I love these topics, but I think a lot of you guys are confused as to what evolution really means. Evolution means change over time, or more specifically, genes mutate in a population from one generation to the next. If you breed plants or animals, or have any basic understanding of biology you know this is undeniably true. Even the big bang can no longer be denied rationally. The pope himself has acknowledged this fact. Still, people will say that God created the Universe in 6 days and made everything looked aged. This would mean carbon dating is wrong.
Instead of the universe being 13.5 billion years old, the first book suggests its only 6,000 - 10,000 years old. But if true, why is the universe so large? Why can we understand what happened all the way up to the big bang mathmatically with 99.999999...999% accuracy? And I'm being kind with that number. So why such a massive amount of galaxies. We have galaxies so far away they will never have an affect on us. Their light won't reach us and we might never be able to reach them unless you believe we can build a worm hole, ala Stargate. And even if that's the case, we talking millions of years in the future. The truth is, we could exist just as well if the universe was the size of the local group.
So this argument really doesn't hold. There is simply to much stuff that doesn't need to be there.
Here's a quick summery of the facts: In Newton's time, the belief was that the universe exited forever. And this lead scientist to speculate that if the universe had always been around, what was the need for a creator. Our current level of science now allows us to know what occurred down to the 10−43 second (that is a faction of a fraction of a fraction of a second). Before this point, we don't know what happened, but we do know without a doubt that time & space started here. So now scientist don't know what to think of the God equation. Technically there IS room for a creator because we have proof that time had a beginning. The COBE satellite gave us the map that showed us how the early universe looked like. Well sort of, it's actually a heat map because shit was so hot back then. In fact... our modern telescopes can see the edge of the universe. the problem is time. We can clearly see the early universe because the light has reached us. What we are trying to find out is how the universe looks right now. That's a lot harder because it takes billions of years for the light to reach us.
At the earliest point in time that we can measure with absolute proof, there was a mix of matter and antimatter. The balance wasn't 100% perfect and in fact, as soon as these two types of particulars came in contact they destroyed each other. Luckily, the very slight imbalance that existed at the sub-atomic level allowed matter to win. At 10−35 second the universe cooled enough for quarks and antiquarks to from. It takes at least three quarks (top, bottom, and strange) for form a nucleolus, which give rise to atoms. At 1 second, quarks began binding and we got protons and neutrons. The first atoms were hydrogen and helium.
3 minutes after the big bag matter and radiation came together to form stable nuclei. At this point, things were pretty boring and it stood this way for about 300,000 years. In this era, think of the universe as being a giant mist of hydrogen, helium, lithium, and raw energy (light). At 1,000 million years the clouds forms little pockets. The bits of matter started to clump together and we got our first stars. These were mega stars like Eta Carinae and the Pistol Stars, which didn't live very long.
When the first generation stars died, they exploded. Some went super nova while others turned into super massive black holes. This had a giant blender affect, mixing old energy with new energy to form heavier elements.
At 15,000 million years the first galaxies formed around the super massive black holes. From here it was only a matter of time before heavy elements such as iron and water formed. These led to rocks, which clustered together to form planets, and one day our own planet was made and life developed on it on. We don't know how life developed. We don't even have a solid theory, only a few ideas. But once life did take fold, we noticed a trend. Micro life developed first, then plants, then animals, and eventually us. You can call this the work of God if it makes you feel nice and fuzzy, but in science we call this Evolution. But evolution, natural selection, etc are just labels we give things.
If you want to really understand how we came to be, pick up Stephen Hawkings' book, A Brief History of Time. If you go to Borders, you might be able to find his illustrated version for $9.99, which is actually two books in one: a brief histor of time and his later book, The Universe in a Nutshell. If you buy the books separately it will cost you over $70.
