, would there be such a thing as time? I view time as an interesting phenomenon of our consciousness passing through different quantum realities. At this point I'm getting pretty heavily into abstract stuff, so, if I'm not boring you to death--if there is any interest--tell me, and I'll revile you with all the exciting details.

I think my views on the existence of God have been stated earlier in this thread, so I shan't repeat them.

Interesting thing to throw into the debate: the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God. Quoted from Wikipedia, it is:

• Everything has a cause(s).
• Nothing can cause itself.
• Therefore, everything is caused by another thing(s).
• A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
• Therefore, there must be a first cause.

If you've heard of Intelligent Design (a.k.a. Creationism in a labcoat) as a competing "theory" againts evolution, consider this organized religion's response to the Big Bang Theory. I think it's equally as laughable. The entire thing is circular logic. With this presented, I think its easy to understand why the debate about the beginnings of the universe is mainly confined to the Steady State and Big Bang Theories.  

[Lee Retalis]

Personally I don't care. We're never going to be able to conclusively prove anything.


And I wouldn't complain if "I don't care" is the only thing you get. If one believes that "Something must have created the big bang" then one would believe that something must have created "God" also.  

[SmurfsonAcid]

Well, nothing. Scientific law dicates that matter, has always existed, 'cause it can't be created nor destroyed, only transmormed.  

[Maryhl]

My general theory has been that the universe is basically a growing mass. Maybe a body... but not conscious, more like a plant or cell. But the universe we're contained in is only one of many of these growths, each one entangling with it's closest neighbors as they continue to expand.

If this were true, the rest could probably be explained in one or many of the forms of String/M Theory floating about. The universes may be closely entangled with each other, but through dimensions we can't see. But we could detect if we knew the signs or had the machines... something like that.
Normally the thought is that the extra dimensions are too small for us to see... but I don't see any reason to assume there are also dimensions that are too large... and the universe we exist in may really be 4D or larger, and we're only seeing the 3D portions. (4D not being used for Space-Time, in this context.. though our experience with it might have something to do with it.)
...though now I'm straying....

Basically, I think it's likely that our universe's Big Bang event (it was not the beginning of the universe... just the point things got moving in a way we can count) was caused by a reaction one or many of its neighboring verses. And you can't have verses with out a chorus to tie it all together.. for which I'd probably name cause and effect, or causality.

I'll wait until String Theory gets more ground before speculating what's beyond the multiverses, though. Not that I know what I'm talking about.. I'm just an artist.  

[Lethkhar]

I hate it when people say those things without even knowing what the Big Bang was.

The Big Bang did NOT create the universe. It merely describes the last time the Universe started expanding again, following its pattern of expansion and contraction over and over again.

Science naturally assumes that the universe exists. It realises that it doesn't know why.  

[Meisugi_Jaganshi]

I don't really know. I don't believe God created all this, and I don't really have a theory either. I just hope some scientist in the near to far future finds out.  

[CleverScreenname]

What I don't understand is how "coincidence" is not a valid argument. A lot of people tend to think that it's all or nothing, either this universe was created by the coincidential collision of whatever and thus the big bang occurred, or there would be nothingness. Nothing would exist at all. It seems possible to me that an separate though equally unlikely occurance may have caused the birth of a another universe, one different from our own. It would simply just be a different plane of existence, but a plane of existance none the less. There's no reasoning to think that our universe was the optimal outcome and anything else would be inferior or unable to come into existance. Things happened this way, and that's that.  

[Super Perfundo]

I don't believe in the universe at all. I believe that we are all trapped in one eternal second that keeps replaying and all you see before you is hallucination at its finest. God doesn't exist because I don't exist, you see? The universe was created by my own mind, if anything. Your brain still has seconds of activity after death. This is it. Right now.

[I should mention that I'm schizophrenic.]