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Evolution is plain common sense. (Part 2) Galactic Evolution

Evolution is plain common sense. (Part 2) Galactic Evolution

Creationists think that they have atheists stumped, when they reference the fact; that scientists do not know how the universe was created. The reason for the gloating and why galactic evolution is rejected, is because most learnt in Sunday school that; Jesus Christ is the creator (uncaused cause) of the universe as referenced in John 1:3 - Jesus Christ created everything in the universe:  “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” 

The Christian Bible gives an account in Genesis of the creation of the universe and the origin of matter by God; it then describes that, mankind is under an obligation, to worship God and to serve him in humility and submission for all the days of your lives because he is the creator and they are HIS creation. 

Of course most sacred books of ancient and current religions point to a creator God and suggest the very same thing. So must Allah, or Yahweh or trinity God, or Ra, or Odin or Zeus etc be worshipped?  There are so many Gods to worship – which one is the correct version of God! Well that depends on what religion you submit to. 

Genesis is one of the funniest books ever written and reads like an episode of “The Flintstones.” For instance the order of creation in Genesis 1 is farcical from a modern astronomical viewpoint. The Bible unashamedly declares as if factual that sun, moon, and stars were “made and set” in heaven “to give light upon the earth – after the earth had been created?” 

Vs 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Vs 3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 

Our earth is a child of the sun. The offspring could not have existed before the parent. We know this now, but no one knew that in Bible days, hence the Bible is obsolete.

The Christian gospel was also written in ignorant times and in order to give Jesus the authority of a God, the writers of John merged the abstract impersonal philosopher type creator God with the Christian personal trinity God, Jesus Christ. 

If the sun, moon, and stars were created “to light the earth,” then why create over a hundred billion galaxies whose light is invisible to the naked eye? Out of billions of galaxies only two relatively close ones, can be seen with the unaided eye, and they appear no brighter than two dim stars in our sky. 

In other words, over a hundred billion galaxies produce light that can only be seen with our most powerful telescopes, and it took telescopes recently mounted in space to detect 99/100ths of those galaxies. And our galaxy is composed of about a billion stars, some of which are far larger than our sun. Therefore, the creation story in Genesis would be even more believable if it told us how much trouble God went through to “NOT light the earth” with the rest of creation. 

In light of modern science “God created it”, is no longer a satisfactory explanation of how the universe came to be. No one can rely any longer on their religious faith in this matter as the Genesis account is beyond ridiculous. It is a mythologised myth, nothing more. 

In any case in reality it is irrelevant as to which religions God created the universe because science has discovered that the universe did not need to be created as it has all ways existed and with the Higgs Boson discovery we now know that space recycles periodically - which would explain where the matter/energy originated. 

Stephen Hawking wrote in "A Brief History of Time" that time and space started at the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the universe and it explains how the universe has changed. 

The science is based on the fact that we know the Big Bang happened from multiple lines of evidence (Doppler shift, cosmic microwave background radiation, etc.), and we know when it happened. We know the events with fairly good accuracy back to sub-microseconds after it happened. 

The Higgs Boson discovery confirms the standard model of the Big Bang of how the universe came to be like it is over 13.75 Billion years. The Higgs Boson has always existed and is eternal so you cannot say there must have been a God to create it. No it is and was always there. When it comes to the explanation of the whole universe we are faced with basically two options; 1) something, anything has always existed, or 2) something, anything popped into existence out of nothing. 

Either choice seems extremely unlikely and possibly even absurd. There is little in our experience that can help us choose. But one of them is correct and the other is false. We either start with the brute fact that something has always existed or the brute fact that something popped into existence out of nothing. 

So the simpler our brute fact is then the more probable it is, as per Ockham's razor. All that scientists have to assume is equilibrium of positive and negative energy and the laws of physics. This is as close to nothing as science can get. But grant it and physicist Victor Stenger argues; 

 “the probability for there being something rather than nothing can actually be calculated; it is over 60 per cent.” As such, “only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. 

The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.” 

So who placed the original matter and energy from which our Universe allegedly evolved/expanded from?  It was always there. 

You see making a simple statement "something cannot come out of nothing" is, not very convincing. From quantum field theory, we know that something does indeed come from nothing: to wit, "vacuum fluctuations". In the simplest case, an electron, a positron and a photon can appear effectively out of nowhere, exist for a brief time and then annihilate, leaving no net creation of mass or energy. 

Experimental support for this sort of effect has been found from a number of different experiments. See, for instance, the Wikipedia page for the Casimir effect. 

 Lawrence Krauss, World-Renowned Physicist states “if you look at the universe and study the universe, what you find is that there is no evidence that we need anything other than the laws of physics and the other laws of science to explain everything we see. There's absolutely no evidence that we need any supernatural hand of god. 

According to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a singularity. All the mass of the universe was once compacted into a space one trillionth the diameter of a proton. Are you disputing the Law of General Relativity? 

Stephen Hawking reiterates in "The Grand Design" that there is no big gap in the scientific account of the big bang. The laws of physics can explain, he says, how a universe of space, time and matter could emerge spontaneously, without the need for God. 

All cosmologists and astrophysicists agree: we don't need a “god-of-the-gaps” to make the big bang go ‘bang” as it were, we know that the universe we are living in began to instantaneously inflate and galactic evolution brought us to where the universe is today. It has happened as part of a natural process and the fundamental forces of the universe have brought us to where we are today. 

Gravity and other forces take a collection of randomly sorted atoms and form star and planets; bring water and atmosphere to the surface and denser materials to the core. Chemistry takes random interactions of molecules and produces a higher-order structure. 

Of course Christians often feel tricked by this scientific logic. They envisage a miracle - working God dwelling within the stream of time for all eternity and then, for some inscrutable reason, supernaturally creating a universe, perhaps in a spectacular explosion at a specific moment in history. God made everything to suit mankind and fine-tuned the universe to suit us. 

In other words the universe exists because we exist. But that does not make any sense in the real world because they have it back to front. We are fine tuned to live in this universe; we developed according to pre-existing conditions. If the universe was structured differently we would have followed suite. So we are literally products of our environment and circumstances just like all other creatures on our planet. Our galaxy and solar system came first before life began and in the habitable zone capable of supporting life, life fine-tuned itself to an existing environment. If our universe wasn't suitable to support life we wouldn't be here.

Why if God created the vast universe and put us, the pinnacle of creation, into it is most of the universe hostile to life? If you scaled the entire universe down to the equivalent size of a house, then the tiny zone that supports life in our solar system is as small as a single proton. 

That means our solar system is invisible and completely insignificant to the rest of the universe. The closest star to our solar system is Proxima Centauri and you would have to travel at the speed of light for over four years to get there as it is 6,132,000,000,000 miles away. That’s our neighbour which is only 4.2 light years away. 

The region visible from Earth (the observable universe) is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light years. Our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away. There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  A 2010 study by astronomers estimated that the observable universe contains 300 sextillion (3×1023) stars. 

Why all the wasted energy in creating a universe so immense? It has no design purposes what so ever?  Is God that dim-witted? This is not what we would expect if the universe was intelligently designed for us, but is exactly what you would expect if we are merely an accidental by-product of a purposeless and chaotic universe. The fact that something is complicated and awesome does not argue for it being intelligently designed for simplicity is a hallmark of good design. 

Some Christians told me when confronted with this argument “that God did it because he can” or “he wanted to have some fun”. What “kind” of answers are those? How about my favourite one "but that's just man's perspective". So the scientific challenges to their faith are not dealt with just brushed under the carpet. 

You are reading this article via the internet on your computer or cell phone none of which would have been possible if it were not for the discoveries of science. Older people think it is a miracle, but the more enlightened know it is just little electrons running to and fro rather than magic or ESP.  So whether we admit it or not we put our trust and faith in science every day. 

Therefore it is just plain common sense and intellectual honesty; to be in favour of rather being influenced by, expert senior research scientist’s testimony and witness, accepted in any court in the land as “bona fide” legal evidence than by a pre-science superstitious Bible creation myth. 

So study for yourself (See the references below) and don't depend on theologians and their religious instruction as they don't really know, even though, they think they do. They will just tell you in the beginning God created….. and when you comment “what beginning” or “where is the evidence for instantaneous creation” or  “rather the evidence points to a slow galactic and biological evolution ” or you tell them that according to very clever physicists the universe was “always there” they tell you stop being so clever, stop asking questions and just believe. 

We need to ask Christians what has gone wrong with their brains if they cannot understand that the evidence we find today does not point to an intelligent creator but to the universe becoming what it is today by the process of galactic evolution, abiogenesis and biological evolution . 

So here's a challenge to conservative Christians: How do you know you're right? You are left with the dilemma of rationalising why a God can be an "uncaused cause" while a universe cannot, all without resorting to special pleading. Good luck. 

References :– “A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing” By Lawrence M. Krauss, - “The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates” by Howard Bloom,  - "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's,  - Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt,  - The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins, - Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne, - The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins, - Stephen Hawking "A Brief History of Time"- God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion by Victor J. Stenger, - Why is there something rather than nothing? By Victor J. Stenger,-   Origins, Abiogenesis and the Search for Life in the Universe by 40 top scientists,  - The Biological Big Bang. Panspermia and the Origins of Life, - "The Making of the Fittest" by Sean B. Carroll, -  "Relics of Eden" by Daniel Fairbanks, - “Your Inner Fish” by Neil Shubin. 

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