The Trouble with Militant Atheist

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I don't fully understand the big bang theory. I recntly tried to understand it again but could not. It involves math and things that I don't understand. It's like a foreign language to me. I was defending ancient civilizations because I am interested and understand history very well.
I Know there are different types of science. I actually like environmental science.
I know what I said sounded ignorant. When I feel that my ideas are being attacked I can't think logically. My emotions take over.
My personalty type is also INFJ which is driven by feelings and not logic.
I give up on this debate. I have clearly lost but I still believe in creation.
Once again I have made an idiot of myself in front of the world.

You haven't made yourself an idiot, artrat. Don't worry. But I think this is not to be discussed. Those who deffend the big bang theory - that doesn't explain anything and isn't logical at all - or the big-bang believers, as I prefer to call them, will always have their arguments, independently of what you say. Keep your certainty and don't worry about that.

Uncertainty in necessary for intellectual growth.

Militant atheists are no different from any other militant religious fundamentalists.

Yes, puddingmouse, I agree with you. But it's not the same for everything. There are ways and ways to question things. Reasons and reasons. If a physicist makes experiments in a wrong way, based only on his personal concepts, he may not find what we wants. Or he will not find it correctly.

And I agree with you, socalaspie.

Neither do most people. The fact of the matter is that you couldn't really understand it completely without an extensive background in advanced mathematics and physics, frankly one that most people don't have a hope of ever obtaining. The kinds of people who can fully understand the justifications behind the Big Bang Theory are something of an elite microminority.

The simplest interpretation of the BBT is that the history of the cosmos is finite, meaning that our universe has not always been around. As far as any layman knows, that's no less likely than it having been around forever, but this does leave for the layman the pregnant question, "how did it get here?"

What the big bang postulates is that it didn't. According to the BBT, there was no point in the history of the universe that it didn't exist. Although the universe has not always been around, it has been around for all time according to the BBT. This concept is much easier to grasp after taking into account that the BBT postulates time as having begun at about the same time as the origin of the cosmos. There is no need, under the Big Bang Theory, for the universe have arrived upon existence from "out of nothingness" because the most straightforward interpretation of one of the BBT's most essential postulates is simply, nothingness was never there.

Although there are nuances to that, I do not have the capability of explaining them. Aspects of it that I do understand I am not able to put into layman's terms. The most thorough possible understanding of the BBT is an enigma to me. However, the truth of the matter is that the BBT is such a small part of the cosmos. I see no justification in trying to wrap my mind around this one subject, which could very well take me a lifetime, when I could happily and fruitfully spend my life studying my own little corner of the universe.

Therefore, you are actually quite right in your thinking here. Because you don't grasp the BBT, it would be silly for you to claim that you "believe in the Big Bang." It might be true that the most talented cosmological minds in the world claim that things probably happened that way, but that is all that you have any business proclaiming a belief in: authoritative voices say it's so, and that's all you know. You know that, if you were to study the subject closely enough and intensively enough, you might understand it a little bit better.

However, if I am only slightly more able than you to proclaim a belief in the Big Bang, what can I believe in? I have actually made this self-evident in this thread: what I believe in is the pursuit of truth. I do not have a high regard for people who choose to wallow in their own ignorance. I can forgive a person who cannot help but be ignorant, but I cannot abide a person who truly does not care whether anything he or she believes is actually true. What I believe in is abstract, not concrete.

And, I don't think that anyone should choose to believe in concrete things. They are so fleeting. Something concrete can be destroyed or taken away from you. Compared to something abstract, concrete things are so frail and ephemeral. The principles that I choose to live by, though, can never be taken away. Perhaps I can be taken away from them, but the destruction of my body would leave that which I truly hold dear behind. They are my religion. I think that anyone is happier with one kind of religion or another. I just think that having singing angels, divine beings, and fairyland-like "spirit worlds" in it makes a religion less worthwhile, not better. Maybe that's a matter of opinion, but I feel strongly about it.

Does that make any sense?

Big Bang believers, that's a good one. You don't know anything about it, do you?

Actually I don't know everything. I do know something, though. Enough to to consider that - for me - it doesn't explain anything. Once I heard someone saying that it takes a lot of "faith" to deffend the Big Bang theory (you see, theory, not established truth). And that's true.

I agree.

here is the man that first came up with the big bang theory

notice his atheist collar and secular black shirt.
...
Oh wait he is the catholic priest Georges Lemaître.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

It makes more sense. I care about knoiwing the truth and question many things about religion. I beilive that most of it is made up to keep people ignorant.
For some reason I still belive in some sort of a creator. I guess it is similar to the beliefs of Deism,Pantheism or Panenthiesm. It's very far from a religion like spirituality.
I have trouble in math and physics so I really probably never understand the BBT. It is good to know that I am not the only one.

the Big bang along with most theories that have their beginnings in the minds of a catholic monseigneur
is actually quite compatible with the creation event at the beginning of Genesis.

A big bang event is quite the example of let there be light.

the american evangelical opposition to it can be more easily chalked up to anti-science and proud ignorance
than to anything else.

Well I always wondered one thing. Science states that life can not come out of nowhere, so life needs to be created. After stating that known fact and law of science I would like to know how there can not be a creator when science clearly disproves the non-existence of g-d. (or in other words it proves g-d right)

by that logic, said 'creator' cannot exist, either.

You should study Prion disease. The stuff involved is not with its own life, and yet it somewhat has "life".

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/prion/P ... fault.aspx

Tadzio

You see, that's why it also takes faith to deffend the big bang theory. I found it very interesting what you posted here. And I definitely agree with you: a big bang event is quite the example of let there be light.