Think about this

[Giaguara]

with that "what was before" thing .. if there was a such thing like god who created everything - what was before it / him / her ? "eternal" sounds like a very non-satisfactory explanation.

 

[JohnnyV]

Some things simply have no explanation or at least no good one. We will never really know the truth until death takes us.

 

[MBHockey]

Hmmm....that's a tough question....I used to ask my mother and father those kinds of questions when I was 4 years old. When I was old enough to read, my mother bought me a book titled "Tell Me Why". That book explained everything, almost, it didn't explain the origin of the universe. But getting back on topic, I think the poll should have included "By design", meaning that an "intelligence" or "order" created the universe. I recall reading a recent physics article, gosh, I can't think of the name of it, but it involves some heavy players in physics. Any way, the article mentions that if some of the constants in the universe were just a little different, everything would be drastically different. This is what I mean by "by design". It doesn't imply a god-like supreme intelligence created the universe, but it basically says that "it is the way it is because things work that way, the only way". Personally, I do believe in God, and that He created the universe, but I also believe that it is by design in the terms that I describe.

There are a few astronomy programs out there, one in particular lets you cruise around the solar system and the local universe. Even moving at the speed of light, the stars don't move like you see in Star Trek. For that, you have to be traveling several hundred to several thousand times the speed of light. This gives you an idea of the immense distances in the universe. When you look at the images from Mars sent from Spirit and Oportunity, the images from the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft, think about this: Earth is the only planet where the environment is just right to foster life. Temperatures, atmospheric pressure, the variety of all of the elements, the amount of water to sustain life and drive the air currents, the atmosphere protecting us just enough from ultraviolet radiation. THAT is something to ponder. And after you've ponder THAT, ponder about your own consciousness, how you came to think about the universe after reading this thread. Ponder about your thinking processes, and how they're geared to mesh well contemplating the universe.

If anything, i would say entropy and chance created the universe, just like evolution, which the second part of your post appears to touch on. And for those who say "i don't care"...i guess it's easy to go through life by either accepting everything or doubting everything. Evolution gave you a brain; use it.

Also, we do not know if earth is the only planet (certainly in the milky way, but i mean beyond) that can sustain life. There's a good book on this, i forget the author, but it is entitled Rare Earth. It deals with the probabilities of other planets like earth in such a vast existence we simply call 'the universe'.

 

[pds]

Evolution gave you a brain; use it.

Some ancient oriental wiseguy once said "The beginning of understanding comes when you learn to think with your heart and feel with your mind." (or reason or brain or however is the best way to translate that inscrutable oriental wiseguy ancient language.)

Evolution also gave you a heart and it needs to be used in conjunction with the reason to fully understand the how and the why of the world.

 

[octane]

How can "A natural event unaided by any intelligence" occur if there is no nature to speak of? Before the beginning there was nothing, can something come from nothing? Is it possible that God has a God? Where did God come from? As a supreme being has he always existed?

Now we're in business. I've been waiting for someone ask the right questions.

And herein lies the very simple and basic flaw of all modern, western religions. The idea of a Creator God is all very well and good, but even he or she must have an origin like the universe itself.

The universe didn't arrive out of nowhere, it was most likely a rubbing together of membranes or the colossal collision of matter and anti-matter [which would explain why the expansion of the universe and its continuing acceleration outwards in all directions]

I am not a religious man because religion does not even attempt to answer the real questions, it instead applies a fine veneer over the crucial problems of being and chooses instead to answer them through obtuse parable, allegory or morality tale.

However, I am a spiritual man, much to the annoyance of those who I meet who are religious because they believe that spirituality and religion are the same thing.

They are most definitely not the dame thing.

I might know why the sky is blue, what particular cloud structure I'm looking at and also understand why the sun is the shade of yellow that it is, but this doesn't stop me from standing on a hill for hours at a time just looking at the beautiful sky above me.

I'm happy with the fact that I am a child of our sun, and that one day my remains will be returned to the sun.

We're simply not equipped to answer any of these questions yet, but we're getting very close...

 

[Arden]

The best explanation I have heard for the beginning of the universe is that it started at the Big Bang after a previous universe collapsed on itself, and ours will eventually collapse on itself as well, producing another Big Bang and another universe. However, whenever I try to think about this topic, my head starts hurting because I always want to know "Where did all this ******* matter come from??????" And nobody ******* knows!!!!!

 

[phatcactus]

It's turtles all the way down.

 

[octane]

The best explanation I have heard for the beginning of the universe is that it started at the Big Bang after a previous universe collapsed on itself, and ours will eventually collapse on itself as well, producing another Big Bang and another universe...

That is part of two competing theories; will the universe end in fire or ice?

You're going with the big bang even bigger collapse theory .. so do I.

The other theory is that the universe expands forever until all matter and energy becomes uniformly distributed and thus, very cold.

I don't like that theory because it lacks a key feature of nearly all natural forces; symmetry. Problem is, the current evidence supports the latter of the two theories.

Without being a physicist, and not having to concern myself with the mathematical problems they have to wrestle with, I feel pretty much free to apply common sense to most things and find that it is often true or correct [with the notable exception of quantum theory, which is just plain madness from beginning to end]

Most things in nature have [or are part of] a cycle, so it stands to reason that the universe itself should be part of a cyclic event .. only a really bloody big one!..

 

[Cat]

The other theory is that the universe expands forever until all matter and energy becomes uniformly distributed and thus, very cold.

That would only be true in a "flat" euclidean kind of space ... you go father and father ... ehm ... further and further away from the origin of the x-y-z axes and matter gets spread thinner and thinner ("like butter that has been scraped over too much bread"). But WHAT IF space isn't like that and it would be more like the surface of a sphere? Matter would keep expanding, but then going around the fictional equator of this sphere, conglomerate again and maybe give rise to another big bang ... I'll leave it to the physicists to argue the whether and how ...

 

[Arden]

Yes... the current theories state that, rather than matter moving farther—no, further—away, as would corks floating in water, spacetime itself is actually expanding and matter is simply expanding with it, like the image on a balloon.

Too late & too tired to go into detail with this...

 

[Satcomer]

That is part of two competing theories; will the universe end in fire or ice?

IMHO, that one is easy. Sir Isaac Newton has already the answer. It's called Gravity. Besides, we'll all be long gone before we collide with another Galaxy.

 

[habilis]

Yep, the universe expands then contracts then expands again in a never ending cycle. It's a giant heart. I'm a definate fan of the big bang/crunch theory, but what sucks is that because it is a cycle, with a beginning and an end, then the laws of logic must be applied to the cycle itself; that is something must have started these cycles long ago and something will end them far in the future. But what? It's too bad that this feeling of helpless intellectual wonder leads people to Jerry Falwell rather then Carl Sagan.

 

[pds]

"Helpless intellectual wonder" - bit demagogic to me... there are many sources of faith.

Neither do I think it's fair to say that is what "leads people to Jerry Falwell" nor would it be good if people were "lead" to Carl Sagan. There are levels of faith, religion, spirituality and understanding. Kohlberg identifies four fundamental ones and Peck concurs and expands on them describing the process of healthy development that is the task of people everywhere.

When we see the process and not the static snapshot of where someone is now, we see a truer picture of life.

 

[hulkaros]

Life is a beach

 

[octane]

IMHO, that one is easy. Sir Isaac Newton has already the answer. It's called Gravity. Besides, we'll all be long gone before we collide with another Galaxy.

The mass expansion of the universe in increasing in speed. Gravity is a week force. Gravity doesn't exert enough force to limit the acceleration...

 

[octane]

Yes... the current theories state that, rather than matter moving farther—no, further—away, as would corks floating in water, spacetime itself is actually expanding and matter is simply expanding with it, like the image on a balloon.

Too late & too tired to go into detail with this...

Stephen Hawking said something like [to paraphrase]: the universe is infinite, but it has boundaries.

One other theory is that the universe is in fact a torus, or doughnut-shape.

This would explain the problems when one asks: would it be possible to move to edge of the universe and actually pass beyond the edge of its expanding wave.

To which the answer would be no...

 

[Cat]

Torus or sphere would imply that there are no boundaries, but simply that you cannot "lift off" the surface. On the surface itself, of course, you can go everywhere without ever meeting a wall or something like that. However, keep in mind that the examples of Hawking likely mean that the space-time continuum is "shaped" in a certain way (it is still a model so don't take it too literally), not just the spatial universe.

 

[octane]

Torus or sphere would imply that there are no boundaries, but simply that you cannot "lift off" the surface. On the surface itself, of course, you can go everywhere without ever meeting a wall or something like that. However, keep in mind that the examples of Hawking likely mean that the space-time continuum is "shaped" in a certain way (it is still a model so don't take it too literally), not just the spatial universe.

I know you mean well, but I am aware of this.

The biggest problem with 'observable' space-time is that what we see isn't all that's there. The current theory is that space-time is made up of 11 dimensions [of which we occupy 4 and sit pretty damn close to the 5]. How do we measure or observe the imperceptible?

Mathematics is always going to be our 'eye' into this world, but even pure number theories will have a limit.

Our comprehension of things is our only real limit, and we're coming pretty close to that. Quantum physics, anyone? [?!]

Hey! Anyone seen Paycheck? Quite a good angle on this kind of thing, though it would have to be a damn big lens!..

 

[speedfreak]

On toroidal universe and torus.....http://www.rgrace.org/126/131toroiduni.html