This is a thread about the creation of the universe and everything.

I think this one goes to Doulos, as I think he may be the most willing to look at the idea of the creation of the universe.



Doulos, do you believe the universe had a beginning?

Also, do you believe that anything that has a beginning has a cause?

Sure, the universe that we live in probably "began" in some way. (Though that term has baggage of its own, and doesn't account for any multiverse ideas either)

Yes, things that have a beginning, also have a cause, but only if the concept of time is as we know it now.

Alright.

If the universe has a beginning, then it has a cause.

As an agnostic/atheist, you wouldn't assume natural causes, as natural did not exist before the universe was created. (Natural causes could not exist before natural existed)

So what caused the universe to begin?

One thing we can establish is that there would be no natural causes for the universe.

Not really.

Cause and effect require time for it to happen.  If the universe did not exist, time didn't exist, and therefore cause and effect didn't exist.  Thus, there did not need to be a cause.

If time was also created when the Universe was then I don't see an issue at all.

The very idea of something being 'caused' is dependant on time being the way it is now, and we have no way of knowing if that was the case when the Universe (as we know it) came into being.

You mean the cause was timeless? You shouldn't mean the beginning of the universe was not caused because time did not exist.

Since everything with a beginning does have a cause. Scientifically we know things just don't start without a cause. Like if we were walking down the street and we saw a basketball on the street, we wouldn't ever naturally assume it appeared spontaneously from nothing, we'd assume it was left behind by some kid, or another reasonable explanation. Because of science, we know things with a beginning have cause.

I think we can establish that the cause of the beginning of the universe could not be natural, and must be timeless, since it was before natural and time existed.

Why can't the cause be natural, but in a way that we don't understand in our current understanding of the Universe?  Or our Universe was birthed from a different Universe that has no time and totally different realities etc.

There are so many options out there that could be possible.

I'm also not including ideas based on Quantum theory in which the Universe actually is created out of nothing essentially.

At the end of the day I am no physicist, but many very bright physicists have all sorts of ways to theorize a Universe that comes out of nothing, so I'm not too worried about it.

I think we can establish that time did have a beginning. The universe could not have been here for infinite. What happens to energy and matter over time? 2nd law of thermodynamics says it goes from order to chaos. Over enough time it all breaks down. If the universe has been around for infinite, well then what happens to energy over an infinite of time?

The Universe "as we know it now" had some sort of beginning.  The theories as to what caused it are many - God being one of them that is way way down my list (but will likely always remain a possibility, just an almost infinitely slim one)

Why can't it natural causes? Well if natural did not exist until the universe did, then it was not around until it was created.

Put another way, if natural did not exist, how could it be around to cause itself to exist?

I would agree that it had to start with nothing. Otherwise there wouldn't be a beginning.

If natural did not exist?  I don't even understand what that means.

No, no, and no.

You presuppose linear time existed.  In point of fact, that wasn't the case according to the theories we have as present.  However, I suspect that will go over your head (I know parts of it go over mine) so I'll try a different approach.

I'll counterpropose with a Buddhist example.  The universe exists, has always existed, and always will.  The cycles of expansion and crunch are just endless repetitions of the same event, over and over.  By that standard, the universe never came into being: it just grows and shrinks eternally.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:06, Sun 29 Dec 2013.

Nature, natural causes, the universe is natural.

In other words, if the universe didn't exist, it's not around to be cause of its existence.

Well I know linear time did not exist before time existed. It cannot exist if there was nothing.
sure, except we know 2nd law of thermodynamics proves we would have gone through all of our energy if infinite amount of time had passed.

We do know that infinite time has not passed, and we do know the universe had a beginning. And everything with a beginning has a cause.

Where I ran across this I don't remember, but someone said one of the things that puzzled  astronomers was an appearance that the matter in this universe is not scattered evenly around the center of the middle of the expanding matter.  They said that it seemed there was a plane with a ring of heavier density expanding with the rest.

To me if that was not just an instrument artifact, the most plausible cause would be two accelerating expanding universes outer shells colliding at speed.  Creating this big bang.

You *assume* all three, but cannot prove it.

In point of fact, if we assume the universe is in a constant state of expansion and contraction, it could be that time is indeed infinite (In fact, inside a black hole, time is infinite or nearly so).  We don't know that the universe had a beginning, exactly, we know it started expanding at a certain point but we don't know what happened before that.  It could be simply that the universe simply goes through periods of contractions and expansions naturally.