What do atheists have to say about the Bigbang ? How did the universe came into being out of nothing ?

Question

What do atheists have to say about the Bigbang ? How did the universe came into being out of nothing ?

Answer 1

It's called peer reviewed academic journals, observation and making a hypothesis. I'm studying chemistry, not physics, but let me tell you that a bunch of physicists didn't think up the bigbang after a night on the p**s.

Answer 2

How did "God" come out of nothing?

Answer 3

I don't think the Big Bang theory says that the universe came into being out of nothing, I think it just describes what happened immediately afterwards.

Answer 4

it always was. the universe has no beginning or no end.

the universe is expanding now which means it has to contract

when it falls back in on its self all the force needed to cram all the universe into a small space makes it exploded again and all start over and it has been doing this for all of time

Answer 5

we don't know if it came out of nothing.  We haven't finished investigating yet

Answer 6

Scientific data thus far cannot give you an answer. The Big Bang theory fits that data the best and theorizes that all matter came from a tremendously energetic singularity (zero volume). It doesn't sound like you are one of those Christians who say "What was before the Big Bang? AH HA! You don't know so you must be wrong!" so good luck finding your answers. It would be nice if scientists could just say God created it, but that would defeat the whole purpose of the pursuit of knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang

There is one theory that states two planes both containing 3 dimensions collided which created the Big Bang, I believe it is the Brane Theory. Once the matter and energy in our universe dissipates into a void than nothing will be keeping the planes from colliding again. I don't know much about this theory, but it sounds interesting. I couldn't find any links though, sorry. But this link explains the Big Bang theory in a no nonsense sort of way. It mentions Brane Theory a little too.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badast...

Answer 7

It's more plausible than saying some dude made the universe. Stop looking for the easy way out, christian.

Answer 8

I always love this question...

"If there is no god, where did the universe come from?"

The same place God came from, if there was a God.

"But-but-but... God is eternal!  He has no beginning!"

Then from that point of view, since the universe came into existence at the same time as time and space, neither does the Universe.

Answer 9

the bib bang says that the universe was a small atom at the beginning and it's been extending ever since.

Answer 10

The Big Bang starts with a singularity. Where the singularity came from is beyond the scope of the theory.

Answer 11

Atheists keep towards science which says: We can't know what was before the Big Bang, we can't most likely not even tell what was during or exactly afterwards the big bang.

So, nothing is not the whole truth. The universe did come into being out of something, we don't know.

Answer 12

Usually, one finds questions directed toward atheists only in the Religion and Spirituality section. How refreshing to find one here. As an atheist, let me answer honestly. Nobody knows for certain. That fact does not grant license for you to say "Goddidit". There is certainly an adequate scientific explanation, we just haven't yet discovered it. With the LHC coming on line, I expect the answer to be coming along quite soon.

I can't help but wonder what you theists will be asking us about when it does.

Answer 13

Since the origin of the universe is not a theological issue, atheism has nothing to do with it.

The singularity popped out of nothing.  But the nothing was rife with quantum possibility.

Answer 14

Atheism isn't a religion. Christians who are also scientists will say much the same thing. In the original Greek, the Genesis account looks alot like the Big Bang. Given that the Bible wasn't attempting to be a science text book, but rather a book with moral lessons, this is remarkable. So i'll just deal with science.

Scientist don't say "I believe in x", except as a short cut.  What is really meant is "the evidence supports x." Belief without evidence (faith) is not considered science. Belief contrary to evidence is considered nonsense.

The Big Bang theory says only a little about how the Universe started.  It mostly talks about how the Universe evolved once it got started.  Main stream science treats how the Universe started as an open question.  It's really OK to say "I don't know".  In science, this is considerably better than saying something that is unsupportable or outright wrong.

There are at least about a dozen ideas that may eventually work for the origin of the Universe.  But as yet, we do not have a theory of the Universe that combines Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. These theories are known to be incompatible, and so at least one of them needs to change. There are candidate theories, like String Theory or Loop Quantum Gravity. But none of these theories are complete as yet.  This is not evidence that "God did it".

And besides.  If God created the Universe, then where did God come from?  From the scientific point of view, adding God does not make the problem easier.  In fact, from what is now understood, it seems easier to create the Universe from nothing and let it evolve into what we see today than to create God first - an immortal, omnipotent and omniscient being with no beginning.

While we're at it, the theory of Evolution doesn't address how life got started. That's still an open issue. Evolution talks about how life evolves once it has started.  There is very little evidence about the origin of life. This is mainly because once life got started, all the available chemicals got consumed and altered.  But we do know that life got started very soon after it was possible for it to survive.  That suggests that life is a process that happens fairly easily on a planet like Earth.  But it doesn't say much about how it happened.  Lots of exciting work has been done in this field.  But there is as yet no "smoking gun" that says it happened one way vs. another.

Answer 15

The Big Bang theory does not totally solve the problem of how to make something out of nothing.  No one knows how to make Something out of Nothing.

The Big Bang, however, does create the Universe out of almost nothing.

It is likely that the total energy content of the Universe is zero.  There is negative potential energy in the gravitational field, and this balances the positive energy of all the particles.  The total energy content of the Big Bang itself may have been zero.

It has been speculated that, if you have an empty, inflating space with unexcited quantum fields in it, that after a long, long time there will be a quantum fluctuation that causes a Big Bang.  An empty, inflating space with ground-state energy fields is not quite Nothing, but it is close to nothing, and (even more interestingly) seems likely to be the end state of our own Universe.  This suggests that the "metauniverse" may be past-eternal, with each Big Bang giving rise to the conditions that ultimately give rise to another.

Answer 16

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe that is best supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. The essential idea is that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past and continues to expand to this day

Now lets define evidence:Evidence is information, such as facts, coupled with principles of inference (beliefs and assumptions), that make information relevant to the proof or disproof of a hypothesis[citation needed]. Scientific evidence is evidence where the dependence of the evidence on principles of inference is not conceded, enabling others to examine the background beliefs or assumptions employed to determine if facts are relevant to the proof or disproof of a purported hypothesis[1].

A person’s assumptions or beliefs about the relationship between alleged facts and a hypothesis will determine if that person takes the facts as evidence[1]. Consider, for example alternative uses of the observation that day and night alternate at a steady rate. In an environment where the observer makes a causal connection between exposure to the sun and day, the observer may take the observation of day and night as evidence for a theory of cosmology. Without an assumption or belief that a causal connection exists between exposure to the sun and the observance of day, the observation of day will be discounted as evidence of a cosmological theory.

A person’s assumptions or beliefs about the relationship between alleged facts and a hypothesis will also determine how a person utilizes the facts as evidence. Continuing with the same example, in an environment where geocentric cosmology is prevalent, the observation of day and night may be taken as evidence that the sun moves about the earth. Alternatively, in an environment where heliocentric cosmology is prevalent, the same observation may be taken as evidence that the earth is spinning about an axis[1]. In summary, beliefs or assumptions about causal relationships are utilized to determine whether facts are evidence of a hypothesis.

Background beliefs differ. As a result, where observers operate under different paradigms, rational observers may find different meaning in scientific evidence from the same event[2]. For example, Priestly, working with phlogiston theory, took his observations about the decomposition of what we know today as mercuric oxide as evidence of the phlogiston. In contrast, Lavoisier, developing the theory of elements, took the same facts as evidence for oxygen[3]. Note that a causal relationship between the facts and hypothesis does not exist to cause the facts to be taken as evidence[1], but rather the causal relationship is provided by the person seeking to establish facts as evidence.

A more formal method to characterize the effect of background beliefs is Bayesianism[4]. Bayesian theory provides that one’s beliefs depend on evidence to which one is exposed and one’s prior experiences (probability distribution, in Bayesian terms)[5]. As a result, two observers of the same event will rationally arrive at different evidence, given the same facts, because their priors (previous experiences) differ.

The importance of background beliefs in the determination of what facts are evidence can also be illustrated using syllogistic logic as provided by Aristotle. A standard syllogism is a triad where two propositions jointly imply the conclusion[6]:

All men are mortal,

Aristotle is a man; therefore Aristotle is mortal.

If a person does not believe the propositions are affirmative, the facts will not be accorded the status of evidence. For example, believers of Intelligent design will arrive at a different result from the following syllogism than followers of Darwinism

Answer 17

Read about Fred Hoyle (easily one of the greatest astro-physicist of his era, despite what he thought of the Big Bang theory).

Fred was an atheist.  He was proud of that.  He was against the Big Bang theory because it allowed for the possibility that the universe, having a beginning, might have been created.

As far as he was concerned, the theory was invented by a priest (Lemaitre -- who came up with the Primordial Atom Hypothesis) just for the purpose of giving God a role in the creation of the universe.

Fred was pushing the other theory, called Steady State, which explained the expansion of the universe while keeping the universe eternal (no beginning = no need for a creator).

The name Big Bang was given to the theory by Fred, to make fun of the theory and to confuse people into thinking about an explosion -- which everyone knew was impossible.

Until the discovery of the Cosmological Microwave Background (CMB) radiation and of quasars, most astronomers preferred the Steady State theory to the Big Bang theory.  

The Steady State theory was much easier to use (more useful).  It also satisfied the idea of the Perfect Cosmological Principle (the universe looks the same everywhere, in all directions and for all times).  But it required the universe to always stay around the same average temperature.

Big Bang, on the other hand, required that the early universe be very hot.  Which caused some astronomers to think of a way to prove it wrong:  if it was so hot in the past, then there must have been a time when it was not transparent, and we should be able to see the radiation that was released when it became transparent.

When the CMB radiation was detected, that confirmed the universe was hot in the past:  it "proved" a prediction made by the Big Bang theory.  As for Steady State, not only did it not predict the CMB radiation, it had in fact required that it not exist.

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As for what came before, the Big Bang theory does not know and is not able to tell us.  It simply describes what happens to a universe (hot and dense at the start) that expands while cooling.  It simply accepts the fact that the universe was that way.

Answer 18

Being an agnostic, I really can't speak for atheists, but I suspect, since they tend to be very, very rational, that they accept it as the best theory we have about the origin of the universe. They wouldn't have religious doubts or objections, would they?  And I'm sure they are just as puzzled about how it happened as anyone else who has bothered to learn about it.

Answer 19

1. IT NEVER SAYS IT CAME FROM NOTHING! the thing that "exploded" is called the primeval atom. it was a singularity of pure energy. how is that nothing?

2. anything that deals with the creation of the primeval atom is not the big bang theory. it is a completely different theory all together.

and if the big bang is wrong explain these

the cosmic microwave background

the redshifted galaxies

the ratio of hydrogen to helium

the ratio of light to heavy elements

the amount of deuterium

the uniformity of the universe

the large scale structure of the universe

Answer 20

First of all, atheism is lack of a believe in a god.  It doesn't mean atheists know anything about the formation of the universe.  But I do, and I happen to be an atheist.  

Big bang theory describes how the universe began from a singularity and expanded into what we have today.  It doesn't say anything about where that singularity came from, and we don't know - there's a chance we emerged from the collapse of a previous universe, but we're not certain about that.

Answer 21

Big bang is not a theory for how the universe started but how it was and is forming.

Actually I encounter more theist using it as support of the existence of god, being that its metaphysics require a "first cause" and theist simply use that as a way to attach the god persona to the concept and pass it off as evidence that their beliefs are justified.

These arguments are flawed as support for a theistic philosophy.

Email me if you want to know why.

Aside from that m-theory deals with this problem and it is among the many reason it is such a promising concept.

quantum fluctuations can not occur without at least one spatial dimension as the uncertainity principle must have a spatial dimension to form fluctuations in.

In m-theory there is a lower limit to how "small" the universe can be.

As a result it would never collapse past a certian point if we apply the same methods used to form big bang theory which employed relativity with a backwards arrow of time, or to rewind what we have and are observing.

With m-theorys lower limit the singularity of big bang does not vanish but has a cap and an inversion of spatial contexts with regards to the actual size of the univese detirmed by how you probe that size.

If you used wound strings or unwound strings to calculate that size.

The physics do not change only the context.