Tarnaak

So all the laws that rule our universe, physics, math, gravity, ect, just came into being from a "big bang"? What started the big bang? And from the big bang man, animals, plants just started and evolved?

The human body alone, with all its complex dna, nervous system, brain functions just evolved from nothing in a relatively short period of time?

Modern Technology is finding that the dating methods used, that date the earth as being millions of years old is flawed.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating2.html

http://www.baptistlink.com/dman/lpage3.html

http://www.greenhaw.com/ccbc/young.htm

The exsistance of "a god" is everywhere. I can understand asking "what make the Christian God the right God", what I cannot understand is an absolute disbelief in "a god" at all.....

Goliath

Tarnaak,

I will give you $1,000* if you can find a SINGLE POST that I have made on this board in which I make the claim that the big bang started the universe.

The fact of the matter is that I have never made that claim, and I will probably never make that claim. I do not believe that any gods exist, and I do not believe that no gods exist.

Sincerely,

Goliath

* - I'm not kidding. I will give you $1,000 if you can find such a post where I make said claim.

Goliath

Tarnaak,

Rhea asked

I would like to see answers to these questions as well.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Ojuice5001

You're probably counting on us not finding it since the search function is down! jk

beastmaster

The question is flawed. In one sense, there was nothing "before" the big bang just like there is nothing North of the North Pole -- one step North of the North Pole is a step South. I'm no scientist, but my understanding is that beyond the big bang "is/was" a singularity that "exists/existed" outside of space-time. The singularity is a compression of the universe into an infinitely dense dimensionless unit. The instability of the singularity necessitated the inflation of the universe into the realm of space-time, thus the big bang. I may be wrong on the particulars, but that's the gist of it.

The evolution of life is independent of the big bang.

Humans did not evolve from nothing, but from antecedent forms. I don't know what you mean by a relatively short period of time.

Fine, let's assume that the dating methods are flawed (which they are not). That does not mean that the earth is young. What physical evidence indicates that the earth is less than millions of years old?

Please do tell.

Tarnaak

The questions posed were not meant to be answered per se, but rather an inquiry to what athiests believe as far as the "beginning".

Goliath

Tarnaak,

Well, this is what I happen to believe about the beginning of the universe: nothing.

But were you satisfied with that? No! You had to use your faulty mind-reading abilities to (incorrectly) surmise that I believed that the big bang was what started the universe.

This is why I doubt that you're interested in any atheist replies at all.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Shadowy Man

Though you will probably find that different atheists have different answers, my answer is that there was no "beginning". It's always been here in one form or another.

Defiant Heretic

Unless you count Polaris (the north star)

That's only one possibility. All they know for sure* is that the universe is expanding and that it was once hotter and denser than it is now. The singularity model came about because people thought that if the universe was expanding, it must have at one time been all in one spot. However, recent evidence has suggested that the expansion of the universe is speeding up, so that conclusion isn't necessarily correct.

Personally, I don't think there was ever an absolute beginning to the universe. The nature of it just changes.

------------------
* Read as "99.999999....% sure", since it's only possible to prove things to 100% using mathematics, not empirical data.
------------------

So this is improbable, but the existence of a being capable of creating it all from scratch is not?

According to the personal home page of a professor of computer science at UNC, a fundamentalist Baptist site, and a dentist.

So Tarnaak:
Why do you believe that a god exists?
Which one?
Why that one?
Do you believe in an afterlife?
Why?

trekbette

My Dad never discussed religion with me so I never thought about it until I was 14.

When I was 14, my 18 year old aunt died of cystic fibrosis and heart failure. From the day she was born until the day she died she was in pain. I sat and thought about it for along time and realized that if there were a higher power, it would not allow a child to suffer like that. So therefore, there is no higher power. Over the years, I have read and studied the subject and still believe that we are on our own.

When we die, we are gone. Our bodies machines with run down batteries. No more us.