Evangelicals Still Don’t Know What to Do With the Big Bang

[cbayer]

Last edited Sun Mar 23, 2014, 11:43 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/23/evangelicals-still-don-t-know-what-to-do-with-the-big-bang.html

When a major discovery confirmed the Big Bang this week, some evangelicals ignored it, while others claimed it’s already in the Bible. But the theory’s Catholic history suggests there’s a better way to look at it.


FAITH 03.23.14
Karl W. Giberson

The “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe got a big boost this week when scientists reported the discovery of 14-billion-year-old echoes of the universe’s first moments—the first proof of an expanding universe, and the last piece of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Creationists and other conservative religious believers have a curiously ambivalent relationship with the Big Bang—unlike evolution, which is universally condemned. Young-earth creationists mock the Big Bang as a wild guess, an anti-biblical fantasy that only atheists determined to ignore evidence of God’s creation could have invented. In contrast, creationists who accept that the earth is old—by making the “days” of creation in Genesis into long epochs—actually claim that the Big Bang is in the Bible. Some of them are rejoicing in the recent discovery.

The leading evangelical anti-science organization is Answers in Genesis (AIG), headed by Ken Ham, the guy who recentlydebated Bill Nye. AIG’s dismissive response to the discovery is breathtaking in its hubris and lack of insight into how science works. They call for Christians to reject the discovery because the “announcement may be improperly understood and reported.” This all-purpose response would also allow one to deny that there is a missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777.

Secondly, Answers in Genesis complains that the predictions being confirmed in the discovery are “model-dependent.” They fail to note that every scientific prediction ever confirmed, from the discovery of Neptune, to DNA, to the Ambulecetus transitional fossil is “model-dependent.” The whole point of deriving predictions in science is to test models, hypotheses, theories. Finally, AIG suggests that “other mechanisms could mimic the signal,” implying that, although the startling prediction was derived from Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the inflationary model of the Big Bang, it could have come from “some other physical mechanism.” No alternative mechanism is suggested.

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[skepticscott]

1. Trying to write about religion's relationship with science

when you have no understanding of science whatsoever, is a losing proposition. "First proof of an expanding universe"? He seriously wrote that? Um...how about the part where everything is getting further apart, something folks noticed a away long time ago? Among many other things.

[CJCRANE]

2. I'd like to see a debate between Creationists of different religions

and different denominations.

That would give them an opportunity to get their story straight before they take on science.

[cbayer]

3. Are there different flavors of creationism?

The only thing I've seen is a division into two groups - those that think god created the earth just like it is and those that believe in evolution, but think god had some kind of guiding hand in it.

Is the first what is generally called "new earth creationism" and the second "creative design"?

[Goblinmonger]

4. How do you know it isn't just turtles all the way down?

There are more creation myths than just Christianity. You do know that right?

[CJCRANE]

5. What about Muslim Creationists, Hindu Creationists etc. ?

That's why I always say basing your authority on saying God told you so only works until someone else comes along and says God told him or her something different.

[cbayer]

6. Had not even thought of that.

I have a jewish friend who is a creationist, but his take is genesis-driven and not unlike those I hear from christian creationist.

Claiming authority is very thin ice when it comes to religion, imo.

[CJCRANE]

7. Of course, we don't hear about them

but I'm sure they exist.

Fundies of all stripes usually don't like science much.

[skepticscott]

8. And yet pretty much all religion does it

In one way or another. Hence the attitude of anti-theists and our distrust of the religious and their apologists and defenders.

[skepticscott]

9. Seriously? Of course there are.

There is far, far more disagreement among creationists than among evolutionary scientists. Creationists are all over the map, depending on how much science they feel like they have to mix with their religion in order to not get laughed at. Yet another example of why religion and science are not compatible..only compartmentalizable.