Mister_T said:
1)Last time I checked, it was a scientific law that matter can neither be created or destroyed.
Actually, the theory that the universe's age is finite doesn't require for matter to arise from nothingness...possibly by definition. The "beginning of time" is postulated to be exactly that: the very beginning. There is no "before" if we are taking for granted that time has an absolute beginning. The universe, then, can be postulated to have had exactly as much energy in it at the beginning of time as it has presently. It would have been a whole universe packed into a singularity the size of a coin. Zero entropy.
However, one could also reject the theory that the universe is of finite age and postulate that its age is infinite. Stephen Hawking would have a conniption, but he could not deny that it's plausible under the assumption that his data is very faulty or incomplete. In fact, any scientist must acknowledge that his data may be faulty and take it for granted that he can only do his best to put one presumed fact together with another.
The problem with what you're saying is that we don't have a reliable basis for it. You can have a perfectly fine theory, but, without a basis in fact, it just doesn't amount to anything, even if it is plausible. Plausibility does not equate to evidence. There are a hundred million perfectly plausible claims that I could make, given my position. For example, I could posit the theory that you are secretly a transexual and have fantasies of playing strip poker with Newt Gingrich. There is no reason for me to consider this implausible. I could even calculate the probability of it based upon an estimation of the number of closet transexuals in the continental US in proportion to the population, another estimation of how likely one is to have a crush on Newt Gingrich, yet another estimation as to how likely one is to have a strip poker fetish, and a plausible theory as to how all of these variables would interact. What keeps this from being a fifty percent chance is that there are so many other types of people in the US. I could come up with hundreds of other plausible theories as to who you really are and what sort of person you are. Just because I cannot positively eliminate the possibility that you are a closet transexual who daydreams of playing strip poker with Newt Gingrich doesn't mean that my friends wouldn't consider me an outright moron for putting faith in the conclusion.
Introspection has its limits. We must know whether we are speaking in terms of introspection, under which we needn't rely upon facts, or science, in which facts are our bread and butter. We must be speaking in the same terms in order to effectively communicate and have a meaningful conversation on the subject.
If that doesn't float your boat, take it up with the authors.
In other words, you're just going by religious dogma. That's not quite as cheap as a folk theory, given that purportedly true events are described within, but what you just stated is the crux of the problem. The narrators cannot be held accountable for what they say because they died thousands of years ago. Without accountability, you have nothing of much worth.
