Religion

Don't worry - you're not offending anyone by asking a question.
 
I agree, all things must come out of our idea of them. I don;t think religions came into existence fully formed. They tend to evolve over time, out of some core idea, and as more and more people start to accept it, believe it, gets modified eventually into what we recognise.
 
That's why it makes more sense to find your own way, out of what you find along the way, and in many ways, that's what religions were meant to be - signposts or stepping stones. Unfortunately, once power hungry and selfish egotistical man gets hold of things, he tends to corrupt what started off pure into something far from it. It is this that most religions eventually degenerate into.

 

They'll say he's some kind of spaceless and timeless transcendent being, which really makes no sense ,since it can't be the cause of the universe since cause is a concept that needs time .

 

 
People take the idea of "nothing" too literal. Imagine if you were having a conversation with someone face to face, it'd be like there is nothing between you, but in reality there's billions upon billions of atoms. Once you get outside of Earth's atmosphere, there again appears to be nothing, but there's something there. Energy, subatomic particles, things like that. They call it nothing because it's nothing that we have the technology to detect and prove yet. Even once you leave the galaxy, there is still going to be subatomic particles, sub-subatomic particles, and energy waves abound. Once the "nothing" starts to condense, it becomes something that's more tangible to us.
 
Then you have people who can see that the nothing really isn't nothing, but they'll still refer to it as God out of fear (they'll claim love) of punishment or lack of an afterlife.

 

I'm not at all religious, but in theory, if Jesus was here how Christians believe he was then he wasn't just an idea, he was a physical person who Christians believe is the son of God. Someone didn't one day just think "hey, imagine if there was guy called Jesus blah blah blah". Just a thought


Sent

 

Think of the universe as energy. Imagine a vast open space full of energy waves, randomly moving along, bumping into other and having their properties changed. Some clash and form new energies, some cancel each other out, some don't even interact with one another.. If it helps, think of how light waves can have properties of particles. As these energy waves collide in space, some condense. After so long, the energy begins to condense into subatomic particles and then into matter.

As for the universe being created, that would mean there has to be a creator.. I'm a firm believer that the energy that goes into the universe has always been there. There was no real beginning.. Even before the big bang, the energy that was part of that was always in existence in one shape or form. Remember, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change forms. Dark energy is only called dark because we don't know what it is yet.. As we learn more and more, the % of dark energy will decrease.

 

That's what everyone else is trying to answer haha

 

The net energy in the universe is calculated to be zero. That is, it has been hypothesised that there exists such a thing as negative energy. The negative energy is gravity, since work has to be done to separate a gravitationally bound system. That is, since gravity is always attractive, gravitational energy is negative. So yeah, we do indeed come from nothing, in a sense.
 
EDIT: Since 'before' is a side effect of time, which came into being only after the singularity of the universe's creation, there was no before that means anything to us beings who live in a continuum defined by time.

 
Priceless. You sir, win one hundred internets
In all seriousness though, that is one of the best descriptions of religion I have ever come across.

 

 
It came from nowhere, from everywhere. It has always existed in one shape or form.. Imagine if you were to actually invent a time machine that could go back in time. If you went back, you would never find a point of creation or even a beginning. It would be like trying to get to 1 from 0.9999999999999999999999999999999999 repeating, it'll never actually happen.
 
According to the law of conversation of energy, it can't be created or destroyed. Meaning there couldn't be a creation point.. Even if you believe in the big bang and a singularity, all the energy that came from the big bang would off been there before the big bang went off. I don't like to call energy eternal because then people will say "so you mean it's God?", but energy has and always will be there.

 

I'll attempt to simplify what I said.... *cracks knuckles*
 
First off, by 'negative energy' I don't mean the spirituality thing. I meant it like '-20 joules'.
It takes energy to cause a body at rest to start or stop moving. That is, Work is done whenever we change the inertial state of a body, i.e., when we cause a body at rest to move or a body in motion to stop.
 
So when two celestial bodies attract each other, work is being done, or in other words, energy is being expended. This energy comes from the gravitational field, which does not diminish no matter how much work it does.
 
Another scenario is the mundane one of a person throwing a ball high into the air. It slows down as it rises higher(moves away from Earth), gaining potential energy which is once again converted into kinetic energy when it falls down. This potential energy comes from the gravitational field of the Earth(and the ball, btw). So gravity is negating the energy imparted to the ball by the person throwing it.
 
Gravity always does this, unlike the other fundamental forces which are attractive or repulsive depending on the situation. That is what I meant by gravity being negative energy.
 
Now you may be wondering if gravity is negative energy, how does it balance out all the matter we see?
Matter and indeed energy is condensed into relatively small areas, whereas gravitational fields stretch out indefinitely. So all the empty space,by which I mean the gaps between the smallest matter particles, is filled by the negative energy of gravity.

 

Not Astrophysics, just Electronics. One doesn't have to take courses to know stuff
I have this incredible, insatiable hunger for food, knowledge and weed. In that order. Very little else matters to me
 
Glad to have been of assistance. I suggest you read Stephen Hawking, that simplified language is something I learned from him

 

Those middle ones make quite a lot of difference though