Originally posted by Scotty70
Is it possible that there is no real "beginning", and that our perception of the universe is simply one in a cycle of expansions and contractions?
Isaac Asimov actually wrote that as a theory and others also. Right now the scientific level of the human race as a whole, all of it, including physics, quantum and otherwise, is in a box trying to break out to understand the universe as a whole and we only have parts of the answer.
That means that any religious views about what came before is just as valid AT THIS POINT IN TIME than any scientific theory or conjecture. It may well come to pass science will advance beyond any rational of religious nature. Or not🙂
So religious people are just as valid in believing some god waggled its little finger and the universe was created and then followed the known laws of physics or whatever.
The thing religious people cannot say is god makes people come back to life, virgins getting impregnated by supernatural godly forces. That intrudes in our known universe having nothing to do with what happened before.
The crime there is how religious people deal with that issue, for instance, taliban killing women for not wearing there whole body armor because some book demands it. For instance, right wing christian killing abortion doctors.
All that goes way beyond any debate about the origin or destiny of the universe as a whole and that has to be considered a crime against humanity in any light.