[wendy1946]

The universe is not dying or flying apart. Again what the evidence suggests is that the universe at large, like God, is eternal, and that the creation stories we read in antique literature refer to the creation of our own living world and local environment, and not to the creation of the entire universe.

Big bang does not pass any sort of a sniff test for basic logic. Having all the mass of the universe collapsed to a point would be the ultimate black hole; nothing would ever "bang" its way out of that. Likewise it is nonsensical to think that a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient God would suddenly figure out that it would be a cool thing to do to create a universe while the idea had never occurred to him previously; whether that supposedly happened 6000 or 17B years ago doesn't even matter, it's nonsensical either way.

In other words, big bang is bad physics, bad logic, and bad theology rolled up into a package.

[texmexis best]

The bang was an expansion of space, ie. the expansion of the dimension in which something can be placed. It was not an explosion that would have had to overcome the mass of the black hole.

[texmexis best]

All of the evidence dictates that the universe had a specific beginning and did not previously exist and is not eternal.

Because of this, we can only see a part of the universe and a recent paper (within the last three months) suggests that for all practical purposes we will only be able to see about 8% of the universe.

[mad_as_he$$]

So you dispute that the various objects, say galaxy to galaxy, are not moving in relation to each other?

[allmendream]

“the universe at large, like God, is eternal, and that the creation stories we read in antique literature refer to the creation of our own living world and local environment, and not to the creation of the entire universe”

Smacks of Mormonism to me.

ONE BIG PROBLEM.

The Bible. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth”. It doesn't say “in the beginning there was no beginning for the Heavens always existed.”

Seems you are putting creation as equivalent to the creator, and removing the creator as the actual creator - sort of a coexistant facet of eternal reality - but not the creator of that universe and reality.

[Rocky]

Thermodynamics tells us that systems will seek to equilibrate. Heat flows from high temperature to low temperature. Stars burn out. It has nothing to do with whether there was a big bang, or whether or not the universe if flying apart.

Is there a source of energy being pumped into the universe to keep it from equilibrating eventually to a very cold temperature throughout?

If the universe is going towards a very cold equilibrium, did it not then have a beginning, whether big bang or some other beginning?