Robert’s Thoughts on
The Original Energy and The Big Bang
My Jesuit high school, Loyola, recently held a lecture that addressed the so-called New Atheism. I can’t say that I’ve given atheists a great deal of thought in the past. I mean I’ve wondered how they arrive at their conclusions about life and the universe, just like I’ve wondered about the people who say the earth is flat or insist that no one has ever landed on the moon, but I never really took them too seriously.
The lecture was informative, and even tackled a couple of atheist arguments, but it was intended primarily to alert us about the growing movement against people of faith. It did not attempt to refute the atheists with any arguments of science.
First, let’s look at what both groups, atheists and believers, agree on. We both agree that this universe we live in was in fact created. The so-called Big Bang theory (science says the event was actually very quiet) has been embraced by members of both parties. It is generally agreed that the universe had some kind of beginning, an inception that occurred at some point in time and space.
The debate begins when we attempt to explain how or why this inception took place. The atheists maintain that the entire event commenced without any conscience effort, that the whole thing was a haphazard event with no planning or intention behind it. The believers say the universe was not only created, they say it was designed, that life as we experience it is part of an intentional blueprint.
This is where the conversation gets interesting. The atheists emphatically reject the notion of a Creator who designed all things, who brought all beings into existence. They cannot stomach the notion of such a Being. For them the concept is absurd. Believers, however, are equally stunned by the concept of an unintentional universe. They cannot fathom how anyone could observe the complexity of the universe and conclude that no conscience effort went into its making. If someone found a complex machine on mars, perhaps an alien wrist watch, no one would dismiss the find as the haphazard result of a sandstorm. Logic would inform the observer that it was consciously constructed. Yet for some, the infinite complexity of the universe is apparently not complex enough to draw the same obvious conclusion.
In attempting to refute the believers position, atheists sometimes ask, “Who created the Creator?” At first glance, this might seem like a difficult question to answer, but let’s consider science for a moment. The law of conservation states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, if the Creator is energy, according to science, the Creator could not be created.
Well that was easy.
To be clear, the original energy from which all things emanated has intelligence. This universe is intentional and so is your place in it.
Robert RedingerAuthor, The Sylvan Hornthehorn.us The Sylvan Horn Copyright © 2011
The lecture was informative, and even tackled a couple of atheist arguments, but it was intended primarily to alert us about the growing movement against people of faith. It did not attempt to refute the atheists with any arguments of science.
First, let’s look at what both groups, atheists and believers, agree on. We both agree that this universe we live in was in fact created. The so-called Big Bang theory (science says the event was actually very quiet) has been embraced by members of both parties. It is generally agreed that the universe had some kind of beginning, an inception that occurred at some point in time and space.
The debate begins when we attempt to explain how or why this inception took place. The atheists maintain that the entire event commenced without any conscience effort, that the whole thing was a haphazard event with no planning or intention behind it. The believers say the universe was not only created, they say it was designed, that life as we experience it is part of an intentional blueprint.
This is where the conversation gets interesting. The atheists emphatically reject the notion of a Creator who designed all things, who brought all beings into existence. They cannot stomach the notion of such a Being. For them the concept is absurd. Believers, however, are equally stunned by the concept of an unintentional universe. They cannot fathom how anyone could observe the complexity of the universe and conclude that no conscience effort went into its making. If someone found a complex machine on mars, perhaps an alien wrist watch, no one would dismiss the find as the haphazard result of a sandstorm. Logic would inform the observer that it was consciously constructed. Yet for some, the infinite complexity of the universe is apparently not complex enough to draw the same obvious conclusion.
In attempting to refute the believers position, atheists sometimes ask, “Who created the Creator?” At first glance, this might seem like a difficult question to answer, but let’s consider science for a moment. The law of conservation states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, if the Creator is energy, according to science, the Creator could not be created.
Well that was easy.
To be clear, the original energy from which all things emanated has intelligence. This universe is intentional and so is your place in it.
Robert RedingerAuthor, The Sylvan Hornthehorn.us The Sylvan Horn Copyright © 2011