Why Atheism and not Agnosticism?

[Myself]

It's perfectly fair to be puzzled about any "first event", but you're never going to get to the zillionth of a nanosecond before the big bang. The simple answer is, "the nature of reality changed".

The Big Bang is a most unsatisfying answer because it can bring you so far, show you a path and then throw up a brick wall to block the answer. So, basically the Big Bang theory is probable until "reality changes". This is where the creationists jump in because they cannot accept an unknown and therefore fill in their answer with the arbitrary answer of god.

These are the sort of questions that led me away from religion at an early age because I couldn't believe in a credo that went with "god created darkness and light", and when I asked "what does nothing look like?", their answer was "A human cannot visualize it, only god can", and "don't think, just believe".

And now, once I had thought I had walked away from irrationalism it creeps back up with science and the question "what was before the big bang?", is answered with "a human cannot visualize it" and "its not productive to think about it, just ignore". Well, either that or pick your favorite pseudoscientific theory and believe with faith not reason. The reason these sort of questions bother me is because I never feel as though I stand on philosophically firm ground, where at some point science has to throw their arms up and declare: "we have brought you thus far and give up". My answer to these sort of questions normally is ignoring and being preoccupied with something else: I don't think about the origins of the Universe, the same way I don't think about my eventual death. The only difference is that death is a subject within the realm of science, the former I must wearily conclude is outside the province of reason.

Edited July 4, 2005 by Myself

[Hal]

The prevalent scientific theory concerning the origins of the universe is the Big Bang theory. I assume for convenience that you are familiar with it principles. If this theory is correct than how would you logically address your theory of a static Universe? How would you contend with the fact that for every action you have an equal and opposite reaction? That every action or event must be preceded by an action or event which caused it? This line of reasoning logically concludes that there must be a root action which started all others.

The Big Bang is not technically a theory about how the universe was created, but a theory about how the universe evolved after a specific point in time (the Planck time). As far as I know, the Big Bang theory does not postulate a 'first' event, and most physicists would regard discussion about what happened 'before' the 'first' unit of planck time as being meaningless (scare quotes intentional).

Edited July 4, 2005 by Hal