TO NON-FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS, WHEN I SAY OUR UNIVERSE HAPPENED BY CHANCE, YOU ARE CERTAINLY WELCOME TO SAY IT WAS GOD-GUIDED.

Suppose two people are telling you about a technical subject. One has never studied the subject, and the other one has. Which one would you believe?

No one I know has the interest I have in the origin and structure of the universe. Since I have spent over 30 years reading the latest developments in this area, I am more qualified than any one I know to be able to say whether or not the universe could have happened by chance.

Here is my bottom line, coming from a retired guy who was brought up as a Christian fundamentalist, went to Sunday School up through high school, became fascinated with Einstein's Relativity at age 17, majored in physics in college, and spent a lifetime studying the scientific origin of everything.

I AM SO ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED THAT OUR UNIVERSE HAPPENED BY CHANCE THAT I WOULD STAKE MY LIFE ON IT, EVEN IF IT MEANT THE MOST HORRIBLE DEATH IMAGINABLE. (signed) James D. Hartsell, Oct. 10, 2005.

The above is now my response when people say "okay, so what was there before the Big Bang?". Like I'm able to explain zero time & space, a Higgs field, false vacuum, quantum tunneling, Inflation Theory, infinite densities, and bubble universes in a few minutes to someone who would have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't need to convince anyone. I'm satisfied with what I know. I just don't like being told I "don't get it" by someone who didn't even take high school physics.

I read a lot of creationist arguments against scientific facts. They sound very convincing to people who have not studied the subject. These arguments make no sense to experts in the field.

In the October 2006 issue of Astronomy magazine, physicist Henry Tye said "So much effort has been put into string theory, yet some people say it's not physics, because after 20 years, we still can't make a testable prediction".
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT SEPARATES CREATIONISM FROM SCIENCE.
THIS IS WHY YOU CAN'T INCLUDE CREATIONISM IN SCIENCE CLASS.
CREATIONISM IS NOT A SCIENCE BECAUSE YOU CANNOT TEST IT.

Christian fundamentalists act as if Science is a conspiracy against God. Science is "what is", what we can see right in front of us, what we can measure, calculate, make theoretical predictions, and test.

Time and time again, theoretical physicists, through mathematics, have come up with an explanation for a phenomenon in the universe, and made theoretical preditions out of their mathematics that such-and-such should be observable. Later it is challenged by other physicists and found to be true, both mathematically and observationally. The grand master was Einstein, who predicted through mathematics that the universe was expanding, that stars and galaxies could bend light rays, that there are black holes, that at the speed of light mass is infinite, that gravitational waves are the ripple of the Big Bang & collapsed stars, etc. All of this has been proven by observation or experiment, and now thoroughly accepted in the scientific community.

To say that the universe was created "in a flash" by a spiritual being, or to say that the universe is 6,000 years old, is to say that the laws of physics are wrong, that mainstream astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists are wrong. It is to say that Einstein was wrong. It is to say that mathematics is wrong.

Read this:
"Zero field is the natural state in the absence of charged particles. The Standard Model requires (mathematically) that for a Higgs field, the lowest energy occurs when it has a specific non-zero value."
I thoroughly understand and appreciate what this means regarding the probable origin of the universe. If you don't, you are not qualified to denounce the universe happening by chance. To declare something one way or another, you must know something about both sides.

For people who tell me that many scientists believe in creationism:
There are many areas of science that have little or nothing to do with the origin of things, like chemistry, molecular biology, meteorology, some specialties in physics, etc. Just because someone is a scientist, it doesn't mean they have intuitive theoretical thought about the origin of the universe.

I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO FIND A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST WHO BELIEVES IN CREATIONISM.

I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO FIND AN ASTRONOMER, GEOLOGIST, OR PALEONTOLOGIST WHO BELIEVES THE UNIVERSE IS 6,000 YEARS OLD.

And yes, I know about Barry Setterfield and his "The Atomic Constants, Light, and Time". He claims the reason stars seem to be more than 6,000 light-years away is that in the beginning, light traveled 10 million times faster than now, and has been slowing down. So, Setterfield, who didn't finish his first year of physics in college, is saying that Albert Einstein, all mainstream Ph.D. astrophysicists, and the universally accepted laws of physics are wrong.

How I got this way:
I was born with "extreme" curiosity. An accident of nature, or God created me like this? In my lifetime I had to understand why time exists, where mass (weight) comes from, how you can get something (the universe) from nothing, and why the universe formed. In my early 20's I still had sort of a belief there was a God. In fact, at age 22 I played the organ in church, and attended regularly. I was raised a Protestant, but became a Catholic because of their dignified reverence in church, and how they took the Old Testament only casually. At age 26 I graduated from college with a B.S. degree in Mathematics (but was a physic major the whole time). Eventually contradictions between science and religion were becoming a serious problem for me. If I was going to really and truly believe in God, and be active in the church, I had to know. I could not be satisfied with "it's too complicated - God must have created it". About the age of 33 I decided to see if the universe and life COULD HAVE happened by chance. I WANTED for there to be a God, and to have that feeling of someone watching over me. For several years I read every issue of Scientific American cover to cover. This is a technical magazine designed for college students in science, or at least it was at that time. I re-read up to three times the articles on matter, the universe, molecular biology, evolutionary steps, etc. I also read, re-read and compared Mathew, Mark, Luke and John regarding the resurrection of Jesus, since without that, Christianity would not have happened. By age 40 I was truly convinced that the universe and life came about by chance. I no longer needed for there to be a God to explain the universe and life. To say it was created by a supernatural being is to add another layer of incredibility on top of something already incredible enough.

Read my conclusion about the resurrection below.

Since I am frequently asked "What about Jesus and his resurrection?", I need to add here my thoughts on it.

The Bible is the only written reference for the Christian religion. It has to serve all humanity for all time. But, the single most important detail that should be in the Bible is not there. There is no mention of anyone seeing the body of Jesus in the tomb the morning after the crucifixion.

Without the resurrection there would be no Christian religion.

The Bible mentions there were many false messiahs performing miracles. Jewish tradition tells of some 40 false messiahs who were executed. For Jesus, it worked. But, since Pilate was surprised Jesus died so soon, and Jesus was taken down early because of the Sabbath, and there was no time for proper embalming, what if he didn't actually die? What if Joseph of Arimathea found Jesus was still alive? They both already knew the prophecies. What if they thought this was the way it was supposed to happen, and acted accordingly? Would not the outcome have been the same?