Cube

   
   And that is precisely why you reject it. 
   You should really write that down on a piece of paper, look at it and think about it. You just said it out loud, probably without putting much thought into it, but it really is the root of the issue.

   "I reject a supernatural origin to the Universe because it implies that there is a Creator".

   I'm not trying to put words in your mouth and I know what I put in quotes is not exactly what you said, but it seems to be the bottom line of your point. Am I wrong?

What you're doing is misrepresenting what I posted previously and it's this...

"Of all the 'out there' theories I've read about/ the supernatural  ones seem the least likely, if only because they involve some creator-entity whose origin is never explained"

The vitally important part of that sentence is "whose origin is never explained", which you notably edited out. And saying some theory seems least likely is not the same as saying it's rejected out of hand.

Paraphrasing someone else's stated opinion is fine but you are supposed to retain as much of the original meaning as possible but what you did is simple distortion, which says it all!

Imagine that you put 10$ in a box. And then you put in $1 the next day. Will there be $11 in the box the next day?

Yes, provide nobody's tampered with it. That is why science cannot explain a creator. The creator must be outside of what He (or, if you want to be contrary, She) has created.

   No, it's not "simple distortion" and it doesn't "say it all". I politely asked you if I was accurately describing your point, so there was no effort to distort. It seemed to me that I was accurately presenting your original meaning and then I actually asked for correction if I was wrong.

   But to your other point, you cannot explain the supernatural by natural means. That's kinda baked into the definition.

   Does that mean that you must forever reject it?

The money in the box analogy isn't really working for me but it isn't the role of science to try to explain anything other than what can be observed and measured. It's a process of understanding how natural systems work.

The 'creator' you refer to falls more under the heading of mataphysics I believe?

Don't you ever allow for the fact that the 'supernatural' may be a redundant term?

It's not unreasonable to speculate that whatever caused the Universe to emerge must itself be natural as we understand the term. It's quite difficult to grasp how some cause described as utterly separate from the natural can possibly affect anything that is natural.

   I don't think anyone here is saying we can "grasp" it.

   There has to be something that had no beginning. If you spend a little time thinking about it you will necessarily come to that conclusion. 
   Everything that we can see or observe or ever see or observe necessarily came from the unseen and unobservable.

With respect, any notion about the beginning is going to be supernatural, and there isn't anything by anyone on the table anywhere in any field of study that has suggested how everything began without exception; that is purely what we would call natural.

Let's hear some.

Not true. If what caused our Universe to emerge accords with known physical laws, it will be a natural cause, not a supernatural one.

The research that's being done into this question assumes that and what theories exist to explain the process are constrained by natural laws.

If you are sincere about making yourself better informed on these issues then you can find plenty of information online and suitable searches will steer you towards them. I'd recommend university websites and other educational sources.

This is particularly difficult to grasp as well but if time can be said to be a dimension of our four-dimensional Universe, then time began only at the earliest point of the Big Bang.

The implication of that would be that time has no relevance 'before' it and then terms such as 'beginning' no longer have relevance.

Time is not a dimension in the terms we are talking about. In the context of this discussion time is only a concept.

I would even be happy to consider a theory that relies purely on natural resources alone. Suggesting simply because they want one doesn’t mean anything towards what happened, that means they don’t look at all possibilities.

I read from a variety of sources.

I think most physicists would take a different position!

Tell them I said they're wrong. That should carry a lot of weight.

Then you should now have the answers you asked for?

Really you have something that you can point to that can give a natural explanation please even a high level I would like to hear it.

I thought you were questioning the basis for the conclusions Cosmologists have reached regarding the age of the Universe and Biologists on the timescale of evolution?

There's good factual information out there on the evidential grounds for believing these conclusions, if only people would make the smallest effort to educate themselves.