Hi Folks,

I am a rather strict Athiest however if evidence is given I am willing to look back into Religion. My Girlfriend was watching a Show that said that we all came from the Big Bang. But her question is well what came before it and how did matter exist?! Something had to have created it? She thinks its easier to assume a God existed than to go on a Theory that it all happened by chance.

Can someone give me some arguments on this.

I know that the Universe is technically infinite so 'Chance' is very unlikely as I am sure there is other life out there.

I'm always bugged by questions of "what came before the big bang?!" as if that hysterical utterance somehow invalidates the theory, mainly because it doesn't make sense. After all, we're talking about a state of being completely outside the scope of our understanding, here.

Who says time even operates the same way in a pre-expansion universe? Or that time even existed in it? For all we know, the idea of a before the big bang might not even make sense. And that's kind of the problem; assuming god based on our ignorance of what came before the big bang is one giant argument from ignorance, and furthermore, to believe in god just because of that is to ignore all of the evidence pointing to the big bang (cosmic background radiation, redshift, etc etc) in favor of a proposition with no evidence at all, merely because it's culturally extant, and she already wants to believe it.

I'd ask why, exactly, she thinks her unreasoned assumption is somehow a safer bet, given the preponderance of evidence toward the current big bang model outclasses anything religion can bring to bear, and also why she feels that the opinions of herself and preachers are as valid, regarding this question, as scientists who have actually spent their time studying and doing the research to come to this conclusion. If her car breaks down and her mechanic tells her the engine's to blame, would she ignore that because she'd rather assume it just needs an oil change? It's like that: the two opinions aren't equal, here.

Watch this with your lady:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3MWRvLndzs

Then subscribe to the channel.

What came before the big bang? Great question. Curiosity drives science, she should look into it and think of a way to solve the problem. Everyone can do science .

An oscillating universe, spontaneous generation from pre-existent quantum 'foam', a 4-dimensional block of space-time, another universe that we spawned from via black holes. There are so many possibilities that to say that it's obvious that God had to do it is just the want of an easy, intellectually un-taxing answer.

(November 18, 2013 at 9:17 pm)themonkeyman Wrote: I know that the Universe is technically infinite so 'Chance' is very unlikely as I am sure there is other life out there.

Oh, you are so wrong. The universe is not infinite, nothing is infinite. There is no such thing as infinite, it's a concept that exists only in mathematics and not in the real world, the real world is finite - no matter how big, it's still finite.

Yes, chance cannot play a role. Just as the laws of chemistry don't exist by chance, nor do the laws of biology, and nor does the process by which life starts, everything has its order in its own set of rules that are derived from - or formed out of the environment in which they operate. How and why we do not know.

If there is true randomness at the quantum level as predicted by QM, it still manages to produce order, and if it is purely ordered, then it produces chaos and choice and true randomness at the meta scale.

Does life really self-start, and if so how? I think it does, but we have no idea how it does only to say that just as the laws of crystallography exist, seemingly without clear reason or logic, so does the rudimentary fundamental biological laws. If this is really the case though, and I should stress this point, then life should have been created trillions upon trillions of times by now here on Earth, and there should be new life forms self-starting all the time - not based on some "primordial soup" stage of Earth or any of that nonsense, and it should be observable. So I do predict that someday we will observe it, however as at yet we haven't and it could well be that I'm wrong and that only God and not the laws of nature (which of course he created) is able to create life itself.

(November 19, 2013 at 4:12 am)Aractus Wrote: Yes, chance cannot play a role. Just as the laws of chemistry don't exist by chance, nor do the laws of biology, and nor does the process by which life starts, everything has its order in its own set of rules that are derived from - or formed out of the environment in which they operate. How and why we do not know.

Why can't it just be patterns in physical responses to stimuli that humans see in nature?

Quote:Does life really self-start, and if so how? I think it does, but we have no idea how it does only to say that just as the laws of crystallography exist, seemingly without clear reason or logic, so does the rudimentary fundamental biological laws. If this is really the case though, and I should stress this point, then life should have been created trillions upon trillions of times by now here on Earth, and there should be new life forms self-starting all the time - not based on some "primordial soup" stage of Earth or any of that nonsense, and it should be observable. So I do predict that someday we will observe it, however as at yet we haven't and it could well be that I'm wrong and that only God and not the laws of nature (which of course he created) is able to create life itself.

More importantly, why are you discarding the idea of primordial soup so out of hand? This line of logic makes absolutely no sense; why can't it be that the conditions for an abiogenetic event were only present on an older earth, and that those conditions have since changed into what we have today? Other than simply dismissing the idea, why can't that be the case?

(November 19, 2013 at 4:48 am)Esquilax Wrote: More importantly, why are you discarding the idea of primordial soup so out of hand? This line of logic makes absolutely no sense; why can't it be that the conditions for an abiogenetic event were only present on an older earth, and that those conditions have since changed into what we have today? Other than simply dismissing the idea, why can't that be the case?

Because it's not enough to describe a true "law" of physics and requires chance. I don't think that fruit grows on an apple tree by "chance"...

(November 19, 2013 at 5:04 am)Aractus Wrote: Because it's not enough to describe a true "law" of physics and requires chance. I don't think that fruit grows on an apple tree by "chance"...

Except that abiogenesis isn't a law of physics; it's a confluence of the laws of physics and chemistry given specific, as yet unknown, conditions. You haven't really addressed my question at all.

Also, you can think the apple doesn't grow by chance, but until you can demonstrate that, it's just an argument from personal incredulity.

(November 19, 2013 at 5:55 am)Esquilax Wrote: Except that abiogenesis isn't a law of physics; it's a confluence of the laws of physics and chemistry given specific, as yet unknown, conditions. You haven't really addressed my question at all.

Also, you can think the apple doesn't grow by chance, but until you can demonstrate that, it's just an argument from personal incredulity.

Oh please, are you serious?

1. "laws, plural, of physics and chemistry"??
2. The apple tree grows apples by definition alone, but what you're probably puzzled by is the fact that it grows fruit as does the banana tree and the orange tree.
3. Who said "abiogenesis isn't a law of physics"?