The Big Bang Invalidates Both Agnosticism and Atheism
The agnostic’s assertion may be expressed by the sentence, “We cannot know whether there is a God or not, and we cannot know whether the universe has been in existence since eternity or not.” He believes that nothing is or can be known. If the hypothesis “Matter had a beginning” is confirmed, the assertion that “Matter had no beginning” would be refuted and the contention “We cannot know whether it had a beginning or not” will be proved wrong. Thus, demonstration of the fact that matter had a beginning is a blow not only to atheism but also to agnosticism and skepticism. Once the hypothesis of the beginning and creation of matter has been confirmed, the atheists should abandon their disbelief and the agnostics their skepticism. If you remember the words in the sura The Prophets, verse 30, “Will they not believe even then?” this statement in the verse that described the Big Bang is a sign according to which the unbelievers will stick to their own convictions, or lack of conviction. It has become clear that an agnostic is no different than a man who worships the cow and the denial of the atheist is tantamount to the adoration of fire; these people base their philosophies on absolute lack of evidence, sheer delusion, total lack of logic and scientific reasoning.
The claims of rationality and the so-called scientific approach of the atheists and agnostics have been debunked. In the coming pages we shall see that both in the creation of the universe, in things created within the universe and in the creation of living beings, an intelligently designed process is going on, and we shall demonstrate that the objections of agnostics and skeptics to this assertion are merely delusions.
BEFORE THE BIG BANG
It was understood that time existed in relation to the movements of matter. As matter and its movements did not exist prior to the Big Bang, time did not exist before the Big Bang. Matter and time came into being after the Big Bang. Their existence depends on each other. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking conclusively proved in mathematical terms that the universe had had a beginning. The Big Bang theory confirmed the hypothetical alternative suggested by atheists that the universe had to have a beginning if it had been created. In brief, the claims of atheists have been proven wrong in scientific terms and in terms of logic and reason; and yet the atheistic attitude is still prevalent today due to reasons like stubbornness, delusion and arbitrariness.
There are different viewpoints on the question “what is the universe made of?” I think that both science and religion offer their own explanation to this topic and they sometimes overlap, which creates contradictions. Therefore, I do not agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial, which claims that there is a fine line separating science from religion. That being said, I think the conflict between science and religion is only in the study of evolution. It is possible for a scientist to be religious if he is not studying evolution, because science is very broad and it has various studies. In this essay, I will talk about the conflict between religion and science by comparing the arguments from Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. I argue that science and religion do overlap but only in some area concerning evolution and the cosmic design. Furthermore, when these overlaps are present it means that there are conflicts and one must choose between science and religion.
18 February 2014 Stafford, Betty. “Intelligent design theory belongs in the science classroom”. National Catholic Reporter. 21 Oct 2005. 23.
First off, The Cosmological Argument was developed by St. Thomas Aquinas in 1274 through his work entitled Summa Theologica (otherwise known as Five Ways). Its purpose was to prove God’s existence through sensory perception. In Part One, Article Three of Prima Pars, Aquinas states that in order to debate, one must become involved in the opposing argument, then afterwards argue their view. In this case, one must look at both the argument for God’s existence (Theism) and for God’s non-existence (Atheism) in order to truly understand the argument that they are arguing for or against. The cosmological argument is divided into three parts, each containing varying sub-arguments:
Throughout our short time on Earth, a very common thought and feeling that many people have is, “What’s out there? Why are we here? What made us?” etc. This natural human tendency to ask these questions lead some people draw conclusions that may or may not be there. A belief I’ve held for years is the atheistic one. Christians, as well as many other moral institutions would refer to an atheist as someone who doesn’t believe in God. Where this may be the case, I feel as though this definition is a lazy and non-intellectual one. Rather I tend to believe that atheism is the lack of a belief in a given higher power. To that, I will reference a quote from Richard Dawkins, “I am an atheist with respect to around 2700 Gods, you (a christian) on the other hand are an atheist with respect to around 2699 Gods.” This is a quintessential and distinguishable difference between the two beliefs, or lack there of. What’s interesting in what Dawkins was saying was that you could infer that with this definition, Christians are statistically about as atheist as atheists are. Now with that being explained, one would start to bring in to frame the probability and the odds that maybe in fact the Christian God is the one real God vs. the chances that maybe another factor has been played into this belief.
Agnostics believe that it cannot be known that a God exists, or in some cases, that is currently unable to know if a God exists. So if asked the question; do you believe in God? An agnostic would say ‘I don’t know’. The reasoning behind this is that there is no direct evidence that a God exists, as well no evidence that one doesn’t exist” (Bott,
In “The Argument of Design,” William Paley argues that the universe has a designer. The need for an intelligent designer is portrayed through his comparison between a watch and the human eye. In this paper, I will critically evaluate William Paley’s argument by giving a brief summery of the content I will be focusing on and discuss how I believe that his arguments are not valid.
First of all, agnostics tend to use emotional arguments rather than rational ones. This is prominent in the film, God’s Not Dead. Professor Raddison was an atheist through and through, which cause him to mistreat his Christian student. Raddison states, “I hate God” and his student, Josh Wheaton relies, “How can you hate someone that doesn’t exist?” Furthermore, for one to claim that the universe simply appeared out of nowhere and was created from nothing, by nothing is extremely flawed reasoning. Agnostics will swear up and down that science is the absolute truth, yet they continue to argue that something can be created from nothing; it is well known that is invalid. Using mathematics, the most accurate branch of science, one can easily disprove that argument. For example, 8 ÷ 0=undefined, meaning it is impossible. This clearly displays that something cannot be created from nothing. Every effect must first have a cause and every existence in our world is the result of a cause that permitted its existence. Such as humans, nobody can zap a baby into existence, it must first be created. In addition, the theistic God is an uncaused God, which many agnostics fail to comprehend. Therefore, according to a theist, God is both antecedent and eternal; he is neither caused nor uncaused. Similar to matter,
The "Intelligent Design" pbs.org. PBS, 5 Aug. 2005. Web. The Web. The Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
To infer God’s existence by ‘Argument from Design’, Rachel has taken the example of amazing things that are present in nature around us such as eye, the most complicated part of body system, the way eye is attached to the human body and the phenomenon by which it performs it function is astounding and such types of creations cannot be occurred randomly by chance. Although, it is only the creation of some intelligent designer. Whereas, in the case of evolution and intelligent design, the author put forward the “Theory of Natural Selection” given by Darwin. In this theory, Darwin stated that evolution occurred among the species due to the changes in their environmental conditions and to adopt these changes, certain changes take place among the specific characteristics of the species in response to such environmental conditions. Therefore, through the process of natural selection, organisms passed their newly adapted characteristics to their off springs and then new generations born with such characteristics which help them to survive and reproduce in altered environmental conditions.
John Polkinghorne’s The Universe as Creation does its best to not convince the reader of Intelligent Design, but rather to dissuade the reader from the notion that although the is intelligently designed, but in this way, it has made science possible.
First assumption being the existence of God; for it is said that He, which was in the beginning, is the one who creates something from nothing. The very sentences, "in the beginning God created," asserts the beginning of things and time. While it is understood that there is no empirical proof of the existence of God but creation itself, and belief in such a theory is based on faith alone. One can not argue the probability of a higher being possibly being responsible for such a complex and magnificent design. Proof of the designer is in the design itself. It would require more faith to assume creation just happened, then to believe God created it. In looking for a rational explanation as to how things came to be, assuming for a moment the big bang theory to be correct, the question still arises, who was responsible for setting such actions into motion? The answer would have to be God.
“The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself” (Chopra). Chopra, a world-renowned author, perceives the existence of life as a truly mystifying cerebration. The pending question that many scientist, and even theists, attempt to answer is how life ultimately began. Currently, the mystery is left with two propositions, evolution and creation. While both approaches attempt to answer the origins of life, evolution and creation are two contrasting concepts. Evolution views life to be a process by which organisms diversified from earlier forms whereas creation illustrates that life was created by a supernatural being. Creation and evolution both agree on the existence of microevolution and the resemblance of apes and humans but vary in terms of interpreting the origins of the life through a historical standpoint. A concept known as Faith Vs Fact comprehensively summarizes the tone of this debate, which leads the question of how life began.
Talking on both sides of the debate, each side feels as though the other has no scientific reasoning come up with their theory. In reading the article written by Shipman, the evolutionists believe that intelligent design has no concrete evidence on how the world was crea...
In today’s society, many topics create a very substantial amount of controversy between different groups of people. From abortion to the healthcare reform, there are countless topics of discussion. One of the major and ongoing controversial topics in the religious community is the Big Bang theory versus Creation. One side of the controversy is, predominately, the scientific community, with the other end obviously being the religious community. Genesis 1:1-2 says: “First this: God created the heavens and earth—all you see, all you don’t see.
The big bang theory is an attempt to explain how the world began. The big bang theory begins with what is called a “singularity.” This term is used to describe an area in space which defies all the known laws of physics. Singularities are thought to exist at the core of black holes. Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that matter is pressed together into an infinite amount of pressure. The dense hot mass of the singularity slowly expanded. This process is called inflation. As the singularity expanded the universe went from dense and hot to cool and expansive. Inflation is still continuing on today which means that the universe is continually expanding.