"In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?" [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, page 257]

The problem with Sagan's point is that what we commonly refer to as our universe is something that hasn't always existed. Now it could be that what we commonly refer to as our universe is just an object that exists in some larger or ultimate reality. This ultimate reality would be that which has always existed and apparently something unobservable to us.

So my question to atheists is this: Given that our universe has not always existed, do you conclude/believe that there is some ultimate reality which has always existed?

Why does it matter?

fwiw, I voted no, for the same reason I don't believe in God. I don't find any compelling evidence for an "ultimate reality," nor am I even sure what that means.

Why ( perhaps how?) would I believe in something that I can't even comprehend? I have no reason to believe there is or isn't or what it means if there were or weren't such a situation as "ultimate reality".

Well Sagan could not have been talking about the known universe....because he knew the known universe has not always existed. Clearly he was talking about a portion of reality that is unknown to him....Yet he seems to conclude that it exists .

Yes. I am a naturalist and believe in an absolute, objective reality.

i thought the jury was still out on whether or not the universe has always existed.

it was my understanding that the big bang doesn't preclude a universe that is infinitely old. or am i wrong on that?

I think that what stu is talking about is the universe as we know it now. I am sure that you agree the universe has not always existed in the state that it is at right now.

Also, modern cosmology appears to lean towards (fairly heavily) a past incomplete Universe. From what I have read the biggest unknown right now is because we do not have a viable model for quantum gravity.

yes, i agree with that. it certainly seems the universe has been expanding for the past 13 billion years.

dunno what this means.

in any case, i thought stu's point was that the universe definitely had a beginning. so it cant have always existed like Carl Sagan says. and my point was that the big bang theory only provides an initial starting expansion point, and nothing in the theory states how long this initial starting point existed, and it could be infinite.

i really dont know though, im not a cosmologist, and it looks like cosmology is hard.

Is an ultimate and eternal universe in it's theory much different than god? Seriously, if we are just playing a defining game then theists will say that god has to "logically" need no cause; well for an atheist then the universe is the last step that, with the same logic, needs no cause.

Naw, that doesn't make any sense.

The point was, the universe as we know it now almost certainly had a beginning. Understanding this, would it still be rational to believe in an "eternal ultimate reality"? IDK...probably not.

It seems to me that if you do not believe in an uncaused eternal God then you're "forced" or left with believing in an uncaused eternal reality. Agree or disagree?

Stu does not mean 'is the universe as it is now infinitely old' but rather something along the lines of 'do you believe there have always been laws in place that govern the way reality works, laws which are not contingent upon anything but simply exist' (such as logical absolutes). That was my understanding, anyhow.

Agree and disagree. An uncaused eternal reality makes the most sense given that I don't believe in an uncaused eternal god but it's not as ironclad as your belief in an uncaused eternal god. My belief can easily change based on more knowledge and learning; I will not hold steadfast to it like Christians will with their belief in god.

Also, I can just as easily say that if you do not believe in an uncaused eternal reality, then you are "forced" or left with believing in an uncaused eternal god. So it's not really making a strong statement...

it doesn't?

i mean stephen hawking said..."But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundaries or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be."

Surely he is familiar with the Big Bang theory, and still thinks it could be the case that the universe has always been.

Yes but I would stress that if the laws which govern reality have always existed then it follows that reality has always existed. If a law governs something then that something must exist to be governed.

Hawking is working with something called "imaginary time" iirc. I'll look up the youtube link after this session and hook you up.

im confused why the laws which govern reality and "as it currently is" keeps getting brought up.

OP is about Sagan's quote, which simply says the universe could always have existed. Nowhere did Sagan say anything about the universe always existing in its present form. All that is needed to keep God out of the equation is a universe that has always been, regardless of what form the universe has been in.

really?

because the next line in that quote, which i left out, is..."What place, then, for a creator?"

if hawking is working with only imaginary time, why would he throw in the next line?

Hawkings is correct. You could have an eternal universe which bangs....expands for a while...expansion stalls out.....contracts....ultimately crunches....then bangs again. It could cycle like that for eternity.

However it seems to me that current evidence points to a universe...which banged from nothing and will expand out back into nothingness.

I'll have to get back to you on that one.

it does? i readily admit im not atop of all the most current cosmological theories and findings. but i wasn't aware that this was true.

Can't answer until you define wtf ultimate and eternal reality means.

Probably just because he could. IIRC, he is also quoted after someone brought up that once you convert back to real time that you end up with a beginning again "I am a physicist I am not concern with reality", or something really weird like that.

the point of the quote was to show that he wasnt dealing with imaginary time in this particular quote, as sunni suggested, not to get any read on his stance about god or the beginnigns of the universe.

youre the worst.

You can check out the thread that I started on the borde-guthe-valenkin (sp?) theorem in SMP. There was some good discussion, but a couple of really good articles, one in particular by Alan Guthe (who is an atheist and one of the leading cosmologists)