• Question: do you believe in the big bang theory even though there is no concrete evidence and what is your response to someone that says 'but god made the universe and dont you believe in the teleological arguement

    Asked by saneaah118 to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 11 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by 349spaa38.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      There is quite a lot of evidence for the big bang. The fact that the universe is expanding, so must have been smaller in the past.
      The cosmic microwave background also shows evidence of the big bang, and the amount of helium/hydrogen also gives clues, as does the distribution of the galaxies.

      So all in all there is a lot of evidence pointing in the same direction. It fits the facts as we see them, whereas a supernatural origin is basically unfalsifiable – i.e. if its supernatural anything can be wished into existance, so there isn’t really any point trying to prove it.

    • Photo: Hugh Osborn

      Hugh Osborn answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      There is actually tonnes of evidence for the big bang:
      We see it’s afterglow everywhere we look in the sky (the CMB); the proportions of elements we find in the universe precisely matches what should happen after a big bang; we have measured the distance and velocity of hundreds of distant galaxies and theyre all expanding away from us; and we also see the evolution of the universe as we look further away and back in time.

      But you’re right; we don’t know enough. We’re still looking for answers, trying to push back the clock to explain everything that happened during the big bang and potentially how it happened at all. So my response would be “We may not know everything about the creation of the universe *yet*, but we’re working on it.” And the same cannot be said for a religious argument.

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Hi Saneaah. I definitely believe the Big Bang theory is the very best explanation we currently have for how the Universe began. As the guys have already covered, there’s plenty of evidence!

      We can tell that all other galaxies are moving away from us, because their light (and spectrum) has been shifted to redder colours/wavelengths, just like the way trains get lower pitched as they move past you. This leads us to believe that the Universe is expanding.

      Light from other galaxies also takes a really long time to reach us, so when we see them we’re actually seeing how things were billions of years ago. Galaxies in the past have completely different structures. We can take slices in time and see how galaxies / the structure of the Universe has evolved to the present day.

      Perhaps the most important piece of evidence is this ‘Cosmic Microwave Background’ – a sort of heat signature left over from the Big Bang. It looks a bit like this: https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRHSQ1uAuCernU1koU5B29kOt6hAKuY_GCGkn8HKoCmuDnkZB7fyg. It’s almost the same in all directions and is the oldest radiation in the Universe. Brian Cox explains it well in his documentary on iPlayer, about 53 minutes in http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time

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