Atheism 101: What came before the Universe?

September 18, 11:06 PMPhiladelphia Atheism ExaminerStaks Rosch

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As close to the The Big Bang as possible as seen through Hubble

The basic question that religious people tend to exploit is that of the First Cause. Many theists ask, “If atheists don’t believe in God, than who created the Universe?” I always find this line of questioning interesting. Surprisingly, it isn’t even just asked by fundamentalist believers, but also from many mainstream religious believers as well. Often times these theists even try to claim that science presents evidence for an unmoved mover or a God as if the Argument by Design or the First Cause Argument were some new revelation to the modern philosophical world.

Those that try to use science in order to prove God don’t seem to really understand science too well. Starting off with the dogmatic conclusion that God exists and then attempting to find evidence to support this already determined conclusion just isn’t how science works. Science starts out with the observations and the evidence and then concludes with the conclusion. It is also important to note that science is open to re-evaluating that conclusion at any time and sciences are encouraged to do so and have their findings peer reviewed. In this way, other sciences can test the conclusion and see if it is repeatable and/or predictive.

Simply reassert the First Cause Argument in a more dressed up fashion using scientific terminology doesn’t make it science or true. On frequent occasions theists even quote famous physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking as some sort of proof by authority for the existence of God.

When scientific observation discovered the Big Bang Theory, many religious people didn’t really know what to say. Still today, there are many fundamentalist theists who simply can’t accept the Big Bang Theory as being an accurate model for the beginning of the Universe because they view it as conflicting with their already predetermined dogmatic conclusion that God did it. On the other hand, many do accept the overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang, but then ask the next logical question, what came before the Big Bang.

Interestingly enough, in 2007, Dr. Stephen Hawking gave the Berkeley Physics Oppenheimer Lecture which addresses this very question. In that lecture, Hawking starts the lecture with an ancient Creation myth. While he didn’t use the one in the Bible, he could have easily swapped creation myths and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference.

Fairly early in the lecture, Hawking states, “it made no sense to talk of a time before the universe began. It would be like asking for a point south of the South Pole. It is not defined.” Hawking clarifies this statement later in the lecture, “Suppose the beginning of the universe, was like the south pole of the Earth, with degrees of latitude, playing the role of time. The universe would start as a point at the South Pole. As one moves north, the circles of constant latitude, representing the size of the universe, would expand. To ask what happened before the beginning of the universe, would become a meaningless question, because there is nothing south of the South Pole.”

So what is before the Universe? Incase you could not follow what Hawking is saying from my limited excerpts, if space and time are linked (See Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity) than before the Universe, there was no time. Since the word “before” denotes time, that basically means that there was no before the Universe as we understand time.

But that is not an answer that sits well with the god crowd. Hawking jokingly concluded the lecture by saying that, “We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. God really does play dice.” This of course is a play on the famous Einstein quote and not an endorsement of the concept of god as religious people understand the term. Unfortunately, that is the only part of the lecture that many theists seem to be able to quote.

While the concept of time is often difficult to grasp, it must be extremely frustrating for some people to come to grips with the idea of a time without time. Even that doesn’t really do this concept justice. People still seem to have a need to explain what came before the Universe. What was the first cause or uncaused cause? But maybe there isn’t an uncaused cause as we can understand it. Maybe Stephen Hawking is right and the question itself is meaningless. That’s not to say that we should stop asking the question, but perhaps we shouldn’t expect an answer.

Atheism 101 Articles:

Atheism 101: What is the difference between atheism and agnosticism?
Atheism 101: Is there moral grounding without God?
Atheism 101: The Purpose of Life
Atheism 101: Is the Bible the inspired word of God?
Atheism 101: The anti-intellectualism of religion
Atheism 101: Why has Christianity demonized nudity, sex and sexuality?
Atheism 101: Does it take more faith to be an atheist?
Atheism 101: How to respond to the ex-atheist