how can we best explain our existence ?

[Tsid502]

how can we best explain our existence ?

what do you think is the cause of the existence of our universe ?

I think there are 3 options.

1. The univerese exists eternally, in one form, or the other, had no beginning.

2. The universe had a beginning, with the Big Bang, but without a cause.

3. The universe had a beginning, and therefore a cause.

If there are other options, which do not fit in one of these three categories, please name them.

If you agree, there exist basically only the above options, please explain, which option you think is most plausible, and why.

[Sir Patrick Crocodile]

I pick #3 - The universe had a beginning, and we cannot explain it. However there is the Big Bang theory, and what happened before then is not known at this stage.

[atheist_angel]

Originally Posted by Tsid502

how can we best explain our existence ?

what do you think is the cause of the existence of our universe ?

I think there are 3 options.

1. The univerese exists eternally, in one form, or the other, had no beginning.

2. The universe had a beginning, with the Big Bang, but without a cause.

3. The universe had a beginning, and therefore a cause.

If there are other options, which do not fit in one of these three categories, please name them.

If you agree, there exist basically only the above options, please explain, which option you think is most plausible, and why.

Exactly how does this question relate to 'general chit-chat about atheism', again?

Are you trying to (dis)prove atheism ...with THIS question?

[Sir Patrick Crocodile]

It includes the words "Big Bang" and "universe" and "existence" which have something to do with atheism.

[Dane]

You see, when a mummy brane and daddy brane love each other very much...

[Tsid502]

Originally Posted by Crocodile

I pick #3 - The universe had a beginning, and we cannot explain it. However there is the Big Bang theory, and what happened before then is not known at this stage.

#3 states, the universe had a beginning, and therefore a CAUSE. Do you agree with this statement ?

[Dave]

All three choices are purely speculative at this stage and to embrace any of your choices would have to be done on faith! This I leave to the religious. If you are asking me to take a guess, I really don't see what could be possibly gained by doing so. I could just as well say that the universe both had a cause and also no cause. This answer would be as good as any of your choices based on the fact that none have been proven to date. I prefer to leave this question unanswered and simply embrace the models containing our best estimates from observation and falsification, yet quite willing for new models to supercede them!

[owheelj]

I don't really understand the question.

The evidence for the big bang is pretty conclusive. On the other hand, what do you mean by cause? Are you implying some kind of conscious decision? Your last post seems to suggest this. On the other hand, I'd say it's pretty obvious that the big bang occurred as a consequence of the conditions before the big bang, and that although we don't have the ability to know what these were, I would call this a cause. Cause is also very broad. If we could analyse the events leading up to the big bang we could come up with many causes, none of which would be wrong. "This particular particle collided with that particle." "Quantum fluctuations caused an energy gradient" etc.

It's also important to note that the big bang isn't really considered the start of the universe, but the start of the known universe, which may sound predantic, but what it's really saying is that we don't, and probably can't, know what occurred before it because of its nature - it destroyed or pushed away from us any evidence we could have found. There is as much evidence that it was the start of the universe as there is that the universe had no start - and that amount of evdience is none.

[Tsid502]

Originally Posted by Dave

All three choices are purely speculative at this stage and to embrace any of your choices would have to be done on faith!

Certainly. The question we want to have a explanation, is which answer best explains our existence. Since we have no proofs whatsoever to answer this question, its deduction will always be based on faith. It can however be a faith, based and deduced on rational and reasonable thoughts, based on scientific pressumptions and prerrogations. We have advanced scientific knowledge to come close to the truth as never before.

This I leave to the religious.

Nope. It can be left to the ones, that search their answers in religion, philosophy, and science.

If you are asking me to take a guess, I really don't see what could be possibly gained by doing so.

A lot. The finding of the truth, and eventually even the reason of our existence. It is a essential question to our existence, a question which every human being should make to itself.

I prefer to leave this question unanswered and simply embrace the models containing our best estimates from observation and falsification, yet quite willing for new models to supercede them!

And which is in your view the best estimate ?

[Tsid502]

Originally Posted by owheelj

I don't really understand the question.

The evidence for the big bang is pretty conclusive. On the other hand, what do you mean by cause? Are you implying some kind of conscious decision? Your last post seems to suggest this. On the other hand, I'd say it's pretty obvious that the big bang occurred as a consequence of the conditions before the big bang, and that although we don't have the ability to know what these were, I would call this a cause. Cause is also very broad. If we could analyse the events leading up to the big bang we could come up with many causes, none of which would be wrong. "This particular particle collided with that particle." "Quantum fluctuations caused an energy gradient" etc.

It's also important to note that the big bang isn't really considered the start of the universe, but the start of the known universe, which may sound predantic, but what it's really saying is that we don't, and probably can't, know what occurred before it because of its nature - it destroyed or pushed away from us any evidence we could have found. There is as much evidence that it was the start of the universe as there is that the universe had no start - and that amount of evdience is none.

The Big Bang theory states, there was no physical " before ", since there was no time. Time itself began with the Big Bang as well.

the assertion our universe had most likely a absolute beginning is not just a claim of theists, but from well respected scientists, like Vilenkin :

Alexander Vilenkin is Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. A theoretical physicist who has been working in the field of cosmology for 25 years, Vilenkin has written over 150 papers and is responsible for introducing the ideas of eternal inflation and quantum creation of the universe from nothing.

Vilenkin is blunt about the implications:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).

Big Bang - Physics Planet .com

There are some disquieting issues with this theory, at least to the non-Physicists. First, the singularity did not appear in space. Space did not exist before the big Bang and in fact, had to begin inside the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed. So, where did it come from and why? We don’t know. All we do know is that we exist within space and at one time it did not exist and neither did we.

The Big Questions - In the Beginning - ABC Science Online

Beyond the point is nothing. The balloon – space – has simply disappeared. Play this scenario in forward time and it represents the coming-into-being of a universe from literally nothing, with space itself appearing. So it’s not an explosion in a pre-existing space. Space itself appears. And so, for that matter, does time.

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/astr...nning-t199.htm

Theorems by Hawking and Penrose show that as long as the universe is governed by general relativity, the existence of an initial singularity-or beginning-is inevitable, and that it's impossible to pass through a singularity to a subsequent state. And there's no known physics that could reverse a contracting universe and suddenly make it bounce before it hits the singularity. The whole theory was simply a theoretical abstraction. Physics never supported it.

WikiAnswers - If the Big Bang came from a singularity where did the singularity come from

Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know.

Can anything 'real' be infinite?

Strictly speaking, according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, a singularity does not contain anything that is actually infinite, only things that MOVE MATHEMATICALLY TOWARDS infinity. A black hole is formed when large stars collapse and their mass has been compressed down to a very small size and the powerful gravitational field so formed prevents anything, even light, from escaping from it. A black hole therefore forms a singularity at its centre from the concentrated mass of the collapsed star itself and from the accumulated mass that is sucked into it. A singularity's mass is therefore finite, the 'infinity' refers only to the maths.

Can we have an infinite universe for example? The answer is no, the universe is finite.