http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11161493

I initially read a different article that had comments, and there was some pretty severe backlash from, primarily, Christians.

Pretty cool stuff.

Edit: Found the original article I mentioned, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100902...wpphu-container - comments are gold.

As usual with Stephen Hawking, he's not specifically saying God does not exist, he's just stating that he's not necessary for the creation of the universe.

To me, both science and physics come down to the same problem, it all has to hinge on something being there forever, be it god, or whatever came before our universe, and human beings just have a massive problem bending their minds round the concept of time being forever, and not having a beginning or an end.

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The fact that it's such a difficult concept to grasp makes it all the more fascinating to me.

It would be nice to know how it all started, but would it make a difference? Religious people who honestly believe in their creation myths look to their beginnings for purpose in their lives, which creates a false sense of purpose... So they end up going about their lives living for their religion rather than spending their lives trying to better humanity. "Knowing" how you were created causes these people to live selfishly, living out their purpose that is associated with their religion... As a species we need to realize that our purpose is to better our species and set aside just about everything else, an individual may be immortalized for his/her life accomplishments, but being immortalized only goes so far. If the general population could set aside their differences and focus on a common objective, no matter what the objective was, it would be possible for us to accomplish. There is always resistance, I know its a very idealistic idea, you can call me a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one.

This story is where I got the newest addition to my sig. Fantastic quote I thought. From another forum where the religious idiots and the none religious were debating the story.

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That's some flawless logic right there. He's got me convinced.

It basically comes down to the fact that time is just a perception by living beings to make more sense of things around them. Since time does not exist, points of creation do not exist; everything in the universe and beyond has always "been" here. Some things can never be comprehended - that's just the reality. That's by belief and if you believe different I respect your viewpoints.

Time certainly does exist, just not in the integer based way we think of it. There is a now, a before, and an after, its just not enclosed within a little capsule of 'this is how long the universe is' like we think. Our universe will have a start and end point, yes, but outside of that there's other universes, and it's not the case where if you go back far enough you'll find the 'original' universe and work out how long the whole of time is. Time does exist, it's just not got any start or end points like we think of it.

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You believe that time exists, and that there is a now, a before, and an after. Time is an abstract term used to measure distances between events perceived by our senses. It's possible that there is no such external force as time imposing its progression upon us. Maybe there is no such thing as a now, before, and after; it could be that there is a now, history, and projection. All I'm saying is that from our tiny view out into the universe, we can't really know anything beyond imagination. We can measure things quantitatively but are only left to deduce the inner workings of the universe and therefore cannot speak so confidently of our flawed and primitive technology. We are like ants who gaze out at the world with machines that can observe qualitatively detect the complex world of men.

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so all of reality is like a film roll... and we're just experiencing our part in it... but the previous frames and future frames are there they just haven't been played in our time, yet whoever is in those frames is experiencing them now as we are experiencing our now as now even though both nows are occuring at the same time?

In likening reality to a film, you're still imagining everything as a set point on a timeline. Are you asking me if I believe that multiple timelines are happening or some shit?

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You fucking idiot.

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First new poster in months and I'm thoroughly disappointed. But he used a really large font, so it must be true.

I recently read an article about a team who claim to have discovered evidence in the cosmic background radiation of black hole collisions from a previous universe. If the findings turn out to be valid, it could be amazing evidence in support of the cyclical universe theory.

So where did the matter for the, er, bing bang come from? From the previous universe, which was made of the universe before it, and so on. And eventually, if this theory holds true, our universe will collapse into a singularity and birth a new universe.

And who says there has to have been a first big bang, an original universe? As we've already discussed, our limited understanding of time and our inability to grasp the concept of something infinite limit our potential understanding.

Or, you know, sky wizard did it.

The simple logic of it all is that nothing came 'before' the big bang...in our universe. Logically there will have been a universe before it, and before that, before that, and so on forever, and our universe simply spawned from one of those that came before it. Pulling out the 'what came before the big bang' argument, when we can honestly not know what did, is pretty stupid. Hence, ban

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