(Posting this as a picture because it’s just easier than editing a submission.)
Thank you for the message. To jump directly to your question, the direct answer is I don’t know. No one really knows. That is something that, as of yet, has no good scientific explanation. Really our understanding has grown in great amounts in the last 100 years. Less than 100 years ago the popular idea was that the universe was timeless and had always existed. We’re getting more and more understanding all the time but we can always seek to push back our understanding. No matter what answer we have we can always ask “What about before that?” and it pushes us in to an infinite regress.
We are left with two options. The universe is either infinite and always has and always will exist, or it is finite and had a starting point. Either answer is pretty amazing to think of. Either answer opens up many other follow up questions we’d love to have the answer to. We’re continuing to seek out those answers and we’re continuing to push our understanding. It’s really amazing to consider just how much we are able to know.
The words people use when discussing these ideas will often reflect the point of view they hold. When you say that these things had to be “created” you’re imply that there had to be a creator in order to make it possible. That is not necessarily the case. There is absolutely no reason to believe it had to be created. So how did it get there? I don’t know, but anyone that will say they have an answer is only speculating.
One aspect of the discussion that always bothers me is how religious people will attempt to be half-way scientific. People should either put trust in science and the scientific method, or not. There are so many people that go in to it half way. There are people that will look at science and say yes this makes sense, this is logical, this is a good explanation but then entirely deter from that when considering things that don’t currently have a complete scientific explanation. They will completely sell out the proof, foundation, and reasoning they used to understand the other information.
The explanation your religion teacher provided is not an uncommon one. It’s one I’ve heard many times, yet when ever I’ve asked for someone to explain how they can possibly know this and why this entity is just automatically outside of the limitation imposed on all other things you get a vague pseudo answer that basically boils down to “I don’t know, just is”. It’s illogical and irrational. It’s ridiculous to use proper thought process to arrive at one piece of information and totally diverge from it in order to arrive at another.
The answer to every mystery we have ever had is never ever “magic”. There are explanation and there are reasons. To put forward that the legitimate answer to a very deep mystery is “magic” is simply silly and irrational. It’s a juvenile mentality that does not provide anything of substance for the conversation. It is something automatically beyond testing, beyond reason, and beyond understanding which makes it both a horrible answer and an unverifiable one.
I do appreciate the message and I hope you don’t feel I’m being too harsh in my criticism. If you trust science, trust in science. If you’re not going to, don’t attempt to make your religion and science coalesce because they simply can’t. I’ve had the discussion many times but there will always be some aspects that religion and science simply can’t come together on. A choice needs to be made, truth or fantasy, logic or mysticism, reason or mystery, science or religion. Personally, I’ll take science every single time.
This may be the politest response that I’ve seen you write to date.
That’s the main division between religion and science when it comes to colossal questions like the origins of the universe. One is “It’s unknown. One of God’s mysteries, and we’re not meant to understand it” and the other is “We just don’t know…yet.” I feel much more comfortable with the latter.
