A Question For My Evolutionist Friends

[TimAllen]

Originally Posted by PsyOps

Not a short answer.

I’m not one of those that had this blinding moment in my life that transformed me. I can remember since I was very young looking around and wondering how all this life got here. My dad is avid about science and has no interest in a belief in God. So we spent a lot of time in my house reading and talking about people like Newton, Weinberg, Sagan, Einstein and Hawking. Here’s something you may find hard to believe, but the Nobel winner in physics in 2006 (John Mather) was our neighbor back in the late 70s early 80s. He would come over to our house and discuss what he was doing at NASA and his study of the Big Bang. Very interesting person and very interesting subjects. My dad was in… errrr… heaven. Strange bit of trivia about Mather and Hawking and the rest of that scientific community… many of them got involved in (what became a bit of a cult) a practice called EST (Erhard Seminar Training). Read about it. Strange stuff.

Anyway, I got to ask Mather some basic questions about the Big Bang… “What came before it?” “How did it all get there?” “Can matter have appeared out of nothing?” Of course he admitted science can only go so far then the rest is left to some sort of belief. He said even Einstein had a certain belief in a God. I already felt there was a higher being that created everything.

I had a couple of pivotal moments in my life. I was praying to God to help me get my spiritual life in order before I joined the military. I wasn’t completely sure about who God was, or which it was. I was working at a clothing store and this customer came in to buy a suit and we started talking about playing the guitar (I play). Then he asked me if I knew who Phil Keaggy (a Christian guitar player) was. Through my brother I knew who he was and thought “could this be how God answers prayers?” Anyway I got involved in their church up until I joined the AF. Then I prayed again that once I got stationed somewhere (after all my training was over) that God would help me find a Christian organization called The Navigators. When I got to my first base I moved into the dorms on base and after about 3 or 4 days I ran into this guy, while doing laundry, and we started talking about playing guitar. And, you guessed it, he asked me if I knew Phil Keaggy. All I could think was how God answers prayers in ways you never expect and He has a sense of humor. Then I asked this guy if he knew of any Navigator groups in the area and he told me he was a member. So I didn’t have to go looking for it, God handed it to me.

I know these sound pretty incredible and typical for Christians to talk about such “miracles” and such. These are absolutely true. And they changed my whole outlook on who God is. So the basis for my belief is 1) After all my studies in science, he explains that unanswered question about how everything got here. Answers that even the greatest scientific minds know they can’t answer and 2) This God does answer prayers. They may not always be the answer you’re looking for; sometime the answer is “no”, but He does answer. This is what God means to me more than the mysterious questions we have about our universe. God (despite what Einstein believed) IS a personal God that wants good for us. But this comes in a spiritual sense and not always in a physical sense. Things that cannot be explained through science. God defies science. All things that we know through science came from him, including the science He blessed our brains to strive to understand.

Sorry for such a long explanation.

hmmm I must say you are the first person on here, myself inlcuded that could actually explain why they believe in God and I can only assume that you are a born again christian?

I know why I beleive in Him, and it is because God answered my prayer when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old. I knew He could heal me, I had Perthe's Disease, it is a disease that cause loss of bone in the ball of the hip, flattens to the size of a silver dollar. I couldnt walk and didnt walk for many many months my Parents carried me everywhere, Childrens Hospital said I needed total hip replacements but first i would need to be in a body cast to see if that would fix it. Well I never made it to the body cast part. Was in church with my parents and the Pastor asked if anyone wanted to get prayed for I said and I remember everything word for word "Mommy Jesus can heal me" Not thinking anything of it she carried me up to get prayed for, after being prayed for I told my Mom it was ok to put me down that Jesus had healed me. She hesitated then put me down, and off I went running around the church, and of course everyone followed me. Went back to Childrens Hospital and next visit and they did x-rays, I told them (only cuz I hated just being there in my underwear) I didnt need x-rays I was fine, they did them anyway what does a 3 yo know? They came back and told us that the ball of my hip had grown back, no explanation juswt grew back..I told them Jesus did it...they wrote on my file MIRACLE and filed it away. I still to this day have before and after x-rays of that. I know I am not perfect and yes I do things that are not right in God's eyes but I also ask for forgiveness, I try to live the way I should, because I know that God is there all the time always watching and always taking care of me and my Family...

[Nucklesack]

Originally Posted by PsyOps

Not a short answer.

I’m not one of those that had this blinding moment in my life that transformed me. I can remember since I was very young looking around and wondering how all this life got here. My dad is avid about science and has no interest in a belief in God. So we spent a lot of time in my house reading and talking about people like Newton, Weinberg, Sagan, Einstein and Hawking. Here’s something you may find hard to believe, but the Nobel winner in physics in 2006 (John Mather) was our neighbor back in the late 70s early 80s. He would come over to our house and discuss what he was doing at NASA and his study of the Big Bang. Very interesting person and very interesting subjects. My dad was in… errrr… heaven. Strange bit of trivia about Mather and Hawking and the rest of that scientific community… many of them got involved in (what became a bit of a cult) a practice called EST (Erhard Seminar Training). Read about it. Strange stuff.

Anyway, I got to ask Mather some basic questions about the Big Bang… “What came before it?” “How did it all get there?” “Can matter have appeared out of nothing?” Of course he admitted science can only go so far then the rest is left to some sort of belief. He said even Einstein had a certain belief in a God. I already felt there was a higher being that created everything.

I had a couple of pivotal moments in my life. I was praying to God to help me get my spiritual life in order before I joined the military. I wasn’t completely sure about who God was, or which it was. I was working at a clothing store and this customer came in to buy a suit and we started talking about playing the guitar (I play). Then he asked me if I knew who Phil Keaggy (a Christian guitar player) was. Through my brother I knew who he was and thought “could this be how God answers prayers?” Anyway I got involved in their church up until I joined the AF. Then I prayed again that once I got stationed somewhere (after all my training was over) that God would help me find a Christian organization called The Navigators. When I got to my first base I moved into the dorms on base and after about 3 or 4 days I ran into this guy, while doing laundry, and we started talking about playing guitar. And, you guessed it, he asked me if I knew Phil Keaggy. All I could think was how God answers prayers in ways you never expect and He has a sense of humor. Then I asked this guy if he knew of any Navigator groups in the area and he told me he was a member. So I didn’t have to go looking for it, God handed it to me.

I know these sound pretty incredible and typical for Christians to talk about such “miracles” and such. These are absolutely true. And they changed my whole outlook on who God is. So the basis for my belief is 1) After all my studies in science, he explains that unanswered question about how everything got here. Answers that even the greatest scientific minds know they can’t answer and 2) This God does answer prayers. They may not always be the answer you’re looking for; sometime the answer is “no”, but He does answer. This is what God means to me more than the mysterious questions we have about our universe. God (despite what Einstein believed) IS a personal God that wants good for us. But this comes in a spiritual sense and not always in a physical sense. Things that cannot be explained through science. God defies science. All things that we know through science came from him, including the science He blessed our brains to strive to understand.

Sorry for such a long explanation.

The Big Bang is a Christian theory for creation of the Universe. When Christians, in the current argument, use “Can matter have appeared out of nothing?” they fail to understand the point they are arguing against, is one of their own ideas generated to "Scientifically" generate an answer about how what was explain in Genesis could have occurred.

The antithesis to this, is the thought that the universe/cosmos/space "always was", there is no "beginning" to it.

[TimAllen]

Originally Posted by Nucklesack

The Big Bang is a Christian theory for creation of the Universe. When Christians, in the current argument, use “Can matter have appeared out of nothing?” they fail to understand the point they are arguing against, is one of their own ideas generated to "Scientifically" generate an answer about how what was explain in Genesis could have occurred.

The antithesis to this, is the thought that the universe/cosmos/space "always was", there is no "beginning" to it.

Hmmm, according to the Bible God created the Heavens and the Earth
Before that there was Nothing, Zero, Zilch, no Big Bang theory.....
Only the God created everything Theory

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

[This_person]

Originally Posted by Nucklesack

The Big Bang is a Christian theory for creation of the Universe.

The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxys velocity is proportional to its distance. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. Another consequence is that the universe is expanding in every direction. This observation means that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position to its current position. Just as the Big Bang provided for the foundation of the universe, Hubbles observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.

Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and, thus, there has been more and more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving farther away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approach earth there is an increase of space between earth and the galaxy, which leads to wavelengths being stretched.

In addition to the understanding of the velocity of galaxies emanating from a single point, there is further evidence for the Big Bang. In 1964, two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, in an attempt to detect microwaves from outer space, inadvertently discovered a noise of extraterrestrial origin. The noise did not seem to emanate from one location but instead, it came from all directions at once. It became obvious that what they heard was radiation from the farthest reaches of the universe which had been left over from the Big Bang. This discovery of the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion lent much credence to the Big Bang theory.

Doesn't sound like a religious concept.

[TimAllen]

Originally Posted by This_person

The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxys velocity is proportional to its distance. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. Another consequence is that the universe is expanding in every direction. This observation means that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position to its current position. Just as the Big Bang provided for the foundation of the universe, Hubbles observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.

Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and, thus, there has been more and more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving farther away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approach earth there is an increase of space between earth and the galaxy, which leads to wavelengths being stretched.

In addition to the understanding of the velocity of galaxies emanating from a single point, there is further evidence for the Big Bang. In 1964, two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, in an attempt to detect microwaves from outer space, inadvertently discovered a noise of extraterrestrial origin. The noise did not seem to emanate from one location but instead, it came from all directions at once. It became obvious that what they heard was radiation from the farthest reaches of the universe which had been left over from the Big Bang. This discovery of the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion lent much credence to the Big Bang theory.

Doesn't sound like a religious concept.

[This_person]

However, it's another case of science proving the claims of religion:

Space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose These are clearly big anti-science Christians always lying! turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.

[Nucklesack]

Originally Posted by This_person

The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxys velocity is proportional to its distance. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. Another consequence is that the universe is expanding in every direction. This observation means that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position to its current position. Just as the Big Bang provided for the foundation of the universe, Hubbles observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.

Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and, thus, there has been more and more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving farther away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approach earth there is an increase of space between earth and the galaxy, which leads to wavelengths being stretched.

In addition to the understanding of the velocity of galaxies emanating from a single point, there is further evidence for the Big Bang. In 1964, two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, in an attempt to detect microwaves from outer space, inadvertently discovered a noise of extraterrestrial origin. The noise did not seem to emanate from one location but instead, it came from all directions at once. It became obvious that what they heard was radiation from the farthest reaches of the universe which had been left over from the Big Bang. This discovery of the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion lent much credence to the Big Bang theory.

Doesn't sound like a religious concept.

Edwin Hubble

Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He profoundly changed astronomers' understanding of the nature of the universe by demonstrating the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way. He also discovered that the degree of redshift observed in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the distance of that galaxy from the Milky Way. This became known as Hubble's law, and would help establish that the universe is expanding

Catholic Priest Georges-Henri Lemaitre

This discovery would have come as no surprise to Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Belgian mathematician and Catholic priest who developed the theory of the Big Bang. Lemaitre described the beginning of the universe as a burst of fireworks, comparing galaxies to the burning embers spreading out in a growing sphere from the center of the burst. He believed this burst of fireworks was the beginning of time, taking place on “a day without yesterday.”

Lemaitre's theory was introduced back in the 1930's, he "discovered" it in the 20's but didnt publish until the 30's.

The Big Bang theory was a theory espoused by a Catholic Priest Georges-Henri Lemaitre and the theory was agreed/approved upon by the Catholic Church

[Nucklesack]

Originally Posted by This_person

However, it's another case of science proving the claims of religion:

Space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose These are clearly big anti-science Christians always lying! turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.

And that pertains to the Big Bang being a Christian concept how?

Unless your saying you agree with Hawkins about his take on other aspects

[Tonio]

Originally Posted by This_person

Then we ARE saying the same thing - it's fair to presume that if God is behind all that has happened, science will root that out.

I agree in part. My point has to do with the "if." The definitions of gods offered by religions not only do not allow for detection, but also do not allow for the possibility of detection.

Originally Posted by This_person

How is that different from what I said?

Your post seemed to imply that there was no middle ground between possibility and fact, or that all possibilities were of equal probability. Was that not the case?

Originally Posted by This_person

How God made things happen is important to know. Why He made them happen is equally important to know. Humans probably should be curious as to the hows - perhaps we can make our lives that much better. Humans should probably also know the whys - perhaps we can make our lives that much better!

That may be reasonable according to the interior logic of religions. The problem is that the typical religion claims to have the only way for humans to make their lives better, and further claims that this way cannot be challenged or because it allegedly comes from a god or gods.

Originally Posted by This_person

That, of course, is based upon the assumption that life can be created from the proper mix of chemicals and atmospheric conditions.

That is not an assumption. It is simply one possibility derived from our accumulated knowledge about molecular biology.

Originally Posted by This_person

My point - it's so likely, yet we can't see nor prove it, therefore it's pure conjecture, and there's nothing but FAITH to say it's likely.

No, conjecture would be an idea

Originally Posted by This_person

What people believe to be true is immaterial to what is actually true. The people in those religions, and the people without religion, still statistically are likely to have certain moral codes - regardless of belief system. Seems built into us.

Rudimentary moral behavior has been observed in animal species such as chimpanzees. It has been hypothesized that morality is an evolutionary adaptation. We cannot assume that morality was created by an outside agency.

Originally Posted by This_person

Yes, it is. It's equally possible we were designed that way.

No, because the design possibility includes host of assumptions about the designer. Any explanation of a natural phenomenon should involve as few assumptions as possible, and the number of assumptions decreases the probability.

[This_person]

Originally Posted by Nucklesack

Edwin Hubble

Catholic Priest Georges-Henri Lemaitre

Lemaitre's theory was introduced back in the 1930's, he "discovered" it in the 20's but didnt publish until the 30's.

The Big Bang theory was a theory espoused by a Catholic Priest Georges-Henri Lemaitre and the theory was agreed/approved upon by the Catholic Church

So, catholiceducation.org holds more water in your eyes than then University of MI for objectivity?

Either way, how does that compare with the rest of the theory and how it's been refined, by noted relgious scholars like Steven Hawking?

Perhaps the first person to state the theory was a Catholic priest as well as a mathemetician. Did he espouse it as Catholic and/or Christian theory, or scientific theory? Did the many scientist after him who refined it to scientific theory do so for religious or scientific reason?