lightfoot3's blog

spook-explosion: whence the big bang?

 abuse

There is often confusion between what evolutionists (both biological and cosmological) believe and how creationists interpret it.  Some have also mistakenly stated that it takes a faith similar to religion to believe in evolution or the current theories of how the universe came to be (i.e. Big Bang).

By now, most should know that I’m an atheist (i.e. I don’t believe in invisible sky spooks) and I believe in the theories of evolution.  For the record, scientific theories are actually backed up by fact and observations, so it’s not just a guess at how things happened as implied by some creationists.  I think the earth is some 4.5 billion years old, and I think the universe is some 13 or so billion years old.

There is plenty of evidence to support evolution, even the so-called “missing links” in some species.  And cosmologically speaking, I subscribe to the current theories of stellar and galactic formations, and to the Big Bang theory.  But I’ll admit, that our current knowledge can’t explain it all.  We don’t know everything and there are still plenty of mysteries.  But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and just say a spook did it.  As scientists, we continue to explore, learn, and massage our theories to the observed facts around us.

Creationists look at the complexity of life and the universe, scratch their heads, and proclaim there must be an Intelligent Designer.  Make no mistake, Intelligent Design specifically means the Christian God of creation, Jehovah.  The main thrust of the current Intelligent Design fad is an attempt to circumvent court rulings against treating creationism as science.

I’ve been asked, if I believe in the Big Bang, who/what/how did the stuff get there to begin with?  And I don’t know.  Could I fathom there was a Designer?  There are too many problems.  Did Intelligent Design create the cancer cell?  Did Intelligent Design create genetic defects?  Is it because of Intelligent Design that we have to kill and consume food to survive?  I know man is an intelligent designer of things.  And I know that some of these things have flaws, and that doesn’t negate the designer’s role.  But the flaws of the system tell me that if there is a Designer of the universe, it is not a divine, godly Designer.  Super advanced space alien?  Maybe.  But not Jehovah, Vishnu, Amon-Ra, Allah, etc.  There is no way to know the name of the designer or what’s on the designer’s mind (like he forbids casual sex).

All the gods we know by name, Jehovah, Vishnu, Allah, Thor, Apollo, etc. are nothing more than man-made creations to explain the unknown, provide comfort, and to given power.  They are fanciful myths, created over time by primitive man.  We know this because we know the history.  And if there is a complexity to the universe that we can’t explain, we must not make the mistake of ascribing it to gods that we know are fiction.  We can always ask who lit the fuse of the big bang, just like we could ask who created God.  But there’s no need to be creators of fiction because we don’t have the answers.

Bottom line is that we don’t know what we don’t know.  We can look at facts, at science, at the universe around us and do our best to understand how the pieces fit together and came to be.  And whether it spawned out of nothingness, or ET the alien did it, that is really left to speculation, and beyond the thinking of most that subscribe to evolution.  That doesn’t cancel out the science we know up to that point.  I will not say I don’t know, therefore God.  I’ll leave the spooks to the horror movies and the fanciful imaginations of mankind.

Additional reading:

Not the only game in town:

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

The blog image is the Trifid nebula located in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Filed under: Religion