The critical thing is the continual disappointment of the Naturalistic expectations of Big Bang cosmologists. The Big Bang is still Naturalism, not Creationism.
"But if you actually read the article, you would answer your own question.
Theopolitan,
Thank you for posting a thoughtful and polite reply.
I'll try to answer some of your points in the same way.
1.) "But if you actually read the article, you would answer your own question."
I don't have any questions. Any questions I posed were purely rhetorical... I answered them in my own post.
(FYI, I did read the original article; I always check original sources before posting.)
2.) "The Big Bang is still Naturalism, not Creationism."
I think that statement is well intended, but it's a poor framing of the issue.
Why?
That statement is a reference to causal agency, but the The Big Bang theory has nothing to do with causal agents... it's akin to shooting at a goose and calling it a giraffe.
a.) As far as I'm aware, the BIG BANG THEORY is only a description of a PHYSICAL EVENT... not an advocacy, or denial, of any particular causal agent. It's just a description of an event.
b.) We all describe physical events, all the time, every day. We do this in a religiously neutral way, and we never think twice about it. So every time you say "it rained", and you don't mention God... are you being a wicked naturalist? No. Of course not.
c.) We shouldn't infer more into things than is really there.
d.) Regarding God: A description of a physical phenomenon is "agency neutral" by definition... until such time as we posit a causal agent, and also posit the number of regressions we want to move backward in time. This is how we talk, and think, in daily life.
- Is the cause of today's rain merely today's weather? Or do we want to say it's the particular meteorological circumstances of the entire week? Or do we want to say it's the result of the meteorological changes throughout the entire year, or decade, or century? Or do we want to go all the way back to the original source, and say "God made it rain." Which level of causality do we wish to talk about? They are ALL CORRECT when we're talking about the natural world God created.
- And finally, if it rained, then it rained... whether I invoke God, or invoked meteorology, or invoked no cause at all... it still rained.
e.) Therefore, when we simply describe something in the natural world, it is causally neutral, and neither religious nor anti-religious, until such time as we posit the causal agent. This is how language works, how logic works... and you'll find the Bible reflecting these same ideas in it's descriptions of events.
f.) TO CLARIFY: An observation of the physical world is just an observation of the physical world; and as long as it is a true observation, it is neither religious nor anti-religious until a causal agent is posited.
g.) If I say, "Looks like it rained a lot yesterday." that neither invokes God, nor denies God, it's just a description of a physical phenomenon.
h. As far as I'm aware, this is what the Big Bang Theory is... it's just a description of a physical phenomena, not that different from the weather.
- If it's raining, we can posit, pretty intelligently, that it must have been preceded by clouds, and accumulation of moisture, whether or not we ever saw those things.
- If the wind is blowing toward the South, we can posit it must have come from some point to the North.
- Likewise, when we see certain things in the cosmos, like everything moving a certain direction, we can intelligently say, "if things are all moving one direction, they must have all come from the opposite direction"... like all things do. That is really all we're talking about with the Big Bang Theory. We're just looking at things moving, just like anything else we see, and working that trajectory backward.
i.) i can't see that the Big Bang theory, at least in it's rudimentary form, takes on any religious or anti-religious connotations, until such time as we posit causal agents.
- If an atheist wants to include causal agents which are contrary to scripture (such as fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, which are nonsensical for other reasons) then I'd assert such agents are not really part of the Big Bang Theory at all.
- In it's rudimentary form, I don't believe the Big Bang Theory does anything to deny, contradict, or exclude God.
J. If my final statement in point "i" is not clear, then we can get into that in more detail.
3.) What is the real issue here?
The real issue is not that the Big Bang Theory is unreasonable, or unscientific, or that it discounts creation, or that it discounts God... the real issue is that it appears to disagree with the Young Earth Creationist's age of the earth.
I'm not going to get into that debate.
However, let's at least be honest, and identify that as the real issue.
Theopolitan, thank you for an interesting thread, and for responding politely.
I wrote a lot of stuff "off the cuff", so it's likely I stated something poorly.
God Bless, and have a great weekend.
.
1
