The following is not a question: Can something come from nothing?

[John V]

But then how do you explain where god came from? Saying god always existed begs the question: why can't the universe and its prior conditions have always existed and cut out the middle man (god)? Positing a creator god just seems gratuitous and completely unhelpful in explaining anything.

To my knowledge there's no logical reason that the universe couldn't have eternally existed. The problem for the atheist is that observation tells us it hasn't eternally existed.

[Rampant.A.I.]

But then how do you explain where god came from? Saying god always existed begs the question: why can't the universe and its prior conditions have always existed and cut out the middle man (god)? Positing a creator god just seems gratuitous and completely unhelpful in explaining anything.

To my knowledge there's no logical reason that the universe couldn't have eternally existed. The problem for the atheist is that observation tells us it hasn't eternally existed.

Hasn't he been corrected here, multiple times? In fact, it seems like he simply stole this from objections when he was parroting the first cause argument, denied it then, but is now advancing it as an "atheist belief" because he thinks it supports his argument?

What a dishonest skid mark this guy is.

[Little lunch]

I'm comfortable with never knowing how the universe started or what was before that.
If we evolved on some other planet, billions of years in the future, the conditions that led us to believe in the Big Bang would not be present and we would still discover heaps of ways to prove the (inevitable) god freaks wrong.
Just like we do now.

Probably in a couple of hundred years we'll both be proven wrong and some alternative answer will present itself only to be proven wrong again one hundred years later.

What strikes me is the way that theists try to understand a scientific point of view.
It must be hard to be open minded and defensive at the same time.

The first story with the backwards water may have been inaccurate, but it did help me to understand how the question makes no sense.
I liked it, thanks. :-)

[LostLocke]

To my knowledge there's no logical reason that the universe couldn't have eternally existed. The problem for the atheist is that observation tells us it hasn't eternally existed.

The problem for the theist is that observation tells us nothing of the sort.

[John V]

The problem for the theist is that observation tells us nothing of the sort.

I frequently hear that the universe is about 14 billion years old. Something with an age hasn't existed eternally.

Alternatively, I hear that the universe will eventually reach a state of heat death. It's not there now. Therefore, it hasn't existed eternally.

[pocaracas]

The big bang has been dated to about 13.7 billion years ago.

What was there before? Was there anything before? Does a "before" make sense?
- To all, "I don't know" is the most honest response.

The often claimed age of the Universe reports to the length of time since the big bang... not necessarily the actual age of the Universe.

[Bob the Dugong Deity]

Can there ever truly be nothing?
I vacuum the floor and there's always bits of fluff mocking my best efforts.

[LostLocke]

I frequently hear that the universe is about 14 billion years old. Something with an age hasn't existed eternally.

The universe in it's current state has existed for 14 billion years.
The singularity, or anything else that it was prior to its current state, has an unknown age.

[Anomalocaris]

I like much of the thought in this post, but have a couple comments.

A backward flowing waterfall would violate the law of gravity, so saying no laws of physics are violated is a bit of a stretch.

No, it does not. The law of gravity, indeed all known laws of physics as far as i know, works just as well with forward progression of time as in backward progression of time. Backward flowing waterfall would only violate the forward progression of time, not the law of gravity.

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To my knowledge there's no logical reason that the universe couldn't have eternally existed. The problem for the atheist is that observation tells us it hasn't eternally existed.

Ah, no. Observation says universe as observable by current techniques and describable by current state of physics hasn't eternally existsed.

I suspect you know the critical importance of the difference, but thought it was theistically righteous to pull a fast one for Jesus by ignoring the difference.

[John V]

The big bang has been dated to about 13.7 billion years ago.

What was there before? Was there anything before? Does a "before" make sense?
- To all, "I don't know" is the most honest response.

I don't know is the most honest answer to many questions for which we speculate about the possibilities anyway.

The often claimed age of the Universe reports to the length of time since the big bang... not necessarily the actual age of the Universe.

To my understanding it's thought that the universe existed as a singularity before the big bang. If the singularity had existed eternally, I would expect it to continue to exist as a singularity eternally. Yet, we had a big bang.

Some have speculated on an oscillating universe, but models of such don't work with certain observations.