[TheRealThing]

The scientists of Old School Hound's mention and the objects of his affection,  Sagan and the rest, all base their reason for life on the lie that God does not exist. Darwin's theory is a total sham in that the theory is a cheat. A marksman who starts off by approaching the target to place the bullet in the bullseye, and then walks back to the firing line to pick up his pistol and fake the shot in reverse order, will never miss. Darwin assumed all complex life forms evolved from lower life forms in an endless procession of forward leaps he referred to as adaptations, over an impossibly long period of time. He then proceeded to invent the evidence he needed to validate his assumption using known science combined with faked fossil finds. Darwin's work like all the rest, was not a journey to the truth, it was rather a journey to a lie. The backstory has developed over time to include the notion that all life started off as amino acids stringing themselves together into dna strands in a puddle of goo.

As to the other theories-- I do accept the idea that time did not start until the formation of the universe. I do not accept the idea that everything that is, are just chips off the old block. If there was nothing according to Sagan et-al, nothing means no light, not so much as one degree of temperature, no movement, no relativism or space between objects that did not yet exist, no energy of any kind just the void of space. Then from where did the rock that produced the big bang come? And how did it explode if there were no forces of nature yet in existence to cause the explosion?

God created the elements of the universe by merely speaking them into existence. And don't forget, God is not a fleshly being, He is spirit. We have no idea of the things that existed prior to the creation when the countdown was started, ticking down the days of men.

John 4:24 
"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

1Cor 2: 14
"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

All we know is what we see around us. Those things are governed by the power of God, the natural laws observed by the scientists of this world in other words. Those laws are all natural men know, they cannot know the things of God and ought not make pronouncements about God which run contrary to His Word.

It takes every bit as much faith, even more so, to buy into something as ludicrous as an exploding rock being the beginning of all things, than to believe in God, Whom gives men the faith to believe in Him in the form of a gift.