Where did the universe come from? Atheistic origin science has no answer.

[Esquilax]

Maybe this theory will intrigue Snowy to check it out.

Snowball Earth[edit]
Main article: Snowball Earth
In the late Neoproterozoic (extending into the early Ediacaran period), the Earth suffered massive glaciations in which most of its surface was covered by ice. This may have caused a mass extinction, creating a genetic bottleneck; the resulting diversification may have given rise to the Ediacara biota, which appears soon after the last "Snowball Earth" episode.[122] However, the snowball episodes occurred a long time before the start of the Cambrian, and it is hard to see how so much diversity could have been caused by even a series of bottlenecks;[42] the cold periods may even have delayed the evolution of large size organisms.

Who wants to bet that Snowy will dismiss the entire thing based on the presence of the words "may have" in the quote?

[Homeless Nutter]

Do christians really see things as a two horse race between evolution and genesis? Is their world really that simple? Sure seems that way to me.

I think their world view is way simpler - "My way (the Bible), or the highway (anything and everything, that's not the Bible)". They don't study, or follow modern science. They can't tell one scientific theory from another. They're not trying to convince non-christians, or win arguments. They just want to prove to themselves, their fellow believers and their god, that they're really devout and deserving to be in paradise.

You can't expect junkies to actually know what they're fighting against - all they've ever known is junk, all they want is the feeling junk gives them and everything that stands between them and junk is just one big "enemy".

[robvalue]

Yeah I know all that, I read the article and studied it carefully. But wouldn't an explosion, like, kill things not evolve them? Why don't badgers give birth to sharks?

[/science scares me]

[Cyberman]

"Yeah, you'd think that all those aliens living on other planets at the time of the big bang would have been killed in the blast."
http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=56968

[robvalue]

Did someone actually write that? Or is that a spoof site or something?

[Cyberman]

It's a fine distinction sometimes. FSTDT - Fundies Say The Darndest Things - is a repository of the weirdest, the wackiest and the worryingly unhinged brainfarts in the moron world. This particular specimen comes from Rapture Ready, which is especially low wattage even by fundie standards.

[downbeatplumb]

http://atheistforums.org/thread-31488.html

That thread is on a new hypothesis that the universe is eternal.

Seemed relevant to link it here.

[snowtracks]

Darwin had hoped later fossil discoveries would eventually eliminate what he regarded as the one outstanding anomaly associated with theory. Ref: Origin of Species, page 307 (I have it on E-book as that). The anomaly he was referring to was the Cambrian Period - (ref. Burgess Shale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale) - wherein appeared in the fossil records was ’disparity’ (major differences in form, phyla level) without prior ’diversity’ (minor diff. among organisms, species level ).
The future fossil evidence he had hope was never realized. Been 150 years old man, time to call it a day.

Except that we have plenty of explanation of the Cambrian period, both in fossils, and in other areas. They're here, though I doubt you'll even bother to click the link. For example, oxygen levels- which have a positive correlation with diversity in Eukaryotic life- rose just prior to, and during the Cambrian period, due to reaching a saturation point that allowed it to exist as a gas. Additionally, sufficient ozone to protect against incoming UV light formed around that time too; you don't think that those two factors, both of which are correlated with increased diversity among biological organisms, might have contributed toward the increased diversity among biological organisms in the Cambrian period?

Just pretending there's no explanation for this is lying, Snowy. Not that this is a surprise from you, at this point; unthinking scrabbling to defend the indefensible via arguments from ignorance is your stock in trade.

Oxygen level - This is one of 3 main factors to explain why the Cambrian event (& Avalon which brought about the ediacara [sponges & jellyfish] ) couldn’t have occurred earlier. Only through billion of years of photosynthetic activity could the earth’s atmosphere and oceans build up sufficient oxygen to support life which transpired in day 4 (biblical Hebrew contains only about 3000 words, consequently, most nouns possess multiple ‘literal definitions’. ‘Day’ has 4 one of which is ‘a long but finite time period’.)
Day 5 - Sea animals & specialized land animals. Explosive speciation. For the first approx. 85% of life’s history on earth, there were no creatures we would refer to as animals. Then suddenly swarms of diverse sea animals emerged with for the first time sporting appendeges, limbs, skeltons, specialized organs, none related to the ediacaras. This sudden appearance is acknowledge as a challenge to the macro-evolutionary model. Ref: Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, http://terebess.hu/keletkultinfo/The_Bli...hmaker.pdf - "For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history".
Since then, in the last ½ billion years, only five or six new phyla have appeared which is not what would be expected from a naturalistic perspective.
Next, day 7 - the final act for now.
---------
The snowball event before Cambrian would have been deleterious to the evolutionary modeling.

[Whateverist]

The snowball event before Cambrian would have been deleterious to the evolutionary modeling.

Tut tut. Modeling? I'm aware of no modeling going on. Aren't we all just a little curious about what came before? We are theorizing. Obviously, barring a Twilight Zone worthy alternative, we have to assume a natural origin.

Even if you want to shoe horn in a place for a creator god, wouldn't His constant fiddling indicate a level of incompetence incompatible with His alleged omni powers? If He really were all that, shouldn't He have been able to fire off a big bang which would have netted life on earth leading to life as we know it - without any further meddling? What reason have you to think otherwise short of resorting to that opening book of the OT?

[Esquilax]

Oxygen level - This is one of 3 main factors to explain why the Cambrian event (& Avalon which brought about the ediacara [sponges & jellyfish] ) couldn’t have occurred earlier. Only through billion of years of photosynthetic activity could the earth’s atmosphere and oceans build up sufficient oxygen to support life which transpired in day 4 (biblical Hebrew contains only about 3000 words, consequently, most nouns possess multiple ‘literal definitions’. ‘Day’ has 4 one of which is ‘a long but finite time period’.)
Day 5 - Sea animals & specialized land animals. Explosive speciation. For the first approx. 85% of life’s history on earth, there were no creatures we would refer to as animals. Then suddenly swarms of diverse sea animals emerged with for the first time sporting appendeges, limbs, skeltons, specialized organs, none related to the ediacaras. This sudden appearance is acknowledge as a challenge to the macro-evolutionary model. Ref: Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, http://terebess.hu/keletkultinfo/The_Bli...hmaker.pdf - "For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history".
Since then, in the last ½ billion years, only five or six new phyla have appeared which is not what would be expected from a naturalistic perspective.
Next, day 7 - the final act for now.
---------
The snowball event before Cambrian would have been deleterious to the evolutionary modeling.

Why do you think just asserting things and co-opting real science by fiat is okay? I always predict what you're going to do next, and somehow you manage to confound even my low standards for you at every turn. It's like you're in a race to the bottom against yourself.