An Explanation of the Big Bang and Evolution that doesn't exclude God.

We've no proof that God exists that goes beyond an Argumentum ad numerum fallacy. However, with no proof of any kind you can make the claim that, were a God to exist, it would outside of space and time. Therefore immediately explaining why it will be impossible for us to ever detect God's presence and neatly fitting into some lackluster theory about the beginings of life and the Universe.
Religon exists as the earliest form of Moral standards and explanation of the unknown for humankind. It creates an all knowing, all seeing, moralistically superior being that supposedely compells us to live our lives in a way that is deemed correct and good. Religion was not handed down by any higher creature, it was the creation of early tribal communities of pre-civilized man to rule over the hearts and minds of all men.
Religion is not an explanation of the origins of life or the universe, it is the earliest form of common law on this planet.
Simply said, this small theory of mine has more roots in reality than does the creationist theory.

I can go one step further than saying "God" invented evolution. If God did or does indeed exist who is to say that it did not itself evolve from a lower form of life and is simply an extremely complex and advanced lifeform?

Who was it that had the quote about sufficiently advanced technology seeming as though magic to those that do not understand it?

 

The whole point of science is to put things under a microscope and study them.

Can you put God under a microscope and study Him?


Scientists may go into an experiment assuming many things, however ideally (and most of the time) those things have been proven in all relevant situations to be true (such as for an experiment involving the motion of things, you can accept that Newton's laws of motion are true). Other experiments are to try to confirm or reject assumptions (if this is true then that should happen).

Can we reconfirm that God exists? Can we do experiments that would go along the lines of 'If there is a God then the results of this test would be whatever?'

(I am not going to try to defend evolution or the big bang as being completely sound science, even though I believe that they are for the most part, this thread is already assuming that they happened, I am just saying that combining God and science is not good science unless the questions I asked can be answered.)

I have to agree with Jediflyer. Even though you can make up an argument that combines Christianity and evolution and the big bang, what?s the point? You still have an uncaused something and you are just adding a step just to still be able to accept your beliefs.

Besides, I do somewhat believe that you must take the Bible as literally as possible. Didn't Christ at one point say that the entire Bible is true (please correct me if I am wrong)? If a god did cause the big bang and guide evolution, I doubt it would be the Christian God simply because of that.

 

Once upon a time, everything that man couldn't understand was labeled the work of the gods. It was the gods who created the thunder, who made the ocean move, who made the wind blow, and who made the sun rise in the morning. Over time, humanity has found new ways to explain these phenomenon, calling thunder the noise made by electrical discharges in clouds, calling the tides the result of the movements of the moon, calling the wind the result of warm and cold air pockets interacting, and calling the sunrise the result of the turning of the earth.

When science becomes an explanation for more and more natural phenomenon, the religious man has two options. The first option is to look for God not in the old places like the thunder or the sunrise, but to find new places not yet fully charted by science, and to place God into these places where our knowledge is still incomplete or impossible to define absolutely. This is what?s being done with creationism, with some interpretations of quantum physics, and with the start of new life. The second option is to look for God in the old places, like our ancestors did thousands of years ago. This isn't to claim that science is wrong, or even incomplete in of itself, but it's only one side of the coin.

I?m an agnostic who knows the scientific explanations for thunder, but in the thunder I still hear the voice of God.

 

Our existance can only be explained by a big bang or a supreme being--it took thousand of years to come up with that. I think the answer my yet to be found. As for evoulution, we and the other inhabitance of Earth continue to evolve.

 

Let me put my .02$ in here:

Obviosuly, a reading of Genesis still leaves more to be supposed. It says that God created the heavens and the earth. Exactly how he did it and what were the specific actions of creation are still a mystery.

But I note that many who insist God cannot exist do so on the premise that we can't find him in science. That is absurd, on many levels. First, if God exists, he must be beyond our realm of understanding. He does, by his very nature, transcend science. Science is only as useful as what it can study. Science is useless in the realm of spirituality.

Another thing. To remark that a theistic approach to science and research is of "the Dark Ages" or that only naive, dogmatic "religous people" can accept Creationism is wrong and insulting. Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, Galileo, all insisted on divine creation. Why? Because they realized that a materialistic apporach to science is one that fails before it even begins.

So let's not count God out. He's still in this fight, by a long shot.

 

But I note that many who insist God cannot exist do so on the premise that we can't find him in science. That is absurd, on many levels.

I don't say he can't exist, merely that it is absurd to believe so.

 

^ Even if we found PROOF?

 

Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, Galileo, all insisted on divine creation. Why? Because they realized that a materialistic apporach to science is one that fails before it even begins.

Well, Newton and Galileo probably followed a belief in divine creation at least in part because they lived before there was any viable alternative. Kelvin continued to believe in divine creation in a post-Darwin word, but it's not Creationism as fundamentalists would have it today. I quote:

This earth, certainly a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot globe; all scientific men of the present day agree that life came upon this earth somehow. If some form or some part of the life at present existing came to this earth, carried on some moss-grown stone perhaps broken away from mountains in other worlds; even if some part of the life had come in that way?for there is nothing too far-fetched in the idea, and probably some such action as that did take place, since meteors do come every day to the earth from other parts of the universe;?still, that does not in the slightest degree diminish the wonder, the tremendous miracle, we have in the commencement of life in this world.

I fully agree with his sentiment. I reject the beginning of Genesis as a literally accurate depiction of the formation of the world and of the formation of man, but the fact that I feel that evolution by natural selection most likely gave rise to all of life in its present form and do not see the initial formations of self-replicating proteins from naturally-occuring chemicals and elements as an unreasonable suggestion, "still, that does not in the slightest degree diminish the wonder, the tremendous miracle, we have in the commencement of life in this world."

-Paul

 

God cannot be proven to exist, nor can He be proven NOT to exist, that is why I have faith that He does, and that is why I believe He created the Big Bang. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

 

Evolution is the scientifically accepted theory that describes how Human Kind and the rest of the world developed into what it is now. It is science, and only things with which the scientific method can be applied may be examined as a science.

Developing a hypothesis pertaining to God and a known scientific process such as evolution is simply not possible. There is no way to examine the theory in the auspices of the scientific community. Therefore God and science are invariably parted.

One is a tangible, measurable and repeatable. The other is an ideal.

Religion was the earliest form of common and moral law applied to civilized humanity. The tribal cultures, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, they all used the existence of a higher power to explain what they did not understand and to derive a moral understanding of their society.

The reason that religion is so wide spread is due to the fact that early societies will invariably move to explain what they fail to comprehend, as the unknown is dangerous.

The ideal of a higher, moralistic being prevails in this day and age for various reasons. The first is to maintain the high moralistic standards of the past and to rule the ambitions of man.
The second is to create a sense of traditionalism amongst the populace, as most people appear more comfortable in familiar surroundings.
Finally Religion remains in order to answer philosophical reasons that people hold.

Is there a reason for my existence?
Why should I follow the moral codes of society and Religion?

Scientific answers to these questions would be simple and logical. There is absolutely no ?reason? for your existence beyond the physical, and the only reasons to follow societies mores is for inclusion.

However, the idea that the only reason a person exists is because a chance combination of amino acids led to a process eventually resulting in the evolution of man does not sit well with many people.

They prefer to think that no matter what happens, if they are ?good? they will be rewarded with paradise.

Religion is the final ?security blanket? that adults need never shed.

However, the advances of science and the rise of a general common law amongst societies are slowly removing the need for Religion. Morality is now defined through the consent of the people and law. The unknown is quickly studied, explained, and defined.

Why is man here? Simple, a set of events in the past began a biological process, which cultivated in the eventual rise of a superior predator race.
We know this because we can look at past evolutionary ends of the human chain, examine them and come to scientifically based conclusions.

The attempts by many to somehow tie the creationist theory to that of the scientific processes and Theory of Evolution are an act of desperation.

It is hoped that, if creationism is advanced as a viable theory for the advancement of life, it will create a new generation of Religious influence on society.

However, as there is no supporting evidence whatsoever that can lead us to even begin to create a foundation for the ?intelligent design? theory it is not viable or relevant.

A hypothesis that can be neither proven nor disproved is simply useless.

Also, to create the link between Evolution and the Intelligent Design one must invalidate the writings of almost every major Religion. Christians claim in the Bible that Man was created in the image of God, Man First, then the animal kingdom, and then Women. There was no evolution, man predated the animals, and women were the last creation.

This is all categorically incorrect, and easily proven wrong.

Attempts to tie Religion and Science are unwise and disingenuous at best.

 

What can you do, in the end, with people who simply want to believe? Nothing.

As was said quite eloquently further up, science is shining a light on the realm in which god (or gods) were previously thought to dwell. Just as shadows run from the light, so god has had to retreat to the margins, no longer the literal bringer of the sun, of famine, of [insert preferred miracle here].

The inevitable end point is that those who wish to believe in God will say "Your science is no good here, God exists outside of time and space, there is nothing you can do do detect him, or to prove that he is there, but neither can you disprove him."

Where can we go after that? It amazes me that astrology is still so popular (or tea leaf reading, or water divining for that matter). I have met people who are utterly convinced that it is true, and will read their daily paper in the heartfelt belief that that sentence or two under Taurus applies not just to them, but to a twelth of the entire population of the planet, no matter what age they are. All because of the position of an arbitrarily chosen 'group' of stars that looked vaguely like a picture to our ancestors.

Can we ever convince them this is nonsense? No. They want to believe, they are happy to believe. If believing makes life somehow more bearable or enjoyable for them, why would they want their illusions shattered by harsh 'truth'?

Can we argue with people who say that no matter what you do, you can't say God doesn't exist, because he is there, but undetectable to science? No, we can't. Even though God apparently intervenes in this world, this intervention is supposedly undetectable, so our hands are tied.

The strange thing is that I believe this is particularly a problem for us here in the West. Many religions throughout history seem to have had a far better understanding than us of the 'Mystery' element. Stories could be 'believed' in one sense, but at the same time the adherents of that religion understood that whilst a religious story captured something of the essence of life, that need not be confused with reality itself. The story had value because it represented a deeper truth about humanity and its relationship to the universe that went far beyond the straightforward question of 'what actually happened'.

I think that whilst we used to understand this, the value of a 'lie', we got sidetracked in the West by the creation of the scientific method. We came up with a system that is incredibly useful when it comes to teaching us how things actually work. The problem, if you can call it that, is that we then applied that method to everything, including areas that were traditionally the exclusive domain of religion.

Instead of telling each other interesting, and perhaps morally valuable tall tales about the gods, which were absorbed, passed on to children, and 'believed' with a knowing wink, we said "Hang on, we've got science now, and we can actually prove whether that makes any sense". This wasn't just an idea adopted by the sceptics, even those who believed grasped scientific method and logic, and tried to use them to bolster the faith.

On both sides Western culture apparently now demands one or the other, there seems no room left for peaceful coexistence. I don't think it necessarily has to be that way.

I have a couple of friends who practise Hinduism. Do they really believe that the elephant headed Lord Ganesha actually exists somewhere? Do they want to use physics, biology or logic to demonstrate that Ganesha must exist? Or do they realise that their religion is telling them something else about life, about their culture, who they are and where they came from that can still be true, even when it is completely at odds with all the other rather more mundane things they also believe in their day to day lives?

Christianity and Western secularism seem locked in a conflict of intellect that doesn't have to happen, as long as you can open your mind that little bit further and appreciate that two apparently contradictory things ca

 

Description of Big Bang theory found Here

About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What exisisted prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurance was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang lay the foundations for the universe.

A few observations:

1).What ignition was there to incite the expolsion? None Big Bang says itself that nothing existed prior to it.

2). Where is the antimatter?

Since matter and antimatter are equivalent in all respects...any force that would create one should have to create the other, and the universe should be made of equal quantities of each. This is a dilemma. Theory tells us there should be antimatter out there, and observation refuses to back it up
Isaac Asimov, Asimov's New Guide to Science, p 343

3). How were the particles united? Outer space is devoid of friction; how then were the planets formed?

4). How did the atomic structures originate? Surely random shootings of nothingness cannot form the intricate model of the atom.

Just some thoughts

 

4). How did the atomic structures originate? Surely random shootings of nothingness cannot form the intricate model of the atom.

...which is the line of thinking embodied in the Scientific Creationism movement. To me, that's akin to believing aliens from outer space built the pyramids of Giza because they're just too massive to have been done by li'l ole humans. There's a much longer tradition of mainstream belief in divinity than in space aliens, so the "surely randomness couldn't, but God could" belief doesn't sound so loony to most as the "surely earlier humans couldn't, but aliens could" belief. It's certainly no better, though.

I like what Shroom says about the contradictory truths. His username fits that. If I had a profound revelatory experience via hallucinogens, I wouldn't discount it because I like science. Of course, there's no big hallucinogen establishment that has a lot to lose in the material world in terms of cultural influence if I think that shrooms or acid or whatever are silly.

 

To me, that's akin to believing aliens from outer space built the pyramids of Giza because they're just too massive to have been done by li'l ole humans. There's a much longer tradition of mainstream belief in divinity than in space aliens, so the "surely randomness couldn't, but God could" belief doesn't sound so loony to most as the "surely earlier humans couldn't, but aliens could" belief. It's certainly no better, though.

Not exactly.

"Small strokes fell great oaks", but no strokes never did anything. It's not a question of which lifeform did what, but what did nothing do. The answer is: nothing.

 

1).What ignition was there to incite the expolsion? None Big Bang says itself that nothing existed prior to it.

It is not accurate to call it an explosion, it is more accurate to call it an expansion.

Besides, I can cause an explosion of a soda can without any heat or spark.

2). Where is the antimatter?

Several possibilities... all the local antimatter has been destroyed and all that is left in the local area is what we call normal matter. There could be antimatter galaxies out there that destroyed all the regular matter that was there.

Or there could be a property (and I have to reread a brief history of time again, but I could swear that it was mentioned) of antimatter that makes it different (and not just opposite) of regular matter (it still has a positive mass which is not opposite of regular matter for example). That property could have made regular matter more prevalent.

3). How were the particles united? Outer space is devoid of friction; how then were the planets formed?

Gravity.

4). How did the atomic structures originate? Surely random shootings of nothingness cannot form the intricate model of the atom.

That logic is just made up; just like anything that starts with 'god must...'

I ask why not?

Besides, the stuff in an atom is something (not nothing).

 

OI like your theory, Rouge Null, and all the implications that go along with it. That God Mostly rules and causes things indirectly, through nature and science, without ever haveing to reach down and pick up hitler and throw him into space. (sorry, wierd example)

But that theory gives more reason to believe in God, and not credit everything on physics and science.

 

Thanks. It came in pieces, over the years of school and reading, and thinking about how many "battles" have been fought between two groups that are trying to explain the same thing (to a point). One group uses faith and belief, while another uses hard data and methodology.

 

1. Einstien did not believe in God. He talked of "God" as the harmony of nature and nothing else.

2. I was right. "trying to out-word each other".

3. What Shroom said. No need for me to repeat any of it.

But please, continue.

 

Yes, you were right VadersLaMent. Any conversation that involves both God and science draws hardliners, both sides refusing to let the other side say anything unanswered.

I find it amusing that a SIMPLE argument for MODERATE christians to use to combine their faith and science would degenerate into an argument about the existence of God.

I should have seen it coming, but I assumed that contribuitors would stick to the topic at hand.

 

Try this on, I'll bend a bit and go for an agnostic point of view.(I've done this before, I don't think anyone reads it )

This Universe is a doomed. Maybe we can't call it and end so to speak, but things are looking pretty bleak.

Let's say the Earth survives(it won't) for 100 billion years. By that time the Universe will have expanded to the point that there will be no stars visable to us in the night sky.
Trillions of years hence there will be nothing left, no stars, no matter, no energy, black holes will have totally evaporated, just an empty void, nadda, zero, zilch, do not pass GO do not collect $200.

In the meantime intelligence makes things(us or some aliens, it doesn't matter). Technology evolves and greater energies are tapped.

A TypeI civilizations controls its world, energy from the oceans, geothermal, nuclear, antimatter, weather control, long life spans, let us all sleep in a virtual world and pretend to be Neo etc etc.


A TypeII civilization jumps by a factor of billions. If we were such, we would enshroud our star to capture all its energy output of 10^26 watts every second(compared to a TypeI which consumes approx 10^12 watts).
Such a civilization could make anything, process the information of the entire history of human thought in millionths of a second, consume solar systems through advanced nanotechnology in days, keep an eye on every star in the galaxy with 100 billion telescopes each the size of the Moon.

A TypeIII civilization controls 100 billion stars in a galaxy, and each star would be a thinking entity in a conglomerate 100 billion node thinking entity. TIII's tap into space-time itself, the Plank energies etc etc.

TII's and III's are immortal, you cannot destroy one. Buuuuuut they have one little problem, they will waste away with the rest of the Universe and eventually cease to exist.

If you are a part of a billions of years old society, will you just let yourself fade off into the void?

Possibly you have an option.

Making blackholes is as easy for a TIII as it is for us to make a baseball park. I'm just gonna use blackholes for this, there are other models.

At the singularity some funny things become possible. Space and time become warped to such a degree that physics models say other dimensions are passable, that other universes are reachable, that time travel is even likely.

Making a blackhole is an escape of need be to go elewhere and elsewhen. Our Universe may be an area in a greater Universe in which an event of quantum randomness makes what we see around us, then expands and becomes a void. A blackhole/wormhole may allow travel to a living part of the Universe rather than stay in the void.

etc etc.

If it could be done one day by us or some surviving intelligence, then it could already have been done by another and we are a result.

Read my sig.

 

I?m an agnostic who knows the scientific explanations for thunder, but in the thunder I still hear the voice of God.

Oooh, well said, Raven

Jediflyer wrote: I don't say he can't exist, merely that it is absurd to believe so.

Why is that? Because God isn't detectable by scientific means?

People's unquestioned faith in science astounds me, especially since such a conviction is founded on the exact same collection of hopes, fears, and guesstimations that religion is founded on.

Supposedly, according to science, the human mind is a sort of transparent veil that can be clevery worked around with scientific instruments, so that we can figure out things about the "objective" world, i.e., the world outside the human mind.

For the moment, let's leave aside the fact that the "transparent veil" hypothesis is based on nothing whatsoever, and ask how on earth would we know "objective" reality if we tripped over it? "Objective" implies the existence of something outside the human mind, and in a world with no God, and presumably no helpful space aliens, we are going to check this objectiveness against what?

Wittgenstien--no theist, but a man who knew hooey when he saw it--said that attempting to check the "objectiveness" of any belief or perception is like buying two copies of the same newspaper to make sure all the stories in them were true. Or, to use a more contemporary example, suggesting that the human mind can use experiments, designed by itself and interpreted by itself, intended to answer questions posed by itself in hopes of yeilding answers comprehensible to itself, is like asking the board of directors at Enron to invent a measure of their company's finanical integrity, and apply it to see how honest they really are.

The best we can say about science is that it allows us to make more accurate predictions about what will happen in the world around us. What happens between the moment the prediction appears in our heads and the moment we interpret the result data that comes in filtered through our senses is an absolute unknown. An honest scientist will even admit this. If he didn't, he'd be undercutting the very foundation of his discipline, which is essentially to tell oneself, "Everything you think you know may be wrong." An example from science itself of where the barrier between "objectivity" and "subjectivity" breaks down is the Copenhagen effect in quantum physics. If you test a photon to see if it will behave as a particle, it will behave as a particle. If you test it to see if it will behave as a wave, it will behave as a wave. The experimenter is not an objective force standing "outside" the experiment, somehow rendering an uninvolved judgement on it. The experimenter is part of the experimental system, whether he likes it or not.

When I say that there has never been a shred of corroborating evidence that the human mind is a transparent veil, it is because there has never been a shred of corroborating evidence of *anything,* assuming "corroborating" means "information that is somehow entirely or largely independent of the human mind." Independent how? The word "information" has no meaning outside the human mind, unless you posit that there is a non-human intelligence out there, whether divine, demonic, or alien.

Once could argue, as Kant did, that the human mind is more of a shroud than a veil, and that we can get only the dimmest glimpses of what the world might look like, if we could somehow step outside our own heads. (It actually makes no sense to say "look like" in this case, since "looking" is an activity that by definition belongs to human consciousness; however, Kant was a theist, so the idea made sense to him.)

What is more likely, however, is that there is no division between our minds and the world outside them. There is no "outside" to step into and peer at the world as an objective, non-participating observer. Where would such an "outside" come from? Did God place a magic box around the human mind, sealin

 

Wow, you're as long winded as Darth_Brooks, and equally good at not understanding the foundation of science, or at least not undertsanding it to the point you need to in order to just spout off about why you think science is bunk.

But what did I just go and do? "out word the others". Fell right into it, right into the usless game. It's fun to watch, but a waste of time to be involved in unless you are testing your typing skills.

And again, looks like Null was right about getting off track.

Have fun kids, so many threads, so little time.

 

People of the past were not benighted souls who were stuck with religion because nothing better had presented itself. Those who were devout practitioners of religion practiced it because they believed it--no differently than people of today.

You're right, and I expressed that poorly.

 

VadersLaMent wrote: not understanding the foundation of science

Enlighten me.