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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2006
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Claim CE420:

The theory of a big bang has been shaken with unresolvable inconsistencies, such as an unexpectedly uneven distribution of matter in the universe and a need for dark matter. Several astronomers think it is no longer a valid theory.

Source:

Gitt, Werner. 1998. What about the big bang? Creation 20(3): 42-44. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i3/big_bang.asp

Response:

  1. The big bang is supported by a great deal of evidence:


    Note that most of these points are not simply observations that fit with the theory; the big bang theory predicted them.

  2. Inconsistencies are not necessarily unresolvable. The clumpiness of the universe, for example, was resolved by finding unevenness in the CMB. Dark matter has been observed in the effects it has on star and galaxy motions; we simply do not know what it is yet.

    There are still unresolved observations. For example, we do not understand why the expansion of the universe seems to be speeding up. However, the big bang has enough supporting evidence behind it that it is likely that new discoveries will add to it, not overthrow it. For example, inflationary universe theory proposes that the size of the universe increased exponentially when the universe was a fraction of a second old (Guth 1997). It was proposed to explain why the big bang did not create large numbers of magnetic monopoles. It also accounts for the observed flatness of space, and it predicted quantitatively the pattern of unevenness of the CMB. Inflationary theory is a significant addition to big bang theory, but it is an extension of big bang theory, not a replacement.

Links:

Feuerbacher, Björn and Ryan Scranton. 2006. Evidence for the Big Bang. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html

References:

  1. Guth, Alan H., 1997. (see below).

Further Reading:

Ferris, Timothy. 1997. The Whole Shebang. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Guth, Alan H. 1997. The Inflationary Universe. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Harrison, E. R. 2000. Cosmology: The science of the universe. Cambridge University Press.
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created 2004-4-21, modified 2006-1-26