I'll keep it brief because we are kinda going off topic.  Although i was aware the whole Columbus being the first to believe the Earth was round since the Greeks was nonsense, i wasn't aware of how heavily the Dark Ages ignorance of this fact was refuted these days.  So although my timescale is definitely off my main point remains and that is it takes time before things that are well accepted in scientific circles become generally accepted into public conciousness.

Vacuum fluctuations. 

I, after being brought up in the Church of England, confirmed in said church, have now moved away from god and he doesn't hold any bearing on my life. I'd say personally I don't anymore.

I am fascinated by religion though, and having a fair few religious friends, like to question their faith and put them to the test. Like how so many Christian based churches are separated from each other, each believing their are the right ones, yet never admitting that in the end they all just follow Jesus, which is the most important thing. No matter how many times my LDS and Christian Conventions friends want to try and tell me otherwise, they believe the same things.

Just trowing some Q&A out there for the people who doubt the big bang. I'm just trying to stirr up a discussion, not trying to offend you or your faith. Please refute.

Q: The universe was supposedly formed in the big bang, but explosions do not produce order or information.

A:

1. The total entropy of the universe at the start of the big bang was minimal, perhaps almost zero. Because it was so compact, it had considerably more order than the universe we are in now. The complexity we observe around us today can be produced from the ultimate order of the hot but cooling gas of the big bang.
   
   
2. The big bang was not an explosion. It was an expansion. Besides the fact that it got bigger over time, the big bang has almost nothing in common with an explosion.
   
   
3. Explosions do produce some order amidst their other effects:
   
   
   • Large surface explosions, such as nuclear bombs, produce the familiar mushroom clouds. There are not very highly ordered, but they are not purely random, either.
   • Supernovae produce heavy elements, and the shock waves from them compress interstellar gases, which begins the formation of new stars.
   • Powerful explosions can compress carbon into diamond crystals, the most ordered arrangement.
   • Explosions of atomized gasoline produce compressed gas, which is harnessed in internal combustion engines to power automobiles and other equipment.

Q: The theory of a big bang has been shaken with unresolvable inconsistencies, such as an unexpectedly uneven distribution of matter in the universe and a need for dark matter. Several astronomers think it is no longer a valid theory.

A:

1. The big bang is supported by a great deal of evidence:
   
   
   • Einstein's general theory of relativity implies that the universe cannot be static; it must be either expanding or contracting.
     
     
   • The more distant a galaxy is, the faster it is receding from us (the Hubble law). This indicates that the universe is expanding. An expanding universe implies that the universe was small and compact in the distant past.
     
     
   • The big bang model predicts that cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation should appear in all directions, with a blackbody spectrum and temperature about 3 degrees K. We observe an exact blackbody spectrum with a temperature of 2.73 degrees K.
     
     
   • The CMB is even to about one part in 100,000. There should be a slight unevenness to account for the uneven distribution of matter in the universe today. Such unevenness is observed, and at a predicted amount.
     
     
   • The big bang predicts the observed abundances of primordial hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and lithium. No other models have been able to do so.
     
     
   • The big bang predicts that the universe changes through time. Because the speed of light is finite, looking at large distances allows us to look into the past. We see, among other changes, that quasars were more common and stars were bluer when the universe was younger.
   
   Note that most of these points are not simply observations that fit with the theory; the big bang theory predicted them.
   
   
2. Inconsistencies are not necessarily unresolvable. The clumpiness of the universe, for example, was resolved by finding unevenness in the CMB. Dark matter has been observed in the effects it has on star and galaxy motions; we simply do not know what it is yet.
   
   There are still unresolved observations. For example, we do not understand why the expansion of the universe seems to be speeding up. However, the big bang has enough supporting evidence behind it that it is likely that new discoveries will add to it, not overthrow it. For example, inflationary universe theory proposes that the size of the universe increased exponentially when the universe was a fraction of a second old (Guth 1997). It was proposed to explain why the big bang did not create large numbers of magnetic monopoles. It also accounts for the observed flatness of space, and it predicted quantitatively the pattern of unevenness of the CMB. Inflationary theory is a significant addition to big bang theory, but it is an extension of big bang theory, not a replacement.

No and No

No, and no. Faith is irrational, and religion is an artifact of human culture and evolution (for an great explanation of this, read Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' - despite the name it is a very reasoned and informative book).

I think it is very sad that atheism isn't accepted in the US though - since it is not a religion, it doesn't require any beliefs or practices that people could object to, so why the hate?

@draik: I'm glad somebody knows how physics works...

I would not recommend The God Delusion. It offers nothing new in this debate. If you have heard the arguments for why God does and does not exist, then there is no point in reading his book. This whole debate on whether or not God exists will never find a resolution. At best, no one knows. 

You can't have understood his book then. His book is NOT primarily about arguing that God does not exist. He first argues that the rational position is not agnosticism ("no one knows") but atheism ("probably no God, with scientific conviction")*, and then, for two-thirds of the book, explains where religion comes from, why it is bad regardless of its truth and how we can solve the real underlying problem of irrationality.

*His main point is that, just because something can't be decided either way, that doesn't imply a 50% probability of it being true. You don't believe in fairies, but there isn't a 50% chance of fairies existing.

To quote Michael Ruse, "The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist". Frankly that book is a load of hot air, and trying to say religion is bad doesn't change whether God exists or not. Also if you're going to to play that game, I seem to remember Atheism brought us Hitler and Stalin who were obviously fine fellows (!). On top of that, Dawkins rants about Christianity, because he says that's what he knows best, yet seem to never have read the bible given at how wrong he is when he quote scripture!

Edit: Yes and no

Explains how something very small became something very large, not where it came from!