Big Bang Example 

By:  Erick Nelson
Last Updated:  December 17, 2007 

Arguments Against Christianity 

Being a person who has come to believe that Christianity is true, and who bases this belief in large part on reasoning from evidence, I have tried to read books and articles written by people who disagree with me.  Occasionally, the arguments they present deal directly with the evidential case for Christianity, but most of the time, the objections seem wide of the mark, irrelevant, not touching my reasons for belief.   

Now, I suppose this could be the case because my belief is unusual or idiosyncratic, but I don’t think so - a great many scholars also share these views in one form or another. 

For instance, when critics of Christianity say “This is all in the realm of faith; it can’t be resolved by appeal to reason and evidence” I can only respond “Not for me!”  Or when they feign skepticism and question whether we can know anything about historical events, or take a post-modern view about pluralistic meaning, I question  whether I can talk to them at all.  Or when they bring up the Crusades and other examples of Christians’ “bad witness”, I can only shake my head and say, “But what does this have to do with Jesus and his claims? 

So my complaint is that these critics are simply setting up straw men.  Hopefully, they are not intending to trick us or deceive us.  They probably really believe that they are refuting things that are essential to Christianity and that are the basis for belief.  But I can’t help but think they are ill-informed about the strongest arguments that exist.  Maybe they just haven’t listened well enough, maybe they haven’t paid attention, and so they argue at cross-purposes with us. 

The Big Bang Example 

To give you a feeling for this, imagine a different issue.  Let’s pretend that the controversial issue is whether the Big Bang happened.  Let’s say you have come to the conclusion that the Big Bang is indeed a fact, responsible for the origin of the universe.   

Why?  There are five strong evidential reasons, which, taken together, are compelling to you:  

  1. The Red Shift in the color of stars; a Doppler effect discovered by Hubble which shows that all galaxies and their stars are moving away from a central point
  2. If the Big Bang occurred, there ought to be a certain kind of background radiation in the universe.  This has been discovered.
  3. The ratio of light and heavy elements gives a determinate age of universe – certainly not infinite – which is consistent with the Red Shift.
  4. The universe is not undulating – that is, there is no series of expansions and contractions.  The speed at which the stars are moving away exceeds the “escape velocity” – there is not enough mass in the universe to bring the expansion to a halt.  There will be no Big Crunch.
  5. It is consistent with General Theory of Relativity.
     

Arguments Against the Big Bang

Let’s say you make an effort to become aware of the arguments against this position.  You read books, scholarly articles, popular articles; watch TV shows; go to lectures.  There are over a dozen arguments put forth against the Big Bang theory.  Let’s pretend you summarize the arguments into four major groups as follows: 

Scientific  

  1. Because dark matter can’t be seen, and has to be inferred by the action of visible stars, it’s possible that there could be more dark matter than we know, and maybe there is something at the fringes of the universe (which are unseen to us) that will halt the expansion and start contraction.  (Note that this is not only pure speculation, but goes directly against the known evidence.)
     
  2. With string theory comes the explanation that, perhaps, a super-universe started the big bang (Note that what started the Big Bang is irrelevant)
     
  3. Contradictions.  There are differences in estimations of the universe’s age (5 – 10 billion years), density of matter, etc., therefore the conclusions are false.  (Note that none of these differences affect the basic ideas).

Philosophical  

  1. Causation has been challenged by Hume, and causation at the atomic level challenged by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, therefore all causal explanations are suspect. 
     
  2. Kant has shown that time/space are not properties of the universe, but are simply our own categories imposed on the real. 
     
  3. Science is constantly changing – what’s true today is false tomorrow.
     
  4. Scientific knowledge is not based on my own, direct experience, and depends upon an elite process of interpretation.
     
  5. The Big Bang, if it happened, is a one-time “miraculous” event, not repeatable, and so is almost infinitely improbable.
     
  6. There is no “one truth” about this: your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth.
     
  7. There is no “one meaning” about this:  meaning is conditioned by many personal factors.  Saying that there is one fixed meaning is an attempt to control the other person.
     
  8. What is important is the moral significance of stories like this – how our lives are inspired and morally changed.  Insisting on the literal truth of this event actually puts focus on the wrong thing and takes away from its deeper meaning in our lives.

Cultural/Psychological 

  1. Science today is not about free, rational inquiry; it's about money, the politics of the university, sensationalism to see books, etc.
     
  2. Cultural relativism - Who are you to say?  Each culture has its own creation (or universal duration) myths.  Who are we to prefer our own and push it off as absolutely true?
     
  3. Feminism/Sociology.  The Big Bang is masculine image, undulating universe is feminine.  The Big Bang is preferred because the scientific community, and the world at large, is run by men.
     
  4. Anticipation – there is not even anything original in the theory; this was already present in ancient accounts.

Ad Hominem 

  1. Big Bangers are essentially irrational people, appealing to authority (whatever they happen to read or see on TV) – unable to appeal to legitimate scientific reasons, they believe what they want to believe.
     
  2. Big Bangers have an agenda.  They are not objective and unbiased.  Their “proofs” are motivated, like Intelligent Design advocates, solely by a desire to prove God’s existence.
     
  3. Many of the leading Big Bangers have exhibited shocking moral failings – unfaithful to their spouses, often alcoholics, overly excitable and vehement in their Revivalist mentality, shockingly rude and uncultured.
     
  4. The reason people believe in the Big Bang is that our brains are hard-wired to look for causes, and even to invent causes when none are obviously present. 
     

Your Response 

Well, your first response would be, “You haven’t even addressed my five points!”, wouldn’t it?  You’d say, “You are just talking around the issue, but not dealing with the things that really matter!”  They are all specious arguments, “pleasing to the eye but deceptive.”  

Your response to the general categories might be something like this: 

  1. Scientific.  Note that none of the three points actually affects the truth of the Big Bang!  The first is speculation against the facts, and the next two are simply irrelevant.
     
  2. Philosophical.  These question not only this theory, but any opposing scientific theory as well, since they work to undercut the validity of all scientific investigation. 
     
  3. Cultural/Psychological.  This is just a hodge-podge of red herrings, from obviously fallacious (#4), to silly (#3), to irrelevant.
     
  4. Ad Hominem.  Personal attacks which, once categorized as “ad hominem”, are seen to be off-topic at best.

When taken together, these arguments appear to gang up on your position, but you get the distinct feeling that none of it really applies to your view.  Hey! - Where is the discussion of the Red Shift implications?  Where are the calculations about the speed of expansion vs. gravitational pull?  Where is the evidence for a steady-state or undulating universe? 

You find it increasingly difficult to read yet even more long books that go down this path.  It is puzzling to know that these authors think they have refuted a position, knowing that they seem not to even know what the real evidence is.   

Conclusion 

I picked the Big Bang as an example because it’s considered to be a well-established theory, and emotions are not involved in this as much as they are in issues such as the truth of Christianity. 

Many of the arguments I have listed against the Big Bang theory are really very much like the arguments against Christianity.  In fact, in many instances I took anti-Christian arguments and simply adapted them for the Big Bang illustration.

Rather than engage the strongest arguments, these critics of Christianity nibble around the edges, use word-play to create a formidable front, indulge in ad hominem abuse, or use burden of proof to require the Christian to refute all kinds of skepticism.  

The “Good” Reasons 

To be clear, what are the “good” reasons for believing that Christianity is true?  For myself, they consist of  “converging evidence” - including scientific, philosophical, historical, and other lines of reasoning.  But I think the strongest argument comes from the claims of Jesus himself. 

  1. The disciples of Jesus claimed that he was the Son of God, risen from the dead, and their witness was recorded in the New Testament.
  2. This writing has come down to us substantially as written, so we have this claim before us.
  3. If it is not true, then the disciples made up a plot or misunderstood.
  4. There are a lot of problems with “plot” and with “misunderstood”, show-stoppers in my view.  On the other hand, the inference that their claim is true squares with the evidence and suffers from no show-stopping problems.
  5. Therefore, it is true.

How many books explicitly try to refute this argument?  The best modern attempt is what I call the “Metaphorical Gospel Theory”, in that it directly challenges the first premise.  It says that the New Testament claim about Jesus was never intended to be taken literally, historically, and factually, but was intended (and understood by its first audience) to be like parables – spiritually, metaphorically true.   

If the MG theory is true, then my first premise would be refuted and the argument as a whole would obviously fail.  But one shouldn’t buy into the MG theory without testing it, and I believe it fails the test (see my MG article). 

Other than this demonstrably false theory, I have found most objections to Christianity to be of the same variety as the arguments above against the Big Bang.  So that’s why it is frustrating to deal with them – not because they are dangerous and scary, but because they are irrelevant.   

Imagining yourself as an advocate of the Big Bang and dealing with these issues, and you’ll have more sympathy for someone in my shoes.