Atheist Memes

Stephen Hawkings had an interesting perspective regarding the creation of our universe. When people ponder our universe's creation, they ask questions like "what caused the big bang?" or "what caused the universe to exist?". Hawkings would have responded with the sentiment that these kind of questions were pointless. When one asks such a question regarding cause/effect, this presupposes the existence of a timeline. Cause and effect explanations have no merit without time; therefore to ask what caused the creation of the universe is silly, because time did not exist which means the notion of cause/effect would not have existed either.

Nevertheless, I think a lot of the folks commenting here have a problematic understanding of science, which is resulting in them agreeing with the toxic meme. Science and Religion don't compete because they are fundamentally different in the way they approach understanding the universe. Religions relies on "truths" whereas science relies on "models". There are no scientific facts or truths, there are only models that can accurately predict things we observe.

For example, the atomic model (atoms, +ions, - ions) can accurately predict a lot of different phenomena in our universe (electrical phenomena, chemical reactions, thermal phenomena, etc). Nevertheless, no good scientist should confidently tell you that atoms actually exist in reality. The atom is a model that functions well in explaining our universe, but that doesn't mean it is "The Correct Model".