Universe(tm) – No God Required

Question from Jhon Roy:
How did the universe existed if there was/is no God to create it, do you want us Christians to believe that out of nothing, the universe began to exist??? It is indeed illogical. Steven Hawking said that because of gravity the universe can create itself, but as I told you before the universe began to exist, there was just nothing, no gravity, nor force. Now answer my question.

Answer by SmartLX:
Non-believers aren’t asking Christians to believe anything about this topic. There are many different ways our present universe might exist, and atheists don’t arbitrarily declare without evidence that a particular one of them is fact. We wait for scientists to uncover evidence favouring one hypothesis over all others, because they’re the only ones finding any relevant evidence at all. All I would ask is that because many of the possibilities do not involve a god, you accept for now that as far as we know the universe isn’t necessarily impossible without a god, and therefore its mere existence isn’t currently proof of a god all by itself.

Regarding the specifics of your argument:

  • How do you know there was nothing before the universe began to exist? You think God existed before the universe did, so why couldn’t something else? Another universe, for example?
  • How do you know the universe even began to exist, and didn’t always exist in some form? You think God always existed; it’s even simpler if the universe always did instead, because then we don’t have to try to explain the existence of a god as well as the universe.
  • Anything creating itself is by definition impossible because it implies an action by an entity which does not exist during the action, but Stephen Hawking’s ideas about the beginning of the universe involve the simultaneous emergence of time, making the concept of “before” irrelevant. Why can’t it have happened the way he describes, other than that it sounds wrong to you? Why can’t the universe behave in an un-intuitive manner, given how limited our intuition is? If it’s so obviously unworkable, why hasn’t a super-brain like Hawking or any of his colleagues realised it and hastily re-worked large sections of A Brief History of Time?

    • Incidentally, the simple fact that you’ve asked a question is reason enough for us to answer it. You don’t then have to order us to answer it.

    One thought on “Universe(tm) – No God Required”

    1. How god existed to create the universe without someone creating god in the first place? Now answer my question!

      You might say that god does not require a cause (that’s why its god). I can then say the same for the universe … there is no need for us to take one step back to god, and then one step back to god’s creator and then one more step back to the creator’s creator etc. These infinite regresse, while they may seem logically compelling to some, are of little real use. And they seem logically compelling only because we are used to temporal thinking and phenomena of the cause and effect variety. I doubt that kind of thinking can be applied when one thinks about the beginning of universe and time.
      The kind of thinking and explanation that is valid for that point/ event is something that scientists are trying to find. And I doubt they will hit upon a demonstrable infinite regress of creator gods (or even the signs of a single creator god) as the real explanation for the event of the beginning of the universe and time.

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