The big bang happened, there is just too mush evidence to back it up. I mean a phenomenal amount. And the Catholic church announced way back in the 1950's that the big bang was compatible with the Christian faith.

Anyway, the universe has A. Existed for a finite amount of time, and B. is expanding metrically.

We have observed that all other galaxies are moving away from each other by measuring the shift in colour in a similar way you would hear sounds using the Doppler effect. If the observed colour of a galaxy moves towards the red end of the spectrum then it is moving away from us, and if it is blue then it is moving towards us. All galaxies show redshift, which means all galaxies are moving away from us. The only way this can occur is if space itself was expanding.

Imagine it like galaxies being dots on a balloon, when you inflate the balloon all the dots move further away from each other. And thus we must conclude that the Universe is expanding in a similar way.

We know that the Universe has existed for a finite amount of time because of the abundance of Hydrogen gas, if it has existed in a state for infinity, then due to the fusion process going on in stars the hydrogen gas shouldn't exist.

So given the knowledge that the universe has existed for a finite amount of time, and that it is expanding at a constant rate, we can figure out this process in reverse to see that at one point there had to be a singularity and a point of expansion, otherwise known as the big bang.

And it's common misconception that the Big bang was an "explosion", it wasn't.

I personally can't get my head around the idea of believing in a personal God..

There are thousands of Gods that have been created which contradict each other, and millions more yet to be created or discovered I'm sure, which causes the odds of your personal God being the right one to be astronomical. Yet people are willing to bet on just one God. They can't all exist, so why would people happily devote their life to a personal God. It's a mindset that I just can't get my head around.

The way I see it is that the sheer volume of personal Gods whose believers claim theirs is the one true God is enough reason to not believe in a personal God.

Furthermore, each personal God has to interact with the Universe, by definition. And yet I have never heard a creation story which matches up anywhere remotely near the evidence we have about our Universe.

For example, the abrahamic creation story tells us that the Universe was created in week in 4004BC. The volume of evidence that contradicts this date is phenomenal. We know the Earth has to be billions of years old, geographical, Biological, physical and chemical evidence just shows that the Earth has to be ancient (in the order of billions of years old) time and times again. Instantly the abrahamic creation story does not match up with the evidence we have.

This is just one example out of thousands I could pick. Similarly I could pick on the belief that the Earth is propped up by a giant tortoise, or that the Earth was created by flying noodles.

...

Now I know that I've left the big gap of the generic creator. I'm a little tired as I've just got back from holiday, so all I'm going to say is that a creator who has infinite power cannot by definition create a finite Universe. Similarly a creator with Finite power would be measurable by our reasoning and logic, yet this has not happened.

Also, who created the creator, why would an omnipotent being trouble himself with just another biological race on a ball of rock out of trillions, *insert generic paradox here*, etc...

I'll get into it a little more tomorrow.

Yeah , the Big Bang is like a balloon full of hot air. The more hot air the bigger the bang.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/big-bang-universe-beginning-100319.html

 From the article:

 "I would say that there is 100 percent consensus, really,"

Consensus does not count as evidence for God but it sure does when it comes to the Big Hot Balloon theory.

"It means everything and anything that can happen, will," Steinhardt told SPACE.com. "So basically everything could be a prediction of inflation. This to me is a fundamental problem and we don't know how to get away from it."

Wow you can't miss when your target is as big as the universe. A funamental problem - you think.

You love to take things out of context. You did in the other thread on evolution too. Also in the same article 

"There is overwhelming evidence [for the big bang] – all of the predictions are true."

Fact is that there is evidence that supports the big bang theory. If new evidence is discovered then the theory will be revised, changed, altered or new ones created etc. On the other hand there is no evidence for the existence of god or a creator being. With the evidence available, which is the more logical to believe in at this point?

Euglena, simple photo-receptors (step 1 in diagram)

Planarian, cup shaped eyes (step 2)

Nautilus, pinhole eyes (step 3)

etc. etc.

Wikipedia is great =P

Edit: Also your argument on 'the more the photo-reciptor is pointing towards the light' doesn't work. A photon arriving at a photoreceptor causes the same signal no matter what angle it arrives at. That's the reason for the evolution of the 'pinhole' eye which allows direction to be known.

This is scary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GqzupY_BQI&feature=PlayList&p=7DFA00F98B86CA5D&playnext=1&index=6

Here's an excellent video for anyone interested in the subject. I tend to have this approach, it's the most reasonable and sensible and it doesn't deny the theory of no intelligent God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9feXeL-3XA

OK. That's reasonable. It's also consistent with a finite but very large (instead of "infinite") alien intelligence outside the universe that created it. No need to invoke supernatural beings, just a mutiverse and a way to create universes that can be controlled by a being, e.g. black hole formation.

The point where we disagree is that I think a 'God' along the lines described in the video can in principle be explained by science if we could get there (to another universe or through a black hole) and meet the creator intelligence. I think we would find it to follow scientifically testable laws if we got there, just as I would find the existence of Malaysia testable if I actually went there.

At the moment there is nothing too wrong with this sort of belief, as there is no proof for or against it. If science ever manages to advance to the stage where we understand what causes universes (it seems very likely that there are many) though it is quite plausible that it would be proven wrong.

Of course that would only be another step back for God, another gap filled for the God of gaps.

Edit: But the entire thing about millions of people having experience spirituality is not evidence that those experiences are supernatural in any way.

I know, I've noticed before that Smidlee likes to take quotes from articles and papers and present them massively out of context.

What gets to me is that in the article he just quoted from and the paper he quoted in the evolution thread, the quotes are extremely tenuously linked to his point. It's almost as though he has had to work very hard to find something that even remotely supports his point.

Surely when going to such an extent to try and find an out of context quote to support your view point, you have to read through hundreds of pieces of evidence against your point. He must have known that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that supports the big bang.

Then again, he probably just got it from Conservapedia or Answers in genesis and didn't bother reading the article to see if the quote was out of context. I've see that done before.