Big Bang and God

[unicorn]

Recently had a discussion with a non-believer (atheist). When he pointed out the Big Bang as "proof" for no God, I had the pleasure of pointing out to him that the Big Bang supports the idea of creationism. He was quite shocked. I thought it was funny and pure logic! What do you guys think?

Some cool articles:

http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

http://www.newcreationism.org/CreationArticle20.html

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html

http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/20 ... e_big_bang

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcrai ... eplyg.html

[QED]

Greetings to all.

I am a Christian and a creationist. though I used to be an evolutionist

Welcome to the DC&R forums Bart! You say you used to be an evolutionist, but have switched over to being a creationist... I have a feeling that this would be the topic for a very interesting debate!

Yes, if the Big Bang (including the Ad Hoc inflationary theory) be true, then it, along with the facts that the universe started out in an extremely low entropic state and has an extraordinarily large information content, provides evidence for an eternal intelligent Creator God because the Big Bang is an effect and is in need of a cause, a first cause must be eternal, and that cause must be intelligent to provide the extraordinarily high information content.

Wow, that's a pretty big chunk you've taken care of. Or is it? The inferences that lead us back to a "big bang" are pretty well beyond dispute would you not agree? Inflation is a phenomenally successful theory in terms of its ability to describe and predict the subsequent evolution of the universe and is persuasive for a number of reasons. The issue of flatness and density perturbations being two of the most compelling. Now in this theory it is not the least bit remarkable why initial entropy should be so low, it is an inevitable result of all the "stretch" in the inflationary expansion phase. But what is the information you speak of? Is it the "settings on the dials" that give rise to all the magic numbers (i.e. ratio of the electric, nuclear and gravitational fields)? If so, then you are overlooking a very important consideration:

The numbers are indeed very finely balanced and one might point to them as evidence for a deliberate and careful setting. But then again, changes of a few parts in billion are enough to shut down things like the nuclear process taking place in the hearts of stars that gives rise to heavier elements (e.g. carbon) and hence the likes of us. So, maybe universes like those emerge from big bangs trillions of times over, except there's no one like us around to appreciate them.

So I don't think you can look at the evidence we have now and safely infer what you do from the data. The problem is that we have a another agenda running as separate process in the thoughts of men:

Not to mention he inspired the Bible and sent His son to "save us" from death, transform us to do the good that He created us to do, and bring us into eternal life.

Men have probably always assumed that, like them, (as consummate planners and creators of many earthly things) there ought to be some greater version of themselves planning and creating the world that they see all around them. But what these fellows didn't know back then (that we do now) is that the appearance of design and planning can arise autonomously from the evolutionary process.

Now that much, as an ex- evolutionist yourself, I would expect you might already be aware of the way current technologists "borrow" the principle (originally described by Darwin) to deliver them autonomous design. Engineers have always marvelled at natures knack at perfecting her most difficult of "design" jobs and through a combination of the understanding of the theory of evolution by natural selection and modern engineering techniques they have (relatively) recently applied the principle for their own benefit across a broad range of applications. a quick Google using some of the relevant terms shows some of the current applications.

So I would suggest that the "you've only got to look out the window" argument isn't what it once was and therefore we have good reasons to look again carefully at the alternative explanations on offer for the reason that the universe seems so exquisitely made just for us.

[harvey1]

Inflation is a phenomenally successful theory in terms of its ability to describe and predict the subsequent evolution of the universe and is persuasive for a number of reasons. The issue of flatness and density perturbations being two of the most compelling. Now in this theory it is not the least bit remarkable why initial entropy should be so low, it is an inevitable result of all the "stretch" in the inflationary expansion phase.

QED, I wouldn't say that inflation is phenomenally successful. That's just me though...

[micatala]

At the very least you have to agree that "god" is very different from the being described in Genesis 1 and 2 (and the other creation stories of other religions).

I will at least allow that my description or concept of God is different in important aspects from the God of Genesis 1 and 2.

Then we will agree: if "god" exists, he/she/it is not any of the beings described by the existing earth religions.

No, I don't think we do. I think we have some very different ideas about the nature of god, religion, and belief.

If you only believe in god in a general sense, and cannot confidently make detailed statements about "god" (such as name, actions, events, etc) then you are really an agnostic.

I'm wondering why you are so intent on labeling me in a different way than I might label myself.

My understanding is an agnostic is someone who has not decided whether there is a God or not, or whether he/she will believe or not. I don't see how you are getting 'agnostic' out of what I'm saying. One does not have to have 'detailed knowledge' of God (or anything else) to believe or accept that He exists.

I'm sure if you go back through history, you will find that different people had different names for the 4th planet from the sun. They had almost no detailed knowledge of it, and yet, they certainly accepted its existence.

Many people, for a variety of good and not so good reasons, believed in 'atoms' without having any direct visible evidence or any kind of detailed accurate description of them. One might argue that, in some sense, we still don't have a detailed, complete description of atoms.

Granted the evidence for or reasons for belief in God are not of the same nature as in the case of Mars or atoms, but I still don't see that one has to accept particular detailed descriptions of God to believe that He exists.

[Bart007]

has an extraordinarily large information content

What's information? Could you quantify this for me? Because I see this word used a lot, but I can't seem to make it mean anything useful to me.

Hello Nyril.

Perhaps, in the future, I will start a new thread on "information". I can't possibly cover numerous topics all at once. So I will stick to the Big Bang Theory.

provides evidence for an eternal intelligent Creator God because the Big Bang is an effect and is in need of a cause, a first cause must be eternal, and that cause must be intelligent to provide the extraordinarily high information content.

Okay, but what caused your creator god? Certainly by your argument god would have -far- more information content then even a trillion of our universes. Secondly, since I can guess the answer, why are you okay with god "just existing" but not the universe?

Yes, you guessed the answer to your first question correctly. God, being eternal, does not require a cause. He is not an effect.

The universe consist of energy, including energy in the form of matter. By our understanding of the Laws of Thermodynamics, our universe is undergoing a heat death, regardless of wether or not it expands forever or it contracts and a new "Big Bang" occurs.


I'm Okay with God "just existing" because of the reasons I gave in my post above, and because where He dwells, and invites us to dwell in fellowship with Him and with one another, there is no entropy. i.e.

Rev 21:9 &ff
9. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, " Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper.

22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The peoples will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.


Revelation 22


Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelvekinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.
NASU

A baby is comfortable in his little universe inside his mother's womb. But unless the baby leaves mother's womb and gets born into the universe we know, the child will never experience all the awesome things to be experienced in our universe. When one dies, there is an even far more awesome and very different universe to enter, an eternal one where nothing undergoes corruption. To go there from here is akin to a baby going from the womb to here, except more so.

[bernee51]

Yes, you guessed the answer to your first question correctly. God, being eternal, does not require a cause. He is not an effect.

So why not accepting the universe (in some form) being eternal? Why complicate matters by introducing an eternal god?

The universe consist of energy, including energy in the form of matter. By our understanding of the Laws of Thermodynamics, our universe is undergoing a heat death, regardless of wether or not it expands forever or it contracts and a new "Big Bang" occurs.

Methinks you have a misunderstanding of the {Second} Law(s) of Thermodynamics but I will leave it to more erudite others to point out the finer nuances of that.

Other than to say - nothing can be created or destroyed - it only changes in form.

I'm Okay with God "just existing" because of the reasons I gave in my post above, and because where He dwells, and invites us to dwell in fellowship with Him and with one another, there is no entropy. i.e. {{{quotes from mythical text }}}


{{{from post above}}}

Yes, if the Big Bang (including the Ad Hoc inflationary theory) be true, then it, along with the facts that the universe started out in an extremely low entropic state...a first cause must be eternal, and that cause must be intelligent to provide the extraordinarily high information content.

Which all means "I can think of no other alternative therefore 'goddidit'".

A classic 'god of the gaps' response.

Not to mention he inspired the Bible and sent His son to "save us" from death, transform us to do the good that He created us to do,...

We have to take 'his' word for that don;t we. But how do we know it is 'his' word?

....and bring us into eternal life.

And what is this eternal life? I take eternal to mean without beginning or end. How can we be brought into a life that is without beginning in the first place? To bring something in means that is must begin.

When one dies, there is an even far more awesome and very different universe to enter, an eternal one where nothing undergoes corruption.

And you know this because...?

[unicorn]

Judging from everyone's responses, it is clear that none (if any) of the articles I posted were read. Again, I am quite disappointed.

[Glee]

Judging from everyone's responses, it is clear that none (if any) of the articles I posted were read. Again, I am quite disappointed.

Perhaps part of the reason that many people may have skipped reading all of the articles is because to recognise the Big Bang as a theory is to recognise that the earth is older than 6000 years old. By understanding that the universe is much older than what it is supposedly stated in the bible, one does not fall into the typical 'creationist' category.

That is, there are two broad groups of creationists, Young Earth Creationists (YEC), and Old Earth creationists(OEC). YEC's generally believe that the world and everything on it was created around 6000 years ago, humans were made in their current form, (macro)evolution is wrong, etc. OEC's have a broader range of beliefs about how man was created and when, but generally accept the physical evidence of the age of the earth and of the universe, again generally with God triggering the big bang. The labels Creationist/ism in general refers to YECs.

The issue evolutionists have is with the YEC group, who are the ones trying to subvert science education, and are typically a lot more zealous in their attempts to control societal values on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. OEC's seldom fall into the 'wacko' category and so do not cause as much friction.

I think that many of the evolutionists on this board have little problem with at least accepting the possibility of a divine entity 'before' the big bang, however not all of them decide to go with that theory, as there are other options that do not involve god. As there is no way of knowing, however, people are generally happy to let others believe what they want 'pre'-big bang. The issue of course, as mentioned above, that non-theistic evolutionists have with god is not whether or not he did it, but rather IF he did it, surely to follow the same logic that requires an intelligent entity to create the universe, what created the creator? Which gets stuck in an endless loop of increasing complexity, which makes things more complex than what they need to. I'll let the smart prople debate that though.

( Then again, there are at least two kinds of 'evolutionists' as well, that being Theistic and non-thesistic evolutionists... theistic of course believing in god, blah blah blah.. So therefore those evolutionists would most certianly believe that god created the big bang, and it a recognized and valid philosophy of sorts)

(also 'before' and 'pre' big bang are in '''''s because technically there was no 'before' the bang)

PS: I guess what i was trying to say is that the big bang is not evidence for 'creationism', rather it is possible evidence for OEC or theistic evolution, depending on your beliefs (understanding) about evolution.

[Glee]

I like where this religious stuff is starting to head, at least it's better than saying man co-existed with dinosaurs. A few quotes from the articles i have issues with though:

http://www.newcreationism.org/CreationArticle20.html said:

Another pleasant implication of a Big Bang in the recent past is that it effectively mutes any theory that leans upon the idea that random processes are responsible for the incredibly complexity that we find in living things. If the Universe is infinitely old however then it becomes likely that even extremely complex entities would result over time due to random molecule interactions. The physicist Arthur Eddington understood the implications of this very well and actually proposed a theory that introduced an infinite hesitation period shortly after the creation of the Universe. When discussing his theory he mentions "we allow evolution an infinite time to get started..." Unfortunately for him and other skeptics, modern science does not support any theories with infinite hesitation periods after the Big Bang.

http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/20 ... e_big_bang

10. Existence of life and humans
Life and humans require a stable star like our sun. However, if the universe cools down too slowly, galaxies trap radiation so effectively as to prevent any fragmentation into stars. If the universe cools too rapidly, no galaxies or stars can condense out of the cosmic gas. If the universe expands too slowly, the universe collapses before solar-type stars reach their stable burning phase. If it expands too rapidly, no galaxies or stars can condense from the general expansion.

The universe with its billions of galaxies were created soley so god could create humans in a backwater second generation solar system like ours? Self importance++; Modesty--; (Actually, its more statements LIKE this that say 'oh, if the earth was 5k closer to the sun, we'd all be dead, etc, that get me frustrated. If the temperature were 100 degrees hotter, people would have never evolved. Instead, other life with mutations better suited to the environment would have taken its place. Humans are the lucky byproduct of an envrionment that we are suited to, not the other way around.) (blah blah blah now im rambling)

[QED]

(Actually, its more statements LIKE this that say 'oh, if the earth was 5k closer to the sun, we'd all be dead, etc, that get me frustrated. If the temperature were 100 degrees hotter, people would have never evolved. Instead, other life with mutations better suited to the environment would have taken its place. Humans are the lucky byproduct of an envrionment that we are suited to, not the other way around.) (blah blah blah now im rambling)

Please don't say "Lucky". This makes creationists think that you think we came together like the wind assembling a 747 from a junkyard full of aircraft parts

The late Douglas Adams put it nicely in a speech he gave in 1998

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it

I apologize to to any readers who've seen me quote this before, but I've found that there are still people who've never come across this way of looking at things before. This is probably a function of our perceived preeminence in the world. It's a very unhealthy bias IMHO.

[Glee]

Please don't say "Lucky". This makes creationists think that you think we came together like the wind assembling a 747 from a junkyard full of aircraft parts

I'll watch my statements a little more carefully next time... When i said lucky, all I meant was that we as humans are fortunate that the direction evolution took resulted in us, as opposed to any other mutitude of possibilities where other species would be found to be better suited to the environment.