"Did God use the 'Big Bang' to create the universe?" An Article

[mdgspencer]

Did God use the “Big Bang” to create the universe? | GotQuestions.org

Did God use the “Big Bang” to create the universe? Was God the one who “banged” the big bang?

www.gotquestions.org

“According to objective, empirical science, all space, time, and energy came into existence together in a single moment: a “beginning”… If true, the Big Bang theory all but confirms the view espoused by Judeo-Christianity for thousands of years.”
…
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

 

[DaveBj]

I still like the slogan on a sweatshirt I used to own (it got too small ):

I believe in the Big Bang. God said, “Let there be,” and BANG! There it was!

D

 

[Aquinas11]

ARTICLE: This situation changed drastically in the first half of the twentieth century, as several discoveries were made leading to the formation of the Big Bang theory. Over several decades, those who preferred the idea of an eternal universe made many attempts to explain away hard evidence, but to no avail. The result was secular science lending tremendous support to the creation account of the Bible.

Given that Big Bang theory was developed by a Catholic Priest, it is Catholic science not secular science

 

[Cricket13]

Honestly, it blew my mind when I first learned it was a Catholic Priest who developed it. That was pretty awesome to research

 

[meltzerboy2]

G-d’s very thought makes it happen. Thus the act of creation is in the power of G-d’s mind.

 

[Weave]

Genesis is epic poetry that reveals actual truths. It isn’t a text book on how the world was created. Learn the genre of the particular section of scripture you’re reading before jumping to outlandish conclusions. St. Augustine has some very particular thoughts on people who took Genesis as creation science and he lived in the fifth century.

 

[po18guy]

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître a Jesuit-trained Belgian Catholic priest, took Hubbell’s observations and calculations and developed it. He knew that Einstein’s theory of a static universe was untenable into an infinite regression. It appears that after Einstein initially disagreed with an expanding universe, he eventually agreed with Fr. Lemaître, at least on that point.

Fr. Lemaître was first to coin the term “big bang” to explain the origin of the universe. Einstein praised either the theory, the presentation of that theory, or both, with sources disagreeing. Truly an intellectual giant who remains obscure in modern culture.

 

[William_Scott]

Genesis is epic poetry that reveals actual truths. It isn’t a text book on how the world was created. Learn the genre of the particular section of scripture you’re reading before jumping to outlandish conclusions. St. Augustine has some very particular thoughts on people who took Genesis as creation science and he lived in the fifth century.

St. Augustine affirmed spiritual/allegorical meanings in the first chapters of Genesis (as St. Paul likewise does with the historical accounts of Sarah and Hagar). He also affirmed in opposition to the skeptics and intellectuals of his day a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11, including: on creatures only reproducing after their kinds (contra the proto-Darwinian evolutionary beliefs extant in his day), on the genealogies and nearly 1000 year life-spans of the earliest generations, on the global flood, on the confusion of the languages of mankind at the Tower of Babel, etc.

That said, his literal interpretation of the first couple of chapters of Genesis is somewhat tortured because of his reliance on faulty Latin manuscripts (in contrast with the normative six literal days interpretation of the other Church Fathers). Please see Kolbe Center’s excellent and in depth analysis on St. Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis:

St. Augustine Rediscovered: A Defense of the Literal Interpretation of St. Augustine’s Writings on the Sacred History of Genesis – Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

Young Earth Creationist, St. Augustine (City of God , Book 12)

Chapter 10.— Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past.
Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been. …They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.
…

Chapter 12.— How These Persons are to Be Answered, Who Find Fault with the Creation of Man on the Score of Its Recent Date.
As to those who are always asking why man was not created during these countless ages of the infinitely extended past, and came into being so lately that, according to Scripture, less than 6000 years have elapsed since He began to be, I would reply to them regarding the creation of man, just as I replied regarding the origin of the world to those who will not believe that it is not eternal, but had a beginning, which even Plato himself most plainly declares, though some think his statement was not consistent with his real opinion. If it offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities, let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120112.htm

 

[William_Scott]

p.s. Quick disclaimer, I’m just a Bible believing Christian who wants everyone here (Roman Catholics, Protestants, Warlocks, Unarians, etc.) to place their trust in Christ and His infinite merits alone for Salvation. As St. Anselm says:

Come, then, while life remains in you. In his death alone place your whole trust; in nothing else place any trust;….with this alone cover yourself wholly; and if the Lord your God wills to judge you, say: Lord, between your judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; in no other way can I contend with you. And if he shall say that you are a sinner, say: Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and you. If he should say that you deserve condemnation, say: Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and you, and his merits I offer for those which I ought to have and have not. If he says that he is angry with you, say: Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between your wrath and me. And when you have completed this, say again: Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and you.

p.p.s. Happy 4th of July all! I’ll leave this thread for now with a couple of Patriotic quotes from a Founding Father, the 1st Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay:

I recommend a general and public return of praise and thanksgiving to Him from whose goodness these blessings descend. The most effectual means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to remember with reverence and gratitude the source from which they flow.

Condescend, merciful Father! to grant as far as proper these imperfect petitions, to accept these inadequate thanksgivings, and to pardon whatever of sin hath mingled in them for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Savior; unto Whom, with Thee, and the blessed Spirit, ever one God, be rendered all honor and glory, now and forever.

 

[Dan_Defender]

Thanks for sharing OP. I would add that space exploration so far has been a disappointment for atheistic scientists. They would like nothing more than to discover ‘evolved’ alien species to tell us that life is common and self-created by random ‘natural’ processes. Instead, all they have discovered so far is that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

 

[Thomasbradley312]

Not only that, Lemaitre named it the primevil atom. Secular stagnant universe believers mocked him by calling it the big bang.