Why Must There be a Beginning?

[Danmark]

Why is it so difficult for many to accept the concept that the universe (or existence) has always been? I understand that we are always looking for causes (first or otherwise) or for beginnings, but it does not seem necessary. Is the concept beyond the imagination of some? Are they unable to form this concept?
It seems that Christians accept the idea of something having no beginning since they accept this about God. But if 'god' can be an exception in their minds, why not the universe itself?

[jgh7]

It is difficult to impossible for me to grasp the concept of always having been in regards to anything, be it the universe or God.

To have no beginning: something existed 10,000 years ago. It also existed 10,000,000 years ago. It also existed 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years ago. And existed 3 seconds before that, and a minute before that, and so on infinitely back in time.

That is what I think of as having no beginning. And ultimately it equates to time having no beginning. Time existed infinitely back in time. I can definitely grasp the concept of existing forward in time forever. But to have no beginning is a completely different ballgame for me.

[Danmark]

It is difficult to impossible for me to grasp the concept of always having been in regards to anything, be it the universe or God.

To have no beginning: something existed 10,000 years ago. It also existed 10,000,000 years ago. It also existed 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years ago. And existed 3 seconds before that, and a minute before that, and so on infinitely back in time.

That is what I think of as having no beginning. And ultimately it equates to time having no beginning. Time existed infinitely back in time. I can definitely grasp the concept of existing forward in time forever. But to have no beginning is a completely different ballgame for me.

Given that the alternate belief is that existence came into being from absolute nothingness, I find it relatively easy to believe things have always been, in one form or another. That something came from nothing strikes me as impossible. I have no idea why the idea of 'always being' is a difficult concept.

[jgh7]

It is difficult to impossible for me to grasp the concept of always having been in regards to anything, be it the universe or God.

To have no beginning: something existed 10,000 years ago. It also existed 10,000,000 years ago. It also existed 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years ago. And existed 3 seconds before that, and a minute before that, and so on infinitely back in time.

That is what I think of as having no beginning. And ultimately it equates to time having no beginning. Time existed infinitely back in time. I can definitely grasp the concept of existing forward in time forever. But to have no beginning is a completely different ballgame for me.

Given that the alternate belief is that existence came into being from absolute nothingness, I find it relatively easy to believe things have always been, in one form or another. That something came from nothing strikes me as impossible. I have no idea why the idea of 'always being' is a difficult concept.

One way I could describe my difficulty with it is with memory. Let's say a being always existed and had perfect memory. His memory would go infinitely back in time. That makes no sense to me in that it is beyond my grasp. If a being exists forever into the future, he will never reach his end. I can comprehend that since I understand time moving continually forward. But if you apply it to the past, he is stuck existing endlessly further and further back in time.

I agree that something can not come from nothing. But I just don't grasp what it truly means to have always existed. Nonetheless I lean on that being the state of existence, whether it be the universe always existing or God always existing. I just cannot grasp the concept of "infinitely back in time".

[Overcomer]

Scientists say that the universe had a beginning. Do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?

I realize that this is a problem for atheists because, if the universe had a beginning, then there must have been a beginner to begin it.

The absurdity of this idea of infinity is demonstrated with Hilbert's Hotel.

http://mathandmultimedia.com/2014/05/26 ... l-paradox/

[Danmark]

Scientists say that the universe had a beginning. Do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?

I realize that this is a problem for atheists because, if the universe had a beginning, then there must have been a beginner to begin it.

The absurdity of this idea of infinity is demonstrated with Hilbert's Hotel.

http://mathandmultimedia.com/2014/05/26 ... l-paradox/

You are in error. Scientists do not say there was absolute nothingness before the so called 'big bang.' Some say the nearly 14 billion year cycle between singularities has repeated infinitely. Krauss, in his book A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing carefully explains that the 'nothingness' that existed prior to the singularity was not an absolute nothingness in either a real or a philosophical sense.

Equally important is the fact that Christians accept that there was 'something' before the 'Big Bang.' They call it 'god.' But that is just a label used to cover up ignorance.

"The initial singularity was a singularity of seemingly infinite density and mass thought[citation needed] to have contained all of the mass and space-time of the Universe[1] before quantum fluctuations caused it to rapidly expand in the Big Bang and subsequent inflation, creating the present-day Universe."
See
Hawking, Stephen. "The Beginning of Time"
and
Wall, Mike (21 October 2011). "The Big Bang: What Really Happened at Our Universe's Birth?" The History & Future of the Cosmos.

BTW, I am not an 'atheist.' I do not think the fantasy of a 'god' even merits the use of an 'anti' term, any more than not believing in goblins or unicorns deserves its own label. In other words, the childish, primitive, undefined concept of a 'god' is not even worth disbelief.

[bluethread]

BTW, I am not an 'atheist.' I do not think the fantasy of a 'god' even merits the use of an 'anti' term, any more than not believing in goblins or unicorns deserves its own label. In other words, the childish, primitive, undefined concept of a 'god' is not even worth disbelief.

That is why I do not think that it is useful to discuss anything about a deity that can not be defined and we can only define those things that effect the human experience. That is not to say that there can not be something about a deity that is beyond what can be defined in ways that effect the human experience. It is just that such things are not really relevant to us.

That being the case, I do not think that "the beginning" needs to be seen as a specific point in time. It probably refers to all of that which preceded the human experience. If I were to restate Gen. 1:1 in 20th century language, it would read something like; As we begin, it should be noted that Adonai creation that which we can not know(the heavens) and that which we can know(the earth), and what we can know(the earth), was imperceptible(without form and void) and obscured (darkness covered the face of the deep), and the essence of the creator (Spirit of Elohim) organized the energy(waters).

[Divine Insight]

Just on a personal intuitive level I can't imagine how anything could possibly exist at all. The very idea that anything could have come into existence seems utterly impossible, yet here we are. So this only tells me that what I consider to be intuitively impossible most certainly is possible.

Clearly either something came into existence somewhere along the way, or something has always existed, which doesn't help intuitively. Even that makes no sense.

~~~~~

But now let's think about this theologically (i.e. let's imagine that an infinite eternal God could somehow exist. A God who can actually think and know what it's doing. And imagine that this God created our physical universe)

For me this is even far more problematic. This brings up far too many even more difficult questions.

1. First off it doesn't help anything in terms of the original problem, because now we simply have a God that has supposedly always existed. So we haven't made any progress at all on the original problem. All we've done is add far more problems to the mix.

2. If we assume that this God truly is eternal and has no beginning or end to it's existence, then surely it must have created infinitely many worlds like our universe infinitely many times before it created ours. Our universe surely couldn't have been God's FIRST creation. In fact, an eternal God couldn't even have ever had a FIRST creation since that would imply that there were times when it FIRST did things. This violates the very notion that it always existed eternally.

3. If this God that has existed eternally is STILL creating worlds as screwed up as ours then he certainly hasn't learned much for an entity that supposedly has eternal experience at creating things.

It just becomes extremely problematic.

How many time did this God have to have his son nailed to a poll in order to offer forgiveness to all the inept creatures that he has eternally been creating? And why does this God need to create so many inept creatures to begin with?

Adding a God into the mix does absolutely NOTHING to advance the original problem. It only creates far more problems.

Something that just happened to exist and form into random universes as inept as ours makes far more sense. At least there's no reason to think that it should learn anything or get any better at creating infinitely many universe if it has no consciousness or intelligence. So that actually makes far more sense than to imagine an intelligent God existing eternally.

The question of how anything could exist in the first place most certainly is an intriguing question. But the idea that some intelligent God has always existed for all of eternity doesn't help the problem at all. It only makes the problem far worse.

An intelligent creator should know better than to keep creating worlds where animals eat each other and humans hate on each other in the very name of the God that never even interacts with them at all.

In short, the universe is too stupid to have been created by an eternal God. Naturalism where everything is just an accident makes far more sense.

There's just no excuse for a supposedly eternal God to have created a world as disgusting as the one we live in. And trying to blame that on humans and free will is absolute nonsense. An eternal God should have been able to figure out how to create free will humans far better than this by now (unless he's just starting out at creating things, but then we have a God who has a beginning, and that violates the original problem of explaining how things got started) How would a God who just starting out have gotten started?

So to even try to solve the problem by introducing a "God" concept does absolutely nothing to help. It only makes the problem far worse.

An accidental universe actually makes far more sense.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 8 by Divine Insight]

I agree wholeheartedly that adding a 'god' to the thinking on origins adds nothing. What we KNOW is that this universe exists. It is an assumption that it had a beginning; that it began out of nothing. To have no unnecessary assumptions we are left with the conclusion it had no beginning, tho' its form and nature are changing. We know this because it is expanding.

So, the cleanest way of viewing it is that in one form or another it has always been.

I also agree that it appears to have no purpose. It is as you say, an accident in that it was not designed because to assume a designer requires unnecessary assumptions.

[William]

This is why I think of GOD as being Consciousness.

I have no problem with the idea that the universe has always existed and simply goes through the singularity process which gives the impression of beginnings and endings, other than the fact that the singularity beginning/end event is part of that process, so which came first? Obviously a beginning had to come first.

This, because the process implies 'start', and thus begs the Q 'what started it going in that process?' If it always existed why doesn't it remain static and unchanged? Timeless.

And that is the issue. Time exists because of beginning and movement. Time exists because of beginnings and endings.

If consciousness existed but nothing else did, then timelessness would exist, so this would mean that timelessness would be an aspect of consciousness and consciousness would have always existed in this timeless state where no thing existed.

If then consciousness evolved ways in its timeless state to create time through creating beginnings (by creating this universe for [obvious] instance) then why would consciousness do this?

One answer could be so that Consciousness could then experience beginnings and endings within a space, occupied by time.

But how can the experience then be genuine? How can a timeless being really experience time without somehow disconnecting from itself and how could it do so without running the risk of losing itself completely to itself?

It would have to create states of being which allowed it to remain in timelessness while being able to explore and experience time, and this would have to involved degrees of involvement through layers of density as it were...a progressive 'fall' into the rabbit hole, each layer offering a deeper experience than the former, but the former integral to that process...

...Until such a time as it could experience the genuine separation from any knowledge of itself because it was so deep in the density that it literally was able to experience what a beginning was, bound by time. Not just a beginning, but also an end.

The whole thing of course, would be a great illusion, because that which has always existed and is timeless cannot stop existing for real.