Atheist's Rejection of Big Bang totally Undermines Their whole Enterprise part 1

Just ten years ago the Big Bang was regarded as the standard theory in science regarding the origin of the universe. It has not been abandoned, but to hear atheists at the popular level tell it the Big Bang theory is totally a thin of the past, disproved, discarded not even regarded highly anymore. Nothing could be further form the truth. The Big bang is still the consensus, but it has been tweaked a bit. What is different is that a small group of radical physicists are leading the beginnings of an a paradigm shift from Big Bang to eternal universe. they are not the majority perhaps never will be, but they have a huge tidal wave of popular atheists websites taunting their message. It's pretty clear the whole thing is an attempt to get away from the cosmological argument because it proved the existence of God. What is hilarious is that these guys don't even realize that fomenting a Paradigm shift the atheists are actually undermining their entire position on epistemology and science. Christians stand to lose only one God argument, atheists stand to lose their entire enterprise.

In this first section I will talk about the general trend and give a slight bit of evidence:

In part 2 present counter evidence to disprove the arguments of those assaulting the Big bang.

In part 3 I'll deal with the consequences of the paradigm shift and what happens if it proves successful.

My position if they want to move away from the big bang, let them, they can undermine their own position on scinece and knowledge by doing so. Therefore I wont put too much time into defending the Status quo, but I will put some in becuase the move is not called for. The Big bang is still the most defensible position.

Let's look at a few examples of the atheist rejection of the big bang. There are now several popular websites spreading this idea. The first site is "The Myth of the Big Bang" by Rawhn Jopspeh Ph.D. Apparently the site is a trailer for a book by the same author. He carefully points out that the original author of the Big Bang was a Catholic Priest. I happen to know that's true because I researched it years ago. But instead of realizing this means that Catholic Priests can have modern ideas and be scientific, he only concludes that the theory is biased and full of holes persuasively because it is about proving the existence of God. He basically the guy invented the theory to prove God.

Lemaître's physics, as Lemaître admitted, had a spiritual foundation. Monsignor Lemaître firmly believed that Jesus Christ was God, and that God created the universe, as dictated by Catholic Church dogma and as described in the Bible. Lemaître was in fact an honorary prelate with the rank of Bishop in the Catholic Church, a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences which is under the direction and authority of the Pope of the Catholic Church. Lemaître's "big bang" theory was in complete accordance with the teachings of the Church and was supported by the Pope and backed by the authority of the Bible:
The Universe was created. God created the Universe. A universe which is created, has a creator who becomes the creator at the moment of creation, just as a carpenter or a builder becomes a carpenter or a builder at the moment he first builds something. Thus we are told that god existed before the creation, and it was only at the moment of creation, that god became "god the creator." Hence, the "creation-event" which gave rise to the universe required a creator, an all powerful omnipotent Lord God who existed prior to and is responsible for the creation event; exactly as described in the Bible.

The bolding can't be turned off. So he assumes that if a religious person does something scientific and it doesn't disprove God then he did it out of bias and its no good. But he doesn't realize that his own biases will prompt him to oppose the theory and his opposition is not based upon scinece but upon his atheist biases.He has big ambitions for his opposition to the Big bang. He assumes that it rules out the existence of God. Why? Because in his mind if the universe is eternal then there can't be a God because there could only be a God if the universe needs a creator. Or rather if the universe is such that it obviously needs a creator. But what is clear is that he thinks his opposition to the big bang is accomplishing big things in terms of his world view by the same logic he uses himself is proof enough of the flaws in it. he says:

By contrast an eternal, infinite universe, has no creator and renders the concept of god irrelevant and useless. The infinite, eternal universe precludes god, does not require god, and is completely incompatible with the creator god worshipped by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. There is no need or justification for religion, or a belief in a creator god, if the universe is infinite and eternal. In an eternal universe god becomes a creation of man, rather than the creator of man and the universe.

Such is obviously not the case because Thomas Aquinas believed that the could be contingent upon God and also be eternal at the same time, if the relationship between God and the universe was one of simultaneous contingency. For example if an eternal flute player played eternally the music he played would be both contingent and eternal. Be that as it may the point is the guy holds it as proved that if the universe is eternal there can't be a God. His biases allow him to overlook the fact that this only applies to the fundamentalist idea of God.

Joseph attributes the success of the BB to the church's political pull:

Subsequently, the theory of the Big Bang has failed every major test. However, as the theory has the backing of the Church and has captured the imagination of the Jewish-Christian scientific and media establishment, these failures are ignored or they are covered up with a patchwork of theoretical appendages such that failure retroactively becomes success.

This is total hogwash, there are many aspects of Big bang theory that make it the only theory of origins that is backed by empirical evidence. I'll get to that in a minute but I'm not going to cover much of the scientific evidence because I don't have to. It's more damaging to atheist position they are going back on the scientific establishment.

Other atheist sites are jumping on the band wagon about hating the big bang. One such site is Atheist Nexus which has joined the chorus of shame "the author of the BB was priest therefore the Big Bang must be wrong!" In fact the title is "The Father of the BB theory is a Jesuit Priest." I can just how that started. Some atheist was doing his "religious people must always be wrong speech," an apologist points out that the author of the BB was priest, and the atheist is embarrassed so he thinks "do some research find a way to make it look like science is turning on the BB." One of them says:

""Lemaitre was a very good physicist. He had religious faith (delusions) but his physics was first rate. Newton had religious and alchemist delusions. Someone can be first rate in one area of human endeavor and out to lunch in another." We identify this tendency to automatically discount all religious bleief as "delusion" and to label it as such whenever they see it, as hate speech and as ideology. They are trying create an association in the mind of the reader, religious bleief = insanity always. If religion was destroyed they would immediately begin destroying philosophy becuase we have to make sure religion never comes back so we must destroy the basic that make religious thinking possible To destroy philosophy so religion never comes we destroy logic so philosophy never comes back. that' what you call "free thinking." Atheists are slaves.

Scientific American did a story on what it called "the new willingness to consider what might have happened before the Big Bang."

Was the big bang really the beginning of time? Or did the universe exist before then? Such a question seemed almost blasphemous only a decade ago. Most cosmologists insisted that it simply made no sense--that to contemplate a time before the big bang was like asking for directions to a place north of the North Pole. But developments in theoretical physics, especially the rise of string theory, have changed their perspective. The pre-bang universe has become the latest frontier of cosmology.

It's important that it says 10 years ago the Big Bang was solid and few scientists dared oppose it because it's not new information that's come along but a paradigm shift. Even though science media trumps up the case backing the paradigm shift, there is no actual data supporting any other alternative. The point being that scinece is far from a factual solid rock fortress of truth that once established gives the "just the facts" forever. Science is actually a relative world view that can turn on a dime. Meanwhile atheist websites are jumping all over the p shift. Atheist Nation does one where they show a little you tube film by Joseph the guy with the first website and the bad understanding of God concepts. This demonstrates the P shift clearly in Kuhian terms, because the Scientific American article tells us that we have real scientists asking questions, while the atheist sites show that it's on a popular level where non academics and non experts (not Joseph who has a Ph.D. but the people doing the websites) are like popular political shock troops waging the battle on the street. That is exactly what Kuhn says a Paradigm shift is, a political struggle. Another popular level website is "the Big Bang Myth" Moutain man graphics. Article by Keith Stein.

Rawhn Joesph in attacking Lemaitre's original idea of the Big Bang accosts it for being a trail blazer. He disparages the intimate concepts Lemaritre worked out even though he was essentially embarking alone into unknown territory. He first called the singularity a "primordial atom." Of course he "admits" he had a spiritual foundation which means he can't know science! As for Joseph's statement above that the Big bang has failed every major test, is this true?

Astronomer for NASA Sten Odenwald in one of his Q/A sessions says this:

Do you believe in Big Bang theory?

I think that the majority of the evidence we now have from a diverse range of independent investigations make it a 'sure thing' that something like a Big Bang did happen. There are technical quibbles about age discrepancies and expansion rates, but I would be very surprised if these were not ironed out in a decade or so after we got better data, and more of it, to look at. I would be excited if a real show stopper could be found that forced us to reconsider whether Big Bang theory is correct, but there are simply too many things that the Standard Model explains and successfully predicts. The observations that suggest an age problem between the universe and the oldest stars are technically very difficult, and for the expansion, you need many more than just 5 or 10 galaxies upon which to base an age estimate. We will have to wait and see how the Hubble Space Telescope measurements of galaxy distances will continue to advance as the distances to many more galaxies are measured.

he also says:


In your list of 10 things supporting Big Bang theory, why do they not also support other ideas too?

There have been over the years several potential rivals to Big Bang cosmology, but with the exception of Steady State theory, none have attracted more than a handful of interested supporters. The reason is that they failed to predict, or offer explanations for, some basic observations that are widely agreed upon to be key tests of any cosmological theory, even by the rivals to Big Bang theory!

he names a whole bunch of theories.
DeSitter cosmology 1917
Einstein static cosmology of 1917
Lemaitre 1924
Plasma Cosmology of 1970.
Many others.

Many atheists think the Big Bang is disproved by inflationary theory, it is not. The inflation assumes the Big Bang. Odenwald talks about it as part of the "tweaking" of theory.

Here's his list of things the other theories don't stack up to but the Big Bang does:

The basic observations that are agreed to me cosmological tests for any theory are:
1.... The universe is expanding.
This is a large-scale observation which spans the entire observable universe so it must be 'cosmological'
2.... There exists a cosmic background radiation field detectable at microwave frequencies.
Why doesn't it occur at other frequencies and only seen in the microwave region, covering every direction of the sky?
3.... The cosmic microwave background field is measurably isotropic to better than a few parts in 100,000 after compensation is made for the relativistic Doppler effect caused by Earth/Sun/Milky Way motion.
This is a large-scale property of this phenomenon that has nothning to do with the Milky Way or other galaxies so it must be a cosmological feature.
4.... The cosmic microwave background radiation field is precisely that of a black body.
Many other kinds of radiation are known, but NONE have exactly a black body spectrum. Only the cosmic background radiation is a perfect black body to the limits of our ability to measure its spectrum.
5.... The cosmic microwave background radiation field has a temperature of 2.7 K.
Why 2.7 K? Why not 5.019723 K.
6.... There does exist a universal abundance ratio of helium to hydrogen consistent with the current expansion rate and cosmic background temperature.
Whether we look at the compsition of stars, planets or even gas clouds in distant galaxies, we always seem to come upon a 'universal' constant ratio of helium to hydrogen and deuterium to hydrogen. There must be an explanation for this that has nothing to do with just our solar system or Milky Way.
7.... The cosmological abundance of deuterium relative to hydrogen and helium is consistent with the levels expected given the current expansion rate and density.
If the universe expanded faster, then there would be less time for heavier elements such as helium and deuterium to form.
8.... There are only three families of neutrinos.
Although we have not confirmed this to be true in the vicinity of distant galaxies, we do see the same kinds of elements and physics occurring out there, especially supernovae whose physics depend very sensitively upon the numbers of distinct types of neutrinos, and the constancy of the underlying 'weak interaction' physics.
9.... The night sky is not as bright as the surface of the Sun.
A simple but profound observation which can only be resolved by the correct distribution of stars in the universe, their ages, and the expansion of the universe.
10... The cosmic background radiation field is slightly lumpy at a level of one part in 100,000 to 1,000,000.
Why is this? And why by this amount?
11... There are no objects that have ages indisputably greater than the expansion age of the universe.
Our universe nearby does not seem to have very old stars older than 20 billion years even though their properties should be easily recognizable and a simple extension of the physics and evolution of the oldest stars we do see.
12... There are about 10,000,000,000 photons in the cosmic background radiation field for every proton and neutron of matter.
This is an important 'thermodynamic' number which tells us how the universe has evolved up to the present time. Why is its entropy so huge?
13... The degree of galaxy clustering observed is consistent with an expanding universe with a finite age less than 20 billion years.
A direct observation which again tells us that gravity has not had a long time to act to build up large complex structures in today's universe.
14... There are no elements heavier than lithium which have a universal abundance ratio.
What process created these heavier elements?
15... The universe was once opaque to its own radiation.
This must follow from the black body shape of the cosmic background radiation.
16... The universe is now dominated exclusively by matter and not a mixture of matter and anti-matter.
Only a few contenders to Big Bang cosmology make any attempt at explaining this direct observation.
So there you have it. This is not a game of billiards where the cue ball ( data) is carefully lined up so that Big Bang theory comes out looking inevitable. Any of these other theories have been repeatedly invited to take their best shot too, and the results are always the same. The proponents have to intervene to even get their theories to pony up a simple prediction for any of these cosmological data.

Joseph speaks as though there is no evidential support but there is actually a lot.

all about science.org: Big bang theory

What are the major evidences which support the Big Bang theory?

• First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
• Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
• Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.
• Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.