Briefly the argument is:
The cosmologist consensus today is that about 14 billion years ago our universe was a minuscule ball containing all the mass/energy of the universe. That ball began to expand about 14 billion years ago. We do not know why the expansion began. We do not know where the ball came from. Our universe seems to have a beginning. Therefore a God must have created the tiny ball and initiated the expansion.
This article will show the Big Bang does not prove there is a god and Big Bang cosmology contradicts the Torah.
First, the argument fails on logic alone as it is an example of the god of the gaps fallacy. Our gap in knowledge is not a compelling reason to posit a god. We do not fully understand the physical behavior of such a tiny ball of great mass in part because relativity and quantum theory have not been reconciled at that level. "The singularity [some scientists say there was no singularity] at the Big Bang doesn't indicate a beginning to the universe, only an end to our theoretical comprehension. It may be that this moment does indeed correspond to a beginning, and a complete theory of quantum gravity will eventually explain how the universe started at approximately this time. But it is equally plausible that what we think of as the Big Bang is merely a phase in the history of the universe, which stretches long before that time – perhaps infinitely far in the past. " (From Does the Universe Need God? Professor Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology).
{ETA 12/19/2015 Page 50 A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking 1990 Bantam Edition. Hawking is discussing Penrose's and Hawking's Cosmology. Hawking initially thought the Universe started with a Big Bang Singularity. But then writes "So in the end our work [Penrose and Hawking] became generally accepted and nowadays nearly everyone assumes that the universe started with a big bang singularity. It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe - as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account."}
Second, we still do not know if some form of oscillating model can occur.
{ETA From the book About Time by Astrophysics Professor Adam Frank 2011 Page 274 "Thus the ancient dream of endless cycles is very much alive as a possibility for tomorrows cosmology." Book metions: Steinhardt and Toruk's model, Physicist Paul Framptons cyclic cosmology (2009), Cosmologist Martin Bojowald cyclic model 2010. The book explains forms of quantum gravitational theory could provide a framework for cyclic models and can not yet be discounted,}
{ETA 1/3/2016 Page 143-148 in Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism Petto and Godfrey Editors 2007. Physics Professor Victor Stenger - "Several cosmological scenarios have been published by established scholars in reputable scientific journals that allow for a universe to appear as an uncaused quantum event from an initial state of zero energy (Akatz and Pagels 1982;...). "It is conventional to label the time of the Big Bang as t=0. However, nothing we know demands that this was the beginning of time..., or that no universe existed at earlier times."
"No scientific basis exists for assuming a universe did not exist before the Big Bang" }
Even if the observable Universe "began", the building blocks of the universe may have existed forever. That would be consistent with the conservation of energy and matter. {ETA 5/17/2018 - Per some scientists - if our universe is expanding then our universe need not obey conservation of energy or matter.{ETA 5/17/2018 Nevertheless, the building blocks of the universe (some natural thing perhaps a vacuum which can have energy fluctuations or perhaps some multiverse that spawns universes) may have existed forever.} {ETA 5/21/2018 Regarding the claim that conservation of energy and matter can be violated, most if not all scientists would respond that if gravity is considered, then conservation of energy and matter is obeyed.}
Fourth "Most modern cosmologists are convinced that conventional scientific progress will ultimately result in a self-contained understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, without the need to invoke God or any other supernatural involvement. ( Does the Universe Need God? Professor Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology)
{ETA 1/23/2016 http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2012/04/28/a-universe-from-nothing/
April 28, 2012 by Sean Carroll - A Universe from Nothing? "...the physical universe can perfectly well be self-contained; it doesn’t need anything or anyone from outside to get it started, even if it had a “beginning.” " }
{ETA 12/19/2016 From Seven Brief Lessons on Physics By Carlo Rovelli 2014, 2016. The Theoretical Physicist Carlo is one of the founders of Loop Quantum Gravity Theory (LQG). Beginning on page 39 - Einstein developed relativity to resolve the conflict between the equations of electromagnetism and mechanics. Today there is a conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. A group of researchers are working on reconciling the conflict thru Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). Consider a star as it begins to run out of fuel and starts to collapse. Per Loop Quantum Gravity infinitesimal points/singularities don’t exist, so the star’s matter will only condense up to a point (called a Planck Star) wherein quantum fluctuations of space-time balance the weight of matter. But a Planck star is not stable and it can then begin to expand again. When our Universe was extremely compressed, quantum theory generates a repulsive force and this can create a Big Bang. Thus our Universe may have been born from a preceding Universe that compressed under it’s own weight into a tiny space before expanding into the Universe we observe.
[LQG can provide a natural explanation why the BB occurred and what existed before the BB. So we need not posit a God to start the BB.]}
ETA 8/13/2018 From Page 339 of Physics-calculus by Eugenr Hecht 1996: Gravity potential energy is negative. If the total of all other energy is equal in magnitude, the net energy of the Universe is zero. "It follows such a system could have spontaneously appeared out of 'nothingness', without violating energy conservation."
{ETA 11/13/2018 From the 2010 Book The Void by Frank Close Professor of Theoretical Physics Oxford
Page 152 - According to Quantum Theory Universe could be a huge vacuum fluctuation. If this is so then who is to say that ours is the one and only Universe.
Page 158 “So our best data are consistent with the theory that out large-scale Universe erupted thru inflation.” “There is no reason to believe that our inflationary Universe is, was, a one off event. There could be many other such Universes that have erupted in similar fashion to this but which are beyond our awareness.” The book mentions the Hawking and Hartle model - there is no beginning of the Universe. It simply exists.}
{ETA 1/10/2020 From the Book Astronomy For Dummies by Stephan P. Maran, PHD Fourth Edition 2017 page 325 - Per Quantum Theory the vacuum of space is far from empty. "Tapping into this energy [of the vacuum], theorists suggest, provided the Big Bang with its explosive energy and radiation".}
{ETA 3/31/2019 From Part 3 of Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe By Professor of Astronomy Mark Whittle 2008
Beginning Page 33 - The sum of all energy and matter in the Universe after including gravity energy is roughly zero. The Universe is in a sense empty. Inflation was the mechanism that split 'nothing' into positive matter and negative energy. The book also mentions Our Universe as a random quantum fluctuation from preinflation fields and that other quantum fluctuations may make other Universes.}
{ETA 4/14/2019 From A First Course in General Relativity 2009 by Bernard Schutz Second Edition Page 357 “This [within one Planck time 10^−43 seconds of the Big Bang] is the domain of quantum gravity, and it may well turn out that, when we have a quantum theory of the gravitational interaction, we will find that the universe has a history before what we call the Big Bang.”}
Also see related posts
Genesis and the Big Bang
Proof of God from Thermodynamics
Kalam Cosmological proof of God repudiated by Theology
Kalam Cosmological Proof of God - Premises and Conclusion repudiated
My Posts on Shroeder's book The Science of God - by Gerald Schroeder Chapter 1 thru 4
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