I don’t get it

[wildflowers1996]

The universe either had to have a cause, or not have a cause.

If it didn't have a cause:

It was either always there, or "came from nowhere".

I just don't understand how it could have always been there. Doesn't the Big Bang suggest otherwise?

If it "came from nowhere" then I think we can no longer say "energy cannot be created or destroyed".

If it did have a cause, surely the cause has to be something that is NOT the universe - so has to be outside of time / space? But people say it's impossible for anything to exist outside of time and space.

I'm so confused and I'm not clever enough to understand complicated physics

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'm too stupid to understand it too but I think black holes could be significant. If you imagine a giant vortex sucking matter in for billions of years till there is so much stuff under so much pressure that it explodes it all back out again. I can sort of picture that. Which makes you start to wonder how many times it has happened before and will again. Not that I have any scientific backup for any of it. Still, the something out of nothing I find even weirder. And a God- weirder still. After all- where did they come from? Where are they now?

 

[derpyderpins]

I'm too stupid to understand it too but I think black holes could be significant. If you imagine a giant vortex sucking matter in for billions of years till there is so much stuff under so much pressure that it explodes it all back out again. I can sort of picture that. Which makes you start to wonder how many times it has happened before and will again. Not that I have any scientific backup for any of it. Still, the something out of nothing I find even weirder. And a God- weirder still. After all- where did they come from? Where are they now?

But the question would be where is the matter sucked in by the black hole coming from. Where did the big bang get all the stuff it exploded out? If it was always there, then there is no "before," which screws with our puny human brains. We want to imagine going back in time further and further to when there was nothing. If I'm in my time machine and go to when the big bang happens, then I keep going backwards further in time, all that stuff sucked in by the big bang goes further away, right? Well, if I just keep going backwards more and more in my time machine, eventually there has to be some starting point, right? Or, at least, that's what my brain wants to think. There couldn't just "be" all this matter, or I would say you haven't gone back all the way. How could the matter get there?

I see why OP is having trouble with it.

 

[Forever Sleep]

But the question would be where is the matter sucked in by the black hole coming from. Where did the big bang get all the stuff it exploded out? If it was always there, then there is no "before," which screws with our puny human brains. We want to imagine going back in time further and further to when there was nothing. If I'm in my time machine and go to when the big bang happens, then I keep going backwards further in time, all that stuff sucked in by the big bang goes further away, right? Well, if I just keep going backwards more and more in my time machine, eventually there has to be some starting point, right? Or, at least, that's what my brain wants to think. There couldn't just "be" all this matter, or I would say you haven't gone back all the way. How could the matter get there?

I see why OP is having trouble with it.

Yeah, definitely. My brain is too small to comprehend it too. I guess I feel like to me, it seems more likely there was always stuff floating about in space. So- always time and always stuff floating about in it. With an infinite amount of time, it just seems more likely to me that things like the big bang and evolution could come about. I know what you mean though. Our linear, narrative lead brains wants it to be neater than that- with an official beginning.

 

[wildflowers1996]

If time were infinite and goes back forever, how would we ever get to "this point" in time if that makes sense?