Here are four ideas that were put forward by theists in the past:

1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

2. God created man as a unique creature, different from all other forms
of life because he was made in God's image.

3. Man's evil brought about God's judgement in the form of a worldwide
flood that fully explains the existence of the geologic column.

4. The universe and the life within it were created less than 10,000
years ago.


Naturalism, which is defined as the doctrine that the world can be
understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or
supernatural explanations, has since gone on to prove scientifically that
at least two of the above ideas are partially or completely wrong. The
fourth idea, that the universe and the life within it were created less
than ten thousand years ago, is completely wrong in light of the evidence
that the universe is at least 15-30 billion years old and that life has
been on this planet for millions of years. The third idea, that God
initiated a worldwide flood that was the cause of the geologic column we
see today, is at least partially wrong in light of the evidence that
sections of the geologic column predate any reasonable time period in
which such a flood might have occured. This doesn't rule out a flood, but
it does rule out that the flood created the entire geologic column. But
what of the other two ideas theists have long endorsed?

The first idea, that God created the universe, was always rejected by
atheists who insisted that there was no deity and that the universe had
always been in existence without having a beginning nor an ending. That
the universe was eternal allowed for an infinite amount of time for
evolution to have occured through blind time and chance because if you're
dealing with something that is forever, then even the slightest chance
that an unlikely event might occur becomes a possiblity if it can be
demonstrated that such an event can happen through natural means. The
eternal state of the universe aided the atheist in his belief that there
was no deity because it ruled out the idea of a beginning of the universe
and the religious implications for such a beginning. But it also
presented the atheist with a dilemma that any person with a belief in the
existence of a deity could immediately see, the dilemma being how the
universe could exist without a cause when nothing within that universe
happens without a cause.

It is thus remarkable that when the evidence for the big bang began to
make itself known through scientific observation and experimentation, the
atheists began to panic as they watched the believers in a deity start
preparing plates of crow for them to eat. Despite their insistence that
their atheism was not a faith nor a belief, their reaction to the
religious implications of the big bang theory were remarkably similar to
that of the creationists when Charles Darwin wrote 'The Origin Of
Species.' Just as the creationists went into denial and then began to
look for ludicrous ways that some of the evidence for change could be
dismissed, the atheists also went into denial over what the big bang
seemed to suggest and then began looking for equally ludicrous ways to
explain away the evidence so that it could be viewed as something other
than a justification for believing in a deity. No less of a figure than
Albert Einstein was so shocked by what his own equations told him that he
introduced a "fudge factor" to eliminate the implications of his own
evidence. Sir Fred Hoyle, who coined the term "the Big Bang," also sought
to avoid the implications of the evidence by coming up with the steady
state theory. And consider the harsh criticism received by agnostic
Robert Jastrow when he wrote the book 'God And The Astronomers' and
explained that the evidence for the big bang seemed to justify the
theologians' belief in a deity. If atheism is not a faith, then why the
sudden rush to deny, explain away, and attack?