Where do athiests think we came from?

[freetoroam]

The only things that may apear to not have a cause are the things we don't fully understand. I'm no determinist... Not by a stretch, but every observation every man has made seems to have a cause until we get to the horizon of our capabilities to observe.

I understand.

Some mens observation of the "cause" can differ, eg: religiously...then we have a whole different ball game.

[redhen]

The OP's question "where did we come from" without a creator is tied to the old question "why is there something rather than nothing? The scientific answer is that "nothing (meaning emptiness) is unstable.

Virtual particles are one example of something coming from nothing.

"they are called virtual particles or vacuum fluctuations of vacuum energy. In a certain sense, they can be understood to be a manifestation of the time-energy uncertainty principle in a vacuum"

So who needs a "creator" ?

[+Liquid Gardens]

If there was nothing, then how does that spawn something?

understanding the force that created us is clearly outside the realms of our comprehension.

It sounds like your second sentence addresses your question.

What we know for sure is that everything in this reality needs a cause in order to have an effect. The big bang is no exception. If it came from somewhere where things needed no cause, then that would leave a gray area for it to have spawned from somewhere mystical all the same (because everything we know in this reality needs a cause).

Define 'this reality' and the bounds of it. Does that include other universes and also the 'mystical' realm whatever that is? When it comes to physical laws, I think you need to bound them at 'this universe', not 'this reality' (assuming there is something else other than our universe); we have no access to other universes if they exist and thus have no evidence that the same physical laws apply outside of our own. Is it your opinion that there is some type of 'meta-time' that was passing while there was no universe, pre-Big Bang? What created that meta-realm?

[Ever Learning]

The OP's question "where did we come from" without a creator is tied to the old question "why is there something rather than nothing? The scientific answer is that "nothing (meaning emptiness) is unstable.

Virtual particles are one example of something coming from nothing.

"they are called virtual particles or vacuum fluctuations of vacuum energy. In a certain sense, they can be understood to be a manifestation of the time-energy uncertainty principle in a vacuum"

So who needs a "creator" ?

why is emptiness unstable and can these tempory fluctations start the ball rolling?

a creator can still be the hand behind any of the ways that everything began

[White Crane Feather]

The OP's question "where did we come from" without a creator is tied to the old question "why is there something rather than nothing? The scientific answer is that "nothing (meaning emptiness) is unstable.

Virtual particles are one example of something coming from nothing.

"they are called virtual particles or vacuum fluctuations of vacuum energy. In a certain sense, they can be understood to be a manifestation of the time-energy uncertainty principle in a vacuum"

So who needs a "creator" ?

When a scientist says "nothing" it really means "I don't know". Vacuum energy appears to come from nothing. Or it might just come from somewhere that we are not or cannot be aware of. It might come from nothing... But the very nature of nothing hides if it might actually be something.

[Hasina]

How to create and manage Universe:

1) ???

2) Universe!

3) ???

4) PROFIT!

5) Heat Death

[Professor Buzzkill]

Either you believe in a creation (whether or not its cause is conscious) or you ascribe god like properties to the universe (i.e. it always existed, even outside of time and space)

Also, this idea of an expansion/contraction staged universe is not likely for a number of reasons. The first being that we don't even have 1/10th of the matter required to stop the universe expanding. But the reason i dislike this theory is that it is a theory that puts the start of the universe further from us, rather than bringing the answer closer.

[Beckys_Mom]

The universe is female, she is always willing to make something out of nothing....... So my husband tells me... lol

Edited November 28, 2012 by Beckys_Mom

[Setton]

my answer is the same as the likes I have clipped above,

One thing i can most certainly definately tell you is where we did not come from....god. IMO

Certainly, definitely, in your opinion? Please tell me that was meant to be a joke

[redhen]

why is emptiness unstable and can these tempory fluctations start the ball rolling?

a creator can still be the hand behind any of the ways that everything began

Nature (and cats) abhor a vacuum It's a funny idiom, but it's also my gut instinct.

More seriously, as I understand it certain particles can spring up, short lived, out of nothing. I'm not a quantum physicist so I could be all wrong. From wiki;

"In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a metastable sector of space that appears to be a perturbative vacuum, but is unstable due to instanton effects that may tunnel to a lower energy state"

Of course it doesn't prove that the universe popped into existence out of nothing, but it does show that certain particles can.

And yes, you are correct, a creator could be behind all these events but it's not a requirement.

[iforgot]

It sounds like your second sentence addresses your question.

I'm sorry, I made a typo here. I meant understanding the force that created the force... Sorry!

[al-amiyr]

The universe is female, she is always willing to make something out of nothing....... So my husband tells me... lol

That's what the Qur'aan says as well. It calls the universe "she".

Edited November 29, 2012 by al-amiyr

[Bendy Demon]

If the universe started with nothing, how do you get something from nothing?

I have said it before so I will say it again, there is no such thing as "nothing". We use that term to denote the state of any situation, circumstance or object that lacks anything of interest, value, use or relevance to us.

There is no "beginning" or an "end" for that matter. "Before" and "after" are terms that are only relevant when comparing the state of being of two or more things or eras but only in relation to the present or when compared to one another.

We can say, with some manner of accuracy, that our solar system "began" at this point and will "end" at a hypothesized date yet the material that was used as building blocks for our system was most likely the remnants of another system before that.

If we are to understand that all matter is just another form or frequency of energy then that energy itself has would have no particular beginning or end but merely a point in transmutation so to speak. To argue where that energy began is about as fruitless as debating where the wind began since one energy fluctuation, like heat, moves air thus creating wind which in turn moves air elsewhere and in the process will be the catalyst for other processes.

OR..to put it more simply, take a circle then try to determine where it began and where it ends.

[Magicjax]

One question that comes to mind is this. Is there a limit to how much energy there can be in a single space?

I'm not sure if I'm able to put into words what I'm thinking here. But just to try to give a scale. Lets take a space the size of a golf ball. How much energy is possible to fit in the space the size of a golf ball? I'm not asking how much energy we, with our current technology, can put in that space. I'm talking about how much is possible to fit in that space.

I'm no scientist but I'm guessing if you think about nuclear energy, the atom bomb and all the possibilities we've yet to discover about energy itll be quite a bit.

What is matter made of? Energy right? So when people ask about something coming from nothing. They are suggesting there was no energy before our universe. Which we know that there was energy before our universe because we know there are other universes. We have to assume some of them existed before ours did.

So when I think about that. When I think about the "something from nothing". I don't think about matter. Matter is the result of energy. The beginning of our universe and in a long run the beginning of life as we know it. Is the result of energy creating matter. The Big Bang as we call it isn't a matter of a collection of matter. It's a matter of energy forming matter. Energy create all the elements on our periodic table. The right combinations of these elements create all the matter we have including life itself. We, all matter and life, are really just a collage of those elements.

So when you ask the "something from nothing" question. Ask yourself. Are you picturing "nothing" as no matter or no energy?

I hope I was able to express my thought on this in understandable words.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Magicjax

[willowdreams]

I guess for me it is one of those 'unknowns', I do not know if the answer will be discovered in my lifetime.

I do know though, the the question of where we came from is just as unanswerable for me an agnostic/atheist as it should be for a Christian.

If a Christian is totally open minded then they would need to ask 'where did God come from', and not give a 'blanket answer' as having no ending or beginning, just was.

Or I could give same answer to 'life', always was, no ending, no beginning, just ever evolving

[Rlyeh]

for god to have existed for ever he would have to exist out of time, to create time

In order for god to act, he would have to exist in time. Causality is such an example which even affects god (both Biblically and according to logical arguments for his existence). Edited November 29, 2012 by Rlyeh

[Rlyeh]

I asked the ocean ( a representation of primordial conciousness in my visions) during an OBE, how it was created. It said ( more of a telepathic understanding rather than language) that it dosnt remember.

Who needs research when you can just day dream.

[White Crane Feather]

Who needs research when you can just day dream.

It wasn't a day dream, you would call it an induced lucid hypnagogic trance.

I'm not sure you can research what a universal conciousness would remember or not. If it does exist you are probably just going to have to find a way to ask it.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Seeker79

[Rlyeh]

It wasn't a day dream, you would call it an induced lucid hypnagogic trance.

I wouldn't call it that. Were you high?

[Imaginarynumber1]

From http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=541

First of all, note that mass and energy are equivalent. So, the total mass of the Universe need not be conserved even though the total energy (taking into account the energy that is equivalent of the mass in the Universe) is conserved. Mass and energy are related by the famous equation E=mc2. Hence if there is enough energy, photons can create matter-antimatter pairs. This is called pair production and is responsible for the mass in the Universe.

As to where everything came from, there is no conclusive opinion. One idea was that the Universe was created from vacuum. This is because according to quantum theory, the apparently quiescent vacuum is not really empty at all. For example, it is possible for an electron and a positron (a matter antimatter pair) to materialize from the vacuum, exist for a brief flash of time and then disappear into nothingness. Such vacuum fluctuations cannot be observed directly as they typically last for only about 10-21seconds and the separation between the electron and positron is typically no longer than 10-10 cm. However, through indirect measurements, physicists are convinced that these fluctuations are real.

Hence, any object in principle might materialize briefly in the vacuum. The probability for an object to materialize decreases dramatically with the mass and complexity of the object. In 1973, Edward Tyron proposed that the Universe is a result of a vacuum fluctuation. The main difficulty of this proposal is that the probability that a 13.7 billion year old Universe could arise from this mechanism is extremely small. In addition, physicists would question Tyron's starting point: if the Universe was born from empty space, then where did the empty space come from? (Note that from the point of view of general relativity, empty space is unambiguously something, since space is not a passive background, but instead a flexible medium that can bend, twist and flex.)

In 1982, Alexander Vilenkin proposed an extension of Tyron's idea and suggested that the Universe was created by quantum processes starting from "literally nothing", meaning not only the absence of matter, but the absence of space and time as well. Vilenkin took the idea of quantum tunneling and proposed that the Universe started in the totally empty geometry and then made a quantum tunneling transition to a non-empty state (subatomic in size), which through inflation (the Universe expands exponentially fast for a brief period of time which causes its size to increase dramatically) came to its current size.

Another idea is from Stephen Hawking and James Hartle. Hawking proposed a description of the Universe in its entirety, viewed as a self-contained entity, with no reference to anything that might have come before it. The description is timeless, in the sense that one set of equations delineates the Universe for all time. As one looks to earlier and earlier times, one finds that the model Universe is not eternal, but there is no creation event either. Instead, at times of the order of 10-43 seconds, the approximation of a classical description of space and time breaks down completely, with the whole picture dissolving into quantum ambiguity. In Hawking's words, the Universe "would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE."

I find these ideas to be much simpler and actual possibilities as opposed to invoking magical deities or outlandish concepts such as massive consciousness. Time and space as we know it probably did not exist before the big bang and hence it is almost a meaningless question to ask what came before as there was no before as we can comprehend it. The oft used analogy of asking what is south of the south pole is quite reflective of the nature of the question of what came before.

[Etu Malku]

From http://curious.astro....php?number=541

I find these ideas to be much simpler and actual possibilities as opposed to invoking magical deities or outlandish concepts such as massive consciousness. Time and space as we know it probably did not exist before the big bang and hence it is almost a meaningless question to ask what came before as there was no before as we can comprehend it. The oft used analogy of asking what is south of the south pole is quite reflective of the nature of the question of what came before.

In Michio Kaku's book "Hyperspace" he cleverly explains how things don't quite add up to us, I'll try to reiterate from memory (should be good!)

Suppose you had this little flat 2 dimensional land with 3 two dimensional dudes hanging out together, well they can walk to the left, to the right as much as they want. Now, here comes along this 3 dimensional guy, he reaches inside 2 dimensional land and removes one the 2 dimensional dudes.

The remaining two can't fathom what just happened, he was here one second, this huge hand comes out of nowhere and miraculously he's gone the next!

For the next 200 years dozens of myths, legends, stories, explanaitions are formulated to explain what happened, some make sense, others are a bit hard to swallow . . . but, none of them are correct.

[Imaginarynumber1]

In Michio Kaku's book "Hyperspace" he cleverly explains how things don't quite add up to us, I'll try to reiterate from memory (should be good!)

Suppose you had this little flat 2 dimensional land with 3 two dimensional dudes hanging out together, well they can walk to the left, to th

e right as much as they want. Now, here comes along this 3 dimensional guy, he reaches inside 2 dimensional land and removes one the 2 dimensional dudes.

The remaining two can't fathom what just happened, he was here one second, this huge hand comes out of nowhere and miraculously he's gone the next!

For the next 200 years dozens of myths, legends, stories, explanaitions are formulated to explain what happened, some make sense, others are a bit hard to swallow . . . but, none of them are correct.

Yeah. I remember that. He was referencing Flatland. Great book. Worth the read. Sphereland (the unofficial sequel) was good as well.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Imaginarynumber1

[MidKn13ght]

Well i believe that we come from the sky, until the crane lands to deliver us to our new fond parents.....

[Coffey]

The real problem here is how to comprehend that which appears to be incomprehensible.

For me it is simple, the Universe (as we understand it) cycles through phases. We are living in an expanding phase giving plenty of time for Solar System creation and Evolution to exist, not forgetting "Time". When this phase submits itself to Entropic forces then the Universe (Ours) will contract again in preparation (not cognitive) for the next expansion.

No real Mystery here, and no need to invoke a "God" principle. IMO

You didn't explain how it was "created" int he first place.

I do not follow a religion, but I find it hilarious how Atheists and Scientists both NEVER anwer the question properly. All you did was explain how you think it works. Not how it started.

[Imaginarynumber1]

I do not follow a religion, but I find it hilarious how Atheists and Scientists both NEVER anwer the question properly. All you did was explain how you think it works. Not how it started.

That's because there isn't an answer. Just educated guesses based on decades of observation, experimentation and maths.