I took this from Positive Atheism, specifically from here. This very concisely explains the Inflationary Big Bang theory. I love it, and so should you.
In the words of Cliff Walker:
I think the Inflationary Big Bang model sufficiently explains the existence of the universe. Not only is it so simple that it does not require that we resort to any supernatural explanation, it really has no room for supernatural intervention. The best description of this model, for the popular reader, is Victor J. Stenger's book Not By Design. I interviewed Stenger last year, and posted the transcription of that interview at: http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/stenger1.htm
Stenger explains that as long as the total amount of energy equals zero, singularities such as a positron-electron pair can and will spontaneously manifest themselves out of nothing without violating any of the known laws of physics. The Inflationary Big Bang model posits that a singularity along these lines appeared within a total vacuum (a "true vacuum") and at that point sought to fill that vacuum. It was this act of trying to fill the vacuum which explains the "explosion" we hear about. Whenever scientists have tried to determine the total amount of energy (matter plus anti-matter) they have come very close to determining that the universe contains zero energy. Thus, no energy went into creating the universe; rather, no energy was needed to create the universe. There was nothing for a god to do, nothing that a god would have needed to do to get to where we are today.
The imbalance between the amount of matter versus the amount of anti-matter can be explained through Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, that a quantum fluctuation during the early stages of the "explosion" created an imbalance, and that imbalance carried through to become the minuscule amount of matter that we observe today (stars, planets, photons, etc.) For the most part, though, the universe is almost entirely randomness -- chaos. Only very tiny pockets of order can be observed. The fact that the universe is still expanding makes room for this order to form without being entirely assimilated into the entropy predicted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Copyright © 1996-2002, by Cliff Walker