I'm still not convinced it makes sense to speak of something happening outside natural laws when there were no natural laws. But I'll tell you why I'm so reluctant to use that term: some people here like to play definition games with words like "faith" and "theory," conflating two senses of the word to try and say "gotcha." I don't want to get into a position where I acknowledge the big bang was "super-natural" by your definition, and then have someone say "you already said science dealt with the supernatural, so why does it ignore God?" I'm not saying you have that intention, but I'd rather just agree that the big bang happened outside currently known natural laws, and leave it at that.
So you're saying that the big bang brought about gravity?
In any sense meaningful to us, yes.
Do you ever wonder where the source substance for the big bang came from?
Nope. And as with "natural laws," I'm not sure "source substance" has any real meaning. But I'd have to ask a physicist.
What about the drastic gap between the intelligence of the human and his next closest living non-human ancestor? Wouldn't you expect there to be some intermediate, if evolution is true?
Not necessarily. Maybe we killed off or outcompeted any species that had that potential, like the Neanderthals. Maybe there's no survival advantage in being smarter than chimps until you're as much smarter as we are. Besides, the chimp is intermediate between us and the next smartest ape--how fine-grained a progression do you want? How do you know how fine-grained it should be?
with the number of generations that would have been required plus the number of different branches there were, we should be seeing enormous numbers of fossils
I don't think so. Think of all the people that have ever lived--current estimates run around 100 billion. Shouldn't we be up to our necks in old bones by this point? Even just considering historical times, they estimate 300 million people were alive in the year zero. Do we have 300 million skeletons from that time? No, because most dead things get eaten and decay--that anything survives even a few hundred years takes luck or protective measures.
How would you rate your certainty that the hypotheses of "Amoeba to man" is correct?
I would say that I have nearly 100 percent confidence in the theory.
Understood. But the fact is that the big bang is impossible, and as far as we know, was always impossible. We have no evidence that it was ever possible. And saying that "The big bang is natural process because at the time it happened, the laws of nature didn't exist" is no more absurd then saying that "God created the universe, but that it's perfectly scientific because at the time the laws of nature didn't yet exist." And to believe not only that something came from nothing, but that everything came from nothing, without evidence that it's even possible or ever was, just requires a lot of hope in things yet unseen.
Nope. And as with "natural laws," I'm not sure "source substance" has any real meaning. But I'd have to ask a physicist.
My apologies, I meant "Singularity" which is described as being about the size of a dime and that from which our universe was born.
I don't think so. Think of all the people that have ever lived--current estimates run around 100 billion. Shouldn't we be up to our necks in old bones by this point? Even just considering historical times, they estimate 300 million people were alive in the year zero.
According to this the earth has about 57.5 square miles of land. According to google calculator 57,500,000 (square miles) = 36,800,000,000 acres.
This means that the world-wide average is 2.72 dead people per acre. Now of course there are grave sites which have hundreds of people's worth of remains, and other areas that don't have any. So for every acre that has 28 buried, that's 9 more acres that don't have a single buried. And by the way, we do run across bones every once in a while. See this article where hundreds of bones were unearthed for a construction project. Nobody knew they were their, but of course when they were unearthed, the nearest Indian tribe claimed them to be their anscestors, and it became quite an ordeal. The fact is that even from the past few thousand years, there are lots and lots of bones in the ground -- it's just that they're nothing new so we don't hear much about them. (and we try to not dig them up)
Do we have 300 million skeletons from that time? No, because most dead things get eaten and decay--that anything survives even a few hundred years takes luck or protective measures.
You're comparing the skeletons from a few thousand years as compared to millions of years. It certainly is true that many remains get eaten leaving only the bones, strewn all over. But buried bones really last quite well. And it's not that we haven't found a lot of bones, it's that we haven't found very many intermediate species, compared to all the ones that must have existed.
-Jesse