Do you believe in the Big Bang? (Merged) Is it Catholic dogma?

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Two sermons:

Science Cannot Explain History: Errors of Big Bang Cosmology

Big Bang Fizzles, Moses Sizzles

Courtesy of Romans 10:17

Debunks the pseudo-science with science, and debunks it based on the Faith.

Squishing all the matter in the universe into something smaller than a pinhead? All of it. Honestly. A moment’s considerate thought: How absurd.

Indirectly related, recently there was a radio show entitled:

“BBC Radio: Everything we know is Wrong”

Every day the newspapers carry stories of new scientific findings. There are 15 million scientists worldwide all trying to get their research published. But a disturbing fact appears if you look closely: as time goes by, many scientific findings seem to become less true than we thought. It’s called the “decline effect” - and some findings even dwindle away to zero.

A highly influential paper by Dr John Ioannidis at Stanford University called “Why most published research findings are false” argues that fewer than half of scientific papers can be believed, and that the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. He even showed that of the 49 most highly cited medical papers, only 34 had been retested and of them 41 per cent had been convincingly shown to be wrong. And yet they were still being cited.

Again and again, researchers are finding the same things, whether it’s with observational studies, or even the “gold standard” Randomised Controlled Studies, whether it’s medicine or economics. Nobody bothers to try to replicate most studies, and when they do try, the majority of findings don’t stack up. The awkward truth is that, taken as a whole, the scientific literature is full of falsehoods.

Jolyon Jenkins reports on the factors that lie behind this. How researchers who are obliged for career reasons to produce studies that have “impact”; of small teams who produce headline-grabbing studies that are too statistically underpowered to produce meaningful results; of the way that scientists are under pressure to spin their findings and pretend that things they discovered by chance are what they were looking for in the first place. It’s not exactly fraud, but it’s not completely honest either. And he reports on new initiatives to go through the literature systematically trying to reproduce published findings, and of the bitter and personalised battles that can occur as a result.
 
Okay. I am still confused.

Is the Big Bang a proven scientific fact or just the best/most acceptable scientific theory so far??
 
Yes, the big bang or something like it resulted in either just this universe or perhaps a multiverse of the Tegmarkian sort. Perhaps there was also a related Eruption with regard to God Himself and His Divine Act of Creation.

I do not assert these things as positive fact, but I suggest them as one who is offering them to the forum as food for thought. Perhaps the universe is much more extensive and elaborate than we have heretofore imagined, or perhaps than we can imagine. And perhaps God’s Creation and the Creator Himself are much more vast and elaborate than we can imagine as well.

In all probability, whatever we imagine is much less than the reality. It it interesting that sincere efforts at trying to tie things up with reason result in new mathematical and physical suggestions which in turn result in florid expansions of what we imagine the nature of reality (and God) to be.
 
Catholic/Agree

No problems here reconciling science and belief. Science tells us how. Theology/scripture tells us why.

Although, I would’ve sppreciated some more “why” for calculus explaination in the first few chapters of Genesis. It could’ve helped out in college… 😃
The how/why concept never worked for me.

Best,
Ed
 
Okay. I am still confused.

Is the Big Bang a proven scientific fact or just the best/most acceptable scientific theory so far??
The latter, I don’t think scientific theories can become scientific facts.
 
Okay. I am still confused.

Is the Big Bang a proven scientific fact or just the best/most acceptable scientific theory so far??
I don’t think it is possible that the Big Bang Theory could be “proven scientific fact.” It’s not exactly the type of thing that can be recreated in a laboratory. 😛

But that doesn’t mean it’s not also the most reasonable explanation of the evidence at hand.

As for me, it makes sense to me and I find nothing in it that contradicts the Catholic faith. So I have no problem accepting it as probable. But if someone came along with a different, more convincing theory, I’d be willing to take a look at it.
 
Okay. I am still confused.

Is the Big Bang a proven scientific fact or just the best/most acceptable scientific theory so far??
Theory.

For it to be a fact, science must be able to reproduce it.

For example:

When I add 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom, I get a water molecule. This experiment is repeatable. As such it can become a fact. (Give or take any accidents in the formulation).

Not only is it a theory because it can’t be reproduce, but we don’t know for certain what were the atmospheric conditions at the time and a myriad of other factors. The theory can be made from an educated opinion.
 
I’m not sure I agree with this. I don’t have the verse in front of me but it says something like “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” According to the Big Bang, the universe(the heavens) began nearly 14 billion years ago. The earth formed something like 9 billion years later. That doesn’t sound like the beginning.
That’s assuming a literal/fundamentalist interpretation. From the beginning of the Church, there has been a great deal of dialogue on how Genesis is to be interpreted. Here are just a few examples:

“For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years [Gen. 5:5]. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression ‘The day of the Lord is a thousand years’ [Ps. 90:4] is connected with this subject” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 81 [A.D. 155]).

"And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with things which exist? . . . That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: ‘This is the book of the generation, also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth’ [Gen. 2:4]. For the expression ‘when they were created’ intimates an indefinite and dateless production. (Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6:16 [A.D. 208]).

“For who that has understanding will suppose that the first and second and third day existed without a sun and moon and stars and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? . . . I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally” (Origen, The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).

“It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation” (St. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20 [A.D. 408]).
 
Greetings,

Below are some quotations from article I link to from my web page.

Though Einstein did not at first affirm the idea of an expanding universe, he later believed it because of its overwhelming verification. Indeed, it is one of the most rigorously established theories in physics today. …

Since the time of Fr. Lemaitre, the Big Bang Theory has been confirmed by multiple, distinct data sets which come together around a similar set of numbers and values:

Edwin Hubble’s’ Redshifts (which shows that all galaxies are moving away from each other),

Arno Penzias’ and Robert Wilson’s discovery of the 2.7 degree Kelvin uniformly distributed radiation which is the remnant of the big bang,

evidence from the cosmic background explorer satellite (COBE),

and further evidence from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). This is why most physicists consider the big bang to be a rigorously established physical theory.

End quote.
 
One slight nit to pick:
snip

Edwin Hubble’s’ Redshifts (which shows that all galaxies are moving away from each other),

snip
. . . except for the Andromeda galaxy, which is moving toward the Milky Way and will eventually merge with it, but not in our physical lifetimes.
 
The fact that a Catholic priest was the first to discover it. Is one factor for why I believe it.

I also believe it because I do not want to be anti-science.
 
Is the Big Bang a proven scientific fact or just the best/most acceptable scientific theory so far??
It i not possible to prove the Big Bang (or any theory of creation). But we can show that the Bang conforms to the laws of physics after the “inflationary epoch” which lasted a very tiny fraction of a second after the bang.

The only other idea that was ever taken seriously is called steady-state, but no physicist of note believes it today (it fell out of favor in the 1960’s).

Some people talk about a multiverse, but that has no relevance regarding the Bang. It just adds noise to the discussion.
 
Two sermons:

Debunks the pseudo-science with science, and debunks it based on the Faith.
Just in case someone doesn’t know, Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, was a Belgian Jesuit priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the French section of the Catholic University of Leuven.He was the first known academic to propose the theory of the expansion of the universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.He e also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe.
 
I am a Catholic and I believe that God created the world.
The Big Bang Theory developed by Fr. Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître (a Belgian Jesuit priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the French section of the Catholic University of Leuven) comports perfectly with Catholic Theology.on the Divine Creation of the universe.
 
I am a Catholic and I believe that God created the world.
God did create the Earth but it could have been by evolution and the Big Bang Theory. When Genesis says, “On the first day God created …”, it does not mean 24 hrs. It could have been one million years.
 
The problem comes with some people who would have you believe that the universe is only 5000 years old because they take the Bible absolutely literally. Including the Old Testament, which was handed down verbally and in a form that was easiest to remember - poetic, full of imagery, etc. It’s not a literal account in the form of a diary or a history paper: it’s illustrative, in some ways allegorical.
This is not a problem. The literalistic translation of the bible creation is not even an issue. It matters not a wit HOW the universe was created or how old it is, but only why and by who?

The Catholic church allows both views of creation among the faithful and does not propose one above the other as doctrine of the Church. It simply teaches the lessons of Creation History, through the creation stories and leaves the how up to others. As Catholics we need not debate the issue of creationism vs evolution or intelligent design. Simply that however it came to be, God made it happen and for His reasons it came to be as he desired.

(I voted for big bang, but that’s just me.)
 
From a Catholic Answers tract:

"The Time Question

“Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.”

Peace,
Ed
 
God did create the Earth but it could have been by evolution and the Big Bang Theory. When Genesis says, “On the first day God created …”, it does not mean 24 hrs. It could have been one million years.
Why would God do that?

It may take me a month to put up a shelf but God could put the shelf up quicker than I can blink, why would He take a month also?
 
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