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[Shrugging Khan]

That's.....a bit insulting, wouldn't you say?

To whom? The one who actually do reason in a line not much dissimilar to that? Or those who are too comfortable with their preconceived notions of the world's workings to make uncomfortable accommodations to the unfortunate non-existence of god, using a roughly similar argument (usually replacing the 3. line with something along the lines of "therefore, a prime mover must exist")?

And seriously, Khan.  "Prime Mover" is a completely different philosophical concept from "Christian God".

Hardly. In most cases of discussion about the origin of the universe, the wish to justify one's belief in the christian god leads firstly to the pseudo-arguments for the existence of a prime mover, and then to the justification of christian or quasi-christian belief. Deism and the like stem from the same source, albeit with a lesser degree of religious detail.

[Mephisto]

My personal thoughts on the matter is that we can only see so far in space because of an as of yet unknown/untested property of light. (maybe it decays after some time... maybe it is being deflected away from our sight by things in space... I don't know.)  With this limited visibility, we assume that our universe is only as big as we can see and therefore must have some limits and because of that, a start.  My thoughts on the whole deal is that the universe is more vast/infinite than we can currently understand and the decay measured by scientists (claiming the Big Bang evidence) is simply the after effect of some big event in our corner of space.  Maybe the bi-product of a super-massive explosion... maybe we are at the tail end of a Galactic Particle Emitter or something.  Still, it just feels wrong to say that it all came from a small speck that exploded and created mass and energy.

Back in '06, the pope got Stephen Hawking to come over for a chit chat. Said he believed in evolution, the big bang, and all that jazz. Paraphrasing, he said that his god likes explosions and created a big ol' ball of junk, threw it out into space, and watched it explode. Billions of years of natural processes later and *poof*, here we are. That's probably the closest viewpoint to the one I had when I considered myself to be a Christian.

Not that I believe it. The part about a god creating it, that is. The big bang? Sure, many geniuses know more about the matter than I.

[Bauglir]

My personal thoughts on the matter is that we can only see so far in space because of an as of yet unknown/untested property of light. (maybe it decays after some time... maybe it is being deflected away from our sight by things in space... I don't know.)  With this limited visibility, we assume that our universe is only as big as we can see and therefore must have some limits and because of that, a start.  My thoughts on the whole deal is that the universe is more vast/infinite than we can currently understand and the decay measured by scientists (claiming the Big Bang evidence) is simply the after effect of some big event in our corner of space.  Maybe the bi-product of a super-massive explosion... maybe we are at the tail end of a Galactic Particle Emitter or something.  Still, it just feels wrong to say that it all came from a small speck that exploded and created mass and energy.

Actually we know why we can see only a certain distance out. It's the speed of light. Any further than the observable universe, and it would have taken light longer than the current age of the universe to travel to Earth from its source.

[Sowelu]

1. The existence of anything rather than nothing does not make sense, as some poster explained.
2. Yet, something exists.
3. OH EM GEE IT MUST BE JESUS' DADDY WHO DUN IT!

That's.....a bit insulting, wouldn't you say?

To whom? The one who actually do reason in a line not much dissimilar to that? Or those who are too comfortable with their preconceived notions of the world's workings to make uncomfortable accommodations to the unfortunate non-existence of god, using a roughly similar argument (usually replacing the 3. line with something along the lines of "therefore, a prime mover must exist")?

The tone, specifically.

EDIT: Also, given points 1 and 2...  I'm pretty curious what you'd suggest for 3, if not a prime mover, and why.

[Andir]

My personal thoughts on the matter is that we can only see so far in space because of an as of yet unknown/untested property of light. (maybe it decays after some time... maybe it is being deflected away from our sight by things in space... I don't know.)  With this limited visibility, we assume that our universe is only as big as we can see and therefore must have some limits and because of that, a start.  My thoughts on the whole deal is that the universe is more vast/infinite than we can currently understand and the decay measured by scientists (claiming the Big Bang evidence) is simply the after effect of some big event in our corner of space.  Maybe the bi-product of a super-massive explosion... maybe we are at the tail end of a Galactic Particle Emitter or something.  Still, it just feels wrong to say that it all came from a small speck that exploded and created mass and energy.

Actually we know why we can see only a certain distance out. It's the speed of light. Any further than the observable universe, and it would have taken light longer than the current age of the universe to travel to Earth from its source.

Yeah yeah... I was taught that in school, and taught that we can see to the beginning of the universe because of it.  Personal feeling though is that light can travel billions of years and it may be losing enough energy or being refracted out of our view... maybe even by the energy that is pushing us all through space.  I covered all this in the other thread and I don't feel like going over it all again.

[MC Dirty]

About that Euler's identity kind of stuff: That is not in any way proof or evidence of a prime mover, an intelligence behind the entire universe. You will never find Euler's identity in real life. Neither will you find the number 0.5 in real life. There's always measuring inaccuracy, estimation and abstraction involved.
Euler's identity is a mathematical concept. Mathematics doesn't come from anywhere, is not a gift given to us by a prime mover. It's an abstract concept in and of itself, based on the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Mathematics is accurate. Real life is not.

[Siquo]

Real life is accurate, yet our measuring tools are not. We operate on a huge scale, compared to the probably-perfect-sphere-smallest-parts. Pi will not be different on a different planet with different mathematicians with 16 tentacles instead of 10 fingers. Unless they never invented the circle, or the concept of distance, in which case their "mathematics" are so alien that it's unimaginable, making the point moot.

Shrugging Khan, please stop it. If you can't approach a different view from yours with respect, then just don't approach it at all.

[penguinofhonor]

My personal thoughts on the matter is that we can only see so far in space because of an as of yet unknown/untested property of light. (maybe it decays after some time... maybe it is being deflected away from our sight by things in space... I don't know.)  With this limited visibility, we assume that our universe is only as big as we can see and therefore must have some limits and because of that, a start.  My thoughts on the whole deal is that the universe is more vast/infinite than we can currently understand and the decay measured by scientists (claiming the Big Bang evidence) is simply the after effect of some big event in our corner of space.  Maybe the bi-product of a super-massive explosion... maybe we are at the tail end of a Galactic Particle Emitter or something.  Still, it just feels wrong to say that it all came from a small speck that exploded and created mass and energy.

Actually we know why we can see only a certain distance out. It's the speed of light. Any further than the observable universe, and it would have taken light longer than the current age of the universe to travel to Earth from its source.

Yeah yeah... I was taught that in school, and taught that we can see to the beginning of the universe because of it.  Personal feeling though is that light can travel billions of years and it may be losing enough energy or being refracted out of our view... maybe even by the energy that is pushing us all through space.  I covered all this in the other thread and I don't feel like going over it all again.

Uh, can you link to your posts there? I don't understand why you don't like the current theory; it works fine for physicists and most other people.

[Andir]

My personal thoughts on the matter is that we can only see so far in space because of an as of yet unknown/untested property of light. (maybe it decays after some time... maybe it is being deflected away from our sight by things in space... I don't know.)  With this limited visibility, we assume that our universe is only as big as we can see and therefore must have some limits and because of that, a start.  My thoughts on the whole deal is that the universe is more vast/infinite than we can currently understand and the decay measured by scientists (claiming the Big Bang evidence) is simply the after effect of some big event in our corner of space.  Maybe the bi-product of a super-massive explosion... maybe we are at the tail end of a Galactic Particle Emitter or something.  Still, it just feels wrong to say that it all came from a small speck that exploded and created mass and energy.

Actually we know why we can see only a certain distance out. It's the speed of light. Any further than the observable universe, and it would have taken light longer than the current age of the universe to travel to Earth from its source.

Yeah yeah... I was taught that in school, and taught that we can see to the beginning of the universe because of it.  Personal feeling though is that light can travel billions of years and it may be losing enough energy or being refracted out of our view... maybe even by the energy that is pushing us all through space.  I covered all this in the other thread and I don't feel like going over it all again.

Uh, can you link to your posts there? I don't understand why you don't like the current theory; it works fine for physicists and most other people.

Because they assume that light is infinite... it never loses energy over billions of years of travel... because we can't test otherwise.  This idea that light is forever infinite is the basis that our universe is only so big.

[Siquo]

You've got a point, even photons might eventually fall apart, we just haven't got the equipment to see it, yet.

[Il Palazzo]

@Andir

Spoiler: not to derail any further (click to show/hide)

Because they assume that light is infinite... it never loses energy over billions of years of travel... because we can't test otherwise.  This idea that light is forever infinite is the basis that our universe is only so big.

But you got it all wrong.(and by "infinite" you mean "unchanging", I guess)
Light does lose energy as it travels through an expanding universe(observable in redshift of distant galaxies - not to confuse with the one associated with Doppler Effect, though)
And there's nothing in there that'd support a limited universe theory - it might just as well be infinite, and the only two factors preventing from seeing any more of it than we do are: the speed of light*age of universe, and the opaqueness of the young universe.

[Andir]

Not sure it's off topic... I mean, we are talking about the creation, or lack thereof creation of the universe and that falls in line with the Atheism topic.  Am I wrong?

Anyway.  By all measure people use light to determine the age of our universe... how far we can see either with the aid of tools or our bare naked eyes.  We are in another one of those scenarios where: "You look out on the horizon and see no other land.  Therefore it must not exist and obviously since we see no roundness our world must be flat."  Without knowing absolutely that light energy doesn't exponentially dissipate (or shift out of our measurable spectrum?) after it red shifts.  And I believe I understand the concept that the expanding universe would sort of "pull  apart" the light that was traveling to us... but that's part of what I'm talking about.  What if that light is being pulled so much that it ceases to be visible.  We can't know if that's certain.  We can only make guesses based on what we can observe.  I guess it all boils down to one idea that I find it extremely arrogant.  Thinking that we are (for all intents) near/in the center of our known universe and when we look in all directions and see billions of light years and then see no more, we assume that is it and there is no more.

[Phmcw]

Andir, it's not a topic on atheism you need right now, but a course on astrophysics.
It's good to have a critical mind, but you need to know the theory you're discussing, else it's useless.

And no one said that the universe doesn't expand farther than where we can see.
The end of the observable universe is the name of this limit.

So, your point is obvious, and already taken into account.

[Andir]

So, your point is obvious, and already taken into account.

It's not obvious to some... because I keep hearing it brought up when people talk about "God" creating all of this and the "Big Bang" being the beginning of all and therefore proof of god(s).  This is where that "derail" came from.

[Siquo]

Andir, it's not a topic on atheism you need right now, but a course on astrophysics.
It's good to have a critical mind, but you need to know the theory you're discussing, else it's useless.

No, he really has a point. The big bang is only surmised from the speed at which galaxies seem to move away from us and eachother. It's a bit shaky at best. However, if the universe is infinite in size and has been around infinitely, the sky would be intensely bright instead of black with a star here and there. Unless photons do decay.
However, time dilation makes photons timeless (the closer to the speed of light you get, the slower your time frame becomes, hence: photons that actually travel at the speed of light do not experience time), so even if they had a half-life of a second, they'd never decay anyway.

... Except that light slows down in a medium. Damn. Ok, forget the last part, but still, who knows?