How do atheists explain the origin of the universe?

[nohorn]

After following all the atheists discussions of various topics, I can't recall any of them attempting to explain the origin of the universe, or is it necessary to even know the origin as an atheists?

[waterboatman]

If God made the universe, where did he get the '100 pounds of clay', if nothing existed?

[beso]

Simple. He said, "Let there be whatever" and there was whatever.

Funny how someone who could make a Universe from nothing used one of Adam's ribs to make Eve.

[waterboatman]

Yup. why bother turning water into wine, all he had to do was say 'let there be wine' job done.

[beso]

The Universe is a consequence of having an infinite amount of absolutely nothing.

That much nothing requires great order. A small amount of deviation from absoulutely nothing over such a vast scale has a lower entropy that a perfect infinite nothing. This difference in entropy provides the initial for the system to power events like the Big Bang.

The Bible has it all wrong about creation. If God really did exist it went more like this.

In the beginning there was God and there was the Void. God knew the void was good. The next day God wondered if the void was really as good as He believed and decided to measure it. To His horror He found that this observation determined the precise energy of the system and hence He could no longer determine its location due to the Uncertantity Principle. This was a real problem In an infinite nothingness.

However being God, omnipresnt and all He managed to track it down the following day. Unfortunately He also found that the Standard Nothing he brought with appeared to be malfunctioning so he was unable to be sure of the energy of the system.

Checking the service manual for the Standard Nothing He found that it only worked properly where its exact location was unknown. This presented quite a conundrum to God.

He spent the rest of the week trying to control the build up of energy parts of the void with little success. On the Seventh Day He rested. By the time He got back to work the next day, everything was well out of hand.

[waterboatman]

If there was nothing, how come he had a service manual? I like it though!

[beso]

Standard measures as always come with a service manual, specification and calibration certificate.

[waterboatman]

:-)

[nohorn]

Well I sure didn't get any answers, none that I could understand anyway. I guess I am too naive. I am a fence-sitter on this, God business, there are no easy answers. And I don't want to be wrong.

[waterboatman]

Sitting on the fence you won't be right either nohorn.

[nohorn]

Well I would rather not be wrong that a 50/50 chance of being right. How does that grab you.

[society]

Only God knows.

[bibblebub]

Try reading about superstrings, and if you can get your head around the idea that our universe might be just the result of an interaction between a couple of 11-dimensional energy waves then you might come to the conclusion that its origin is a fairly minor event.

[waterboatman]

The cosmic jester has strange ways of being cynical nohorn.

[jno]

"If God made the universe, where did he get the '100 pounds of clay', if nothing existed?"

The same query attaches to the Big Bang theory. Nobody knows the answer (yet), so it's perfectly reasonable to sit on the fence until someone produces it. You can have an opinion if you want to, but it's not legally required.

[beso]

I explained it in my post above. Infinite nothing is unstable and spontaneously manifests energy because a little bit of something here and there has lower entropy. That part of my post was serious.

[naomi24]

I don't attempt to explain it because I don't know the answer. The most ridiculous answer has to be 'I don't know how it happened so God must have done it', because that explanation simply attributes the unknown to the unknown.

Incidentally, your choice of 50/50 is known as Pascal's Wager.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

[LazyGun]

@nohorn - Naomi has given you a link to "Pascals Wager" - Read it, then see how, with respect, pathetic the concept of fence-sitting "just in case" really is.

As to your original question - How exactly does believing in God explain the origin of the universe? How is "well God did it" any sort of satisfactory answer to an enquiring, open mind? And, as others have pointed out before - If we were to accept that a God did in fact create the universe, that must mean that God is an extraordinarily complex being - so who or what created God?

We should always be looking to find rational, natural answers to such big questions, because that very process of seeking answers improves us as a species. So far, every single example of creation that Theists have posed can be answered by a natural process - No supernatural element either wanted or required.

Over successive generations, humanity has gradually stripped God of the grand finery of omnipotence and omniscience, to hiding in the gaps of our scientific knowledge - And now all God has left is the fig leaf that is the first milliseconds of the creation of the universe.

[chakka35]

As has happened before, naomi and LazyGun got in before me, using almost the same words I would have used. What perceptive people they are...

Nobody knows how the universe came about and, as an atheist, I am quite happy to accept that our knowledge and understanding hasn't got that far yet and may never get there at all. Religionists can't accept that and (as has been pointed out) behave like primitive man, assigning to a god something they can't otherwise explain.

Why does nohorn think that atheists should copy theists in this way?

[mibn2cweus]

Believing is not knowing and to believe without knowing is an act of faith and a departure from the rational process. Any explanation for the origin of the universe can only be derived with any reasonable certainty by studying the nature of the universe we observe today and learning to understand the laws which govern its behaviors and through this the processes that brought the universe to its current state, much as a detective studies the scene of a crime to determine how, when and the nature of the crime committed.

Accepting that one does not have all the answers is essential to an investigation of the truth and crucial to any hope of discovering what the truth is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJwq3aPLMk