The "why" is not just a philosophical thing, it is a scientific thing. What existed before the big bang? What caused it to happen? How did it happen? Making guesses to those answers are not natural, not observable, and not empirical. Even if you can formulate a hypothesis (however incorrect it is) that at least makes an attempts to rationalize the atheistic view of the early stages of the universe, it doesn't compromise for the evidence weighing against later aspects of the greater atheistic scientific viewpoint (such as biological evolution). Even if you (atheists in general, not you you, Worm) can try to wrap your heads around these important questions, it doesn't invalid the observable, empirical data that mutations create extra genetic information, that radiometric dating is unreliable and inconsistent, that the fossil record is not full of missing links but whole missing chains and the tree of life lacks a trunk, and all the other things that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this greater evolution hypothesis is false and that are constantly ignored and suppressed by so-called "scientists" who are a disgrace to the field.
Really you are trying to tackle three subjects at once: science, theology, and politics. Yes they are often related and have one thing (God) in common, but they all demand three different discussions. You say that you do not deny the possibility of a creator, that is within the realm of science. Then you say that this creator shouldn't be worshipped, which falls within theology. Why shouldn't the creator be worshipped? Doesn't the creator deserve esteem, and what if the creator asks to be worshipped? And then you return to the older topic of politics and its relation to religion (or visa versa). First you need to take in mind that there are different religions. They have different ideas on God(s) and beliefs. Because many people have used bad religions or have abused Christianity is not evidence that the big bang occured. You seem to be grasping at straws here, my good friend.
Science is ongoing. The fact that there are unanswered questions, like holes in the fossil record, does not mean there are no answers. It means scientists have not discovered them. I don't imagine that the universe is wholly explainable now. It may never be. I am comfortable in the uncertainty, because what has been established as true is firm enough. (Evolution has not been debunked, by the way, despite what you claim.) I know nothing about plumbing but I'm reasonably sure that when I turn on the faucet water will flow from the tap.
A Creator is not in the realm of science. If He exists at all, science is in the realm of the Creator. How will we understand Him? Through a cobbled-together book written by a collection of agrarian patriarchs and rag-tag mystics thousands of years ago or modern science? With all its faults, the latter-- and it's not even close. Is the idea that God set the Big Bang in motion so impossible to believe? Is that not more interesting than a snake tempting a naked tart in a forest? Couldn't we find, if we looked for it, just as strong a moral code in a universe created by God through the Big Bang in harmony with observable scientific laws? A more...
natural morality? A more adaptable, complex, and fluid morality, just like nature itself?
(Ssssh. We don't want to wake Nietzsche.)
Why would the Creator deserve esteem? There is no compelling reason for worship. You're making God in your own image, like humans have always done. The irony of your conception of God and mine is that, to the extent that I acknowledge a Creator at all, I conceive of Him as having so much more
mystery than you do. My god is more godlike. But of course God is not as mysterious to you because you have His words-- and, again, this is the stumbling block we will not get past.
I am not confused in my framing of the question as scientific, philosophical, and political. I mentioned politics because that is what drew me into this debate ("God sanctions war"). I am not opposed to personal religious belief, but I think lines should be drawn to keep religion away from the state. I was merely swinging back to an older point.
Nor did I use the mythological character of the great religions as proof of the Big Bang. That is a knight leap of logic I didn't make, and flies in the face of what I have been talking about, namely that our sense of the universe should rest on empirical observations of nature. Didn't I say that? I thought I said that somewhere. The grasping hands are illusory, the straws are yours.
