this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Atheist, if you consider that a religion. I view it more as a lack of religion or belief, but that's just pedantry. I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, but eventually became disillusioned with their teachings as I grew older and realized that they were out of touch with the Bible and (more importantly) reality. After a period of self-reflection, I examined what I believe and came to the conclusion that I didn't really believe in much of anything anymore.
I don't believe in the Bible. It's a great work of literature, in an academic sense, but it's not something to model your life on. You can tie yourselves up in knots trying to come up with a coherent interpretation or you can take everything so figuratively that you might as well ignore the source material all together. I didn't see much point in either and just view it as a product of the wide range of people over the millennia that contributed to it.
I don't believe in God either. For me, I don't see a reason to think that there is a God. It's essentially impossible to prove that God doesn't exist. If you disproved one, people would just come up with either excuses or another God entirely. Some might argue that Earth's existence implies the existence of a creator. Assuming that was true, wouldn't the existence of this creator imply the existence of a second creator for the first? Why should we accept that God had no creator but that the universe had to have a creator?
There are other arguments, sure, but my lived experience has shown me no reason to think that there's a God or specific meaning, plan, scheme, or rhyme and reason to life on Earth. That doesn't mean we can't find meaning in our own lives, but it does mean we have to work to make it.
Nobody is coming to save us. Nobody is going to hand us an answer or salvation. We have to save ourselves.
It is not merely the existence of the earth that implies it, but the fact that it has a beginning. There's other evidence in physics and thermodynamics that the universe's beginning could be explained with an external trigger. The fact that the universe does not stretch endlessly into the past, and there's a beginning of "time" does allude to the possibility of a creator.
This logic may not apply to the creator themselves, as there's no evidence that they have a beginning too, and they don't need one to be a creator. In fact, it makes more sense that they don't.
But this is all very hand wavy in the end. I don't mean to say it is certain. But I do think there's a good argument for it.
Why do you think the universe needs a beginning, but there are special rules for your god because of?... magic?
One of the primary assertions of the Big Bang Theory is that the universe has a beginning, and it is thus far the most widely accepted explanation of the origin of the universe.
Also please tone down the passive aggression. No one said anything about magic, and this isn't Reddit :)
But that's a theory isn't it? I haven't seen any scientific theories to gods how do we know anything about a god, much less what the nature of their being? It's just not based on anything, (therefore my allusions to magic)
I don't enjoy your tone policing.. There are ways to do that without sounding pretentious and holier than though, please keep that in mind for the next time.
Yes it is a scientific theory (not a hypothesis), which means it is the widely accepted explanation by scientists.
You're right that the theory is not about God, but explains the origins of the universe. What I said about God is what I think is a logical conclusion. If something has a beginning, then it must have been kickstarted somehow. What kickstarted it is by definition its creator. And this applies to our universe, in my opinion.
This does not reveal the nature of the creator or anything about them. It is merely a statement that they must exist. An effect must have a cause.
I apologize for sounding pretentious earlier, that was not my intention, but I can see how it came off as such. And apologize for misunderstanding your intentions as well.
Also I notice you have some downvotes. Just want to clarify that it is not me.
How so? I don't see what you mean here, it doesn't explain anything, it just builds a level of assumptions on top of something, basically explaining something with an untested hypothesis.
If you Agree to the premises I guess, but I don't, so it explains nothing.
Then who kickstarted god? Or does he/she/it for some reason get special treatment here? (This is special pleading)
If I kick a stone down a hill I did not create the stone even though I set it in motion.
Hmm, I don't see how you evade an infinite regression here, unless you break your own rules and give one link in the chain an "eternal always existing" modifier. We don't know that anything eternal exist, or even that our universe isn't eternal (extisting eternally as a singularity before spreading or a part of a bigger multiverse that we cannot perceive)
It is just assuming that something must exist, since you're building your logic on very shaky premises that we cannot prove.
Must it? Or have we just never seen the contrary (black swan fallacy) Who caused god? like I said before you can't get away from that without special pleading.
Water under the bridge :) No worries :)
No worries, I don't care about the votes, interactions are worth way more than someone clicking an arrow :)
This may seem like splitting hairs, but please bear with me: this statement is quite incorrect except in the most colloquial sense of the term "beginning." The big bang describes the processes that led to what we understand as the current presentation of the universe. It does not offer any explanation about the actual origins of the matter and energy that make up the universe; in fact, it requires that they were already present in an extremely hot and dense state for the initial expansion to occur. This is a common misconception among theists and non-scientists and it's a bit nuanced, but it's really important. To state in a different way that might more directly counter your statement: my understanding is that the energy and matter that we observe as making up the universe has always existed, and there is no scientific theory that I'm aware of that claims it hasn't.
Speculating about the supposed properties of a creator of the universe that has no evidence of existing is pretty useless. You might as well be talking about magic.
Is it true that the Big Bang asserts that the universe had a beginning? True, we don't know much about the pre-Big Bang universe, but we don't have a reason to think that it didn't exist.