Atheist Ireland Forum

It surpsises me how seldom the argument that the universe has always existed comes up, at least in everyday conversations about such matters. Personally, I find this idea intellectually satisfying, moreso than the idea that something could have come from nothing. Most people can kind of get their head around the idea of an infinite future, so why is an infinite past such an unreasonable theory?

Any thoughts?

If there was an infinite past then we would live in a homogeneous universe where everything is at the same temperature, due to the action of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. i.e. that the entropy of the universe tends to increase.
if that was the case then we would have no stars and therefore no solar systems. A lot of work in high energy physics in the last few decades has been about to higher and higher energy levels that we can use to simulate conditions at the start of the universe. this gives a good overview of the evidence for the big bang.

To be honest, I think we mightn't be intellectually developed enough to comprehend the origin of the universe. How can something just start from nothing? The answer is definetly not 'God'. There has to be a scientific explanation, but I don't think we will ever find it...

@Gar:

I appear to have been misunderstood. I don't have an issue with the Big Bang. It's a theory that I'm 100% behind. But if it happened at a finite time in the past, it simply opens up more questions, such as, of course, "what caused the big bang?" I'm hopeful that those questions can be answered in the future, by scientific exploration.

What I'm saying is that there has always been a plane in which things can physically exist, and that this plane itself did not need a creator. It has an infinite past and and infinite future.

Neil: This should be in the Science or Skepticism section. Posting it here smells like holy smoke.

Neil: What I'm saying is that there has always been a plane in which things can physically exist, and that this plane itself did not need a creator. It has an infinite past and and infinite future.

I cannot understand how you can say "that there has always been a plane in which things can physically exist" as this is pure speculation. I would advise you reading "Hyperspace" -Michio Kaku, he does have some intresting documentries, but this book goes where no tv-doc can. Explained in non-techno jargan.

I read a piece in the new scientist a couple of months ago about a new theory called Loop Quantum Cosmology that you might find interesting.

I would also recommend Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, he writes extremely clearly and with a real passion for the subject. Unfortunately string theory has fallen from favour as of late due to the large amount of solutions that we can get from it.
I also think Kaku has a very good TV show, I forget what it's called but it might have been on Channel 4.

If we exist in an advanced simulation (cf. The Matrix) - Then 'god', the prime mover, is whatever switched on the simulation at the beginning of what we perceive as time.

And you can never prove that you *don't* exist in a simulation!

You can' t prove a lot of thing, so anything could be possible really. This universe is so incredible. I would do anything to find out what this place really is...

Nope that makes god a more superior being – a more or better-evolved creature but not supernatural. I’ve got no problem with me being an alien’s computer program just don’t ask me to believe that that alien didn’t evolve from some other alien.

Exactly - It's probable other intelligent species evolved and exist(ed) in the universe, it's possible that some of these species survived self-annihilation long enough to evolved to a highly advanced state, possibly billions of years ago. Possibly before this iteration of the universe as we perceive it within our timescales.

In fact, the idea of a highly evolved 'super-powerful' creator(s) would withstand critical analysis far better than the idea of a supernatural creator.

I’m no scientician, but… If we go with Hume’s account of causation then talk of what caused something else is going to be intelligible without a temporal context. If time didn’t exist before there was something, or if it worked differently, then it seems to me that the question of “what caused existence” wouldn’t make much sense, since there would be no such thing as “before time”.


As far as us all living in a simulation, I came across a rather nifty argument recently which suggested that it is in fact quite likely that we are living in one. I’ll have a poke around and see if I can find it.

I think this will just go around in circles, because there had to be something before something. But there also had to be something before that. Where does it end?

The matrix idea is not entirely without merit ... except, no Keanu Reeves or killer robots.
Physicists have been playing around with the idea, see here or here that looks at the idea that we exist only as 2D information projected onto a cosmological horizon so that it appears 3D to us.

Although, to answer the OP's original question, the current theories on how our universe are discussed in this video here by Steve Weinberg.

The idea that the universe has always existed as far as I know is called the Steady State Theory, but my understanding is that the reason the theory is less popular is that it basically contradicts the Big Bang Theory, and now that we have evidence that the universe is expanding and in fact accelerating; the idea of a fixed universe seems unlikely.

And Scorpio, its natural enough to think that there always has to be a "before" because we exist in time. However, time only started after the Big Bang; so technically, there was no "before".
It does boggle the brain a bit, I admit
Check this video out - Brian Cox explains this much better than I can.

I think this is due to confusing the concepts of the observable universe and the universe in general. People think that because our observable universe had a beginning at the big bang that that is necessarily a creation moment. You don't need the steady state theory to be able to talk about eternal energy (matter is merely a state of energy).

No matter what evidence is produced for the big bang the question of whether energy is eternal is still open. You just have to consider that the laws of physics as we know them don't apply inside a singularity. And human language as we know it might not even be a useful tool in asking the right questions.

For instance, what happened before the big bang? If we accept that the big bang was the moment at which time came into existence then this is not a meaningful question. There can't be a 'time' before time.

Where did the energy come from? Again, without space how do we have 'where'?

We don't know that the energy didn't just leak in from another universe or from whatever state of existence there is outside of our universe (if any).

I think it was Smolin who came up with the idea of universes spawning universes. I think the idea was that black hole singularities are powerful enough to tear through space time and create other universes as their incredibly dense matter spews out.

Despite what the theists will tell you, the question of a cause for the big bang is still open and our science only takes us back to a fraction of second afterthe big bang.

More stuff on theories of how the universe began:

Big Bang Machine - Brian Cox expands on Standard model of particle physics

There's a great interview with Dr. Michio Kaku by the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe team in Podcast 182 - Dr Kaku explains String theory, M theory and the theories about the initial state of the universe. (Audio only)