So then if the universe did not come about by pure chance - what did happen? Perhaps a better question would be 'who' did it?

[Raider5678]

1 minute ago, zapatos said:

The only thing springing from nothing is your argument. You can repeat "it had to have a beginning" as often as you like. It doesn't make it true.

So the Universe did not have a beginning?

Let's try to establish common ground first.

[zapatos]

8 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

So the Universe did not have a beginning?

Let's try to establish common ground first.

No one knows.

[Bender]

2 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

It's not mental gymnastics

It might be. The time dimension is not as straightforward as we perceive it. General relativity takes quite some mental gymnastics; who knows how difficult the physics active 13,7 billion years ago is to imagine. Quantum gravity theories are our best guess at the moment, and after a century of trying to figure it out, the best physicists haven't managed to get their head around it. Quite possibly, what we perceive as time dimension might have "condensed" out of some hyperdimensional who-knows-what at some point, making the question "what came before" irrelevant, as there was no before.

[Strange]

8 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

There is evidence we're here.

Obviously, it exists, so it must have had a beginning.

If it didn't have a beginning, then you're going to have a hard time explaining that to me without saying it's supernatural.

There are several ways that the universe could be infinitely old. There are obvious ones like the "big bounce' (the current expanding universe was formed from the collapse of an earlier state). One of the more interesting ideas is from attempts to combine quantum theory and GR, which suggest that the universe has been expanding for an infinite time.

[Prometheus]

7 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

It had to come from somewhere.

So does god. 

Oh, except god has existed forever or popped out of nothing, despite believers insisting this can't be true of the universe. Any reason to believe this is true of god but not the universe except magic?

[koti]

1 hour ago, Prometheus said:

So does god. 

Oh, except god has existed forever or popped out of nothing, despite believers insisting this can't be true of the universe. Any reason to believe this is true of god but not the universe except magic?

God is allmighty ya’ll should remember that and don’t listen to them scientists actin like they know it all.

Edited May 2, 2018 by koti

[beecee]

20 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

Actually, we still can't explain how the BB came into existence.

It had to start somewhere.

And if there was something before that, where did that come from?

Etc.

So. I mean. We have no start point for our theoretical model of the Universe, which is an illogical concept to say it just sprang into existence out of nothing.

 

Correct, we neither know how or why the BB evolved our universe/spacetime [as we know it] but we have overwhelming evidence that  it did. I mention spacetime as we know it, as the nature of what ever existed [if anything] before t=10-43 seconds is beyond our theoretical models at this time. A quantum foam or whatever.

Perhaps this pre-existing quantum foam is the best definition of nothing that we can really think about or perhaps even exist. Perhaps the quantum foam is the nothing that has existed for eternity. Perhaps its our definition of nothing that needs apparaisal.

In the meantime, we can reasonably speculate....

https://www.astrosociety.org/publication/a-universe-from-nothing/

 

Certainly has a lot more going for it then some deity that has spent his or her eternity twiddling his or her thumbs before he or she decided to create the universe13.83 billion years ago.

[Raider5678]

3 hours ago, beecee said:

Correct, we neither know how or why the BB evolved our universe/spacetime [as we know it] but we have overwhelming evidence that  it did.

1

And I never said it didn't.

I just asked what caused it.

 

[beecee]

7 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

And I never said it didn't.

I just asked what caused it.

 

And I answered you as others have, along with more information on your definition of nothing.

[Kekethedoll]

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-powered-the-big-bang

 

Here you go you'll enjoy your fantasies be crushed Paul...