To my "Big bang" commenter

First of all, thanks for asking the tough questions. Discussing philosophy is a passion for me, and I rarely get the chance. (If anyone else wishes to read what my anonymous commenter wrote, which I am responding to by means of post just because of the interesting ideas raised, see THIS.)

Now as to the specific conceptions you expressed, the most interesting and telling is your resort to the word 'magic.' You've certainly got a curious understanding of what religious people consider creation (such as it is) to be. Why would you use such a loaded term as "magic"? Would the clockwinder of the deist conception be a "magician", too? I'm sure even you can see the silliness of that proposition, so why should the more involved God of the specifically religious have to be a "magician"? How does that follow?

The Big Bang IS troubling, and that's always been acknowledged. When I first read about the colliding branes theory that has the universe stretched out on a ten dimensional superstring sheet right next to another universe, it was in a Discover article uncomfortably noting that Pope Pius quickly endorsed the Big Bang in the fifties. Turok and Steinhardt, who conceived the colliding brane theorem, will certainly not be the last scientists to confront the reality that the Big Bang's universal origin troubles them, as this latest theory suggests.

As to the Big Bang lacking evidence for a deity, I am afraid that is somewhat overclaimed. The universe of limited scope that modern cosmology offers us does offer the teleological problem - why are the universal constants peculiarly well designed for life to emerge? This isn't a small problem - the odds on the universe coming into being in such a way as to produce life are really, REALLY long - according to Paul Davies in "Many Worlds", the odds are "one followed by a thousand billion billion billion zeros, at least."

Such impossibly long odds really only leave a handful of possiblities.

1. The Weak Anthropic Principle, that there is an infinite multiverse and we happen to just be in the one universe that statistically would have to fall into that rare range of values. Of course this is just as fantastical and unfalsifiable as God.

2. The Strong Anthropic Principle, which suggests the universe is self-realizing - can only exist because life within it can emerge and then perceive it. I'd call this almost the "Buddhist cosmology."

3. The teleological solution, or what might be called the "ultimate anthropic principle." The universe exists, in spite of its long odds and finite origin, because it was specifically intended to exist. Since time itself is a property of the universe and does not predate it, (which St. Augustine conceived before modern cosmology) this does not bring the problem many suppose it to of an uncreated creator requiring an origin, for a non-temporal being would be outside concepts such as 'origin.'

Since steady state theories do not require confronting this problem, or the fantastical mental gymnastics of the anthropic principles, the emergence of a new steady state theory of any plausiblity always sees some popularity. If I were still an atheist, I'd certainly favour them and seek them out...