Hmm if the big bang theory was proven correct... on one side I find this to be an almost impossible thing to happen, the big bang was far too complex of an event for us to be able to accurately model it any time soon. I just don't feel we have the mathematics to come up with a definitive answer.
Something that must be understood about any theory is that, they are for the most part, a post-hoc rationalization. This means that basically what happened, is a bunch of people sat around and used what data they had (mostly mathematical with a good amount of cosmological observations) and attempted to come up with a story that best fit that data. A lot of times this can actually come up with very strong explanations for events, though they suffer from the problem of being only as strong as the data that is used when you come up with the concept.
I feel it would be rather arrogant of us to assume that most of the current theories we have are all correct. Don't get me wrong, they are all
good theories, splendid actually. For the data we have they make a lot of sense. The problem as I see it, is there is no doubt countless basic properties of the universe we have close to zero understanding of. Gravity is a big one. Gravity is responsible for most of events that took place during the big bang, so how could we in good faith believe a theory to be true that we only have and extremely basic idea of how the basic forces involved operate.
We have some empirical data on how they operate, but in reality we don't really have much understanding of what is going on. This isn't our fault really as we suffer from a limited perspective on things. Mostly because most of our measurements are only local measurements, and we have very little idea if the laws of physics are different in different parts of the universe.
So I feel that in time, we will come to view most of our current theories the same way we view the idea that the earth is flat. It made a lot of sense at the time for the data people had available, but we both are missing key concepts that we just couldn't understand at the time.
I don't understand why people think that if you are religious you cannot believe in science or vise-versa. I recently heard a very interesting talk by a pretty prominent cosmologist, it was a pretty long talk and had many really interesting ideas, but the general concept of what he discussed went along this lines of this.
Where I live on some clear days I can see Denali (Mt. McKinley) in the distance, often shrouded by the sun.
And generally two things go through my mind, the first are observations, "the particulate concentrations in the air must be pretty low today for me to see that mountain" "That mountain is a granitic pluton", and other things like this.
The other thing that comes to mind is I see the sun glinting off the snowy slopes, and green of the trees silhouetting it and think, "
Holy cow, that is a beautiful sight".
So how do we scientifically define something as beautiful?
We could say well, it has 4.56 x 10^36 atoms in the mountain's makeup, is that what makes it beautiful? For some perhaps, but most people probably not.
So that's the thing, the scientific method is absolutely wonderful for empirical observations. With it we could define nearly every property of that mountain, its size, volume, elemental concentrations, rock types, rock formations, how it was formed, how much energy was required for its formation.
Nearly everything, but one.
How beautiful is Denali?
The reason for this, is what is beautiful isn't a scientific concept. And so by attempting to define it scientifically you miss the point about a lot of things about it. Beauty is a subjective term, what is beautiful varies from person to person. Some people find a well organized spreadsheet the most beautiful thing in the world, some find Kazimir Malevich's "
Black Square" to be the most beautiful thing in the world. Many of the things that one person finds beautiful, other people will not find nearly as beautiful.
So that's just it, it takes a person to come along and define something as beautiful. And no amount of empirical evidence will determine otherwise.
So that now brings us to the bible. You can certainly apply the scientific method to the bible, you can investigate all the historical accounts in the bible, and find that most of the historical accounts in the bible are accurate, with other evidence supporting the accounts of what takes place. In-fact a good portion of our historical data in our history books comes from accounts in the bible. Then of course the account of miracles and moral quandaries, and such is just religious habbernacky put in there by crazy goat farmers.
So that brings me to the point of all this. When you apply only the scientific method to the bible, you miss something. You miss something in the same way as when you attempt to scientifically define "Beauty". The bible was never meant to be a scientific journal.
It was meant to talk to the human side of things, it was meant to talk to the side that calls something beautiful.
