What do you believe?

Just to make this clear, I don't mean for this to be a thread about religion, or rather a thread solely about religion.

I want to know what you believe about certain unknowns in our world. Do you believe the big bang theory? Do you believe we're all doomed eventually when the universe recollapses? Do you believe there is a supreme being who watches over or influences us? Do you believe there was a supreme being who started everything but has since taken a hike?

I'm not targeting any once specific topic. Anything that you think might be considered controversial or unconfirmable.

I don't want this to end up a debate about who is right or who is wrong, though I do hope that it will lead to that elsewhere. I encourage you to start debates with people, but do try to keep it out of this thread.




I'm somewhat undecided about whether or not there is a supreme being or any sort, myself. I've considered such things as there being not a supreme being but rather a supreme power of some sort that is not necessarily a sapient "being." There are things such as dark matter, gravity, etc, that we can somewhat theorize about but we can't seem to completely explain. Perhaps these are examples of or part of this "supreme power."

I do believe in the big bang theory. All of the evidence points to such an event and it's becoming pretty widely accepted these days. The only problem with such an event is that it almost makes a supreme being or power of some sort a necessity in explaining why it happened, whereas an infinite universe with no beginning and no end has no specific event that must have been caused by something.

However, there is the question in my mind of whether or not the universe will ever contract. There seem to be two possible outcomes in my mind, either the universe will continue to expand, never reaching but approaching zero expansion, or it will eventually reach the end of it's expansion and start contracting, similarly to how a ball thrown up into the air eventually stops and then returns. The evidence currently points to the former, since the average density of the universe doesn't seem to be dense enough to where gravity will eventually get a grip on it and bring it back. However, there are some things we can't really accurately account for, such as dark matter, so it's hard to say either way.

I'm going to leave it at that for now, but give a few topics that people can build on(and perhaps I'll address later.)

Evolution
Black Holes
The speed of light and how it affects our universe
Time Travel
Unified Theory
Dark Matter
Crazy Shit

ETC.