What do you believe about the origin of the earth? As a Christian I believe by faith the creation account since I was not their. I think you can make some argument about different things but ultimately as you said I do not have enough verifiable evidence because I was not an eyewitness. How do you reconcile this concept of seeing firsthand with your belief of origins.
your asking my view of this based on comparative beliefs of your beliefs and the facts of science. Yes this line of dialogue is marginal in this section of the forum, and has been addressed many times in more appropriate sections of the forum, but nonetheless my response nor the facts of science will not change regardless where and when I respond, as a comparison to your beliefs. As far as beliefs go the view of my belief in the Baha'i Faith is the harmony and consistency between science and religious beliefs.
The objections of not being there is not coherent simply based the nature of objective verifiable evidence.
Nothing in science is first hand except for an experiment done in the now, and the experiments and observations in the history of humanity can simply be repeated and the results are always basically the same. We are not there in any way beyond the present moment. Science is based on predictability of processes in the past, and the future, and at present all the evidence known based on consistent and predictive success of the methods of science.
For example: The tree stumps and roots, mud cracks, leaf impressions,worm tracks, and raindrop marks found in the lamella layers in repeated layers of shale found hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth sis not form any different than those observed forming in musd today.
Another important observation throughout the history of the earth is weathering and deposition of the rocks of the earth. We can directly observe this gradual weathering and breakdown over time today as mountains gradually break down and the sediments from these mountains form the river, lake, and ocean deposits gradually over time. We can see evidence of the same gradual weathering and depositions in the rocks for many thousands of feet of cyclic deposits, as well as vast limestone deposits that cannot be formed any other way but gradual carbonate deposition in shallow seas like we observe in seas like around Bermuda, ocean islands and the Great Barrier Reef.
There is absolutely no evidence of any significant change in these natural processes nor time itself are different now than in the past billions of years of earth's history.
You may refer to one of the many threads that have addressed this question in the past, or start a thread to further discuss this.
The subject of this thread is Brahman and monotheism. Second thought I will cut and past this post, and start a thread in Science and Religion, since it is a more appropriate place for this dialogue