Do you believe in God, a Source a Creator.

[OrphanPip]

As an aside quantum fluctuations allow energy (and therefor mass) to be 'borrowed' for very short periods of time, not 13.7 billion years.

My understanding is that any energy in the presence of nothingness could undergo inflationary expansion, where more and more positive energy is "created" balanced by an equal amount of negative energy, creating a universe with net zero energy. All it would require is a quantum fluctuation to instigate it.

Lawrence Krauss explains it better than I can, since he probably actually understands what he is talking about.

[fredv3b]

Sorry but I don't have time to watch an hour long clip. I don't understand what negative energy is.

[OrphanPip]

Sorry but I don't have time to watch an hour long clip. I don't understand what negative energy is.

Gravitational potential energy is negative, mathematically speaking.

http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury...thing.html

This thing explains it kinda, but Krauss does it in much more detail and explains why it is likely that the universe's net energy is actually zero.

[Miles]

<----------------------------this discussion


my head-->:confused:

:tongue:

As for the original question, I guess it would depend on how you define god. If it's some bearded guy in the sky, then no. If it's simply some kind of prime mover or first cause, then that sounds more reasonable. There's so many different ways of looking at the word "god" and what its implications are...ultimately I think whatever is really going on behind the scenes of everything is beyond anything I could wrap my mind around, so I just cop out and say I don't know.

[Fayt]

I believe that when you die for about 2 minutes your brain is still active but it’s starting to shout down like your computer might do, and in that time you are in a dream state and that’s where I believe you’ll make who or whoever you want. It’s your subconscious shouting down.
Doesn’t really answer your question but it is the way I believe in things..

That's kind of what I think lol. But I also wonder about that conservation of matter law (rule or whatever). When the flame of a match goes out, that heat becomes the warmth in the atmosphere. And when another fire source is ignited, it's taking the heat from the atmosphere to do it. How about a person / animal / plants life? What happens when the force driving their life runs out, that "life" matter has to go somewhere or become something? That extinguished flame became something greater, the heat of the atmosphere, what could be greater than the matter involved in life?

This is just my very weird way of thinking and I'm probably wrong about most, if not all of this.

[Paul1]

I have tried to write a reply to put right your misunderstandings of physics and realised that a messageboard is not a good medium to do it. Suffice to say that every point in your post is at odds with the way physicists understand the origin and development of the universe.

It's a cop out, I appreciate, but it's impossible to explain this stuff very briefly without sounding dogmatic. Ultimately it makes no difference what you or I believe but if you enjoy an intellectual challenge there are lots of books out there that explain in 100,000 words or more what I'm not going to tackle in 50.

No I know. I admit I'm not a physicist, and I find it really hard to understand physics because it's so abstract from the human experience of the world. The books I've read have tried to talk about General Relativity from a human point of view, but at the end of the day it's a mathematical concept.

So to put it into a human perspective: If I never had to die, would I be able to live forever and continue to experience time forever?

The one appreciation I have gained from reading and trying to understand about time, is that the human experience of time is limited to what evolution produced given the state of physics we have to survive in. Our own experiences are compelling, but it's important to bear in mind that they might be incorrect when presented with "extreme" situations (i.e. the ones evolution rarely touches).

Anyway, to conclude, I don't really know what happened before the big bang. It doesn't compel me to think there must be a god, it just makes me think we don't have the answers.

IMO god creates more questions than he does answers, offering only a sense of philosophical security, at the expense of continuing to seek and understand the universe we live in. But if it works for people, then I don't care

Still there is a lingering question: Isn't it coincidental that the universal constants turned out correct in order to support our life? A small change in the gravitational constant and whole stars wouldn't have formed. I think this is the primary reason people are compelled to believe in god.

[zeon]

i beleieve that when you are born you have something within... When you die that thing carries on in a world you remember. l dont beleive in god sadly but i do beleive the end is only the beginning

[Wintereis]

The closest thing I can say to my understanding of the divine.

[Rychard the Lionheart]

May I ask the following questions.

1. Which country has the largest population of Non-Believers?

2. What percentage of the Bi or gay community are Non-Believers?

Maybe its time to let religion go and move on.

If Mankind wants to carry on existing, we need to live among the stars. We have one home, the Earth, when it goes we go as well. Science has predicted our sun will get hotter and eventually turn into a super nova and collapse. Some way off yet but this is the future, or if we are unlucky and a big rock slams into the Earth and destroys all live. Or man might do it itself, a nuke or a man made environmental cock-up. My bet is on Mankind not god who will destroy the Earth.