did it really happen, and do we have proof? is god nothing more than the big bang itself?

several of you have discussed the idea that believeing in god does not discount your understanding of science and evolution, but how does it tie in with the possibility of the big bang?

i find it a bit hard to imagine that the universe started from nothing at all - why should there have been a beginning?

Good point Jo. If the universe is as vast as we believe who's to say it hasn't always been there. The beginning as people put it, could be no more than when 'man' first discovered it.

i don't think we'll ever know. i am sceptical though. and i'm not alone by the looks of things; [quote] http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/re1/chapter7.asp the big bang theory has many scientific problems... and quite a few secular astronomers reject it. Dr James Trefil, professor of physics at George Mason University, Virginia, accepts the big bang model, but he admits that there are fundamental problems: There shouldn’t be galaxies out there at all, and even if there are galaxies, they shouldn’t be grouped together the way they are. The formation of stars after the alleged big bang is also a huge problem. The creationist astronomer, Dr Danny Faulkner, pointed out: Stars supposedly condensed out of vast clouds of gas, and it has long been recognized that the clouds don’t spontaneously collapse and form stars, they need to be pushed somehow to be started. There have been a number of suggestions to get the process started, and almost all of them require having stars to start with [e.g. a shockwave from an exploding star causing compression of a nearby gas cloud]. This is the old chicken and egg problem; it can’t account for the origin of stars in the first place.4 [/quote]

here's a another take on it that would be more relevant to this section

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/bang.html

I'm surprised that this hasn't come up sooner!

It's a mystery to me.

And, of course, the creationists say that this is where science breaks down. In the beginning there must have been just God - pretty much as it says in the Bible.

But then, surely you have to wonder where God comes from.

And if atheists are right - what then?

Humans do not seem to be able to truly comprehend infinity or eternity.

it's something that is completely beyond our brainpower to imagine - but i find it harder to believe that there might have just been nothing at all. i also find the idea that the universe is infinite far more exciting than the existance of god and/or the event of a beginning.

Yes: infinity, eternity and nothingness. We just can't get our heads around them, yet without one or more of them, how do we explain life and the universe - unless you turn to the idea of God?

In which case where did God come from? What actually is this 'God' whom Christians refer to with such ease but without any explanations, yet who must be more difficult to comprehend than 'nothing', 'eternity' or 'infinity'?

it could well be that 'god' is simply one of two things;

1. the void that existed before the universe began.

2. the eternity that has always been and always will be.

Scientists have calculated the universe is expanding. Working backwards it seems to have started from a single point, what they call bigb bang.

I can't see any religious conflict here. If you believe in god, then god created the universe by saying let there be light, there was an almighty bang and the universe started.

If you don't believe then the answer is big bang started the universe but we don't know what was there before or where it came from.

Yes, Jo, I think that could be a possible answer - whether it is or not, I don't know. I wonder if it's even possible to know. Something else I didn't know: [b]The 'Big Bang Theory' was originated by a Roman Catholic priest. [/b] See: 'The Belgian astronomer Abbé Georges Édouard Lemaître (1894-1966) originated what came to be called the "big bang" theory of cosmogony. Georges Lemaître was born in Charleroi on July 17, 1894. Already at age nine he had decided to become both a scientist and a priest. He never saw any essential conflict between science and religion; later in life he is reported to have asked: " [i]Do you know where the heart of the misunderstanding lies? It really is a joke on the scientists. They are a literal-minded lot. Hundreds of professional and amateur scientists still actually believe that the Bible pretends to teach science. This is a good deal like assuming that there must be authentic religious dogma in the binomial theorem[/i] ".' http://www.bookrags.com/biography-georges-edouard-lemaitre-abbe/ And: 'Georges LeMaitre (1894-1966) showed that religion and science -- or at least physics -- did not have to be incompatible. LeMaitre, born in Belgium, was a monsignor in the Catholic church. 'He was fascinated by physics and studied Einstein's laws of gravitation, published in 1915. He deduced that if Einstein's theory were true (and there had been good evidence for it since 1919), it meant the universe must be expanding. In 1927, the year he got his PhD from MIT, LeMaitre proposed this theory, in which he stated that the expanding universe was the same in all directions -- the same laws applied, and its composition was the same -- but it was not static.' http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dp27bi.html Also this page: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/G/Ge/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre.htm