When exactly and how exactly was it proven consciousness exists outside the body? And when did scientists ever say the big bang was "contradicting" when the vast majority of scientists agree it really happened? If everything had to start somewhere, where did god start? And finally, where did your non-sequitor about life after death come from?

Oh, yeah, you do have the right to believe whatever you want. You have the right to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, that cat is spelled "K-A-T" or that pouring ice cream into computers makes them work better. Of course if you believe that you are wrong, and if you go around saying it I'm going to think you're a moron and tell you so.

1. No scientist I'm aware of has ever described the big bang as a contradiction, and if he did, I suspect his motives would not be scientific.
2. There is no question in the scientific community concerning WHETHER the universe began with an explosion, the only questions that remain concern how.
3. There are many different opinions over what caused the big bang and where the matter in the universe came from and all of them have one thing in common:

Parsimony: preference for the least complex explanation for an observation.

When scientists say "least complex" they don't mean easiest to understand, in fact, it usually ends up being the opposite.

Theories are refined and usually made more difficult to understand, explaining complex phenomena down to simpler origins. Natural selection, for example, explains how an extremely complex phenomena, like the human being, came from extremely simple beginnings, like primordial ooze. That is parsimony.

Scientists have deduced, beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe is the result of a massive explosion caused by a gravitational singularity. Now, a massive singularity of sufficient density to produce all the stars, galaxies, and planets in the universe is, needless to say, unlikely to occur without cause.

However, in the absence of an exact explanation, all we have is the simplest explanation. "Introducing a creative intelligence," says Richard Dawkins, "only pushes the explanation problem under the rug, and creates a bigger problem, where did the intelligent designer come from? A being capable of creating a complex universe would have to be at least as complex as that which he creates, so we are left with a more complex explanation than we started."

Yeah, how long have I been talking about this shit?

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forums/yellow_number_five/evolution_of_life/debunking_creationism

Check show #9 as well. I have better versions of this response/essay floating around other places as well. It sickens me how often I have to repost this shit.

and damn the reality!

We have taken your comments and, if you wish, will promptly forward them to John Mather and George  Smoot, who this year jointly won a Nobel Prize in Physics for providing more evidence for the  Big Bang.

 While your appeal to the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) is quite interesting, we would like to note that they set out to prove that a collective conscious, not the afterlife, existed. It should also be noted that, although the results appeared significant, later meta-analyses showed that the results obtained were not significant and had a high probability of occuring by chance.

 Secondly, although we thank you for invoking the Monroe Institute, Robert Monroe, leading "researcher," is a business man who wrote several books after experiencing what he believed to be an out of body experience. He has never done actual research nor does he refer to anything past anecdotal evidence. However, we believe that Mr. Monroe agrees with us when we highly suggest that you buy any of his CDs at $19.95 that will use the trademarked Hemi-Synch method to induce out of body experiences or relaxation. 

 Gauging by your last comment, we finally suggest seeking immediate psychiatric help for your obvious diagnosis of self-hatred.

Dawkins makes a great point simply in terms of likelihood. Which is more likely: a universe that began with a complex intelligent designer or one that began with simple things that gradually increased in complexity over long periods of time? From a logic point of view, it seems like a no-brainer to me.

I'm new to this site, so I hope someone can give me some answers to the Big Bang Theory.  I am a Christian, and I have a limited knowledge of what this theory is. 

I believe that God never had a beginning because he is outside of time.  Since time and causality are related, then I don't think that God needs to have a creator.   It doesn't matter how complex God is because I believe He was never created.

I do not believe that the universe is eternal because it is constantly running out of usable energy due to entropy.  The Big Bang theory would agree that the universe had a point of beginning, and this seems to be the general concensus. 

With the above paragraph in mind, "Everything that has come into existence, was brought into existence by something else.  If something did not already exist but then came into existence, then something had to bring it into existence because something that does not exist cannot bring itself into existence."  I believe that this is very logical, and it therefore requires the universe to have something that brought it into existence.  Why can't God be a possibility?  

That is a summary of my belief.  I came here to get some answers, so I hope someone can help me out with this issue.  Thanks.

Thanks, I came across this thread directly from Google.

OK, you state that you have the right to believe in anything YOU want, but apparently that doesn't apply to everyone else. We probably should believe in the exact same thing that you believe in or else we're, as you say, "stupid." This is just a pathetic attempt at trying to goad us into your way of thinking.  Well, it didn't work. It just sounded silly.

PW

Additionally, the same moment at which the universe was caused, was the exact same moment of the effect of the universe coming to be.  This is known as simultaneous causation.  An example would be the pressing of a cushion and the simultaneous effect of the cushion being depressed.

Then we have a stolen concept fallacy in employ.

Yeah, yeah, we all know that, however, inflationary cosmology dictates that natural causes brought about the universe, as shown:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/lies_damn_lies_and_false_beliefs_about_ex_nihilo_aka_how_to_pretend_you_know_cosmology_without_r...

And btw, you ought reword that. Gravity is nothing more than the distortion caused by material acting on the spatiotemporal continuum, hence, to make reference to gravity without time (hence, without space, being that the two are not indepedent) is complete nonsense.

Special pleading fallacy. The notion which you are attempting to put forth refutes itself, as I have shown:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/all_a_posteriori_arguments_for_the_existence_of_god_are_intellectually_bankrupt

You are invoking an entity whose attributes presuppose the concepts which you are attempting to explain via the invocation of said entity, making it an utterly shameful stolen concept fallacy.