If The Catholic Church Supports The Big Bang Theory...

I was having a conversation with a few people the other day and we were talking about the Catholic Church and the theory of the Big Bang. Someone said that the Church is open to the idea. That got me thinking...

Assuming there is a God and the Big Bang did occur...

If God was always here, the Big Bang could not have occured without God. Therefore, the theory of creation remains because the Big Bang couldn't have happened without Gods knowledge, as this would prove that God is not all knowing.

Of course this only strengthens the arguments of those who believe in creation, but it was just an observation.

Thoughts?

 

What if God caused the "Big Bang?" Wouldn't that support the claim that he is all knowing?

 

If God caused the Big Bang, the theory of creation is correct, as God caused the explosion. The two theories cannot work together, though.

 

It doesn't strengthen anything because it still has to just assume, without any evidence, that a god exists. And why one particular god over all others that humans have believed in, or even one, or many, that humans haven't?

At least the Big Bang Theory relies on evidence.

 

Actually, they work quite well together depending on your interpretation of divine creation.

 

This thread is going on the assumption that God exists.

I disagree. The Big Bang could have occured with Gods knowledge, which would mean that God, knowing in advance of the explosion, is all knowing. If it happened without his knowledge, he is not all knowing at all

I have thought a lot about it and I don't see how the two work together without proving or disproving that God is an all knowing being.

 

That's the problem with all religions as that's all they do. It's why religion hasn't given us TVs, computers, planes, spacecraft........

 

Because religion isn't in the manufacturing business. That's why the Catholic Church isn't listed on Standard and Poorer's 500.

 

mmhmm

Mmh: In this context god "is" as well a "pre"-big-bang-entity as he is a "post"-big-bang-entity. But to speak about an existance in a philosophical way about an existance outside and/or before our universe was/is existing is a little difficult.

What you are calling "always here" is a tautology. "Here" means our universe and "always" means the existance of time (what is also our universe here). You are speaking about space and time as if space and time would not had started out of nothing in a kind of big bang a first time. But the big-bang -theory says something like "there was a first second and there was a first yard". If we take the creation serios then we have to see that space and time are a kind of echo of the timeless and spaceless word of gods creation.

The strange thing: If it was nothing "before" the big-bang came then there was not only no time and no space before this point was - there was also no information (knowldege) or energy (might) before this point came. All this things are word of god - are creation. So: What we are calling "knowledge" is also 'only' a word of god - creation - although knowledge evolves. And if we will know one day everything about this universe here then we would perhaps be endless knowing - but we would not be allknowing like god is.
"Allknowing" includes forms of thoughts we are not able to understand - forms of timeless thoughts for example or logic in more than two dimesions (true-false). In mathematics we are for example able to find the most complex and also often completly crazy - nevertheless 'true' - thoughts. And afterwards we can often see: we are able to use this thoughts )(formulas) for the solution of very serios problems - in physics for example or in theories about catastrophes and so on and so on...

¿Thoughts? Difficult to say. The problem is not gods knowledge. The problem is our knowledge about gods knowlegde. The best seems to be to trust in god - he knows what he is doing on what reasons and he's for sure not a liar - although we are sometimes confrontaded with strange things. If hate is for example something worthful then it is worthful because it makes sense to hate hate. So this can give perhaps an idea why hate is creation of god although god is love.

In general there are two things what are very easy to unerstand: the endless things and the nothing. But our universe here is not endless and it is not nothing - it's an endful universe - a limited universe - full of some things. Not everything is true not everything is false. We have to decide the way we are going to god - while god is always here ... and there ... whereever 'there' could be.

http://youtu.be/sf9eqoC2Tgc

 

Who gave to us TVs, computers, planes, spacecraft?

http://youtu.be/1hIURBIcQmc

 

"Assuming there is a God and the Big Bang did occur..."

You know that's a logical fallacy, right?

I find Stephen Hawkings' theory compelling that the 'stuff' of the universe was there and due to an imbalance (caused by whatever physics my mind is too puny to comprehend) of matter with anti-matter, it went BOOM and here we are 14.5 billion years later. Which is actually much closer to the Hindu dogma than any of the Monotheists religions.


The dude above me seems to have a better grasp of the whole thing.

But I'd just like to add that, since when is the Catholic Church an authority of 'truth'?

 

You people know it was a Catholic Priest that developed the theory of the Big Bang--don't you???


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître

 

13.7 billion years

Steven Hawking has some problems - not only with his body. In his books are also wrong informations - specially for example about the history of physics and the relations of this history with the catholic church. The emancipation of natural science from religion and philosophy was necessary - but this doesn't mean that relígion and philosophy grew senseless. Indeed lots of phycisists are religious men and women. Hawking has his opinions like every baker or dentist or anyone else has his opinion. Everyone is able to find
the way to god and everyone is able to deny this. Hawkings idea - of it is his idea what I don't know in the moment - is not an answer to the question "Why is something existing and not only nothing?"

Nevertheless I have no idea about what kind of Dogma (=teaching) of the hinduistsic religions you are speaking about - and antimatter and matter destroyed themselve. As far as I know the natural laws phycisists found until today don't give any explanation in the moment why some matter (=we and some other parts of the universe) was not destroyed. If the hinduistic religions can give only a little idea about such a process it could be very interesting to know something about.

Anticatholicism seems to be the only form of knowledge for some people.

http://youtu.be/bjvkl9EGBPE

 

Well, if God is the Creator of the universe, how exactly could the universe be created without God's knowledge?

Here is what we know - the universe is finite. That is what the Big Bang states, it has a beginning. Time, space, matter, literally everything, was created in a single event known as the Big Bang.

This process begins - where there is nothing mind you - with the appearence of a super tiny pin prick of pure energy. Something then sets it off. We have no idea what caused that eneregy to explode. None.

Indeed, we do find pure energy today, in the massive core of stars, where fusion produces ... tiny little pin pricks of pure energy ... which amazingly do not produce gigantic universes when they are consumed.

Even more fascinating is the reality that this pure eneregy should have resulted in equal parts matter and anti-matter - obviously, we get a rather large skew toward matter - once again for reasons unknown.

At this point, most atheists will simply state that they don't know or that this is the just God of the gaps. What they fail to acknowledge is that being atheist means you are certain that the creation mechanism is not God and that they are dismissing a hypothesis based on religious preface - nothing more.

The simple fact of the matter is that everything came from nothing. The question was, was al this created for no reason? Or was their a purpose?

 

No. The current model is that all matter existed, as well as anti-matter (very active material but there was no time yet so it didn't concord with our model of existence), and due to an imbalance between matter and anti-matter... the imbalance caused an 'expansion' of said 'stuff' into the form that we know today. A theory that is similar to Hinduism in that the universe is eternal but is in perpetual flux.

Energy is matter. So saying 'pure energy' is like saying 'pure matter' which subsequently describes about everything that exists. And your concept of 'universe' is flawed because the 'universe' is just a set of stuff and not a thing unto itself. It's like saying 'my refrigerator feeds me'. Your refrigerator doesn't 'actually' feed you, it's the food inside that does.

Matter = Energy, so I'm not sure where you get that 'pure eneregy should have resulted in equal parts matter and anti-matter'?

Our current concept of matter is a result of the imbalance between it and anti-matter.

It's literally centuries that this debate has raged on. My philosophy about it is simple...Religion claims magic. Prove to me that magic exists and I will then have the evidence necessary to believe in religious claims.

Just because there was no 'time' in the natural world doesn't mean that nothing 'existed' in the natural world. You're creating a false dilemma while already presupposing that 'everything' came from 'nothing'.

 

Why must the big bang be gods work just because a powerful immortal exists and predated it and interacted with what came from it?

And saying it could not happen without god knowing because it would mean god is not all knowing seem circular

ignoring a possibility that it happened without gods knowing or that god might not be all knowing

 

According to Christians, and in the Bible, God is all knowing. To say he isn't is an offense. If this is true, God had knowledge of the Big Bang before it occured, and he allowed it to occur.

If God wasn't all knowing, then affects the claim of 'free will' which we all have, but with God knowing what choices we will make before we make them.

 

If you're assuming the universe created itself, that is a contradiction. Because how could something which doesn't exist, create at all? If there was a point when the universe didn't exist, how could the universe do anything, if it WASN'T IN EXISTENCE!

The Big Bang is how God created the universe. "How is the Church an authority on truth?" It's an authority on moral truth. Religion is the science of morality. You can't measure right and wrong in a test tube. If there is no God there is no meaning, there is no absolute truth, there is no purpose! If that is so, why are atheists so quick to point out the horrible moral atrocities religion has created. If there is no God, there is no "right" way of being. It becomes a "who says" ordeal, which in a relativistic world, will never be resolved. God is the basis of morality.

 

But then we have another problem as we cannot prove the existance of a God. Simply saying that God must exist because how else would we be here doesn't cut it. There is always another explanation for that which we do not understand.

 

How does one "prove" the existence of God? Do you want a photograph or do you want him to appear for you and tell you he exists?

You cannot disprove God as well. But what you can do, is give arguments for his existence.

 

This thread is assuming God exists, so proving the existance of a God is not necessary. Of course, the OP can be turned into that argument by questioning how nothing could become nothing. But then I could ask how God got here, if he, as with everything, began as nothing?

 

For most Protestants, raised to believe that the Catholic Church was somehow evil and certainly anti-Science, it's confusing. When the Reformation got underway, there were good reasons to protest how the church was raising and spending money. Very good reasons.

None of the wrongs of the Church though, cancel out the positive things it's done, many of which include maintaining historical documents, supporting both science and education.

Ah yes, Copernicus. Well anyone that wishes to research a bit will find the Church actually supported his studies, including financially. What it had issue with was PR, they didn't thing the masses could easily assimilate the idea that the sun, not the earth was the guiding body of the universe. They were asking for time, to educate. Well we all know how that turned out.

So yes, unlike most public schools, Catholic schools teach evolution in science classes, they don't ignore the issue. ID, if taught is in religion classes, perhaps philosophy/theology in high schools. The Church is open to the Big Bang theory, as a possible staring point.

The bottom line though is the 'Prime Mover' which is God.

 

Okay, but here's where you fault. God never "began" to exist. He always existed, as he is infinite and outside of space and time. There was never a point when he did not exist.

You should watch this video and others by William Lane Craig. I think he will answer a lot of your questions.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkBD20edOco"]Dr. William Lane Craig humiliates Dr. Peter Atkins - YouTube[/ame]

 

Again, you cannot prove that God always existed. If God is a being, he came into being somehow. Just like the universe.

 

God never came into being. He is a necessary being.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgBZlhp2XqU"]If Eveything Needed a Creator, Then Who Created God? - YouTube[/ame]