i was talking to my roommate about a month ago about god and religion because he asked my beliefs. i told him i dont believe in god and im an atheist and gave him tons of reasons why. we respectfully debated for awhile and i was able to show how some of his reasons for believing were based on no facts or logic (brag).
so the story is he comes into my room a couple days ago and says that he now thinks god probably isnt real (brag) but he cant stop thinking about the idea of infinity in our universe and how our universe couldnt have just started without something. i basically just tell him i understand what hes saying and i dont know either but that im content with not knowing. since then i have been infatuated with thinking about this. im just curious what you guys think about this stuff and what things you would say to someone in my situation.

Why is infinity any harder to comprehend then the idea that some entity had to create our vast universe?

Personally, I think its no harder thinking of the universe/time as being infinite as the idea that it has a beginning or end.

The fact that he doesn't understand things shouldn't be troubling to him. There's no reason to assume that humans should be able to explain everything, understand everything, etc.

I get disturbed when I can't figure out something that should be within my grasp. I'm not troubled that I don't understand things that have every reason to be outside of my grasp (and the current grasp of all humans)

There is no explanation to why we exist except for scientific theory, which present day is getting more believable.....One thing to always remember in life is, You arrived alone and you will leave alone.

Before you were born, the earth was here many , many lifetimes beyond comprehension. It will still be here after you are gone unless the planet dies unexpectantly.

My advice, sit down, figure out what makes u happy and go for it.

What is infinite about our universe?

Most scientists agree that the universe has a finite size and shape.

Also, the guy above has made the most irrelevant comment. It's not even that inspirational...

obv u dont do much thinking on this subject. also scientific "theories" are not fact.

wasnt trying to inspire, just putting it out there for ur mind to munch on....take it or leave it

How can people say yes to a God creating an entire universe from nothing but say no to the same thing happening with the God removed? It all came from nothing in either scenario. What do they think, God had a giant bag of planet mix - just add water?

i agree with you guys but thats not really the direction i wanted to take this thread. i was more thinking about like how our universe was created obviously not from god and how anything actually exists lol but i guess that would be more for the science math forum. also im not looking for the meaning of life i just was wondering if there are any good educated guesses on the matter.

I'm no philosopher, but I do some some thinking on the subject. You however have avoided the point of the OP and written something irrelevant. I kind of agree with what you say, but it is still irrelevant to what the OP is asking.

OP asked

" im just curious what you guys think about this stuff and what things you would say to someone in my situation.'

I answered the best way I could without a lot of back and forth over old arguments.

If it hasn't been said already, I'm sure it will be quickly pointed out that god does nothing to solve or satisfy your infinity problem/question. If anything, it just creates more questions. Why is god allowed to be infinite, but the universe is not? Why is it any less ridiculous to think a complicated intelligent conscious being can just pop into existence, but a mindless purposeless universe cannot?

The short answer is that no one knows where the universe came from and that's exactly what our answer should be: We don't know. It's better (and more intellectually honest), than making up gods to sate our ignorance.

See bold I added. What is outside that? Also, our concept of time is infinite. Even if this universe began from a singularity and had a big bang, saying that there was nothing before that is a massive paradox. I'm pretty confident it will never be understood. And having a God doesn't resolve any of this either, it just allows us to throw up our hands about it.

What created the big bang was something outside of time.

It does not make sense to speak of something "before the Big Bang", because loosely speaking, the Big Bang created time itself. Outside of this universe, there are things which we cannot (yet) explain - perhaps God, perhaps other things - but these "things" don't involve time within our universe as we know it.

The view that "God created the Big Bang" is perfectly reasonable imo, although I am agnostic...

not really

why not?

No ones said that to me before. Where have you aquired all of your vast wisdom? If you just made this case years ago theist the world over would surely burn their places of worship to the ground.

It's equally reasonable that our universe was created by the collision of a flying spaghetti monster with a flying teapot within some higher dimensional universe.

To narrow it down to God is improbable, but still possible I guess.

I think this was true 20 years ago...but not today.

Have him watch these

Arrow of time...Sean Carrol

Aeons before the big bang...Roger Penrose