A Bud with Bud

For the religous: If god made us who made god? he couldnt have made himself because he didnt exist while creating...himself.

For the atheists: What caused the Big Bang? You cant make something out of nothing.

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Unriggable

I guess I'll take the second question.
There is no definitive answer. We basically know the big bang happened based on the mathematical analysis of the movement of galaxies from a center. BUT those mathematics stop working when they deal with a singularity (infinitely small point). So we can't venture any farther than the big bang, which leads to guessing.

Enter the Big Bounce, an extension of the Big Crunch. Many physicists think that not only is space curved and circular, but that time itself is circular (we know for a fact that it isn't linear, so it must be curved). The Big Crunch theory holds that the collective gravitation of all matter will eventually cause the universe to stop expanding and to start shrinking back into a singularity. The Big Bounce holds that once this happens, another Big Bang happens.

But if you've heard of the fact that the universe is accelerating, then this is much more complicated. The Big Rip theory holds that the universe will continually accelerate until the universe is infinitely large.

The first rule of physics is that nothing is as it seems - which is why nobody can answer the second question.

gimmegimmeganj

Anyone else cracking up at how all these theories start with "Big"?

Unriggable

Aptly named, IMHO

ctwalrus

i for one am an atheist
but for both the first and second questions the answers replied will basically be the same
god has always been
the universe has always existed (and has gone through cycles of bangs and crunches)

you cannot prove or disprove either one

its all faith and opinions from here

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Vicki

I cannot answer your question, and I doubt anyone else can either. In the Bible, there is a scripture that says "God always has been, and always shall be."

Now, I get the "always shall be," as most other people do as well. Most people understand what it means to be omnipotent.

However, I always had trouble with the "always has been" part. It was too difficult for me to understand, or any human to understand. That is where faith comes in. Religious people have faith in God, and his word the Bible. If they trust God, they trust him to explain things, in his due time. If he sees fit to do so.

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Goliash

1) religious beliefs depending--- (more christian/church goer theroy) God was created by his god... if we believe god to have been lifted to an exhaulted state then he must have at one point been subject to a lessened state... thereby the meaning of god is one in an exaulted state who got there by being proven in their lesser state... this means god is our god, but has a god, who is somewhere on a long chain of gods... but all this does is raise the question, what came first the chicken or the egg... (the god or the lesser being)

Man is as God once was, God is as men may become?

Or: (More agnostic/scientific view than above) God is not so much a supreme being/entity as a supreme law. Are not all things we do on earth governed by some law or another... so shouldn't existence be governed by some law. Though we may not know the meaning/purpose/origins or this law we may believe it to be true. This law is one that i believe nobody alive can completely/truthfully decipher/know because the range of this law extends beyond the 'entrapment' of our bodies... this law is one that gives us hope for an after-death existance

Religion is a ray of hope in the phobia of death?
Religion is an incomplete science of the study of an unknown unnatural law governing existence in its past, curent, and ensuing state?

The big bang is only another theory put forth by those who feel there is no God, and that existance is only a thing of numbers and chance... however that is its own flaw. Like it has been said this theory colapses and is rebirthed in other theories (Big Bounce, Big Crunch ect.) when it looks upon the universe in its miniscule to the point of mathematical insignificant state during the initial point of "matter from nothing" instant.

I think, reguardless of which religion you practice if any... we are all agnostic
an agnostic is one who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God or that his mysterious nature cannot be known... that is why we have religion... so we can join others who believe similar faiths on how that affects our lives

<the above is the understanding of a young, curious fool brought up in the belief that learning through math and science promotes intelligence amongst a very religous croud)

The argument of God can also be made:
1) Can God microwave a borrito so hot even he can't eat it?
If he could microwave a borrito that hot he can't eat it and therefore cant to everything = is not God... if he can eat it he cannot microwave one hot enough and cannot do everything = is not God... (don't say why would he do it... its not meant to ask that, but rather are there some things God cannot do which would have to change the definition of God as we know it)
2) Can god make a rock so large he cannot move it?
Same thing as borrito... can't move it = not God, can't make one big enough = not God...

Rev0lver

First of all, nobody said it started with nothing. Scientists believe there was some sort of small, compact form of matter that exploded into what we see today as our universe. They think this because we have discovered our universe is actually expanding. The cause is still undetermined, but some believe that there was an ongoing reaction within this form of matter that eventually caused it to erupt and create the universe.

Yana Usdi

We don't know but there are a lot of theories. Someone already suggested the "Big Bounce", that's one angle. Another comes from an extension of string theory which is known as M-Theory. M-Theory suggests (among other things) that we might live on one universe of many, a plane within a higher membrane. Most of the time those planes exist parallel to each other without interaction but every now and then they get close enough to interact. When they interact they "bang".

In the scheme of things we're still children, we only discovered the atom within the last 100 years or so and genetics is brand new, so is the field of cosmology. We don't know all the answers yet and personally I don't think we've even found all the questions yet. Maybe that's an answer we'll prove someday but the fact that we don't have all the answers already doesn't disturb me in the slightest.

Edit to add this point... while you can't make something out of nothing you can still make something out of what appears to be nothing, it goes back to Einstein. The equation e=mc2 doesn't just tell us how to take an atom apart (convert matter into energy) but it also says that energy converts to matter, they are interchangeable in the right circumstances. That's an aspect to consider as well.

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diab1o_3000

Disclaimer: I'm agnostic and believe that there very well might be a "god" but that the chance of it being one of humanity's gods is almost nil just based on the fact that "god" could be ANYTHING... [insert all religions and possibilities of religions]

I think the belief is that it is a violation of faith to even ask that question in a way that implies that God isn't capable of any and everything. That being said, believers will tell you that any perceived contradictions regarding god are only due to human limitations and do not represent an actual "gotcha" moment. Pretty much saying that we don't understand the answer, but there is one and questioning it is none of our business as mere humans in god's universe.

Disclaimer: I believe in the big bang like I believe in gravity and evolution.

This answer is actually pretty similar to the religious one. The cause of the big bang is unknown, but that isn't a "gotcha" moment either. Before we knew how gravity worked, (to the best of my knowledge, gravity is only a theory, btw) it was an unknown but was still doing it's job. Birds were still flying even though we didn't have the science to understand it yet, so looking at the last page of our(mankind's) scientific book (so far) doesn't mean that what isn't written yet isn't explainable.

Just like saying birds can't fly due to a lack of scientific knowledge on our part would have been a mistake, saying the big bang couldn't have had a source using current science is a mistake and may be proven to be one in the future.

My