(July 20, 2012 at 4:57 am)Chriswt Wrote: In the 'I' (20p version of the Independent New Paper) there was a letter from a believer which ended by asking the atheist he was addressing "Does she believe the universe evolved from nothing?" Which must be the most common believer vs atheist put down.
Isn't this the easiest question in the world to answer, the answer being it was never created because its always existed?
That's one answer. I'd add that "the universe always existed" can be interpreted to mean that (a) the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time or (b) the universe has existed for a finite amount of time, but has existed for every single nanosecond of time that has been, and asking what came before is like asking "what is north of the north pole?" In other words, if fourteen billion years is all the time that has been, and the universe has existed for every second of it, asking a question concerning the time before is meaningless because there was no time before. The universe cannot be pictured as coming from nothing, under this hypothesis, because "coming from nothing" denotes a time in which there is nothing and a later moment in which there is something. Of course, since there wasn't time prior to the existence of the universe (or anything before the universe) there could not have been such a "moment of nothingness."
