Did the Universe begin to exist?

What do you guys think?

JV-Stalin: What is the question? That's kind of confusing. Are you asking, "Does what exists exist?"

Pinkie: It's asking if the universe began to exist or did it just always exist?

JV-Stalin: Well. are you asking what we believe personally or what the truth is?

Pinkie: Haha nice one.

I'll bite. It began to exist.

I'm defining the universe as everything we see today - stars, planets etc.

Want to laugh even more? It began a little over 6000 years ago.

nzlockie: I wasn't kidding....

I agree though!

JV-Stalin: I think it did begin to exist, at least 13.7 billion years ago. The evidence for that is pretty convincing.

I also believe there are other universes.

admin: interesting.

A lot of my Christian mates reckon that there can't possibly be other universes as the bible doesn't mention them.
They make similar claims about Aliens within OUR universe.

I dispute that reasoning. From a Christian standpoint it's important for us to believe that the Bible contains all the information we need to know - not all the information that's out there.
I don't find any contradiction with the idea that there could be parallel universes, although I'd be forced to believe that God is still sovereign over those as well.

nzlockie: I think there might e other universes, there just aren't intelligent life forms equal to humans on them.

Pinkie: We can think that, but the fact is that the Bible doesn't speak to it one way or the other.

In my world that simply means that life in other universes, (or on other planets) simply can't be a variable that impacts us at all.

I would like to hear biblical evidence for Alien life not existing in our universe or for other universes not existing. I don't think there is any.

nzlockie: I'm talking about intelligent life equal to humans... not cows. You know?

Pinkie: yep I know - and you could be right.
All I'm saying is in my opinion it would wrong to say that you're coming to that conclusion because of something the Bible says or doesn't say.
There's an outfit in oz that does a little magazine called Creation Science. They have some good stuff in there but they frequently make the mistake of stating something that they THINK is true as a "Biblical Fact". In many of these cases that "biblical fact" is decades later proved to wrong and then they have to retract what they said earlier.
I ask myself, if alien life more intelligent than cows (and therefore more intelligent than some humans) were discovered... would that make my Bible untrue? I don't think it would. So given that, I'm not going to use the bible to assure myself that such things don't exist.

Finally, I'm not saying that YOU'RE saying the bible indicates that smarter-than-the-average-cow-booboo aliens don't exist - you haven't said why you think that. I'm just saying that some of the Christian crazies down here say stuff like that all the time and it makes me look bad when they get it wrong.

Pinkie: Seems like a pretty weird proposition.

Let me put it to you this way. Suppose only 0.00000001% of all stars have a planet that supports life. That's a pretty low estimate, but it's sensible enough because Christians like to hate on the Copernican principle quite a bit for reasons that I've never fully understood. Now in the observable universe, we can see about 1000000000000000000000000 stars. That means (by our percentage guess up there) that one quadrillion planets out there support life. There are over 3,300 times more planets in the observable universe that support life than there are stars in the milky way galaxy. You have to realize how massive a place the universe really is. If you were talking about all of the milky way or even the local group I could kinda see where you're coming from. Even if there's nothing more to the universe than what we know the odds are staked astronomically against you.

But you've taken this a step further. Not just do you believe that in all of the one quadrillion planets in this observable universe there is no more intelligent life than us - bearing in mind that a high percentage of these planets will be much older than the earth and thus had more time for species to develop - you've extended that case to the entire universe. Nobody even knows how big the universe is. Some very smart astrophysicists have made the very compelling case that the universe is infinite. So in all of the up-to-infinity planets that we're dealing with here, there is no planet that could possibly have evolved greater life than us.

You know, I've got to be honest, that sounds really crazy to me. But you've taken it one step further still, and charged that in all the possible multiverses - up to infinite possible permutations of a universe of possibly infinite size - there cannot be a single planet with a single organism with a greater intelligence than a cow.

nzlockie is absolutely right, nowhere does the bible state "Thou shalt not believe that aliens are smarter than cows". There is no scientific validity to your claim. There is no statistical validity to your claim. And frankly - I don't see why you'd want to believe that. This universe - I cannot stress this enough - is MASSIVE. To think that we are the only planet that has evolved this level of intelligence, and we're not even a particularly smart species, is incredibly depressing.

All I want to know is - why? Why in the world would you believe that?

nzlockie: Omgosh, that's hilarious "I ask myself, if alien life more intelligent than cows (and therefore more intelligent than some humans) were discovered... would that make my Bible untrue?" That makes sense.

Pinkie:

Pinkie: That's us.

nzlockie: That's a bad argument. The bible doesn't speak of comic microwave background radiation or the nature of light. Does that mean they don't exist? Assuming he exists, the God of the bible may not have wanted us to know at that time

JV-Stalin: I think what he means is just because it's not in the Bible doesn't mean it's not there> That affirms your statement.

JV-Stalin: Rebekah's right. I was saying that as Christians we believe the Bible tells us everything we NEED to know. Unfortunately a lot of Christians take that as meaning that if aliens were real, they would have been mentioned. I disagree strongly with that idea.

As you mentioned, there are lots of things not mentioned in the bible.