Eturnalshift wrote:
Joklem wrote:
I'm an astrophysicist and fuck this debate. It's been beaten to death and it's not worth wasting keystrokes on anymore.
Convince me, then.
I may be wrong, but doesn't the conservation of energy state that energy can't be created or destroyed? How did energy, or matter, exist at the start of the universe... before the big bang? By our own laws it couldn't have been created... but for it to exist, it had to be created at some point through some means - God or something else...
This point alone pulled me from Atheism to Agnosticism because as much as I can't absolutely prove a God exists, I can't absolutely prove a God doesn't exist, either.
I'm an agnostic too.
I'll keep it simple because seriously this shit is tedious. The matter didn't come out of nowhere. Think of the universe as an island in the infinite ocean of space. Space meaning emptiness, beyond our universe is emptiness. Within that emptiness was a "blob" of energy and matter with very, very, very massive density and at an extreme temperature. That blob contained all the matter currently in the universe today, but not in the form of molecules - quarks or smaller than quarks, some physicists refer to it as the "quark soup". Something happened, and it started a chain reaction (call it an explosion, an expansion or the "Big Bang", whatever) that sent the matter in all directions. As the early universe cooled from expansion, molecules (hydrogen and helium first) were allowed to form. Over a vast amount of time, chemical reactions and gravity allowed for more molecules, then for stars and planets to form. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Seriously, there are plenty of good papers on the Big Bang theory all over the internet.
The expansion of the universe can be observed (galaxies moving away from each other), therefore all matter in the universe must have been located at a single point in space at some time. We don't know for sure where it came from, and we probably never will. For all we know, and especially due to the infinite nature of emptiness, what we call "Big Bangs", or universes forming, could be an occurrence more common than we think.
One can safely assume that no deity created the universe in it's current, exact form. It could be possible that intelligence was involved in the design of the mechanisms that made it possible to become the way it is today. But remember that as humans we are limited in our intelligence, and we tend to turn towards fairy shit when faced by the unknown.
P.S. I don't "believe" in theories zealously. The true origin of the universe is unknown, and any scientists who believes in any theory and refuses to accept changes, adjustments or new theories altogether is a complete fool. One thing's for sure: a giant white bearded man in the sky did not create the Earth and it's inhabitants.
Edit: if your prayers are answered, then you are likely schizophrenic. An anti-psychotic such as Seroquel or Zyprexa could help with that.
That is all, g'day.
Pretty much nailed it.
