An honest answer for a newbie, please.

[QUOTE][B]Evolutionary scientists acknowledges with the Big Bang theory that a beginning is needed. Everything that is physical and tangible must have a start.[/QUOTE][/B]Actually that isn't necessarily so. The late astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (*ahem*) spent most of his career pushing a steady-state universe with no beginning and no end. The data was not on his side, of course, but to claim that the universe *had* to have a beginning is begging the question. [QUOTE][B]The Big Bang (that didn't happen) was pure energy without any means of harnessing the energy.[/QUOTE][/B]Matter is energy, energy and matter are interchangeable. In fact virtual particles are spontaneously created out of energy in the vacuum every day. This is the Casimir Effect, you might look into it.The BB leads directly to matter and that leads directly to hydrogen atoms which leads directly to stars and formation of heavy elements through fusion. A non-natural method of harnessing that energy isn't needed any more than we have to build machines to make a thunderstorm (converting the thermal energy of air and the latent heat of water vapor into rain, wind, and lightning) it can happen spontaneously in nature. [QUOTE][B]To better exemplify this, think of atomic energy. Radioactive material, such as uranium, is the energy needed to create atomic bombs, electricity, etc... But unless the uranium (energy), is put into a useful (or not so useful!) system, it is worthless.[/QUOTE][/B]Nope, simple decay will heat the surroundings spontaneously. If radiation-tolerant microbes were around they could live off the heat.
In fact, this system on a global scale is what powers plate tectonics and volcanism, which is an essential element in keeping us alive even though those the phenomena all appear to be completely "natural".The point is that thermodynamics does not account for any sort of "harnessing". The best our technology does is take something that could happen anyway and make it more efficient. The mountain of uranium in nature would just be warm for a long time. If we purified it and put it in a reactor we could generate a lot of heat in a small amount of time. Same amount of energy but different timescale and we can use the energy for our purposes. However, in nature, the energy would most likely be "used" for something else, if not just heating the hillsides.By the way, stars are an example of a natural fusion reactor. No design is necessary, you just need a cloud of hydrogen. That's pretty useful, don't you think? Where does most of the energy in our foodchain originate? [QUOTE][B]Without a means of converting it, a mountain of uranium would do us very little good[/QUOTE][/B]Unless, again, it were used in nature by driving plate tectonics. The fact is that energy is "converted" into "useful" (subjective term) forms in nature as well as in human design.

[QUOTE][B]He can only guess, same as you or me.[/QUOTE][/B]I wouldn't challenge him in mathematics. That's one misconception you have, that cosmology is a bunch of brains sitting around "guessing". It isn't, it is a bunch of brains sitting around doing very hard math problems. [QUOTE][B]But why not? It is as hard to go back 15 billion years as it is to go back 15 million years ago.[/QUOTE][/B]We have tons of evidence for what was happening 15 million years ago, and there is no evidence that the very laws of physics were any different then.When we go back 15 billion years our evidence gets very tenuous and then ceases. We can extrapolate expansion back to a very compact region of space but it ends there. We can also simulate conditions shortly after the BB in our highest energy facilities. We can make mathematical models. But direct evidence (and our understanding of physics) ceases entirely at the singularity. [QUOTE][B]It is impossible![/QUOTE][/B]It is not impossible. Geologists have been doing so for years.

[QUOTE][B]You guys keep talking about this ample evidence. Please explain to me what this is.[/QUOTE][/B]Pretty much everything dealing with the ground. We can find out a great deal, it boils down to how much we are allowed to spend. You want to know where creeks were? Ground-penetrating radar can find them. What direction the current was going? Excavate the area and check the pebbles in the channel sediment, they'll be lined up along their axis of least resistance. You want to know how much it rained over Canada fifteen MYA? Check the glacial varves, while you're there also see how big the summer wildfires were over western NA by extracting ash and see the population ratios of grasses on the great plains by consulting a polynologist. Be sure and double-check your results with ice cores from Greenland--there you can find atmospheric samples trapped in the ace, you might check and see how many volcanic eruptions there were, and by measuring isotopes in the ash, you can determine which volcanoes the source came from, not to mention determining things like the CO2 load in the atmosphere. I don't feel like writing a book here, it might be wiser just to check NSF grants instead. [QUOTE][B]'Where did that come from?' [/QUOTE][/B]Maybe it was created. Or maybe it was always there.

I would be skeptical of using a book rather than a pr source.

[QUOTE][B]no, i know it's competitive, even within disciplines... i'm saying that scientists are human too, they bring their own presuppositions to the table... those who believe in macroevolution, for example, know it's not "scientific" (repeatable, falsifiable, etc [/QUOTE][/B]You mean, it's not repeatable in that it cannot be done in a lab. But the sciences of geology, meteorology, astronomy, astrophysics, forensic pathology, and others have the same problems yet they are sciences.It is repeatable in that it happens. Speciation has been observed. Macroevolution is obeserved through fossils...and since there are more fossils out there to be found it is still being tested. It could be falsified if the right kinds of fossils were found...people from the Precambrian for example. Clovis points in a hadrosaur femur. That kind of thing. Yet we don't find those. What we do find is dinosaurs with bird femurs and "human" skeletons with very primitive features. This sort of thing cries out for evolution.The most common argument that is levied in evolution is that not enough transitionals are being found. That's just a very blunt way of saying not all the data is in yet, hardly a serious challenge to the predominant paradigm in biology.

There is only on way that I can trust and that is evidence. Evidence that I can show to other people so that they can examine it also.You are free to believe or not to believe. If there were "evidence" like that that was non-subjective you would not be free to disbelieve.Throughout the NT Jesus is referred to as the "bridegroom". And it's not a shotgun wedding.