I can’t quite grasp your question. When I was a kid I said the universe has no end to one of my friends. And she said it had to end somewhere. I said well what is there some big sign at the end saying to turn back as you’ve reached the end of the universe? These are concepts we just can’t grasp in our feeble minds.

Close your eyes an what do you see? Black space right? Where does it end even in our minds? It’s as if it goes on forever! There are some things too far beyond our comprehension.

All we can work with is what we do know and understand. Hopefully one way we will all get the answers to our deepest questions.

God: Hi Stephen nice to meet you.
Stephen Hawking: God, that can’t be you, I have shown through science that there is no God.
God: Does not my presence prove you wrong?
Stephen Hawking: No, this can’t be right, I must be imagining this.
God: You mean like imagninary time?
Stephen Hawking: So you’ve read my book?
God: Well I sort of skimmed through it once.
Stephen Hawking: What did you think?
God: Well to start your title is a bit misleading. You call your book “A Brief History of Time”, but then you go on to say that time is just imaginary. I found that a little misleading. And then when you left me out, well let’s just say we almost had another Big Bang. And believe me you would have been imagining it for a long time after.
Stephen Hawking: Hmm, you have a point. I hope you’re still not offended.
God: It’s ok, I am no longer so angry at you as I am with this new Richard guy. He really gets under my spirit. How would you feel if someone dedicated their whole existence just to tell everyone that you didn’t exist?
Stephen Hawking: I see your point.
God: I’ve tried everything from parting seas, fire on Mount Sinai, I even rose from the dead, but people still think I’m not real. Everyone seems to believe in you, do you have any advice for me?
Stephen Hawking: The secret is no one will believe in you these days until you write a book. All you have to do is write a book, then they will believe.
God: No Stephen, I tried that already, but it didn’t work.
Stephen Hawking: Oh yeah.
God: What did you think of my book Stephen?
Stephen Hawking: Well, I sort of, well I umm, I sort of haven’t read it.
God: But I read yours!
Narrator: At this point there was a very large explosion, we can only pray for Stephen at this point. God was too angry to comment and quickly left the scene.

There are some experiences that would not exist in a perfect sinless existence. For example relief from pain, comfort in tough times, empathy for someone’s loss, etc. Perhaps we have to go through this to understand the fullness of our existence. It may be good to know what it’s like to hunger or thirst. Or to be pushed emotionally through enduring tough times. Who knows, perhaps only after we experience all that is wrong can we appreciate all that is right.

To me, this is not a reason why I don’t believe in God, though one of my principal arguments is related.

Much of judeo-christian (by which I include muslims and any other “People of the Book”) writings presents God as a being who is fair, but harsh. In some cases, he is even angry, punitive, jealous, and he “holds his enemies like snakes over the pits of hell”.

How can you possibly believe that someone who behaves in such an angry, punitive manner can be good? Our experience of the world shows us that anger, jealousy, vengeance and other harshnesses are not qualities associated with “good” people. And if God is not good, he is certainly not Good. And if he is not Good, then there are only two possibilities: either He exists and is not worth believing in, or He does not exist and is therefore also not worth believing in.

Daniel

As to how do I know I have all the options, it is simple, every option must either state the universe is either:

- Not Real

- Real and Eternal

- Real and With a Beginning

This covers every possibility and anything you can think of is just a variation of one of these buckets.

As to saying the Big Bang did not come from nothing but singularity, I say then where did singularity come from? You have the same issue, if singularity was eternal then it would remain just that eternally, unless it had a will to act.

As to why can’t the universe be eternal, the answer is that something within time and space cannot be eternal. You can never have an infinite succession of events. For example how many times has the earth spun? Or days have there been? The answer is finite and points to a beginning. For the universe to be eternal it would have to exist without change, but we know it changes.

God can be eternal as he is unchanging and outside of space and time.

As to time being man made, no matter how you slice it we have change in our universe. Where there is change there is a beginning. So we don’t even have to use the word time. The earth could not of spun an infinite number of times.

When we look at the world today it is obvious that something went wrong somewhere. Just about every culture in the world has some creation story where everything was originally good, and then evil entered in. As a result of this evil/sin, humankind was punished. We now have the promise of restoration, or a new heaven and earth where everything is made perfect.

No we cannot know everything there is to know about God, but we can know some truth about him. God gave us the ability to think and reason to uncover truth from error and right from wrong. He gave us the spiritual capacity to know him intimately even though we cannot see or touch him. He promises that if we seek him with all our hearts we will find him. And I can vouch for that.

Thanks for all your comments! I hope I’ve been able to answer the above posts to your satisfaction, I’m sure some will say no:)

There has been no evidence that the Universe is not eternal. You are ignoring the fact that Time (as well as religion, but i don’t expect you to admit this) are man made things.

“Something eternal is not created. Either the universe it eternal or something eternal with a will created it. We know the universe is not eternal as it exists within time and space and has a beginning.”

How can you claim to understand anything about “god”? Is your research from a book that has been re-written several times over the course of its existence, which was started by men? Also, the universe has a central point that it is expanding out from, not that it has a beginning. We also know that it is expanding to an undefined point. The part that scientists don’t know is for how far and for how long, therefore making it eternal so far as we know.

In a logical argument the burden of proof cannot fall upon a negative assertion. Rather the burden of proof falls upon the positive, this being a core tenant of science.

In the “God created the universe” argument you choose too small a sample of theories to disprove and represented them incompletely as their are an infinite number of possibilities. To disprove the existence of god you would have to prove existence of god not disprove a limited number of assertions.

Science is completely capable and does both prove and admit that its conclusions (when I say’ “it” and “science in this paragraph I am referring to the scientific community as a whole”) are wrong and in doing so find the correct answer, until such evidence reveals itself and demands the process be repeated (otherwise known as the scientific method).

It is true that the creation of life is unknown to human beings (both scientific and religions explanations alike). But religious explanations have failed to develop any logical explanation (the fact that christianity holds that we are descended from the same two parents, does not account for the fact that our species would have severe health issues along with stunted mental growth. This can be viewed when a breed of dog has been inbred for too long. The dog looses eyesight at a younger age, develops joint problems and dies sooner).

Comon, B, what you got for me? You aint so bad!!!

LOL