If the Universe has existed forever, the light of every star in the sky would have reached us by now, and at night the sky would be white, not black. We see a black sky at night because the light from all the stars in the sky hasn't reached us yet.

The speed of light is finite, so it takes time for the light from all the stars to reach us. That means that there has not been enough time (an eternity of time) for the light to travel. Thus the Universe has not existed "forever".

It's has not been used yet in the while ( myUniverse.StillExists() ) loop. It gets called in the myUniverse.EnableLife(LifeForm_Intelligent) function, which may or may not be called at all (myUniverse.RandomizeLife() function is used to get a random scenario...got to have a little bit of surprise. )

Just because light takes time to move, THAT is your reason the universe has not existed "forever"?!? Time and space can be twisted and warped....black holes do this daily.

Edit:
We will probably never know what created what or if the universe has been here forever...we might not really want to know that answer.

My biggest reason for believing in a GOD is that this CAN'T be it. Just look at all the crap that goes on. The meaning of life would be just so pointless... What would be the point in living at all if this life we have here is it?

I don't care if you prove me wrong...I WILL NOT accept that this is all there is, nothing to look forward to, no comfort after this cruel world is gone. If the meaning of life is to just procreate and fill the universe with our kind...well, if this is true...then WHY?

If this is it, then the universe will NOT be here forever...and therefore neither will we. That is like eating a huge dinner before being killed...why? You are gonna be dead anyway, so what does it matter? Why go on as a species if we are only here for a blink of an eye anyway?

Maybe it is just the existence of consciousness that created it all....seems weird, but think of those particles that exist away from each other and are still controlled by some unknown force. We would never know for sure if this is the case, because of the fact that you have a conscious effect on the universe by just existing. Now THAT is a mind fuck!:o

I'm not sure as to what happened, but we don't know even a quarter of a percent of the physics and other sciences involved in our universe. There may be some form of advanced math that we will learn in the future that proves that objects CAN spontaneously be created. Either way, I am sure we are a LONG time away from PROVING what is true.

First of all, what do you mean by the meaning of life? You can't even begin to answer that question until you know what the meaning of life means.

People looking for a reason to live won't find it in the distant universe, a book, nor an illusionary super-being. It's programmed into our brains (I use the term brains loosely here - even simple organisms have a similar reason for living...) and that's really all there is.

Actually, it does. Only religion claims to have answers for everything ("God did it").

Whatever is out there has no observable effect on our universe. That's why it is undetectable.

If it existed on another plane of existence, we wouldn't be able to tell anyway...at least not very easily. (that last part added for the 23yrold3yrold);D

Maybe Atheist refuse to believe in GOD because they don't want to feel like they are not the ones in control.;)

Added:

Yeah...They could have Romulan cloaking technology.::);D

Allow me to direct you to Douglas Adams.

I don't really want to get into the whole science vs guesswork thing,except to say that technology is pretty good evidence that science works. "Just a theory" doesn't really seem like such a strong statement when you find out that the theory allows us to cure diseases and do billions of calculations in a second... That's better than any other system of belief has been able to grant us.

But back to the original post - I think it was a bogus question. What is revolving around what is just a matter of perspective. If you have two massive objects in space, they will revolve around each other. Just because one is bigger than the other does not mean that the smaller one rotates around the bigger one. They both pull on each other - equally. From our reference frame, both the moon and the sun revolve around the earth. So all you guys talking about how "sad" this is can go stick it.

It's like computer code knowing about our outside world...other than the hardware attached, and software to use that hardware...it would be impossible for the code to know anything about our world. You could create programs that are "alive", so in a sense, you would be it's GOD. It has no way of proving you exist...other than looking for actions/commands you enter into the computer. Does that mean you do not exist because your creation can't prove you exist?

And yes, all points can be seen to move around each other. The sun could be seen as moving around the earth from a different viewpoint. It's just all relative to the viewer.;)

Allegro 0.9

I think these theories about what came 'first' are all wrong.
Since time is not a physical thing, but a human perception of things, 'first' is not real. Time is just another dimension (as you probably know), like x, y, and z, and we don't try to figure out why the sun sometimes comes 'before' planets, and sometimes 'after'. It's just the planets orbit the sun. Sometimes they are between us and the sun (the closer ones anyway), sometimes they are the other side of the sun. Why are the 'physical' dimensions understood much more than time?
/rant

He said

and the answer is no, because light moves with a constant speed. Light that was emitted 13.7 Gyrs ago from a point 13.7Gly distant has only just now reached us. Surely this is an obvious point?

That's exactly right. So the big bang did not happen at one particular point in space that you can point to right now. It happend everywhere, every single point was at the centre of the explosion when it happened. Surely that's just rephrasing what you just said?
When the fictional bread is in the oven and you look at it from the outside you have a frame of reference outside the bread that allows you to point to a specific location inside it. If your only frame of reference is inside the fictional bread, you cannot do this.

Nothing, or anything. The question makes no physical sense and is more properly a question of metaphysics. The question is the same as asking what the big bang looks like from the outside, a notion that doesn't make sense from the point of view of our universe.

No, that's just the thing. If there is something that has no detectable influence whatsoever, by what argument would you claim that it exists? Is there a difference between the thing existing and the thing not existing? If not, then as far as physics is concerned, it doesn't exist. Maybe all of space is filled with completely undetectable pink elephants, but if they're undetectable, who cares?

There isn't and we don't, really. Nothing in the universe gives a damn about what we do. It is therefor up to each person to give meaning to their lives in some way. If believing in a higher power does that for you, then good for you.

Ah, but is it really? It is a difficult point what "time" means outside of human perception, but it is definately not merely human perception. Think of the second law of thermodynamics, for instance.

Because spatial dimensions are very different from time dimensions. Time is not "just another" dimension. To give you a concrete example, you cannot move freely through time.
The difference is already explicit in the metric describing relativity, where distances are measured by (note that the sign of time is different). I think some formulations of string theory give more insight in this, but that's beyond my field of expertise (The Elegant Universe by Brian Green makes the point, I think).

And no rational person would, because it's nonsense. The North Pole is just some arbitrary location man invented; it's not like you can't keep going past it or go up or something. It's rubbish.

They're opposites, so kinda, yeah. I'm pretty sure that makes them different by definition.

If it were you wouldn't be correcting me. If the universe is 13.7G years old, light from 13.7Gly distance long since past us. Let me know when you find the Big Bang though.