[Thor]

Originally Posted by speede5

Agreed.So it would have been OK if I thought 'God said Bang and it happened'?

To me thats a valid argument, albeit I don't believe thats the case.

I was under the assumption that the Big Bang was when all matter was in one nice little ball and went supernova and spread becoming the universe, slowly forming other smaller balls of gas called stars and dirt into planets. I hope thats not to simple for your liking.

From my previous link here's a common misconception on the Big Bang you just mentioned:

a) Common misconceptions about the Big Bang

In most popularized science sources, BBT is often described with something like "The universe came into being due to the explosion of a point in which all matter was concentrated." Not surprisingly, this is probably the standard impression which most people have of the theory. Occasionally, one even hears "In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."
There are several misconceptions hidden in these statements:

• The BBT is not about the origin of the universe. Rather, its primary focus is the development of the universe over time.
• BBT does not imply that the universe was ever point-like.
• The origin of the universe was not an explosion of matter into already existing space.

The famous cosmologist P. J. E. Peebles stated this succinctly in the January 2001 edition of Scientific American (the whole issue was about cosmology and is worth reading!): "That the universe is expanding and cooling is the essence of the big bang theory. You will notice I have said nothing about an 'explosion' - the big bang theory describes how our universe is evolving, not how it began." (p. 44). The March 2005 issue also contained an excellent article pointing out and correcting many of the usual misconceptions about BBT.

From: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html

Also because these debates always seem to happen with athiest/ agnostics I naturally assume that they are being posed as anti god theories. pardon me for sterotyping.Should I have said hypothesis? As I said they are usually used as evidence against God so maybe I am just being defensive.

Hypothesis is probably how you deemed the word 'theory' as in how its often said in creationist circles when they talk of evolution is just a theory.

As for evidence against God, sure thats definitely the case a lot of the time, I'm guilty of that, but I'm more concerned with denying evidence that is overwhelming because of a particular faith/belief.

More often than not evolution is used to back the non-theist view point. Pretty sure that was the point in this debate.Not sure, losing track but it went back to how the pyramids are proof that there are aliens or something like that.

Evolution is what you want it to be, like Photon said you can believe in God and evolution, its only some more strident religious folks that refuse to go with the evidence. I mean the Vatican laughs at people who think evolution is false, and if you've read my posts you know my low opinion of the vatican

Its simple to me, the only time people distrust a 'theory' with such vigor as they do with evolution is because some religions and parts of those religions fear its implications. While most moderate religious folk have no problems with it. As has been stated before if there is this 'distrust' of science theory why are we not hearing them raising hell about germ theory, theory of gravity, atomic theory, plate-tectonic theory, etc..

Its just that in evolution that segment who does not believe in it is attempting to convince people there is some controversy while there is none amongst the scientific community, this is the similar strategy used by big tobacco to convince people there was a controversy about if nicotine causes cancer.