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Alex_Altair comments on Does anyone know any kid geniuses? - Less Wrong
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I am extremely worried to see him in the context of Glenn Beck pushing Christianity. As far as I know, his ideas to disprove the Big Bang have nothing to do with religion, and I sure hope he hasn't written the bottom line. And you're right about the integral test.
If I remember correctly, the Big Bang model was first proposed by a Catholic priest and was initially dismissed as an attempt to sneak religion back into cosmology. If he was engaging in motivated cognition to defend his faith, then wouldn't he not try to "disprove the Big Bang"?
The Catholic Church has enthusiastically supported the Big Bang model since the '50s. But there are strains of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity that don't think the theory is consistent with the Bible and so reject it. The Young Earth Creationist website "Answers in Genesis" is an example: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab2/does-big-bang-fit-with-bible
In America at least, if I knew a person was very religious, I would count that as evidence against the claim that they believe the Big Bang occurred. If I remember correctly, surveys show that a majority of Americans don't believe in the theory, and I suspect this is largely because they think it is in tension with their religious beliefs.
While the Big Bang may be a better fit for theism than the steady state model, it is a worse fit than the claim that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago with essentially the same physical structure it has now.
Christians don't have the criterion of making sense.
Some of them do. In any case, it seems clear to me that the Big Bang model is coherent with theism, but the steady state model is not (or, at least, is much less so).
I am not comfortable with this generalization - particularly when applied across all ages and the Christian being discussed was right.