this is the only one I have trouble with............

I believe everything else is fine and well thought out ideas
a Higher Power didn't need to do (God or another higher) but I have just this hard time believing everything popped out of nowhere.......... that is really the only thing that Bothers me about this..... I except that it could have happened... but how did it happen? where did the Gas to make it happen come from? the Idea makes great sense but with these questions bothers me........ its this that makes me wonder if there truly is something out there that we can't comprehend or Explain. was the Big Bang the beginning of the universe? was there something there before? wouldn't there have to have been? nothing doesn't explode right? so right now the best I can come up with is there must be something......... (perhaps God or gods some kind of higher power.......) with these questions how can anyone truly be a 100% atheist or an agnostic?

I understand your confusion, and attempts to wrap my head around it leave me with a headache sometimes as well.As far as "there must have been God to cause it" though... that never flew with me. After all, if the explanation is "An incomprehensible being waved his or her hand, causing everything to form", well... then everything still just kind of popped out of nowhere, at least for all intents and purposes.Contrarily... let's say we finally completely understand God. What he is, how he did what he did, etc. The same questions remain, but applied higher up. What was around before God? How did God simply form out of nothing? Did someone make God?As far as I'm concerned, bringing up God just moves the goalposts a little, and leaves the questions right where they are. It doesn't present a simpler explanation, but actually a much more complex and unlikely one.------------------
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Dan Carroll

There are a number of issues here, some of which are better dealt with in the religious areas of the forum.However, in passing, I think you need to be careful about phrases like

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how can anyone truly be a 100% atheist or an agnostic?

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An agnostic, after all, may be an agnostic as a result of thinking about precisely the reasons you have given.For the atheist, the agnostic, or the religious believer these issues may only cause a problem if you expect an answer. But, as with any question, I susepct the really interesting issue is

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how would I know what the correct answer is?

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In other words, is the origin of the universe a question to which one could reasonably expect a detailed descriptive answer? I would say no - it is likely to be too distant in time, and too rare an event.But is there a way in which an answer could be found? Well, perhaps. We may observe the creation of another universe at some time - but such an observation cannot be guaranteed or perhaps even reasonably expected. We may observe phenomena which appear to show processes which we can extrapolate to universe formation - like the Casimir effect which does show particles appearing apparently from nothing: Getting something out of nothing | EurekAlert! We may theorize.But in any of these cases can we reasonably expect a definitive answer? I don't think so. Many's the God lives in that gap.Getting something out of nothing | EurekAlert!

Cosmology has got to it's current state through decades of work by many people of great talent. And although scientists are making progress there is still a lot that nobody knows at present.Please remember that this work deals with pysical reality at levels greatly removed from out personal experience where things often behave in ways that are quite thoroughly at odds with our intuitions.Alan Guth's _THe Inflationary Universe_ is just one of the books that tries to bring the discoveries of cosmologists to a lay audienceI am not sure what you mean by "100% atheist" but if you mean absolute certainty that there is no God or gods of any sort then I don't know anyone who I could definitely say fits that description. But the simple fact is that proposing a God is not a good answer to explain the universe so it is not a significant issue to me.And I am really not sure why our lack of knowledge should not be a reason to be "100% agnostic" - isn't the whole point of agnosticism NOT to come to an absolute conclusion without sufficient knowledge ?

well I guess in a sense since I am asking this question am I agnostic? but it is much to confusing and way to much we don't know................
Now I am an Evolutionist and most people assume Because I am I Must be atheist. But I don't see myself as 100% disbelief in a Higher Power
so I guess I am agnostic........ you are right the existence of a God rasies more and more questions........ are there Many gods in charge over Each other and if so was there a first if so then how? errrrrrrrrr to much.............

Maybe you should become a physicist. There's no use speculating. An agnostic doesn't say 'there is no God', instead he just says, 'I don't know anything about god', how more reasonable can you get?

Hi DCThe way I deal with this is to think of the universe as always being there in some shape or form.I know we humans have a tendency to think that there needs to be a beginning to everything, but I tend to think maybe our limited knowledge imposes this thought onto reality. Maybe everything does'nt need ot have a beginning, the theists don't seem to have a problem applying this to God so why can it not apply to other things?But as you say, it can make your head spin, I think it was Bertrand Russell who says that the universe is a 'brute fact', I think, for the moment, that I will go with that.Best WishesBrian

here are even more questions? does the universe end? if so what would the end look like? I understand what you are talking about but things can't just always be there can they? and how can someone say the Univese is Expanding when we don't know if it even ends?
And if there is a God are we Just Tinker toys in the grand Picture?
AHHHHHHHHH I hate thinking!

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does the universe end? if so what would the end look like? I understand what you are talking about but things can't just always be there can they? and how can someone say the Univese is Expanding when we don't know if it even ends?

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Hoof. This one does my head in too. One time I freaked out looking at the night sky.It gets worse when you hear a few theoretical physics notions. Try picturing the universe as not only existing as a single object in space, but in time as well. One giant structure already laid out in four dimensions. Even once you get past the mental gymnastics it would take to even conceive of the shape of the universe at that point, you start worrying about free will...
AHHHHHHHHH indeed.A giant, blob-like catepillar is the closest I can come to picturing it, and even that's reducing it to the concept of time I already experience...------------------
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Dan Carroll

if the universe ends is it part of something even bigger? or is the Universe it? and what is it? we will never know........... at least not in our life time or maybe not even the entire time the Human race will be around..... sigh.........
did we Evolve the Ability to think like this to torture ourselves?
or if there is a God I ask the same thing was it given to us so we can be tortured? Also if A god exists then are we Just tinker toys in the big picture of things?[This message has been edited by DC85, 05-15-2003]

There are at least a couple of ways of discussion this.1) The somewhat silly way. That is to point out the universe might be (or is) defined as everything. In which case, by definiton, it isn't part of something bigger. I don't think that's all that interesting.
2) The other is to take the "universe" as everything we see and all the rest that we expect is a continuation of this. It might be sort of "everything that originated with the big bang".In the second case there might be something else beyond. A new idea about colliding "branes" moving in multidimensional space would have our "universe" being just one of these branes. The big bang happened when our collided with another. The whole framework is conjectured to have always existed without beginning or end. This is conjecture and fun cosmological speculation more than anything else (or at least that's what I understand right now).I have know idea if this will ever be testable in any sensible way. Some individuals talk about "thinking outside the box". HA! They don't have any idea of just how far outside some of the cosmologists think! None at all.

If you define the universe as the sum of all matter and energy that can be seen/felt/detected, than it could be said that the universe doesn't end, it just changes size. It gets smaller, to the size of a point, which explodes, getting larger. According to our current understanding of time/gravity/physics, etc. there are many possibilities for the ultimate fate of our universe.As for infinity, there a some "easily" understood things that go on forever in some sense. Numbers, for example, never end in either direction, you can always add or subtract another one from the current number. We all accept this because no matter how large or small a number we choose, we can always add or subtract. Now, extend that idea to time. We can set some arbitrary time to zero, for ease, let's set it at the change from BC to AD. Now in either direction, we can always add or subtract a second, minute, and/or hour to the time. This means that , theoretically, time is infinite. However, if there is nothing around for the effect of time to influence, i.e. moving particles, time ceases to have meaning. So if we give time an infinite existence, we must allow the fact that there must be something for time to act on for time's entire existence.This may help to see how a universe could exist for ever by starting with something "understood" and using the principle on more and more abstract concepts. I am aware that this proves nothing, seeing as how time is really nothing more than a human construct, but I hope it helps to show the possibility of an infinite universe, or series of universes.
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Micah"Of course...we all creat god in our own image" - Willard Decker, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

thank you very much you made my head spin even more.
not that i don't understand but it seems to be something like this you are saying the old Question "if a Tree falls in the Woods and nothing is there to hear it. does it make a sound?" so since time is only something we Invented Does it exist? do we even exist? what is it to exist?

Welcome to the questions that have been spinning the heads of philosophers since time immemorial.

well tis quite simply really.time is infinite.
and the time before the universe happened is also infinite.
any probability no mater how small or almost 0 are as good as being 1 (certain) when time is infinite.Chaos theory say's that if you do the sum 1+1 enough times there will come a time when 1+1 WILL = 3now MIX infinite TIME with chaos and we come to the conclution that the creation of the universe was not so much a probability...but a dead cert.and you can prove this theory yourself with a simple coin...flip it, mathimaticaly it should be 50% heads 50% tails....but chances are its gonna be at least 60% 40% after 10 flips.
logic says it should be 50-50, just like logic say's that something cannot come from Nothing...,.but that is very much the case....everything must come from nothing, or rather...before you can have something...you have to have nothing...simple as....the universe alway's existed because TIME alway's exsisted....all Chaos did was introduce boundries and from thoose boundries the world/universe as we know it today was formedBread