I have a general question to ask.
I'm a big fan of the big bang theory, the general theory that everything in the universe today was in one hot and dense state, there was an explosion and subsequently matter spread out and the universe is expanding today but I was wondering where the matter came from in the first place? Also if you age the universe on the idea of the big bang, going back in time, this matter must have come from somewhere which means that the universe is older than first thought surely. This may sound a little confusing, if anyone can help shed light.

How's this for a start: Big Bang
You may of already seen it.

lets say the matter came from energy (E=mc^2 you know). When the universe was very small it was too dense for any matter to condense from the energy.
now you'll be wondering where the energy came from... this much can only be philosophy.
my personal favorite theory is that the single equation which describes the exact behavior of the universe is so beautiful that its beauty alone compelled the universe into existence. My second favorite theory is that the energy was the result of a previous universe's "big crunch". If the density of the universe is great enough such that gravity eventually wins against expansion all the matter of the universe will ultimately find itself being pulled back together into a single point and then into pure energy again. At the point where this becomes a singularity all information that was in the old universe is lost. The old universe's big crunch leads directly to a new universe's big bang. But since the singularity causes all information to be lost we can never know anything about the previous universe, including its existence.
I'm sure others will provide similarly unprovable theories since that's all that can exist by definition. :)

Brane collision! Wooo!

You have to remember that energy has always existed, because it can not be created or destroyed. Whether it always existed on this plane of existence, we don't know. Matter is formed from energy when conditions are right. (this happens all the time to light).

My vote is that it came from the One who created it ;)

So, if the one who created it didn't have a creator... we still have the same problem :p Might as well skip out the middle man... Occam's Razor and all that.

Thus the problem with any idea of big bang or any teaching that deals with any concept that does not involve a supreme being, A god, who is all powerful and exists not in any one realm of reality or time or space. But a powerful force that has no beginning or end.

If matter was here to bang together, it had to be formed, what caused the energy that made this bang happen. There is no answer to it, since without a belief in a "god" there is no answer that works in science.

"The energy was always there" is significantly more believable and scientific than "it was created by a God who was always there"

I don't really see the problem you are referring to, Chuck. It works fine in science.

I contend that my point still stands, questions of anything outside the universe or about its origin can never be more than philosophy. Neither that god created the energy nor that it was always there is more helpful in understanding our current situation than the other since, by definition, anything that occurs outside the universe is not visible to those of us inside it.

I agree with you asterisk. It is completely philosophical.

We will probably never know what was before the big bang. If you "run the movie backwards" to the instant of the big bang you get to a singularity that prevents any consideration of what came "before." An analogy I like is one that I believe Stephen Hawking used in his "Brief History of Time": it's like walking north on the earth - if you keep going until you reach the north pole, it doesn't make sense to then ask "what if I took another step north?" Discussing what came before the big bang is like asking what's north of the north pole.

Without proof, the hypothesis cannot be supported. There is no evidence to support the God hypothesis other than allegory and mythology, therefore the god hypothesis must be considered untenable.

As for matter, it is simply a complex outgrowth of the second law of thermodynamics.

An interesting side note, consider a cubic space 20 miles to a side. If that space was analogous to the space within our universe, the total amount of matter that exists within our universe would be analogous to a single grain of sand.

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Originally Posted by Sneppahtihs

Without proof, the hypothesis cannot be supported. There is no evidence to support the God hypothesis other than allegory and mythology, therefore the god hypothesis must be considered untenable.

As for matter, it is simply a complex outgrowth of the second law of thermodynamics.

An interesting side note, consider a cubic space 20 miles to a side. If that space was analogous to the space within our universe, the total amount of matter that exists within our universe would be analogous to a single grain of sand.

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That's tantamount to saying that complex machinery found by archeologists offers no evidence of intelligent design and that any claims made by those archeologists concerning intelligent design in relation to the discovered ancient machinery is merely myth and allegory and that therefore their conclusion concerning that complex machinery is untenable. The following websites provide sufficient grounds for acceptance of the intelligent design viewpoint in preference to the mindless-formation-of-the-universe idea. In my opinion

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design Network :: Seeking Objectivity in Origins Science

CSC - Evidence for Intelligent Design from Biochemistry

Evidence of Intelligent Design

BTW

Not all scientists are atheists and the that the majority view invariably equates with truth concept is considered fallacious reasoning.

That site makes a lot of points, all of which can easily be explained by the anthropic principle. This leaves 2 points:

1) If the universe came into existence without all these finely tuned constants, then it would carry on with no life, no life would observe it. This universe is destroyed, another universe is created. If we posit that this has been happening continuously for an infinite time (I see no reason why not to), then we have an infinite number of universes, at least one of which had these finely tuned constants (as is evident).
2) Okay, say a universe was created with constants that weren't suitable for life as we know it, would other life be able to exist? I don't see why not.

The difference between your argument and Sneppahtihs' is the fact that the universe (or at least the energy that we see) may have existed for an infinite time and entered infinite configurations. However an archaeologist knows, if he uncovers a complex machine, that it did not have an infinite time to form, therefore a creator must have had a part in making it.

The reason an Archeologist, or any other scientist would conclude that a complex artifact
Or even such a simple artifact as an arrowhead had to have a designer isn't based on the fact that it is not infinitely old. It is based on the need for of intelligent forethought which its parts and the cooperation of its parts toward a specific purpose display. Infinite amounts of time with infinite amounts of blind mindless energies moving about mindlessly does not magically imbue the them with the ability to display forethought--and forethought, as scientists who do believe in a creator agree, indicates a mind.



And it's not a matter of scientists vs non-scientists or the scientifically trained vs the scientifically untrained since not all scientists agree with the atheist viewpoint:


Excerpt:

600+ voting scientists of the Creation Research Society (voting membership requires at least an earned master's degree in a recognized area of science).

150 Ph.D. scientists and 300 other scientists with masters degrees in science or engineering are members of the Korea Association of Creation Research. The President of KACR is the distinguished scientist and Professor Young-Gil Kim of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Ph.D. in Materials Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute / highly distinguished / inventor of various important high-tech alloys.

Do real scientists believe in Creation? - ChristianAnswers.Net

1) I believe you just failed to make an argument.
"and lemons, as scientists who believe that lemons are purple agree, are purple".

2) If you had read my reply, you would realise that I don't see a universe that requires forethought. If I had found a machine that looks like it required forethought, but I know that the components of that machine had existed together for an infinite time and was a stable configuration for those parts (just as the universe is for energy), then I would not need to explain it with the presence of a creator.

3) Science incorporates many disciplines, many of which require no knowledge of what we are talking about here.

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Originally Posted by Capuchin

1) I believe you just failed to make an argument.
"and lemons, as scientists who believe that lemons are purple agree, are purple".

2) If you had read my reply, you would realise that I don't see a universe that requires forethought. If I had found a machine that looks like it required forethought, but I know that the components of that machine had existed together for an infinite time and was a stable configuration for those parts (just as the universe is for energy), then I would not need to explain it with the presence of a creator.

3) Science incorporates many disciplines, many of which require no knowledge of what we are talking about here.

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I agree that obviously not all science is physics. However, all science applies the scientific method and any violation of the scientific method or any conclusion based on the violation of that method doesn't deserve to be given too much credence.

Being a scientist is nice. However, and fortunately, it is not necessary for a person to be a scientist in order for that person to detect accidental or purposeful fallacious reasoning via inconsistency.

About lemons, since belief or disbelief doesn't make anything real or unreal in the ultimate sense, I see absolutely no relevance.

About infinity of time -- nothing in the human experience justifies ignoring the evidence of forethought and planning and attributing it to blind chance. Since there isn't then the assumption that this happens to be the case in respect to the universe amounts to a blind leap of faith.

You have to read some philosophical (critical thinking) on the Creator and Creation. Read on the web Dooyeweerd's notion of creation. The Creator is distinct FROM yet RELATED to the creation. Is it the top of the hierarchy of being with ultimate authority... or the total of all perfection. Read what he thought very interesting, may have to read it twice

Philosophical implications of creation - The Dooyweerd's pages

The problem here is not the fact that there is matter; it is what so called science is trying to make of it. Everything scientists say is supposed to be taken as fact while they spend most of their time making corrections to their last theory. Every day they come up with new theories and push them as fact. What they need to do is prove something before they start making accusations. We have black holes that have never been seen, anti-matter that has never been used, the string theory, gravity waves, and it goes on forever while there isn't a single fact in any of it.

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Originally Posted by outsidein

... i was wondering where the matter came from in the first place? ... also if you age the universe on the idea of the big bang, going back in time, this matter must have come from somewhere which means that the universe is older than first thought surely. This may sound a little confusing, if anyone can help shed light.

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Matter is just another format of energy (see String theory). Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy is all around us. Everywhere. The more space is empty (vacuum!), the more energy it contains. Please note that with energy most of us normally mean energy that can do work for us. That is not the same as energy that surrounds everything.
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