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Originally Posted by speede5
So it would have been OK if I thought 'God said Bang and it happened'?  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.  Also because these debates always seem to happen with athiest/ agnostics I naturally assume that they are being posed as anti god theories. |
Why would you assume that they are being posed as anti-god theories?? Science takes no position on God, it simply tries to explain how things have happened and what made them happen that way. Science tries to answer questions that haven't been answered, or find better answers for ones that have.
They don't sit down and think "ok, how can we disprove the genesis account." despite what the anti-science rhetoric of some parts of some religions would have you believe.
So anyway, to answer your question "So it would have been OK if I thought 'God said Bang and it happened'?", that's actually not that far off.
The Big Bang Theory describes the history of the universe, from now until when the universe was very very young (billionths of a second). This is very well supported with observational evidence (The Hubble constant, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, tons more).
What the Big Bang Theory does NOT describe is what the universe was like before that, or how the universe got to the state that it was in (very small, very dense, very hot). There's no current theory for this.. lots of ideas, but mostly speculation.
So yes you could say "God said Bang" and at least not be demonstrably wrong. For now anyway, science of course always advances and in 50 years they could discover how the universe came about.. so saying "God said Bang" seems about the same to me as saying lightning is made by God.. at some point everyone thought so because of a lack of understanding, but as we learned more we discovered we didn't need a God up there hurling lightning down.
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Originally Posted by speede5
Should I have said hypothesis?
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You could have, but neither Big Bang nor evolution are hypothesis's (is that how you pluralize that?).
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Originally Posted by speede5
As I said they are usually used as evidence against God so maybe I am just being defensive.
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I really don't see how they could be used as evidence against God, do you have an example?
They're examples for evolution, which would I guess be evidence against a specific interpretation of some religions, evidence against God creating each species uniquely as they are now, but that's not evidence against God, just evidence against specific interpretations.
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Originally Posted by speede5
More often than not evolution is used to back the non-theist view point. Pretty sure that was the point in this debate.
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That's another piece of rhetoric from the creationist camp... Evolution is not used to back a non-theist point of view. I mean think about it, would saying gravity holds us to the earth instead of God's fingers or chemical reactions happen because of molecules rather than God's power be used to back a non-theist point of view? It's the same thing. Some creationists want to tie evolution to atheism to combat it, maybe because they're uncomfortable with the thought that apes and men have a common ancestor. But evolution itself, like chemistry and physics, makes no claims about God one way or the other.
As I said a majority of Christians accept evolution no problem.
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Originally Posted by speede5
Not sure, losing track but it went back to how the pyramids are proof that there are aliens or something like that.
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I think that was made in jest, even the guy in the thread that thinks aliens are talking to our governments doesn't say that.
Most here are saying not that there's evidence of aliens, only that it makes more sense if there are. Life arose on earth, therefore it's possible, and given the vastness of the universe it's possible for it to happen again. Kind of like me saying you have a DVD player.. there's a chance you don't, but knowing what I know about our society, the fact you have a computer, etc, I can make a pretty good guess.