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Well before I became Athiest, I was methodist, and they did.

I also beleive that Fundie churches (e.g. Southern Baptist) still do.

Being confirmed methodist, I can assure you that Methodists do not. The others I don't know.

The Big Bang theory dosn't account for Creationsism.

I can't vouch for non Christian religions but most Christian religions don't believe in Evolution. Or they permit it as a "theory".

Some fanatics believe fossils to be the work of the Devil to seed confusion and doubt. Some nuts thinks scientist themselves plant them there to be found.

Oddly, i still consider myself a Christian (I don't practice) I don't subscribe to the literalsists (fundementalists if you prefer) who think everything is in the Bible is literal truth. There is enough contradiction and suspicious entries to disuade most people from that. The Noah story is a good example as it's a literal copy of a tale that predates the Bible itself.

The Bible has been rewritten so many times and handed down verbally from so many sources before being put to paper it's amazing it's as coherant as it is.

Check out this site if you want a few laughs:

http://www.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacadem … things.htm

It's a good site to debunk some of the more preposterous ways Anti creationists use to disprove Creationism.

Still, you cannot prove or disprove that statement. An omnipotent being is outside observation. Science is all about making models from observation. Therefore, creationism is not a scientific theory and will always stay that way.

It being taught in classes is a big issue where I am to.

though one of the teachers at my school does teache it, his credibility as a teacher is, erm, questionable.  We beleive that he purposfully teaches his studints odd and unaccreditable theories just to mess with their minds.

mo'ron said:

I wouldn't support the teaching of "God created the universe" in classes, but when they mention the big bang, the should say "we don't know what or why caused the big bang though." AFAIK, there aren't any solid theories of this, just that "it just did..."

But, should we even still teach the big bang? There are many new theories that say the universe was created in a differnt way (but not neccecarily by way of a "Supreme Being").

They think the universe may be expanding and will not slow down because of vacuum energy (anti energy?). I don't see how the new evidence has much to do with disproving the big bang theory.

We probably won't know how the universe started (before the big bang) for a very long time because it was an explosion of time and space, essentially. We need time and space to make sense of anything.

All this wacky new physics is way over my head.

Okay, I have a question:

Why do we refer to the Big Bang as a theory?  A theory is supposed to be a statement, while not beyond reprochable, that has enough evidence to include the likelihood of being true.  The bb is not observable, has no hard evidence, and is in reality just conjecture--a hypothesis (just like creationism).

I'm a language major and I am annoyed that schooling forces me to take worthless science classes (not that science is worthless, for me, taking them is).  So, I bother profs with this argument all the time--and to great affect!

So, do I have have a good argument or was my Duke educated prof just a poof.

Okay, I have a question:

Why do we refer to the Big Bang as a theory?  A theory is supposed to be a statement, while not beyond reprochable, that has enough evidence to include the likelihood of being true.  The bb is not observable, has no hard evidence, and is in reality just conjecture--a hypothesis (just like creationism)

There are a number of things that support the Universe coming from a large explosion: Cosmic Background Radiation, and Doppler shifting

Cosmic background radiation is a constant heat remnant detectable in every direction.  Doppler shifts in light from distant stars and galaxies show us that the distribution of matter over the universe is thinning - everything is moving farther away from everything else.  Depending on the 4th dimensional shape of the universe, we'll loop back around to a "big crunch" or "gnab gib", perhaps continue expanding at a constant rate, or expand at an exponential rate.

Those two facts alone merit the teaching of the big bang as a scientific theory.

What I'd like to know is, why do science and religion have to be at odds?

They won't be in about 50 years, except by a few small fundamentalist groups.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned the debate isn't about science vs. religion, since reasonable people can easily reconcile the two

I entirely agree.

Okay, I have a question:

Why do we refer to the Big Bang as a theory?  A theory is supposed to be a statement, while not beyond reprochable, that has enough evidence to include the likelihood of being true.  The bb is not observable, has no hard evidence, and is in reality just conjecture--a hypothesis (just like creationism).

I'm a language major and I am annoyed that schooling forces me to take worthless science classes (not that science is worthless, for me, taking them is).  So, I bother profs with this argument all the time--and to great affect!

So, do I have have a good argument or was my Duke educated prof just a poof.

Umm, no.

We refer to the big bang as a theory, because it is a theory. A theory is a statement, based on observation and/or physics that makes speficic predictions that can be tested. We see background radiation, and an expanding universe. This means that at some point in the past, the universe was probably a lot smaller than it was, and that it exploded outwards. The big bang theory was based on these observations. The observations are facts, the theory is an explanation of this theory. Since we can't create a universe in a lab, we can't test this theory, so we continue to observe. If enough evidence is gathered to dispute the big bang, the theory will be changed or abandoned altogether.