Why would an atheist believe in the Big Bang Theory but not believe in God?
You wouldn’t understand. You see, unlike Your situation, it isn’t that I ‘believe’ the BBT. Through literally decades of study, I’ve learned the evidence-based science that explains, and the supporting mathematical proofs that prove, what we ‘know’ about the BBT (it involves complicated ‘stuff’ like observed background radiation measurements matching complicated mathematical predictions, so you’ll just have to take my word on that, sorry).So like I said, it’s complicated, and to ‘know’ it requires a level of understanding of relevant scientific knowledge you don’t possess. Until you do, you wil never be able to ‘understand’. With understanding out, that only leaves you with ‘believing’.That means you will be forced to ‘believe’ what someone else claims to ‘understand’. Now you do have a choice about who and what you choose to believe — and while granted that could be the early Jewish goatherds folktales, early Christian shepherds folktales, later Muslim goatherds folktales, or the Indian herdsmen’s fireside stories that spawned Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc. — I would also suggest alternatively you can choose a more intelligent, educated, and scientifically informed group than goatherds from hundreds of years ago to believe, perhaps like the world’s scientific community. If you can’t take the time to learn that which is required for you to ‘understand’ so that you too can ‘know’, then at least you can pick a more reliable group to ‘believe’.
What do atheists think to be the reason for the origin of the universe and everything?
Then who created God? Super God? Even if you go down that path you are eventually left with something coming from nothing. Why not skip a step and say the universe created itself? If you recognize true nothingness as a physical impossibility (try to imagine the absence of anything: no space, no darkness, nothing) then you can get something from nothing by seeing that nothing is something in and of itself. The instability of this condition (and the uncertainty principle) gives rise to matter.Mathematically, this can be visualized with the null set. You first take zero which represents nothing, then you take the set containing zero which is equal to one. S{0}=1. Boom, something from nothing!I'm not saying God doesn't exist, but I don't think you can get there from here.
How do atheists explain the "big bang" and in particular, what came before the bang? Did the big bang just "happen" or was there a priori causation? And if the time prior to the big bang is unexplained/unobservable, does this create doubt for atheists?
What's wrong with simply saying, "We're just not sure yet"? Are we required to know? Are we so desperate for an answer that we'll depend on the folklore of Bronze & Iron Age religions for an answer to that question? Fuck! I hope not. While we do have a very logical model for how the universe came into existence from the Big Bang, and some reasonable hypotheses (that require further exploration, testing, etc.) for what might have come before, the truth is we simply aren't sure yet. The process of discovery continues unabated. Just like we weren't sure why things fell to the ground centuries ago (but, rest assured, there was gravity before it was discovered); Just like we didn't know why people got sick (but rest assured, viruses and bacteria were there even before we discovered them); just like we didn't know the composition of stars (but rest assured, they were composed of super-heated plasma before we figured it out), we simply haven't figured out all the answers yet. The good news is that there are answers, and thus far, science has provided them, religion hasn't. Name a single disease cured by prayer or describe how speciation resulted from a magical deity? Oh, right. We can't. But we CAN -- using the process of scientific exploration, study and discovery -- continue learning and figuring out how things really work.Edit-RE: "About all an atheist can claim is, "I'm not an astrophysicist. I do not know.""No. Do not presume to speak on behalf of someone else. All that an HONEST person can say is, "Well, this is the stuff of life! This is why we study and keep looking for answers! This is why we are so passionate for studying science, because the process of discovery is the path to the correct answer. Since religion has never cured a disease or told us about the workings of quantum mechanics, it's unlikely to deliver the answer to this question. So, when we don't know, we tell the truth and keep looking rather than plug ignorance from before the dark ages into the hole in our knowledge."
Do atheists believe that the Big Bang is a miracle, like that of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with fish and bread? The theory essentially creates everything out of nothing.
It’s not a miracle if you can come up with a sound, scientific rationale.Ever heard of this idea called “The Multiple Bangs Hypothesis”?Sure, it’s just a hypothesis. But hey, it makes a lot of sense. Here’s what the hypothesis says in layman’s terms:Instead of a single bang, there could very well be multiple bangs.Whatever energy the Big Bang generated, is being used up into expanding the universe. We know this from the Hubble’s Law[1] - the red shift, where galaxies and stars are basically moving away from each other. Essentially, energy is being used up to do work.At some point in time, several trillions of years into the future, this energy is going to run out and there’s going to be nothing left to expand the universe. What do you think will happen now?Well, all this while, it’s been a constant fight for supremacy between the energy generated during the Big Bang and gravitational forces, which, of course, this energy has been winning quite easily so far. However, with no energy left, gravitational forces kick in, and being attractive, this starts drawing in all cosmic bodies and the universe begins to contract.The universe now starts collapsing onto itself.This contraction goes on for a while. Galaxies start collapsing into each other, planets collide, stars explode, you name it! All this goes on until we have a superdense, ultra high temperature, and extremely unstable singularity. What now?BANG!And the cycle repeats. Sure, we have nothing to prove any of this now. We also do not know how long this has been going on for. But, isn’t that what makes research fun?If we said, “God did it”, then what’s the scope of research? Why are we still trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe if god did everything?Being an atheist, we do accept there are things we have no idea about. But instead of calling these miracles or the handiwork of a mysterious bloke with magical powers, we research and try and find answers to them.So far, we’re doing a pretty good job at it!Footnotes[1] Hubble law and the expanding universe
What is the atheists' explanation for the cause of The Big Bang?
I don’t even need to be an atheist, just understand the mathematical foundations of physical cosmology to know that the Big Bang (i.e., the initial singularity) has no cause.You see, if the Big Bang cosmology is correct, the initial singularity marks the beginning of time, but it is not a point in time within our universe. And causality is not a universal law. It applies within our physical universe (as far as we know) but it does not apply to the singularity itself, which is not part of the physical universe.Another way of looking at it is by noting that there is no smallest positive real number. No matter how small a positive number you pick, I can always divide it by two and get an even smaller one. So any actual event that is part of our physical universe, and thus has a positive time coordinate (if we label time such that the singularity corresponds to time zero), would have events preceding it. However, as I mentioned above, the Big Bang itself is not an event, and not part of our physical universe.And if all this reads like an attempt to evade the question, it really isn’t. This really is the way physical cosmology works.Of course it is entirely possible that the predictions of general relativity, insofar as the singularity is concerned, will need to be modified. Perhaps we live in a cyclic universe. Perhaps we live in the universe of eternal inflation. Whatever. In all these cases, the chain of events takes us back to an infinite past, although it is by no means certain that it would be a causal past: just because our present patch of the universe appears to be causal does not mean that, if it turns out to be part of a much larger actual universe, that the entire universe has to be causal. In which case there would be many effects without causes, not just the Big Bang.As an interesting and relevant footnote of sorts, when the expanding universe first appeared in the physics literature, some physicists were repelled by it because the initial singularity looked suspiciously like a religiously inspired moment of creation. They need not have bothered, for the reasons I explained above.
Atheists: if there is no conclusive proof of the big bang and you didn't witness it then why do you believe it?
I am not answering as a real atheist but evidence nonetheless supports big bang. Nobody made it up. Many people worked to form conclusions based on evidence and most do not 'believe' it as much as they conclude it most likely. However, your point is not lost on me and I appreciate that many big bang militant atheists mangle rationality and science to form world view belief systems that ultimately amount to religion. You successfully solicited at least three classic examples in the responses to your question featuring such smash hits as the recitation of fact and statistic as if chanting from sacred texts, and the defensive distraction tactic of quibbling over the meaning of "100%" without actually addressing the substance of the question. I find the trivial technicality distraction defense the most alarming conduct of over-aggressive atheists and I think it highly offensive and disturbing when those that claim the legitimacy and credibility of science and rationality think they prove a point or win an argument with cynical tactic, dogma, distraction and deception.
How can the atheism big bang theory proof afterlife. ?
Instead of labeling things, you should get educated on them. The big bang theory is not an atheist's theory - it is a model for how teh universe we observe around us came to be. Note I did not say created since the model starts with a singular point containing all the energy that will become the universe. How that point came to be is not part of the model - that is a question for philosphers and theologians. I suspect you use the label "atheist" because the big bang theory does not line up in a literal sense with some religous account of creation. Too bad. All this other stuff you wrote is not science. It is wishful thinking at best and the stuff of bad sci-fi stories at worst. You really should read the popular versions of the theory - Hawking's "A Brief Hstory of Time" is a good start. But if you are a person who believes in a literal interpretation of a religous story of creation, you probably won't read or like any of the popularizations anyway.