Does the Big Bang prove the existence of God?

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As we know, the BB theory was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Father Lemaitre. It is the cosmological model of the universe which is most consistent with the data available today and is the most popular model for the beginning of the universe.
The question being proposed is whether or not the BB can be understood as a purely natural event, say like an earthquake, volcano or tsunami, which does not require direct divine intervention or whether it definitely and unequivocally proves the existence of a Creator.
 
Tomdstone said:
As we know, the BB theory was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Father Lemaitre. It is the cosmological model of the universe which is most consistent with the data available today and is the most popular model for the beginning of the universe.
The question being proposed is whether or not the BB can be understood as a purely natural event, say like an earthquake, volcano or tsunami, which does not require direct divine intervention or whether it definitely and unequivocally proves the existence of a Creator.
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Fr. Lamaitre, author of the theory, warned Pius XII not to use this as proof for the absolute beginning of the universe. The reason, which is still valid, is that we cannot " see " prior to the first few moments of this event. Secondly, there are qualified scientists who doubt a " Big Bang. " They propose a more general and wide spread unfolding of reality.

I’m afraid our best " proofs " for the existence of God are the usual ones.
BTW have you seen the movie The Star of Bethlehem. I have been trying to get our skeptical friends to watch it since it offers valid scientific proof of the validity of Divine Revelation and the birth and death of Christ. youtube.com/watch?v=zPHKg0M3mEo

Linus2nd
 
I don’t think that the Big Bang would necessarily prove the existence of the Creator. The only definitive conclusion one could make would probably be that the cause of the universe, whatever it is, is not constrained by space or time as both began to exist with the beginning of the universe. That gets you closer to God but I don’t think that any positive proof of God’s existence is possible given the infinite nature of God; you could only say that such-and-such a thing is consistent with God’s nature.

That said, I think it is also interesting to note that even if the universe follows a cyclical model (which is uncertain currently) it is not a proof that the universe exists necessarily for the simple fact that the universe is not absolutely simple and therefore cannot exist necessarily because it’s existence is contingent on the parts composing the universe existing.
 
I always thought so. Seems to make so much sense to me.
 
It tends to support the God hypothesis. It doesn’t prove anything.
 
What proves the existence of God, whether the universe started from a single point like a big bang or from many points like two wrinkled sheets falling together and touching at various points as some are now proposing, is that it took an almost infinite amount of energy to create it.

That enormous amount of energy had to come from someone, somewhere, and that someone of course is God. Atheists would have you believe it just happened on its own. IF that’s the case then why has it not happened again after more than 30 billion years ???
 
Simple answer no

More complex

The Big Bang is explaining how the universe as we know it was once at a point if singularity where everything was in one infinitely small space than something happened which caused that to begin to expand and over the past 13.8 billion years it has been expanding. What does this have to say about God? Nothing why because first and simply God isn’t observable science can’t say anything about him so why would a scientific theory prove something science can’t prove or disprove its impossible. Also we know that God must be a first cause ok yeah but the Big Bang doesn’t prove a beginning if time or that the universe is finite. Its a big moment maybe at the beginning of time but we can’t know.

The simple fact is we can’t use the Big Bang to prove god exists because it can’t
 
wcknight said:
That enormous amount of energy had to come from someone, somewhere…
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Makes sense.
…and that someone of course is God.
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Doesn’t. There are other possibilities. God is probably the simplest explanation, though, and simplicity is an explanatory desideratum.
 
It seems to me that first of all while the BB theory is a nice theory to start with in that it might have happen that way, I also think that we do not know for sure if the BB did happen in the way the theory states. that being said, 1) we do not know if it was a big bang 2) we do not what banged,3) how it banged,4) what was before the bang. the big bang theory only talks about what happens after it banged. Now the universe is so vast that the mind cannot even absorb the immensity of it. I have heard some scientists say that the universe is somewhere between 12 to 15 billion years old and that no one has seen a time when there was no galaxies. Yet, I do not see how the universe could be created without a Supreme Being. Hawkins states in his book that the universe could have created itself out of nothing and that the universe did not need God to have created it by the law of physic’s. I think that God created the universe out of nothing and will it into being. that said, How God created the universe whether as the big bang theory suggests or some other way or manor we will never know. personally I think if the big bang theory is true it does prove that tat God had His hand in it.
 
spina1953 said:
Hawkins states in his book that the universe could have created itself out of nothing and that the universe did not need God to have created it by the law of physic’s. I think that God created the universe out of nothing and will it into being.
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There seem to be a lot of physicists nowadays that proclaim that the universe can be created out of nothing but then proceed to discuss how quantum fluctuations or the laws of physics or what-have-you can explain how the universe came from nothing. Only they are not arguing that it came from nothing but rather that it came from quantum fluctuations and the laws of physics which are hardly nothing.

That’s why this debate tends to devolve into people proclaiming that the universe is a necessary entity, which essentially is just renaming “God” as “the Universe.” This is really a debate between theism and pantheism/deism, not atheism and theism.
 
balto said:
There seem to be a lot of physicists nowadays that proclaim that the universe can be created out of nothing but then proceed to discuss how quantum fluctuations or the laws of physics or what-have-you can explain how the universe came from nothing. Only they are not arguing that it came from nothing but rather that it came from quantum fluctuations and the laws of physics which are hardly nothing.

That’s why this debate tends to devolve into people proclaiming that the universe is a necessary entity, which essentially is just renaming “God” as “the Universe.” This is really a debate between theism and pantheism/deism, not atheism and theism.
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While I knew some of this, I did not know about the quantum fluctuations you speak of in a manor that it is more a debate between theism and pantheism/deism. That is something new to me on that score. I understand that some scientists/phyiscists think that there are multitude universes which the string theory and quantum physics allude to, but in the end irt still seems to even if that were true, God is still the author of the universe in that he created it. I think or tend to think that some scientists want to try and find out just how God created and not the why he created the universe.
 
Why would the Big Bang prove the existence of God? Is it just that it seemingly provides a “starting point” for the universe?

But God could as easily create a universe with no temporal beginning as he could create a universe with a temporal beginning. It’s not a problem for Him. He creates from outside of time, not from within it.
 
spina1953 said:
While I knew some of this, I did not know about the quantum fluctuations you speak of in a manor that it is more a debate between theism and pantheism/deism. That is something new to me on that score. I understand that some scientists/phyiscists think that there are multitude universes which the string theory and quantum physics allude to, but in the end irt still seems to even if that were true, God is still the author of the universe in that he created it. I think or tend to think that some scientists want to try and find out just how God created and not the why he created the universe.
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Well the multiverse hypothesis really doesn’t escape the problem because then the problem has just been kicked up one more level (i.e. the Multiverse is what exists unconditionally, not the universe). There’s a lot of emotional connotations with God that identifies Him as having the attributes of the Judeo-Christian God, which is why many reject God because they reject Christianity, when most fundamentally God is defined as He who is, i.e. He doesn’t need a reason to exist, He just does exist. Saying the the Universe or Multiverse or Laws of Physics just exist unconditionally is just renaming God. It doesn’t really matter all that much if we call it “God” or the “Multiverse” if the terms refers to the same reality. Hence the debate is usually really over what God is like (e.g. personal vs. impersonal, etc.), not whether He exists.
 
The Big Bang itself can’t prove the existence of God. There might always be some undetectable cause of whatever “earliest”/most fundamental event we can observe.

I think one kind of has to take the multiverse route, or something similar, if not a theistic explanation. Bertrand Russell said something to the effect that “the universe is just there, and that’s it,” which I think is a proposal that runs into certain problems, since a brute fact would be non-explanatory by its nature (and so the brute fact proposal does not have an advantage over a theistic proposal, which is explanatory). There is also the issue that a brute fact essentially has no probability. There could be no “conditions” for it. Which would render all cosmology meaningless.
 
I have to agree with the posts so far, yet in the end the universe cannot prove that God exists Just as nature itself cannot prove God exists. However, reason itself states that some Supreme being greater than ourselves and nature created . I tend to think that the large majority of scientists do not pose the question of if God created the universe or not. That seems to be a question they are not prepared to answer. This does not mean that all scientists think that way only that some do. E-Mc2 meaning that the universe is made of matter and energy and that energy turns into matter and that matter can turn into energy, something like the universe in and of itself cannot create itself out of nothing since if it does not exist and did not exist, it cannot cause or bring itself into existence by its own self, since it did not exist in the first place. It is by faith that we believe that God revealed Himself to man. How God did that exactly no one really knows how. Its more of do we choose to believe God exists or not, and maybe why we believe or not that would be the better question.
 
The argument for the Big Bang is a falsifiable claim. Yet it is the most successful of claims to explain the origin of the universe. For those, however, who believe that the universe is eternal, they do not have a scientific fact to back up that assumption. The eternal universe advocates are therefore trading science for an unfalsifiable assumption they so often claim to despise.
 
I think it helps support the way God created the universe not exactly God himself. Such as how the Big Bang has a beginning, which can relate to “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” -Genesis 1:1.
 
Ok so the BB doesn’t “prove” there’s a God…but if there’s no God, who exactly was Jesus and how does he tie in?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The argument for the Big Bang is a falsifiable claim. Yet it is the most successful of claims to explain the origin of the universe. For those, however, who believe that the universe is eternal, they do not have a scientific fact to back up that assumption. The eternal universe advocates are therefore trading science for an unfalsifiable assumption they so often claim to despise.
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How can you argue using science only that the cosmos is finite. ( I say cosmos because we may have more than a universe)
 
AntB said:
Ok so the BB doesn’t “prove” there’s a God…but if there’s no God, who exactly was Jesus and how does he tie in?
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The scientific basis of the " Big Bang " has been questioned by a number of qualified scientists. But assuming that it is correct, we are not able to detect what might have happened right after or just before the event. That is why it is still regarded as a theory. But we can still present " reasons for belief " that have a high degree of certitude that God exists, that He is an Intelligent, Personal and Perfect Being, as the Church has always taught De Fide. The Church has always taught that we can come to this knowledge simply by observing the universe, the beauty of the universe, its universal order, its directedness, from human conscience, etc. This topic is covered in the part of the Catechism dealing with creation.

But the Church teaches that because some are unable, for various reasons, to understand these things through reason, that God has seen fit to reveal himself through Divine Revelation. Thus all can know with certitude that he exists and is who the Church says he is.

Linus2nd
 
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