Then who made God? The standard answer is no one made God, He is infinite, always there. Seems the same answer to the same question to me.
I don't claim to have the answer, but I don't dismiss them with quibbling. No start is quibbling. It all started somewhere.
And your blanket statement of the "it all started somewhere" is not logically sound. If it was started, what started it? Something had to start it, even if we don't know what that thing is. And that something had to have something that started that. Logically, there cannot be a true start to anything. And that is OK. It is a perfectly good answer. So it isn't quibbling. It is a logically sound position.
The same rules can't apply to the starter. Something outside the universe not governed by the laws of the universe started it. To me that is self-evident. Looking around, it seems that that something was pretty intelligent. But that is only probable and not certain.
By introducing an infinite number of other problems. This isn't a shortcut. It's just a possibility that hasn't been ruled out. The human brain isn't really equipped to deal with deep time and astronomical distances. We're gonna be in the weeds on this no matter how you slice it, if we resist the temptation to fall back on "a god did it," which isn't really an explanation at all.
How is this materially different than saying "something was always there?" I see a lot of extra added detail with no evidence in this as well, such as "self-evidence" based on the as-yet unsupported claim that of something outside the universe, and that thing being "pretty intelligent." It seems intelligent compared to what? If what you claim is true, then you have never seen anything that wasn't the product of intelligence. Not one thing to compare it to. I'd say it is neither probable or improbable. It's just personal speculation.
My argument is that they are both the same argument. You infer a conscious being, and I make the claim that this is not necessary.
We have a highly improbably ordered universe that sits on a razor's edge w/regards to all the conditions necessary for matter and relative stasis (forget life). To me it seems reasonable that there is something beyond the universe -that our physical laws- do not describe that does not sit on a razor's edge -that just IS. It doesn't play by the rules that our sciences can observe. Doesn't mean any of the religions are right about its nature/characteristics.
If nothing has a start, then start has no meaning. The only thing to compare it to is ending. But ending has the same issue as start. We don't end. Our moedules break down and become parts of other molecules, which fuel beginnings of other things. Which means we're in a circle, that constantly repeats. Which means we're doing the same thing over and over again, for eternity. So for the 17th or so billionth time, I write this message.
Couldn't that also be due to a limitation in our understanding of the extent of the universe/existence? And this universe is improbably ordered, compared to what? On what do you base this probability, given your sample size of exactly one? What do you base the probability life existing somewhere in an entire universe on? It would seem to me that any chance, given a high enough number of chances, becomes inevitable. If I buy a lottery ticket, my odds suck. If I happen to have every lottery ticket made for a single drawing lottery, I am going to win at least once despite losing millions of times.
Ya, that's where I gravitate right now. And maybe things aren't always exactly the same. Maybe there are an infinite number of deviations that have or will occur. Or maybe they are exactly the same.
no. It doesn't include God (if such exists.) It doesn't include the multitude of other universes (if such exists.)
In starting and ending, we're talking about time. Time is an invention, not a discovery. While no easier to fathom, it is at least more intellectually honest to talk about cause. We assume everything is caused by something. What, then, is the nature of the cause. Just a few days ago I was reading William lane craig at reasonablefaith.org. it's quite helpful in mixing god with cosmology.
There is only one universe. That's the uni- part. I understand your point, however. I think what we have been calling the universe, including the geometry necessary for the big bang, we should now call a "bangzone" or something. How many bangzones in the universe, we wonder. And how are they ordered?
If you ask the physicist NYY, nothing is outside the bangzone. But seriously, the Big Bang Theory is meaningless if something is outside of it. That's the whole point.
Why? Because of observed expansion? The analogy I read uses butter in a hot sauce pan. It starts to bubble. The bubbles come from nowhere and expand. Turn down the heat, they recede. Otherwise they pop. I'm not sure what the pop equates to.
I'm just saying the BBT is stating that everything now came into being from that explosion. If there were something else, it'd no longer be the BBT.
