Why?
I don’t understand this line of reasoning. I’m as well-versed as any layman in the Big Bang, and fully accept the science behind physics, cosmology, and any other relevant branch of science dealing with this issue.
But to simply say that God must exist because the universe exists just doesn’t make any sense to me. I accept that it’s an argument on faith (no proof required). Just don’t try to make it scientific, because it isn’t.
Yeah, that whole line of thought is just — odd, right?
For it to work, I guess we have to grant that at least one other entity wasn’t created by something else: it always existed, or it came into being without something else creating it; or we just push things back another step, saying it was created by something that always existed or just came into being, or whatever.
But if we’re willing to grant that — which is, after all, the entire point — then all we’ve done is grant that something can have always existed, or can suddenly come into being without some other creator. And if we’re willing to grant that something can have that property, then (a) we should ask whether six other things or sixteen other things or sixty other things can likewise have that property; and (b) we should, of course, ask whether the universe itself can likewise have that property.
Because if the starting point is a cheerful “well, something can exist without having some other creator”, then when we’re asked whether the universe can exist without having some other creator we should presumably reply in exactly that fashion.
Well, the truth is that we can see so little of the Universe that we are unaware of the coming of the Great White Hanky.
The Great Green Arkleseizure is a deity worshiped by the Jatravartids of planet Viltvodle VI. He is believed to have sneezed the entire universe out of his nose, and to be poised to wipe it up at some point in the future during the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, at which point he will put it either into a trashcan of nothingness or back into his nose, depending on his mood. This naturally terrifies the believers.
Exactly. Just as I have a layman’s scientific background and education, I’ve dealt with religious people all my life. I recall an argument I had (2nd or 3rd grade or so–I’d found a squirrel’s skull, and took it to school–that started an argument about evolution, and one classmate gave the old “maybe your ancestors came from monkeys, but mine didn’t…”), then in high school, a friend’s father was a street evangelist, and my friend would start conversations with “if you died right now, would you go to heaven or hell?” and “Are you saved?”
Not that these weren’t nice people, and I got along with them in other ways, but I just never understood the mindset.
Just like I don’t understand the mindset of the OP. If I were to offer advice, it’d be to not claim that what you’re saying has any basis in science. Sure, some parts of the bible have been proven historically true, but it doesn’t follow that all of it is.
I view it as a failure of your conviction in your faith. It’s not enough for you to just believe without the need for justification, witnessing or conversion. No, you have to come up with ridiculous theories and manufactured evidence based on methods you don’t understand and which are the antithesis to whatever claims you’re trying to make in support of your belief system.
Life is proof of God.
Archaeology is proof of God.
History is proof of God.
Science is proof of God.
Universe is proof of God.
No they aren’t. There is not a shred of evidence to be found for the proof of god in any of these things.
As for the bible, it’s no more proof of God than Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing is proof of Sherlock Holmes: Good stories about a fictional character.
No Greek philosophers dabbling in what was later called science could be anywhere near this accurate like the Holy Bible. To say nothing of getting these amazingly correct scientific statements to be accepted by the ancient Kingdom of Israel. A quintuple miracle!
What are you talking about? 
As already mentioned, light did precede water; and Genesis 1 gets several other things wrong as well.
Oh, Really?
OTOH the ones following the Bible ignored Democritus for 2000 years because they thought that Aristotle was the one that was more in tune with Christianity. Unfortunately he and the church were wrong about heliocentrism, atoms and other items.
I still like several of Aristotle’s ideas though.
Assistant (To The) Minister from a Mainstream Protestant Church here, laughing at you.
The Bible was never written as a science textbook. It was written by people with a much cruder and simplistic view of the world than we have, so of course the “science” in it reflects that.
For most of us, that’s not a problem, because we can say “Well, that wasn’t its purpose”. But for you, that’s bad news, because you’re invested in it being “immensely accurate”… SERIOUSLY? I can’t even type that with a straight face.
Unless you’re not really serious, and you’re just, what’s the theological term? Ah, yes, taking the piss.
(Bolding mine)
Wait, are we accepting “just so stories”? If so, I could go on forever! Possible explanations for the material creation of the universe:
But if we want an actual explanation, then your phrasing is wrong. We don’t need to provide “another” explanation, because you never offered us an explanation. All you did was offer “God did it” and leave it at that. That’s really not an explanation! That’s a story.
Lawrence Krauss disagrees.
Sorry. You have not explained squat. You have asserted a number of things without providing any evidence beyond you say-so.
I seriously doubt this statement. However, as long as you make an attempt to lay out your odd beliefs in complete forms, you may continue.
[ /Moderating ]
everything is older than the sun, including the stuff the sun is made out of.
Some matter might have changed shape/composition a bit due to radioactive decay, the odd supernova, and similar inconsequential things, but all matter and energy was formed during and directly after the Big Bang, roughly some 13.8 billion years ago.
ned12, trust me, you don’t have to build your faith in God or reverence for the Bible on bad science and bad biblical scholarship. You can be a perfectly faithful Christian and reject young earth creationism, and embrace science as part of God’s method of revealing the universe to us. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if you acknowledge the Big Bang, you have to give up on God.
You’re a young earth creationist, aren’t you? You’ve said several things that indicate you are.
Science quite emphatically doesn’t agree with you about how -or when- earth was created.
How do you expect anybody to be impressed by your claims that the bible ‘miraculously’ sold its mythology to Israel? We all think that mythology is wrong. Spreading that amazingly false mythology was a bad thing.
They weren’t dabbling. The Greek philosophers were giving life, the universe, and everything deep thought, forming, testing, and sometimes rejecting hypotheses. They weren’t blindly accepting and repeating myths.
YOU are dabbling.
Rock of Ages?
Christian geology music… I’ll give it a listen.
It’s Rock of Ages, not Ages of Rock.
I inherited that joke.
And God could not come into being without a universe to reign over.
Don’t use this concession to try to trick me. As the old lady said to Bertrand Russell “You’re very clever, young man, very clever. But it’s god/universe pairings all the way down!”
Russell was a late-comer to the argument, (as was Sagan): Turtles all the way down.