The big bang is a bust

[Swami objecto]

The only thing we really know is that we exist in the here and now; everything else is speculation and supposition. One theory says that an intelligent designer (ID) created us, and they base it on what they read in the Bible. Another theory claims that it all started with a big bang 15 billion years ago and that the universe is still expanding. A third theory says that the universe and everything in it has always been here in ever-changing forms. A fourth theory proposes that what made it all happen is beyond man's ability to comprehend. It all comes down to one question: Did we emerge from the fiery primordial soup the world consisted of millions of years ago, or are we the result of intelligent design?

[Big_Gay_Ed]

The only thing we really know is that we exist in the here and now; everything else is speculation and supposition. One theory says that an intelligent designer (ID) created us, and they base it on what they read in the Bible. Another theory claims that it all started with a big bang 15 billion years ago and that the universe is still expanding. A third theory says that the universe and everything in it has always been here in ever-changing forms. A fourth theory proposes that what made it all happen is beyond man's ability to comprehend. It all comes down to one question: Did we emerge from the fiery primordial soup the world consisted of millions of years ago, or are we the result of intelligent design?

IMO we are the result of intelligent design. And so was the fiery primordial soup.The designer put everything together into a neat, small ball and then busted it with a big bang some 15BYA.

[stuart_allsop]

The only thing we really know is that we exist in the here and now; everything else is speculation and supposition.Not really: Science is based firmly on facts. Certainly, a lot of speculation goes on in science, but only in order to sift out the trash and get down to the cold hard facts. For example, you correctly point out that the age of the universe is estimated to be around 16 billion years, and this is based on the best possible measurements of every single paramater of the universe that man is able to measure: Distance between glalxies scattered around the universe, their positions in space, speeds, masses, motion trajectories, etc. All can be studied, then kind of "run backwards" (interpolated) to figure out where they came from. Combine that with the study of the cosmic background radiation, the composition of stars of different generations and ages, red-shifts, the speed of light, etc., and you come up with several ways of projecting the age of they universe. All these methods agree on an age of around 16 billion years.

One theory says that an intelligent designer (ID) created us, and they base it on what they read in the Bible. Another theory claims that it all started with a big bang 15 billion years ago and that the universe is still expanding.Actually, that's not true: The theory of Creationism, not ID, is based on the Bible: Intelligent Design is a kind of watered down, more "politically correct" version that does not refer to "God", and certainly not to the Bible. However, it also does not contradict the Bible. In fact, there really are no conflicts between the Big Bang theory, and Biblical creationism, and Intelligent Design. They all describe the same thing from different points of view. Of course, Fundamentalist creationism is out the window here, since it directly conflicts with reality, BIG TIME! But there is nothing in the Bible that confilicts with the Big Bang theory, and there is nothing in the Big Bang theory that conflicts with the Bible.

A third theory says that the universe and everything in it has always been here in ever-changing forms.That's the "steady state" theory, and it has been pretty much discarded by serious scientists. It used to be the most popular theory among scientists, but the evidence has been piling up over the years, and none of it point towards Steady State.

A fourth theory proposes that what made it all happen is beyond man's ability to comprehend. It all comes down to one question: Did we emerge from the fiery primordial soup the world consisted of millions of years ago, or are we the result of intelligent design?Those two questions are actually not mutually exclusive: It is possible to answer "yes" to both, with some caveats... You can even add "Did God create us?" and still have no conflicts... In fact, you could even go so far as to add "Did we evolve?", and STILL answer "yes" to all four questions.

[Sith]

You godless conservative commie! Everything in the Bible is true. How dare you hate God and make baby Jesus cry. At this rate, conservatives will be successful in removing God from America. It was conservatives that ignored pedophile priests and scammed Christians out of their money for greed.

God have mercy on us. We need to let God be God and ignore our lesser intents: greed, sex, laziness, and godless conservative commie Fox News.

[Marjorie]

I read an interesting book by a theoretical physicist named Dr. Amit Goswami. He writes how consciousness creates the material world. This is interesting since quantum mechanics seems to imply a ten-dimensional universe. Maybe wormholes really are pathways to parallel universes which are in bizarre distortions of time. All of this makes me worried about being reincarnated during the French Revolution...