1. The microwave background.
2. The red-shifting of distant galaxies.
3. The evolved appearance of distant galaxy clusters.
4. The delayed light curve of distant supernovae.
5. The proportion of hydrogen, helium, and lithium in the universe almost exactly matching mathematical models of nucleosynthesis in a hot, dense early universe.
6. The increasing detected temperature of the microwave background with distance.
This points to a universe that is cooling and expanding. And if it is expanding, it must have had a beginning. For someone with a religious background, neither do I see how this conflicts with the Bible. If someone has an alternative explanations for the points I’ve given, I’d like to hear them.
tons of google links of doubts about the big bang and even cosmic microwave background...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/doubts-shroud-big-bang-discovery
You must have missed the part about not “self-referential”...
The fact that models designed to predict a cooling and expanding universe do so, is not the same thing as evidence.
All of the items you’ve listed, bar none, have to be programmed into the mathematical models in order to arrive at the prediction... or could indicate other phenomena not predicted by the theory, or could be used to prove something entirely different.
What were the conditions in a “hot, dense early universe” except those hypothesized by working backward from current conditions?
What universe was used to create those models?
Has the universe always been expanding? could it be cyclic?
That’s why the authors of the letter published by Scientific American are questioning the validity of the model. Not ALL of the parameters were programmed to arrive at the foregone conclusion, and therefore they didn’t.
I don’t have a competing theory... But I have studied the “Big-Bang” theory enough to have noticed its dogmatic nature... I do not think it is beyond questioning by reasonable scientists.
Maybe it does not HAVE TO have a beginning, just because it is expanding.
Imagine it was cut in half, then half again, then half over and over...
You can repeat that for infinity. If the original point of origin contained (literally) everything, then you can cut it in half to make half of everything forever.
I appreciate your reasoned response. I believe that God is the author of all things, but there is no sin in trying to understand how he did it. The answers may well be beyond our reach, but it is fun to try to figure out how it all happened.