Who made God?

A tactical question, one without an answer, and one used often by the scientist in their battle against religion.. The standard response 'God is eternal' is beyond human comprehension. I have given up asking this question of religious people because, firstly, they cannot give an answer that can be tested, and secondly, there is no way for me to argue with their answer. It is a truly unanswerable question.

So where did the universe come from? Science is divided on this, although the 'big bang' theory is currently prevalent. That requires the entire universe to be compressed into an extraordinarily small space. This, not unreasonably, exploded and eventually formed the expanding universe we see today. It's a theory borne out by observation on many levels, but it has, at its heart, the same unanswerable question.

Where did this massively compressed ball of matter come from?

The oscillating universe model says that the universe will expand, then contract, eventually ending up as the compressed matter-ball again. Then it explodes and the whole process restarts.

That solves nothing. It only moves the question back a step. So our universe came from a previous universe that collapsed. Where did that one come from?

To hold such a belief - for belief it is - is no different to believing in a religious creation story. If there was a definitive answer to the beginning of time, then there would be one theory to cover it. There are dozens. New Scientist recently ran a story on a new one - that our universe is actually the inside of a black hole in a bigger universe. That does not answer the question. That makes it harder to answer.

Human beings need beginnings and ends to things. Infinity is beyond our grasp. We cannot accept the Always There, we cannot accept the Never Ends.

Science is often guilty of forcing answers to unanswerable questions. Religion is guilty of answering them with untestable answers.

We should accept that, for some questions, there is no answer available to us. It's not just that we don't know, it's that we cannot know. Perhaps we will never know.

Where the universe came from is one of these questions. There is currently no way to provide a definitive answer. There might never be.

Science tries, fails, and refuses to acknowledge its failure. That's bad.

Religion makes up an answer and calls it success. That's worse.

There is only one truthful, realistic answer to the question 'Where did it all come from?'

Repeat after me: 'I don't know'.