What came from what?

Alright.. a few basic questions.

If God created us, how did God come about?

If we're just a random combination of whatever, how did the first particle/element/whatever come into existence?

The universe couldn't have just 'been there'. But how could it have started in nothingness?

Something is at the beginning of everything, but how was that something created?

You guys get what I want to know.. Thinking about this kind of stuff makes me unable to sleep at night because my mind starts going crazy.

I need some answers, or good theories.. and not the one that says "the universe never really started", that's just a smart sounding way of saying you don't know. So, fill me in, put my mind at rest for a few nights.. please..

There has got to be a basic clarifier. What is god, basically? It needs to be defined.

To entertain the story of god, I think most everyone with god beliefs will agree that god is a source of energy, among other things. You certainly need energy to create stuff. Doesn't the story say that the last day was for rest? Rest for what, to get more energy. Where does that energy come from? When did it start? What were the steps that got it where it is today?

god is the default answer to things not yet known.

Evolution is about the change of existing life. It has nothing to do with the start of it all. Abiogenesis is about the beginning of life out of all that exists now and in the past. First off the big bang was not an explosion, it was an expansion. But what was in the beginning seams rather simplistic to me. Energy.

use this theory E=MC2. In the begining there was energy.

First you have energy. Then you get matter. Works for everyone here. Simple huh?

Now the problem and the division is science.

You either understand and apply the basic sciences to the real world or you make stuff up. Were you upset when you found out how much your parents lied to you when you grew up? How did you first learn/hear about god?

Thunder or a sneeze?

"God bless you" is said like a reflex after someone sneezes, interesting.

When a child hears thunder and sees lightning for the first time it is almost always explained by a lie. Something about god is bowling, or throwing lightning rods at bad people, or just plain angry about something. The details are not important but eventually you were taught some science. Well I hope you were. But thunder as we all know is the result of suddenly supper heating the air and water vapor by a bolt of lightning. The superheating causes sudden expansion which causes a thunder, a big bang. Wow, full circle.

So slowly stories you most likely were told as you grew up became untrue. No big deal huh. Maybe you were told that if you do bad god will strike you down. Great, I'm safe then, god will take care of all the bad people. Ever heard of a serial killer? What's up with that? (Are they Nephilm?) Do these guys have a lifetime pardon from god? What the @#@^%!!!

Ok, so there appears there may have been a few more false things that we may have been taught to keep us in line as we were growing up. False things, hum, doesn't that diminish the credibility of the source of all your information of you entire life to that point? You were told stories to learn values. The most important thing in the world is values. People seam to skirt the purpose quite often. You have been taught values and god was a huge part of that. Huge. Did I say huge? Well anyway, some people were influenced more then others as the grew up. But it is pretty hard to remove what has been driven into you as right and wrong. Can you instill solid values into your children without ever mentioning god? Most likely not, unless maybe you are an atheist. Did you chose your religion? I'm guessing not. Most likely your religion is that of your parents. They taught you all about your religion and about god and about thunder........

How did god come about?
He was made up to answer things we can't explain to you.
god bless you ''


Based on many observed events, causes and results.
In the beginning there was energy, and it was unstable. What is energy? electrons? particles? quarks? This part could be a long story.
Anyway, flowing electricity has several effects. In an atmosphere it can make thunder. In a vacuum (or the near vacuum of space) and in an atmosphere it makes an electromagnetic wave or pulse. This is a simplistic STORY of how the atom works. It is important that it is understood that this is simplified because the details, well lets just say a doctorate degree of knowledge would be required. But anyhow, that magnetism causes attractions, the electric charges causes repulsions. There was lots of banging of charged particles and sparks and basic chaos. But over time electrons were shattering protons and neutrons were being formed. Soon, bingo hydrogen! Matter is formed. E=MC2. What is time? Billions or trillions or infinitely plus one years ago? Does it really matter? ''

Know anyone who won the lottery on January 12th 1997? What are the odds? Pretty freakin small, but, not impossible. We could go our whole lives and never know someone who won. But suppose we lived forever. Eventually we would know someone who won, eventually. Well, it didn't take forever it took forever less one year. Energy changed form into matter.

Hydrogen is the simplest of all of our defined elemental elements (particles of matter, check out the periodic table of the elements). Over time and under conditions, which may never exist again, all of the particles of matter were formed. Electron bombardment under pressures and temperatures and radiation, and magnetism, and forces we may not yet know of. Plasmas and fusion and fission, matter was formed over and unknown, unspeculated amount of time.

There's a lot to explain. I can't explain all this now there isn't enough time, oh that's relative so let me sell out and say

god did it.

naw, there's no god. It would set a precedent that would make ghosts and goblins real. (the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Which is it? you are only supposed to pray to one god but, you list three)


They say god always existed, why? The earth didn't, we didn't. What would be the purpose of god before earth? Trillions of years with #@%$ to do. Why god? Why then? Why ever?
Values, just to teach values. Not a bad thing huh? Being taught the most important things in life but, under false pretences. We as a human race have set ourselves up for this by the way we teach. We are not objective to our world. People really need a structure to learn values and god fills that need, religion fills that need. People want to believe and with the principle benefit of values (of the appearance of values, religion out of convenience in no religion at all) how can anyone say that it is wrong? Religions feels attacked when you question their purpose. How many successful religions are killing people?

Isn't that how it became so big? by killing? People were taught values and told their religion. The inquisition was very successful at its mission, it won. Religion has been permanently fixed into the human culture. It is and has always been the biggest excuse for war because it divides. People make up different stories and believe them and fight for them. Viola, terrorists.

In the beginning there was energy, not nothingness. Slowly all of the elemental particles were formed. Different forces caused all the different forms of particles, to form matter, to form material. Nothing created. We are all made up of elemental particles. All those particles are made of electrons, protons, and neutrons. These are all the original particles that were once just energy. Only their form has changed, nothing was created.

God on the other hand just popped up outta energy, intelligence from nowhere and 10,000 years ago, magically created planets and stars and put billions of years of light into motion to fake us all out about the age of the universe.
Yeah,....... plausible if you have no values.


en.wikipedia.org...

Abiogenesis is being successfully tested in labs here on earth. Pretty dam amazing that this can be done in this gravity, in this atmosphere, under these pressures without the left handed protein effects of a supernova.

This book will answer a lot
www.forum2.org...

Note: Science will only answer how it happened not why, that is philosophy.''

i am the complete opposite of religious i know god does not exist i do belive in karma though because i like to do right but to belive in god is stupid! i was watching programmes about babies born with diabilities and there parents would be like "why has god done this what did i do wrong BOO HOO!" the answer is they didnt do anything its down to genetics etc. So this is one reason why god doesnt exist but then after all this the christians come out and just say "god works in mysterious ways" which is just an excuse to get them out of little a complete tit for believing in nothinh all their lives! Scientists belive the world was just like other planets before it was inhabited and that it had a huge amount of gases that were able to hold a stable atmosphere for living organisms. They believe that simple celled organisms where first made and then plants and then these where able to evolve into bigger things like frogs which decided they were sick of water and started going on land, most died because they werent properly adapted but after a long time they grew legs and stuff and started living on ground then bla bla bla bla bla bla humans! the thing is christian people WE HAVE EVIDENCE all you have is a manky old book! In my opinion jesus was just a magician and a prankster and beacuse people where retards back then they thought what he was doing where miracles!

Do you exist? Are you sure?

Does your computer monitor exist? Are you sure?

Pinch your arm and leg? Do you feel it? Does feeling it prove you pinched yourself, or even that you have a physical self? Are you sure?

Are there other people near you: in your house, out on the street? Are you sure?

Is that your reflection in the mirror? Are you sure?

Does your country exist? Do you really see other people when you go to the mall or to work? Are you sure? Can you prove it? Can you prove any of this exists? How? How do you know or prove, beyond doubt, that you aren't locked in a straightjacket in an asylum, spending your life hallucinating all that you currently believe to be 'reality' ?

Does the Earth really roll around space in company with the Moon, Mars, the Sun, etc? How can you prove that? How do you know they aren't all cardboard cut-outs in a five year old child's book? How can you prove that the Earth is not just a mouldy orange sitting in a bowl on a sideboard somewhere, with 'humanity' simply a mircroscopic fungi on that orange?

Can you prove that Earth and everything on it aren't just a few bytes in some cosmic child's computer game? For fun, every now and then, that cosmic child destroys a city or civilization through war or tsunami.

That child would howl with laughter if he realised that the creatures in his game, or the fungi on the orange in his living-room were having intense discussions about their origins (no pun intended) and creator/s.

No point losing sleep about it. We believe we're here, whether or not we are. And we can't get out of it until we do. After that, we have to take eternity as we find it, whether or not there is eternity. If we were meant to know, we would. We don't.

i totally agree

Mod Edit
sent U2U for 1-line post

[edit on 8-4-2006 by masqua]

Originally posted by Zodiac
Alright.. a few basic questions.

If God created us, how did God come about?

If we're just a random combination of whatever, how did the first particle/element/whatever come into existence?

The universe couldn't have just 'been there'. But how could it have started in nothingness?

Something is at the beginning of everything, but how was that something created?

You guys get what I want to know.. Thinking about this kind of stuff makes me unable to sleep at night because my mind starts going crazy.

I need some answers, or good theories.. and not the one that says "the universe never really started", that's just a smart sounding way of saying you don't know.

So, fill me in, put my mind at rest for a few nights.. please..

maybe we r all just a simulation and what created god. it must have been his god and his god and so on. we r sort of in a nightmarish loophole.

Yes god created the material universes; as a prison to be our own gods

[edit on 26-4-2006 by vortigen]

Let me help in our understanding of existence, if I can; or that is, if any will hear. I have discovered one subject which ties together science, philosophy, and religion. So let us start with that in our attempt to understand ultimate reality. These three subjects and statements are one and the same thing: (1) The six nights and six days and sabbath of creation. (2) The law of eternal progression to ultimate continnum, and (3) The number and order of the twelve universes of the cosmos. The first is a religious statement, the second is a philosophical statement, and the third is a scientific statement. And they are each saying the same thing! Can you see it? Understanding reality depends upon the dicipline one is in and what level one is at. For instance, if a child asks: Where did I come from. His parents might say that we love you, and God gave you to us. Then the child might ask, How do you make ice cream? See? That is like the gospel - it is baby talk - and all that children need at that time. Another way of saying it is "the milk of the gospel." The ultimate answer to creation and existence is this: the twelve nights and days of the creation story are actually the twelve universes of the cosmos. Creation is still going on, and always will, and this physical universe is the night before the third day. Immortality is the third day universe, and that is why Jesus was resurrected on the third day. Get it? All this is explained in my book, which is offered for free, at www.losttruthfound.com. Hope this helps, I am truthound.

I don't think anybody is addressing Zodiac's initial question properly, in that what should be being discussed is what came before EVERYTHING regardless of the existence of God or whatnot. I would suggest he Googles string theory and M-theory as these are the topics that come closest to trying to explain/discover what begat everything. These are extremely difficult concepts to understand though and impossible to put neatly in laymans terms, because by their nature you have to totally change the way you look at multi-dimensional existence or non-existence, what energy is, and what void is.

Personally, I am trying very hard to get some understanding of these thories, without much success, my limited understanding so far makes me unable to articulate my fledgling thoughts on the matter; As soon as I start trying to arrange the thoughts in my head in order to be able to write them down, I get tangled up again. Thus, if anybody has some good links to discussion or explanations of string or M theory, could you post them?

We had a discussion about this in a lesson once. And also me and my friends had one (interesting aren't we?)

My friends, who are Muslim/Sikh, and myself, atheist, were discussing how everything started.

I said that first there was nothing, and then there was something, and then the Big Bang (which in itself sounds like a creationist theory).
My friends then said how can nothing just become?
I then argued that as we don't understand the nature of nothing, beyond it being a vacuum, we can't attribute characteristics to it.

He dismissed that and said Allah made everything. I then asked what made Allah and he said (in these exact words) "Nothing."
I smiled at him and said how did he come from nothing?

from nothing, nothing comes and life comes from life, perky123 you say you believe in karma, and you also believe a scientific theory, that all life started with a single cell that then evolved into other forms of life?, yet you dont believe in god, then what or who created the first cell and how did that cell know to evolve into other forms of life?, so a complex being like a human just accidently evolved from a chemical soup. when a baby is concieved a living sperm and a living egg come together right? you wouldnt expect a dead sperm and egg to create a human. so in the same way, how can a chemical soup become life?scientist dont have any evidence as to the origin of the first cell, all they have are theories. and even these theories have all failed. how can complex life evolve by accident? .some force had to write a code in our dna. and if there is other intelligent life in the universe, how can life just accidently appear elsewhere besides earth? and as to the birth of the universe, scientist have determined that the universe began with the big bang, a single point of matter. this is like a seed, which has grown into the universe and everything in it. the question is who or what planted that seed and wrote the instructions on what it would grow. and i doubt that god had a begining or has an end, concepts like that only have meaning in this universe.

Originally posted by Zodiac
If we're just a random combination of whatever, how did the first particle/element/whatever come into existence?

The universe couldn't have just 'been there'. But how could it have started in nothingness?

Something is at the beginning of everything, but how was that something created?

All our evidence shows that :

- The universe appeared from the "Big bang"
- Life appeared from a primordial soup of organic elements in a primitive,hostile earth.

There are theories that explain how the big bang happened and guess what provoked it (string theory...)

But the real answer is : We don't know why the universe exists

I don't even know if we will know one day, but it is two easy to explain the universe through religion (there is 0 evidence behind god's existance)

Note: Science will only answer how it happened not why, that is philosophy.''

Philosophy can say the big bang happened for x or y reasons, but those claims have as much value as if i said the universe is flat and lies on the back of a turtle, they have absolutely no backup.

[edit on 31-5-2006 by DarkSide]

One of the major points about God's character that most people agree with is that he is infinite.

If this is true, and we use the reasoning that everything has to have a beginning, then infinity could not exist because there is no such thing as infinity having a beginning. Infinity always exists without beginning or ending. Whatever else infinity is, that to say it has a beginning, destroys the definition of the term.

Either one needs to disagree that God is infinite or accept that using time language of beginnings and endings is not useful when speaking about the infinite aspect of God's being. God's reality either exceeds time which means he is self caused, or God does not exist. It is either/or. There is no middle ground. That makes agnosticism a case of not being able to make one's mind up about the evidence.

Think of this as well:

If God exists, he is one. Being One as God means that his unity can not be broken apart and dissected. Does His unity exist in infinity and not anywhere else? Is that what causes confusion among we time travelers about our Creator's lack of beginnings? Do we mix up our need to grow when God never had to grow? It appears, therefore, that God can not be compared to us in certain ways such as our capacity to learn. WE have to learn to have greater capacity, but God already has an infinite capacity as nothing can exhaust him.

If God and the universe are different parts of the same Oneness, then the universe takes on some of the characteristics that God has. Using time beginnings to investigate the underlying cause of the universe leads to uncovering more cycles of more beginnings followed by other endings, but God in his infinity has no such cycle as He is always himself as the Eternal Now in the eternal clothing of a universe. For we time beings to experience the cause of the universe we then would no longer be time beings.

If the universe is at one with the Creator, then its God-center came into being by fiat by the divine will (as God did) at the same time, and all else evolved from its center as a time experience. Does God therefore plan to have time exhaust itself with one last ending to approximate the perfection of its eternal center? Does this mean the learning of science ends with its perfection in time? Can the humanities, the arts and music be perfected? Does man himself reach the end of time at some point to reach a human perfection?

Such are far more simple questions than the question that asks how God came to be. The simplest answer is to say that God has will just as we do to choose what acts to do or not do. God chose to have a universe. He chose to be self evident to the spiritual universe but to be less direct in the sub-infinite cosmos so as not to subvert time into infinity. As hard as that may be to fathom in time, the acts of God are laws that govern time as well as infinity, but minds and beings behave differently in each. It's just that in infinity there are no secrets, but in time there is a constant discovery to uncover the secrets of being and why things are the way they are.

Ron

How can something be infinite? That sounds to me like your saying that he just is. If that is what your saying then HOW is he? Something cannot just exist, and if you say it can then your arguing against yourself. If a deity can just be then why can't the universe?

We have scientific, empirical, falsifiable evidence for the Big Bang (the simple version is that the Universe is moving outwards in the same way matter does from an explosion).
But for god we only have faith. Faith cannot be measured. Faith isn't an accurate way to account for something.

The whole idea of a god or designer arises from primitive people believing that nature, in all its wonder and splendour and beauty, must have been created. Some all powerful thing must have made this world around us. Any thing they didn't like, such as man's destructive nature or something ugly, was either created or twisted by an anti-god (in Christian terms Satan)

As we move further and further into the future we are able to account for more and more things. Thunder isn't the sound of an angry God chastising you for adultery, it is some kind of air pressure thing I don't understand.

JackOfBlades -

You seem to be of the definite opinion that science is real and God is a myth? Let me take your post and reply with alternatives to your statements.

JoB:
How can something be infinite? That sounds to me like your saying that he just is. If that is what your saying then HOW is he? Something cannot just exist, and if you say it can then your arguing against yourself. If a deity can just be then why can't the universe?

A:
Take the other side of your question: How can something not be infinite? My question is of equal weight to yours, and neither question has a definite answer on this side of time.

God is an un-caused cause. Let that sink in. If it is new to your thinking, it will take some time to get comfortable with such a possibility. We have no un-caused causes in the universe of time, so that should give you some idea just how complex the multi-reality universe really is.

The material universe, or at least as we see it, has causes, but the underlying energy was supplied from the infinite supplies of Unqualified energy. And because it is of an unqualified source, the energy, as well as the source, can not be destroyed.

If you prefer your own language, God does just exist through his own self-cause. One has to stop using the ideas and language of time to even begin to fathom in what way this is possible.


JoB:
We have . . . evidence for the Big Bang . . . . But for god we only have faith. Faith cannot be measured. Faith isn't an accurate way to account for something.

A:
When someone asks about how God is or can be then the response has to take into consideration that all of reality includes more than the physical sciences. God made the physical universe, but he also made the minds that study it, and the spirit that values it. Only the material universe can be studied using empirical evidence, all other realities transcend the physical explanations of physical effects. Faith is not blind but leaves the evidence of things unseen to be more fully explained later. God is not all subjective either.

Someday man will give up his childish view that explosions and big bangs are evidences of the first causes of the Cosmic Supreme. Until then, man will have to backtrack out of his errors about universe causes to find a better theory. Meanwhile, those causes to bring the material universe into being are far more sublime than observing the excitation and compression of hydrogen gas so abundant in the physical realm. What brings the hydrogen atom into being in the first place? How does a nebula precipitate matter and then obtain a rotation Might it be acted on by the God of energy?

JoB:
The whole idea of a god or designer arises from primitive people . . . .

A:
That is part of the social history taught in these modern times. It is not wrong. But neither does it go far enough. Since when does ANY history relate the full facts and interpret all the details correctly to the reader? The assassination of Kennedy is a perfect example of how many versions of history we are subject to. The history of religion is divided into two grand streams of thought: One - the evolutionary religions of churches and temples; Two - the personal religions of God-knowing humans throughout the ages. Either history is incomplete and we have yet to experience a genuine cosmology based on these histories, so take it under advisement that more has to be discovered as to why the human need for religion is universal. Does God get so close to us each that he can trigger a mind to want to know the greatest spiritual love there is? What is the attraction of God's love, and why do we seem to always look outside of ourselves to find it?

Ron

i totally agree with dock6.

this sort of questioning, i mean where did it all began.. why/how/where/when/what comes out of nothingness is sort of ridiculously pointless. take an apple and give it to a kid, then ask him how many seeds in that apple, it would've been dead easy for that kid to figure out.

but if u take one seed from that apple and give it to a scientist and ask him how many apples would there be? can u really imagine? u can indulge in theories after theories.. u can debate it all your life, but still u won't find a definite answer to that.

so now, imagine that u are a drop of water, that turned into ice as u drop from the clouds. u then dropped into the ocean, you, the drop of ice is surrounded by water. then as u melt slowly in the ocean, u become the ocean. finally, u disappear into the ocean and u become one with it. the thing is, do u now acquire the attributes of the ocean or are u still the same drop of water?

what would be the right answer?

ok, now take a piece of cloth and question it (say, this is good way of going crazy). suppose it replies to our questions. this is how it will proceed.

Q: are u handkerchief?
A: no, i'm not. i'm a cloth.
Q: u are a piece of cloth then.
A: no i'm not. i'm threads put together.
Q: u are thread then.
A: nope. i'm cotton.
Q: so u are cotton?
A: nah, i'm fibre.
Q: oh u are fibre!
A: actually i'm molecules of carbon bonded together.
Q: please tell me u are carbon molecules.
A: really, i'm a combination of electrons and protons.

and so on and so on until finally, when we come to the smallest particle. the conversation would've been something like:

Q: u are the smallest particle then?
A: nope. i am light. sometimes solid and sometimes i'm just a wave of light..

we could venture into the physics of quantum mechanics, but the possibilities could be endless. but do u notice that in the end, no one and nothing has a name unless it has a supposed existence. and yet when we look deeply into matter, its existence disappears and similarly the names disappear too, if we look at each name closely.

so, names only define what is whole and not what is in focus. in other words to perceive an object, the name defines the wholeness. but when u focus on a particular part of the object, u will see something with another name and so on.

hence the ultimate question - if all physical existence are just waves of light, what and who we are? are we not space between the waves of light?

i am a moslem and i believe what we call matter is actually nothing but energy. i am a moslem and i believe that the world or any other world is like the movie matrix. u have to dig deep and ask yourself - if matter is not real, then what is it that gives energy its intelligence and what controls it? is there an overseeing intelligence, a supreme being that is omnipotent, omnipresent and timeless?

now, if we deduce that matter is non existence, then what is reality? or better yet - what is the real reality?

or u can ask yourself what the rubbish is this guy talking about? either way the choice is yours. believe what u want to believe in, and knowledge is everywhere.. but it is wisdom that brings u forward to somewhere.......................... but where?

Originally posted by perky_123
...WE HAVE EVIDENCE all you have is a manky old book! In my opinion jesus was just a magician and a prankster and beacuse people where retards back then they thought what he was doing where miracles!

We don't just have a "manky old book", we have our own personal, spritual experiences, etc.

Also, I can assure you that people "back then" weren't retarded. What about the Ancient Egyptians, they were on Earth many, many years before Christ and his followers, are you calling them retarded too? I don't think retards could build huge pyramids, do you?

Evolution doesn't prove that God doesn't exist at all. How do you know that God didn't design life so that it would evolve?


By the way, I find your post very offensive.

Try not to be offensive just because you think someone is wrong (manky old book comment). Argue forcefully but respectfully.
Argonloc, I never said I don't believe in God, I just don't believe in your God. I'm a more nature worshipping kinda guy and I worship Mother Nature.

I am saying that because we can't study absolute nothingness (I'm talking something that is an absolute emptiness. Not even a vacuum) we can't say what properties it has. Whose to say that a universe can't spring from nothing? Or for that matter a god?
You have your theories and I have mine, except my beliefs are not inthe simple answer that God created everything, as i find many problems with it.
Mainly, assuming nothing can come from nothing, what did god create everything with? As he was the only thing did he cut off an arm and use that? Or did he just magic it into existence (which contradicts the nothing from nothing)? And answers such as "he can do it because he is omnipotent" are not exactly helpful. Can God create something he couldn't do? If he can then he isn't omnipotent, and if he can't he isn't.

Originally posted by JackofBlades
Try not to be offensive just because you think someone is wrong (manky old book comment). Argue forcefully but respectfully.

I don't really see how my post is offensive. I was just stating my opinions, and I hope people can respect them just as I respect their's.

I don't think the human mind has the ability to imagine nothingness, when I try to imagine nothingness, it just makes my head hurt. I imagine a kind of three-dimensional black canvas... but then, surely if it was truely nothingness, it wouldn't even be black? Maybe it's not even 3-D.

Yeah, now my head hurts... again.

I was referring to the person you were talking to, but I forgot his name midpost. Sorry for the confusion.

Thats what I mean about nothing. We can't even comprehend it so how can we attribute behaviour to it.

[edit on 23/6/06 by JackofBlades]