One would not need to hate God, or even believe in God in order to believe that no such thing as wrong exists.
Even if one has no concept of God(And you can't hate what you don't have a concept of) but they believe with all their heart that all came to be by chance and that there is no moral lawgiver greater then man, the only logical position is that no such thing as wrong exists. What one man says is wrong another might say is just fine. Logically, the only rule is to preserve one's self and offspring -- in other words, the rule of the jungle: Don't get caught.
Not necessarily, though it's not quite what I meant in any case; there are very good societal reasons for ethics. "I don't rob you blind, because it's more profitable for me to do business with you for the next fifty years" - "I save your life, because it builds our relationship and gives you reason to save mine" - "I don't lie to you, because if we all know the truth, we're more likely to agree and there's less room to trip up" - these examples are slightly cartoonish, I admit, but they illustrate my point. While there are short-term benefits to all unethical action, when viewed from a community perspective, in the long term, acting ethically is usually the only reasonable course to action. Coincidentally, this is the same reason that it's difficult to create a truly evil and believable antagonist in fiction, unless one makes him stupid or insane - evil is not, by and large, a successful strategy. It creates too many enemies, and destroys too many otherwise useful assets.
I digress, though, from my original point, which is that evolution is not incompatible with God, and that most believers in evolution also believe in God. Presuming, for the sake of this argument, that macroevolution is true, then God made it so; God made all of the laws of the universe, after all. Why, then, wouldn't God have used the processes that he created to bring the various species into being? While I can respect that others have answers to that question that differ from my own, I prefer to believe that the easiest answer is that evolution existed precisely as a simple, elegant way of enacting his design, and that the proof is that he would not have otherwise made it possible. God, after all, has no unintended consequences.
Atheists consist of roughly ten percent of the population (in the US - it's higher elsewhere), while believers in evolution consist of roughly thirty to forty percent of the population (depending on which statistics you consult, what year you look at, and how you define evolution) - while it's safe to say that all of those ten percent believe in evolution, that still leaves billions of people who must reconcile their faith with evolution - I believe that most answer the question in the same way that I did, that God created this process with a deliberate design in mind, and made Evolution as a simple means to fulfill that end.
I only mentioned that because as I think about the issue I see that a person is presented with two contradictory stories ("In 6 days God created the heavens and the earth" vs "Long long ago, far far away, there was, for all practical purposes, nothing, and then it exploded") and they both require significant faith. So then it is perfectly logical to ask ones self which story is more likely true: The one which proves that no such thing as wrong exists, or the one who says that such a thing as wrong does exist.
I don't really see the stories as contradictory, to be honest; the sudden creation of massive amounts of matter, exploding in energy that give rise to the precise natural laws we need to survive looks to have fingerprints of divine intervention all over it, to me. Why, then, shouldn't I simply say God did it, and walk away? It's not as though scientists have an answer as to what ELSE it might have been.
(Though, to be fair, I view the events of billions of years ago to be of little concern to myself, and so haven't exactly looked into it much)
But my main point was that the evidence that the earth is billions of years old and that the big bang happened requires us to have faith in things which we did not see and which, in the case of the big bang, are now impossible.
My own main point was that the evidence that the Earth is billions of years old is persuasive when taken as a whole, and that there are fields with significant predictive success that would require a great deal of explanation as to why they were working, should the Earth truly be young (bar God having created a young earth with the appearance of age)... But that none of that requires belief in the Big Bang.
All the Big Bang really provides for (or such is my understanding; as I said before, this is nowhere near my field) is a reason why the universe is expanding - essentially, noting that all matter seems to be speeding away from a central point, and that for this to be true, a massive expansion must have taken place at that point. Literally almost anything could fill that void, and Big Bang is a simple label to attach to it, because sentences grow too long without one.
My point, which has already grown obscured, is that the universe can very easily be old without a Big Bang, so long as you provide another explanation as to why the universe is expanding; saying "God did it" might rub a few people the wrong way, but it's not rewriting much of science.
Herein I am not trying to prove ID or anything else -- I'm just trying to logically and honestly look at this big bang idea.
To be fair, I wasn't really trying to prove evolution, the Big Bang, or much of anything; I rather lack the expertise to any serious questions on those issues. I was just honestly a tad confused as to how you divided things between a hardcore naturalist and a disbelief in evolution and the big bang, when the vast majority who believe in those two concepts still place their ethical core in Christianity.
If you agree that it's possible and common for one person to believe in both Christianity and evolution/an old earth, then I really don't have much of a disagreement with you.
I think if we just asked people on the street whether the big bang was true, they would say yes. But if we asked them further, I'm betting that for the vast majority of them, it is a pure faith. They have chosen to believe in it and chosen to trust people that they don't know, about a thing that is physically impossible today, that nobody ever saw.
Well... To be fair, I suspect that almost everything people believe in these days is based on faith. The complexity of science, technology, and society have all risen to the point where one must spend years of research to really understand an issue for oneself, free from elements that would otherwise disprove it.
This is particularly true when you have unscrupulous people and organizations specifically contracting studies to obfuscate issues as a way to advance their own positions.
I further suspect that if you asked them the question "Would you care if the Big Bang were disproved?" that most of them, if they answered honestly, would say "no" - for most people, it's not an issue that affects them, or anything that they care about. Sadly, they'd probably say the same for things that really mattered...
I sure hope that somewhere, somebody knows it to a significantly better degree then as a mere faith. After all, it's being taught all over as fact to innocent schoolchildren.
Well, to be fair once again, if the amount of time spent teach astronomy is the same as it was when I was in school, it probably merited a sentence, at the most... And, if classrooms are as unruly today as they were then, most of the class probably missed it. And, well, of those left, most have probably already forgotten it once the test was over.
Of those who are left, you have those who earnestly care about knowledge, and will pursue answers on their own... Most of them will likely never care about the Big Bang, unless they go into a related field, and it's true that those will remember and probably never question it. Of those that do care... Well, they'll dig deeper. And maybe they'll find more supporting evidence, and maybe they'll find a different answer. But isn't that what the pursuit of knowledge is all about?
(quietly moves her soapbox away, but remains unable to find a less preachy way of ending the post)
Some people believe that way. But it is clear that not everybody believes that way. The news is full of stories about people who believe that as long as they can get away with something without those around them turning on them or finding out, that anything is fine to do.
If you agree that it's possible and common for one person to believe in both Christianity and evolution/an old earth, then I really don't have much of a disagreement with you.
With my scientific / engineering tendencies, I tend to find out what something says before deciding what it means. And the Bible is quite clear in describing 6 twenty four hour days, each with an evening and a morning. Furthermore, it gives generations of people and their ages. In answer to your question, I have not found the Bible to be compatible with what the evolutionists claim.
And, if classrooms are as unruly today as they were then, most of the class probably missed it. And, well, of those left, most have probably already forgotten it once the test was over.
This almost sounds like "It doesn't matter if we're lying to the students and telling them that evolution is proven even though it isn't, because they aren't paying attention anyway" :-)
But my impression has been that by the time an average child is graduated from highschool, he has been quite thoroughly, for many years, taught evolution. And it can't help but influence his decisions later in life.
Keep up the good work,
-Jesse