pragmatist comments on Does anyone know any kid geniuses? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Solvent 28 March 2012 12:03PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (66)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: pragmatist 29 March 2012 08:51:17PM *  1 point [-]

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.