Five atheist miracles

There are other aspects of the big bang, the 'mainstream' model of the universe's origin, that are also miraculous. The 'standard model' has a period of very rapid expansion called 'inflation' (which Alan Guth, mentioned above, invented). There is no known cause for the initiation of this supposed expansion, no known cause for it to stop and no physical mechanism for the extremely rapid expansion (many orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light). However, these three associated miracles must have happened or the big bang does not work because of the 'horizon problem'. More magic!

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). This is not magic, because God, who is eternal and omnipotent, is a sufficient cause for the universe. And He can exist eternally (and therefore has no beginning) because He is a non-material entity (God is spirit, as the Bible says in many places).

2.Origin of stars

According to the big bang, the 'only game in town' to explain the origin of stars, there had to have been two phases of star formation. Phase 1 involved the formation of hydrogen/helium stars (which are called Population III stars). Here is the first problem: how do you get gases formed in a rapidly expanding primordial universe to coalesce together to form a critical mass so that there is sufficient gravitational attraction to attract more gas to grow a star? Gases don't tend to come together; they disperse, especially where there is a huge amount of energy (heat). Hey presto! Cosmologists invented 'dark matter', which is invisible undetectable 'stuff' that just happens to generate a lot of gravitational attraction just where it is needed. More magic!

However, we have countless stars - like the sun - that are not just hydrogen and helium, but contain the heavier elements. Phase 2 supposedly comes in here. Exploding stars (supernovas) from phase 1 produced sufficient pressure to force hydrogen and helium together to make new stars that made all the heavier elements (which astronomers call 'metals'), including the elements of which we are made. These stars are called Population I and II stars.

Now here is another problem: how do exploding stars, with matter flying at great speed in all directions, cause stars made of all those new elements to form? There has to be a coming together of the elements, not a flying apart. Pieces hitting one another would bounce off rather than coalesce. Most hypotheses involve multiple supernovas from phase 1 in close proximity, such that sufficient material collided together to form enough of a proto-star with sufficient gravity to overcome the tendency to fly apart and attract more matter and so grow a normal star. However, supernovas are not common events, especially multiple ones at the same time in close proximity. Thus, this scenario requires a huge number of very improbable events to account for the vast numbers of the heavier stars.

This is more magic; miracles without a miracle worker.

God made the sun and the stars on the fourth day of Creation Week. Again, this is not magic or superstition, because God is able to do such things.

3.Origin of life

Astrobiologist Professor Paul Davies said:

How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software … ? Nobody knows … there is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.

Not only must the DNA code be explained (how can a coded information storage system come about without intelligent design?), but the incredible machinery that reads the information and creates the components of life from that information has to be explained as well.

Former hard-nosed English atheist philosopher Antony Flew abandoned atheism/materialism because of the growing evidence for such design in living things. He said:

It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.