there is no dating unit you can use. there is a lot of christians out there who believe in millions of years. i am not saying they are not christian. there is an inconsistency with what the bible teaches. if you believe in millions of years he has got death and bloodshed, suffering, disease because that is what you see in the fossil record. death is the result of man's sin. the bible makes it clear. there's the sacrifice pointing toward what happened with jesus christ. if you believe in millions of years as a christian in the fossil record there is evidence of animals eating each other.

the bible says in the beginning man and animals were vegetarian. the bible says -- there are fossilized torrence in the record. torrents came after the curse. these two things cannot be true at the same time. there is hundreds of dating methods out there. 90% of them contradict billions of years. the point is also stating records are not infallible. i would say that the earth is only 6000 years. there is nothing in astronomy.

and the thing in geology to contradict a belief in a young age for the earth and the universe. a five-minute rebuttal. >> thank you. let me start at the beginning. when you find a 45 million old rock on top of the trees, maybe the rock slid on top. that seems a much more reasonable explanation then it is impossible. as far as dating goes the methods are very reliable. one of the mysteries or interesting things that people in my business especially at the planetary society are interested, why all the asteroids seem to be so close to the same date. in age. 4.5 billion years, 4.6 billion. people expect there is more of a spread. i understand that you take the

bible as written in glacier and english and translate it many times over the last three millennia. it has to be the more accurate, the more reasonable assessment of the natural laws we see. that to me is unsettling, troubling. about the disease thing, have sinners done something wrong -- were they sinners to get diseases? that is an extra ordinary claim that takes me past where i am come to bowl. as far as you cannot observe the past, i have to stop you right there. that is what we do in astronomy. all we can do is look at the past. by the way, you're looking at the past right now. the speed of light bounces off of me and gets to your eyes.

i am delighted to see that people in the back of the room appear that much younger than the people in the front. this idea that you can separate the natural laws of the past from the natural laws that we have now is at the heart of our disagreement. i do not see how we're going to agree with that if you insist that natural laws have changed. it is magical for lack of a better word. i have appreciated magic since i was a kid but it is not what we want in conventional mainstream science. your assertion that all the animals were vegetarians before they got on the arc, that is remarkable. i have not spent a lot of time with lions but i can tell they have got teeth that are not set

up for broccoli. that these animals were vegetarians until this flood. it is something i would ask you to private -- provide proof for. i give you the lions teeth. that is not enough evidence for me. if you ever played telephone, we'd have a secret and whispered to the next person to the next and things often go wrong. it is reasonable to me that instead of lyons being vegetarians on the ark, lions are lyons and the information that you use to create your worldview is not consistent with what i is a reasonable man would expect. i want everybody to consider the

implications of this. if we accept mr. him -- ham's point of view that the bible serves as a science text and he and his followers will interpret that for you. i want you to consider what that means. it means that his word or his interpretation of these other words is somehow to be more respected than what you can observe in nature. what you can find in your backyard and kentucky. a troubling and unsettling point of view and it is one i would like you to address when you come back. as far as the five races that you mentioned, it is kind of the same thing. the five races were claimed by people who were of european descent and they said we are the best, check us out and that turns out to be if you have traveled anywhere or done anything not to be that way. people are much more alike than they are different.

are we supposed to take your word instead of what we can observe in the universe around us? >> would you like to offer your five-minute counter rebuttal? >> the wood was inside in the basalt. that is why i was making that point. i said we had the rules of logic, the uniformity of nature. that makes sense within a biblical worldview anyway. we can go to experimental science because we assume those laws are true and they will be tomorrow. i do want to say this. you said a few times his -- ken ham's view or model.

i had video quotes from some scientists. there are a lot of creation scientists who agree with what we're saying concerning the bible and the bible's account of creation. it is not just my model in that sense. there is so much i could say. as i listened to you i believe you are confusing terms in regard to species and kinds. we are not saying god created species, he created kind. we are not saying species got on the ark, we are saying kind.

there is a number of papers on our website with dogs and this one breach with this one and you can look at the papers around the world and connect them and say that represents one kind. they have predicted probably less than 1000 kinds were on noah's ark. under 2000 animals. there was plenty of room on the ark. a lot of what you were saying was illustrating my point. you were talking about tree rings and ice layers and kangaroos getting to australia and all sorts of things. we are talking about the past. we did not see those tree rings forming. if you assume one layer a year to much it is like the dating method. you are assuming things in regard to the past that are not necessarily true.

in regard to lions and teeth. most bears are primarily vegetarian. the panda that has sharp teeth. it looks like a savage little creature and it rips into fruit. just because it has sharp teeth doesn't mean that it is a mediator. the flood was a catastrophic event. why would you say noah was not skilled?

i did not meet him. it is an evolutionary view of origins because you are thinking that people before us are not as good as us. they were civilizations that existed in the past and we cannot understand how they did some of the things they did. who says noah could not build the big boat? some of their research indicates that some of the wooden boats had three layers into locking so they would not twist like that and leak. we have an exhibit where we have rebuilt one percent of the ark to scale and shows three interlocking layers like that. concerning the speed of light, i am sure you are aware of the horizon problem. that is from a big bang perspective. even the secularists have a problem of getting light and radiation out to the universe to exchange with the rest of the universe. even background radiation.

15 billion years, they can only get it about half way and that is why they have inflation theories which means everyone has a problem concerning the light issue. people do not understand that we have some models on our website to help explain those sorts of things. >> your counter rebuttal. >> i am completely unsatisfied. you did not in my view address fundamental questions. 680,000 years of snow ice layers which require winter-summer cycles for let's say you have 2000 kinds instead of seven, that makes the problem even more extraordinary. multiplying 11 by 3.5. we get to 35, 40 species every day that we do not see. they are not extent. we are losing species due to mostly human activity and loss of habitat. as far as know of being an

extraordinary shipwright, my family spend their whole life learning to make ships. it is very reasonable perhaps to you that noah had superpowers and was able to build this extraordinary craft with seven family members but to me it is not reasonable. by the way: the fundamental thing we disagree on is this nature of what you can prove to yourself. this is to say when people make assumptions based on radiometric data, when they make assumptions about the expanding universe, when they make assumptions about the rate at which genes change in populations of act. bacteria. laboratory growth media, they're

making assumptions based on previous experience. they are not coming out of whole cloth. next time you have a chance to speak, i encourage you to explain to us why we should accept your word for it that natural law changed 4000 years ago completely and there is no record of it. there are pyramid s that are older than that. there are human populations that are far older than that. with traditions that go back farther than that and it is not reasonable that everything changed for thousand years ago. by everything i mean the species, the surface of the earth, the stars in the sky, and the relationship of all the other living things on earth to humans. it is not reasonable to me that everything changed like that. another thing i would very much appreciate you addressing mode there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious and i respect that. people get tremendous community and comfort and nurture and support from their religious

fellows in their communities and faves and churches. they do not accept your point of view. there are christians who do not accept that the earth could be this extraordinarily young age because of all the evidence around them. what is to become of them? in your view? this thing started, as i understand it, based on the old testament. when you bring in i am not a theologian, when you bring in the new testament, it is and that a little out-of-the-box? i am looking for explanations of the creation of the world as we know it. based on what i am going to call science. not historical science, not observational science. things that each of us can do akin to what we do. we try to out guess the characters on murder mystery

shows or "crime scene investigation" especially. what is to become of all those people who do not see it your way? for us in the scientific community, i remind you that when we find an idea that is not tenable, it does not work, it does not fly, it does not hold water, whatever it him you would like to embrace, we throw it away. we are delighted. if you can find a fossil that is between the layers, bring it on. if you could show that the microwave background radiation is not a result of the big bang, come on. writer paper, tear it up. your view that we are supposed to take your word for this book written centuries ago, translated into american english is somehow more important than what i can see with my own eyes is next ordinary claim. for those watching online

especially i want to remind you that we need scientists and especially engineers for the future. engineers use science to solve problems and make things. we need these people so the u.s. can continue to innovate and be a world reader. we need innovation and that needs science education. thank you. >> thank you both. we are going to get things moving faster. i think they might be quite interesting. questions and answers submitted by our audience. we handed out these cards to everyone. i shuffled them in the back and i dropped a lot of them and skip them up again and to view summary sorting through them here he was to get a pile for each so we can alternate reasonably between them. the reason i will skip over one if i cannot read it or if it is a question i do not know how to read because it does not seem to

make sense. what is going to happen is we will go back and forth between mr. nye and mr. ham. the other will have one minute to answer the question. mr. ham, you have been a first. mr. nye, you can stand by. how does creationism account for celestial bodies moving farther apart and what function does that serve in the grand design? >> when it comes to looking at the universe, we believe that in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth and creationist astronomers say you can observe the uninverse expanding.

he it says he stretches out the heavens and seems to indicate that there is an expansion of the universe. we would say yeah, you can observe that in that fits with observational science. i cannot answer that question. the bible says god made the heavens for his glory and that is why he made the stars that we see out there. it is to tell us how great he is. one of our programs looks at this when you see how large the universe is and it shows us how great god is. how big he is and he is and all-powerful god and infinite, all-knowing god who created the universe to show us his power.

that is remarkable as it says on the fourth day of creation, he made the stars also. so much like by the way. he is an all powerful god. he made the stars and made them show us how great he is. the more they understand what that means is god is all-powerful, infinite, you realize how small we are and realize he would consider this planet is so significant that he created human beings here. that is what i would say when i see the universe as it is. >> one minute. and your response? >> there is a question that troubles us all from the time we are youngest and first able to think. that is where did we come from? where did i come from? this question is so compelling that we have invented the science of astronomy. we have invented life science, we have invented physics.

we discovered these natural laws we can learn more about our origin and where we came from. to you, when it says he invented the stars also, that is satisfying. you are done. to me when i look at the night sky i want to know what is out there. i am driven. i want to know what is out there is any part of me and indeed, it is. by the way, i find compelling you are satisfied. and the big thing i want from you mr. ham is can you come up with something that you can predict. do you have a creation model that predicts something that will happen in nature? >> how did the atoms that created the big bang get there? >> this is a great mystery. you hit the nail on the head. what was before the big bang? this is what drives us. this is what we want to know. let's keep looking. let's keep searching. when i was young, it was

presumed that the universe was slowing down. there's the big bang. except it's in outer space, there's no air so...goes out like that and so people presumed that it would slow down. that the universe, the gravity especially will hold everything together and maybe it's going to come back and explode again and people went out and the mathematical expression is is the universe flat. it's a mathematical expression. will the universe slow down, slow down as...without ever stopping? well in 2004 saul perlmutter and his colleagues went looking for the rate at which the universe was slowing down. we're going to, let's go out and measure it and we do it with these extraordinary system of telescopes around the world, looking at the night sky, looking for supernovae. these are standard brightness that you can infer distances with and the universe isn't slowing down. it's accelerating. the universe is accelerating in its expansion. and you know why? nobody knows why. nobody knows why.

and you'll hear the expression nowadays dark energy, dark matter which are mathematical ideas that seem to reckon well with what seems to be the gravitational attraction of clusters of stars, galaxies and their expansion and then isn't it reasonable that whatever's out there causing the universe to expand is here also and we just haven't figured out how to detect it. my friends, suppose a science student from the commonwealth of kentucky pursues a career in science and finds out the answer to that deep question. where did we come from? what was before the big bang? to us, this is wonderful and charming and compelling. this is what makes us get up and go to work everyday is to try to solve the mysteries of the universe. >> bill, i just want to let you know that there's actually a book out there that actually tells us where matter came from

. [laughter] and the very first sentence in that book says "in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth." and really, that's the only thing that makes sense. it's the only thing that makes sense of why not just matter is here, where it came from but why matter when you look at it, we have information and language systems that build life, not just matter. and where did that come from because matter can never produce information. matter can never produce a language system. language can only come from intelligence. information only comes from information. the bible tells us that the things we see like in the book of hebrews are made from things that are unseen. an infinite creator god who created universe, created matter, the energy, space, mass, time, universe and created the information for life. it's the only thing that makes logical sense. >> the overall majority of

people in the scientific community have presented valid, physical evidence such as carbon dating and fossils to support evolutionary theory. what evidence besides the literal word of the bible supports creationism? >> first of all, you know, i often hear people talking about the majority. i would agree that the majority of scientists would believe in millions of years. the majority would believe in evolution but there's a large group out there that certainly don't. but the first thing i want to say is that it's not the majority that judge the truth. there have been many times in the past when the majority have got it wrong. the majority of doctors in england once thought that after you cut up bodies, you can go...and wonder why the death rate is high in hospitals until they found out about a disease caused by bacteria and so on. the majority once thought that the appendix was a leftover organ from evolutionary ancestors. when it's okay, rip it out. when it's diseased, rip it out. these days, we know that it's

for the immune system and it's very, very important. it's important to understand that just because the majority believes something doesn't mean that it's true. one of the things i was doing was i was making some predictions. i made some predictions. there's a whole list of predictions. and i was saying if the bible is right, there's adam and eve, there's one race and i talked about that. if the bible is right, god made kinds and i went through and talked about that and so you know really that question comes down to the fact that we're again dealing with the fact that there's aspects about the past that you can't scientifically prove because you weren't there but observational science in the present. bill and i have all the same observational science. we're here in the present. we can see radioactivity but when it comes to talking about the past, you're not going to be scientifically able to prove that. that's what we need to admit. but we can be great scientists in the present as the examples i

gave you. dr. damadian , or dr. stuart burgess or dr. fobich and we can be investigating the present. understanding the past is a whole different matter. >> thank you mr. ham. i have to disabuse you of a fundamental idea. if a scientist, if anybody makes a discovery that changes the way people view natural law, scientists embrace him or her. this person's fantastic. louis pasteur, he made reference to germs. if you find something that changes, that disagrees with common thought, that's the greatest thing going in science. we look forward to that change. we challenge you. tell us why the universe is accelerating. tell us why these mothers were getting sick and we'll find an explanation for it. the idea that the majority has sway in science is true only up to a point and then the other

thing i just want to point out, what you may have missed in evolutionary explanations of life is the mechanism by which we add complexity. the earth is getting energy from the sun all the time. and that energy is used to make lifeforms somewhat more complex. >> how did consciousness come from matter? >> i don't know. this is a great mystery. a dear friend of mine is a neurologist. she studies the nature of consciousness. now i will say i used to embrace a joke about dogs. i love dogs, who doesn't. and you can say this guy remarked "i've never seen a dog paralyzed by self-doubt." actually, i have. furthermore, the thing that we celebrate. there are three sundials on the planet mars that bear an inscription to the future.

to those who visit here, we wish you safe journey and the joy of discovery. it's inherently optimistic. that the future of human kind that we will one day walk on mars. but the joy of discovery. that's what drives us. the joy of finding out what's going on. so we don't know where consciousness comes from but we want to find out. furthermore, i tell you it's deep within us. i claim that i've spent time with dogs. that i've had the joy of discovery. it's way inside us. we have one ancestor as we can figure. and by the way, if you can find what we in science call a second genesis. this is to say did life start another way on the earth? there are researchers, astro-biology researchers supported by nasa, your tax dollars that are looking for an answer to that very question. is it possible that life can start another way?

is there some sort of a lifeform akin to science fiction that's crystal instead of membranes. this would be a fantastic discovery that would change the world. the nature of consciousness is a mystery. i challenge the young people here to investigate that very question. and i remind you, taxpayers and voters that might be watching, if we do not embrace the process of science, i mean in the mainstream, we will fall behind economically. this is a point i can't say enough. >> bill, i want to say that there is a book out there that does document where consciousness came from. and in that book, the one who created us said that he made man in his image and he breathe into man and he became a living being and so the bible does document that. that's where consciousness came from. that god gave it to us. and you know, one thing i want to say is i have a mystery. and that is you talk about the joy of discovery but you also say that when you die it's over and that's the end of you and if when you die it's over, you

don't even remember you were here. what's the point of the joy of discovery anyway. i mean it in an ultimate sense. i mean, you know, you don't even know you were here. so what's the point anyway? i love the joy of discovery because this is god's creation and i'm finding more about that to take dominion for man's good and for god's glory. >> what, if anything, would ever change your mind? >> well, the answer to that question is "i'm a christian." and as a christian, i can't prove it to you but god has

definitely shown me very clearly through his word and shown himself in the person of jesus christ. the bible is the word of god. i admit that that's where i start from. i can challenge people that you can go and test that, you can make predictions based on that, you can check the prophecies in the bible, you can check the statements in genesis, you can check that and i did a little bit of that tonight. and i can't ultimately prove that to you. all i can do is to say to someone, look, if the bible really is what it claims to be, if it really is the word of god and that's what it claims to be then check it out. if you can't believe that he is, he will reveal himself to you. and you will know. as christians, we can say we know. and so as far as the word of god is concerned, no, no one's ever going to convince me that the word of god is not true. but i do want to make a distinction here and for bill's sake.

we build models based upon the bible and those models are always subject to change. the fact of noah's flood is not subject to change. the model of how the flood occurred is subject to change because we observe in the current world and we're able to come up with maybe different ways this could've happened or that could've happened and that's part of that scientific discovery. that's part of what it's all about. so the bottomline is that as a christian, i have the foundation. that as a christian, i would ask bill the question what would change your mind? i mean you said even if you come to faith, you'd never give up believing in billions of years. i think i quoted you correctly saying something like that recently. so that would be my question to bill. >> we would just need one piece of evidence. we would need the fossil that swam from one layer to another. we would need evidence that the universe is not expanding. we would need evidence that the stars appear to be far away but they're not.

we would need evidence that rock layers can somehow form in just 4000 years instead of the extraordinary amount. we would need evidence that somehow you can reset atomic clocks and keep neutrons from becoming protons. bring on any of those things and you would change me immediately. the question i have for you though fundamentally and for everybody watching "mr. ham, what can you prove? what you have done tonight is spend most of it, all the time, coming up with explanations about the past. what can you really predict? what can you really prove in a conventional scientific or in a conventional "i have an idea that makes a prediction and it comes out the way i see it." this is very troubling to me. >> outside of radiometric methods, what scientific evidence supports your view of the age of the earth? >> the age of the earth. well, the age of stars.

radiometric evidence is pretty compelling. also the deposition rates, it was lael, a geologist who realized in my recollection he came up with the first use of the term deep time when people realized that the earth had to be much much older. and in a related story, there was a mystery as to how the earth could be old enough to allow evolution to have taken place. how could the earth possibly be three billion years old? lord calvin did a calculation that if the sun were made of coal and burning, it couldn't be more than a hundred thousand or so years old. but radioactivity was discovered. radioactivity is why the earth is still as warm as it is. it's why the earth has been able to sustain it's internal heat all these millenia.

and this discovery, it's something like this question without radiometric dating, how would you view the age of the earth? to me it's akin to the expression "well if things were any other way, things would be different." this is to say that's not how the world is. radiometric dating does exist. neutrons do become protons and that's our level of understanding today. the universe is accelerating. these are all provable facts. that there was a flood 4,000 years ago is not provable. in fact the evidence for me at least as a reasonable man is overwhelming that it couldn't possibly have happened. there's no evidence for it. furthermore, mr. ham, you never quite addressed this issue of the skulls. there are many, many steps in what appears to be the creation or the coming into being of you and me. and those steps --

>> i just wanted people to understand, too. when it comes to the age of the earth being billions of years, no earth rock was dated to get that date. they dated meteorites and because they assumed meteorites were the same age as the earth left out from the formation of the solar system, that's where they come from. people think they dated rocks on the earth that's four and a half billion years. that's just not true. and the other point that i was making and that is i said at the end of my first rebuttal time that there are hundreds of physical processes that set limits on the age of the earth. here's the point, every dating method involves a change with time and there are hundreds of them and if you assume what was there to start with and if you assume something about the rate and you know about the rate, you make lots of those assumptions. every dating method has those assumptions. most of the dating methods, 90% of them contradict the billions of years. there's no absolute age dating method from scientific method because you can't prove

scientifically young or old. >> can you reconcile the change in the rate continents are now drifting versus how quickly they must have traveled at creation's 6,000 years ago? can you reconcile the speed in which continents are now drifting today to the rate they would have traveled 6,000 years ago to which where we are now? >> this again illustrates exactly what i'm talking about in regard to historical science and observational science. we can look at continents today and we have scientists that have written papers about these on our website. i'm definitely not an expert in this area, i don't claim to be but there are scientists even dr. andrews spelling a phd geologist has done a lot of research here too as well and

there are other people out. you plate tectonics. certainly we can see movements of plates today and if you look at those movements and if you assume at the way it's moving today the rate it's moving that it's always been that way in the past. see, that's an assumption. that's the problem when it comes to understanding these things. you can observe movement, but then to assume that it has always been like that in the past, that's historical science. and in fact, we would believe basically in catastrophic plate tectonics -- that as a result of the flood the time of the flood, there was catastrophic breakup of the earth's surface. and what we're seeing now is sort of a remnant of that movement. and so we do not deny the movement. we do not deny plates. what we would deny is that you can use what you see today as a basis for just extrapolating into the past. it's the same with the flood. you can say that the layers today can only lay down slowly

in places but if there was a global flood, that would have changed all of that. again, it's this emphasis on historical science and observational science. i would encourage people to go to our website in answers in genesis because we do have a number of papers. in fact, very technical papers. dr. john bumgardner is one who has written some very extensive work dealing with this very issue. on the basis of the bible, of course we believe that there's one continent to start with because the waters were gathered in one place. so we do believe that the continent has split up. particularly the flood had a lot to do with that. >> it must have been easier for you to explain this a century ago before the existence of tectonic plates was proven. if you go into a clock store and there's a bunch of clocks. they are not all going to say exactly the same thing. do you think that they are all wrong? the reason that we acknowledge the rate at which continents are drifting apart, one of the

reasons is we see what's called sea floor spreading in the mid-atlantic. the earth's magnetic field has reversed over the millenia and , as it does, it leaves a signature in the rocks as the continental plates drift apart. so, you can measure how fast the continents were spreading. that's how we do it on the outside. as i say, i lived in washington state when mt. st. helens exploded. that's a result of a continental plate going under another continental plate and cracking and this water-laden rock led to a steam explosion. that's how we do it on the outside. >> what's your favorite color? [laughter] >> i will go along with most people and say green. and it's an irony that green plants reflect green light. >> deny not -- did i not ask for

a one-word answer? [laughter] it's a mystery >> can i have three words since he had three hundred? observational science, blue. >> how do you balance the theory of evolution with the second law of thermodynamics? what is the second law of thermodynamics? [laughter] >> oh, the second law of thermodynamics is fantastic. and i call the words of eddington who said that if you had a theory that disagrees with isaac newton, that's a great theory. if you have a theory that disagrees with relativity, you've changed the world, that's great. but if your theory disagrees with the second law of thermodynamics, i can offer you no hope. i can't help you. and the second law of thermodynamics is basically is where you lose energy to heat. this is why car engines are about 30% efficient. that's it, thermodynamically.

that's why you want the hottest explosion you can get in the coldest outside environment. you have to have a difference between hot and cold and that difference can be assessed scientifically and mathematically with this word entropy, this disorder of molecules but the fundamental thing that this questioner has missed is that the earth is not a closed system. so there's energy pouring in here from the sun, if i may day and night, cause at night it's pouring in on the other side and so that energy is what drives living things on earth especially for, in our case, plants. by the way, if you're here in kentucky, about a third and maybe a half of the oxygen you breathe is made in the ocean by phyto plankton and they get their energy from the sun so the second law of thermodynamics is a wonderful thing. it has allowed us to have everything you see in this room. because our power generation depends on the robust and

extremely precise computation of how much energy is in burning fuel whether it's nuclear fuel or fossil fuel or some extraordinary fuel to be discovered in the future. the second law of thermodynamics will govern any turbine that makes electricity that we all depend on and allowed all these shapes to exist. >> let me just say two things. one is you know what, here's a point that we need to understand, you can have all the energy that you want but energy on matter will never produce life. god imposed information, language system, and that's how we have life. matter by itself can never produce life no matter what energy you have. even if you have a dead stick. you can have all the energy in

the world on the dead stick, it's going to decay. and it's not going to produce life. from a creationist's perspective, we certainly agree, i mean, before man sinned, you know there was digestion and so on but because of the fall now things are running down. god doesn't hold everything together as he did back then. so now we see in regard to the second law of thermodynamics, we'd say sort of in a sense a bit out of control now compared to what it was originally which is why we have a running down universe. >> hypothetically, if evidence existed that caused you to have to admit that the earth was older than 10,000 years and creation did not occur over 6 days, would you still believe in god and the historical jesus of nazareth and that jesus was the son of god? >> well, i've been emphasizing all night. you cannot ever prove using the scientific method in the present. you can't prove the age of the earth.

so you can never prove it's old. so there's no hypothetical because you can't do that. now, we can certainly use methods in the present in making assumptions. i mean creationists use methods that change over time. as i said, there's hundreds of physical processes that you can use to set limits on the age of the universe but you can't ultimately prove the age of the earth. not using the scientific method, you can't ultimately prove the age of the universe. now, you can look at methods and you can say that there are many methods that contradict billions of years, many methods that seem to support thousands of years as dr. faulkner said in the little video clip i showed you, there is nothing in observational astronomy that contradicts a young universe. i've said it to you before and i admit again that the reason i believe in a young universe is because of the bible's account of origins. i believe that god who has always been there, the infinite creator god revealed in his word what he did for us. and when we add up those dates

we get thousands of years. but there's nothing in observational science that contradicts that. but as far as the age of the earth, the age of the universe, even when it comes to the fossil record, that's why i really challenge christians if you're going to believe in millions of years for the fossil record, you got a problem with the bible. and that is you're going to have death and disease and suffering before sin. so there's no hypothetical in regard to that. you can't prove scientifically the age of the earth or the universe, bottomline. >> of course, this is where we disagree. you can prove the age of the earth with great robustness by observing the universe around us. and i get the feeling mr. ham that you want us to take your word for it. this is to say, your interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago as translated into american english is more compelling for you than everything that i can observe in the world around me. this is where you and i, i think

are not going to see eye to eye. you said, you asserted that life cannot come from something that is not alive, are you sure? are you sure enough to say that we should not continue to look for signs of water and life on mars, that that's a waste. you're sure enough to claim that? that is an extraordinary claim that we want to investigate. once again, what is it you can predict? what do you provide us that can tell us something about the future, not just about your vision of the past? >> is there room for god in science? >> well, we remind us, there are billions of people around the world who are religious and who accept science and embrace it and especially all the technology that it brings us. is there anyone here who doesn't have a mobile phone that has a camera? is there anyone here whose family members have not

benefited from modern medicine? is there anyone here who doesn't use emails or is there anybody here who doesn't eat? because we use information sent from satellites in space to plant seeds on our farms. that's how we are able to feed 7.1 billion people where we used to barely be able to feed a billion. so that's what i see. that's how we have used science and the process. science for me is two things. it's the body of knowledge. the atomic number of rubidium. and it's the process, the means by which we make these discoveries. so for me, that's not that connected with your belief in a spiritual being or in a higher power. if you reconcile those two, scientists, the head of the national institute of health is a devout christian. there are billions of people in the world who are devoutly religious.

they have to be compatible because those same people embrace science. the exception is you, mr. ham. that's the problem for me. you want us to take your word for what's written in this ancient text to be more compelling than what we see around us. the evidence for a higher power and spirituality is for me separate. i encourage you to take the next minute and address this problem of the fossils, this problem of the ice layers, this problem of the ancient trees, this problem of the ark, i mean really address it. and so then we could move forward but right now i see no incompatibility between religions and science. >> yeah, i actually want to take a minute to address the question. let me just say this, my answer would be god is necessary for science. in fact, you talked about cellphones, yeah i have a cellphone, i love technology. we love technology here in answers and genesis. and i have email.

we have millions of them as we speak up here. and satellites, and what you said about the information we get, hey, i agree with all that. see, they are the things that can be done in the present and that's just like i showed you. dr. burgess who invented that gear set for the satellite. creationists can be great scientists. but you see, god is necessary because you have to assume the laws of logic. you have to assume the laws of nature. you have to assume the uniformity of nature. and here's a question i have for you. where does that come from if the universe is here by natural processes? christianity and science, the bible and science go hand and hand. we love science. but then again, you gotta understand, inventing things, that's very different than talking about our origins. two very different things. >> do you believe the entire bible is to be taken literally? for example, should people who touch pig's skin be stoned? can men marry multiple women?

>> do i believe the entire bible should be taken literally? well, remember in my opening address, i said we have to define our terms. so when people are asked that question say literally, i have to know what that person meant by literally. now, i would say this, if you say naturally and that's what you mean by literally, i would say yes, i take the bible naturally. what do i mean by that? well, if it's history as genesis is, it's written in typical historical narrative, you take it as history. if it's a poetry as we find in the psalms then you take it as poetry. it doesn't mean it doesn't teach truth but it's not a cosmological account in the sense that genesis is. there's prophecy in the bible and there's literature in the bible concerning future events and so on so if you take it as written naturally according to literature and you let it speak to you in that way, that's how i take the bible. it's god's revelation to man. he used different people. the bible says that all scriptures are inspired by god

so god moved by his spirit to write his words. and also there's a lot of misunderstanding in regard to scriptures, in regard to the israelites, i mean we have laws in our civil government here in america that the government sets. there were certain laws for israel. some people take that out of context and then they try to impose them on us today christians and say you should be obeying these laws. it's a misunderstanding of the old testament. it's a misunderstanding of the new testament and you know again it's important to take the bible as a whole in interpreting scriptures. if scriptures really is the word of god then there's not going to be any contradiction which says not, and by the way when men were married to multiple women , there were lots of problems and the bible condemns that for what it is. and the bible is very clear. you know the bible is a real book, there are people who did things that were not in accordance with the scriptures and they were recorded to help us understand it's a real book. but marriage was one man and one woman. jesus reiterated that in matthew 19 as i had in my talk and so those that did marry multiple women were wrong.

>> so it sounds to me just listening to you during the last two minutes that there's certain parts of this document of the bible that you embrace literally and other parts you consider poetry. so it sounds to me in those last two minutes like you're going to take what you like, interpret literally and other passages you're going to interpret as poetic descriptions of human events. all that aside, i would say , scientifically or as a reasonable man, that it doesn't seem possible that all these things that contradict your literal interpretation of those first few passages. all those things that contradict that, i find unsettling when you want me to embrace the rest of it as literal. now as i say i'm not a theologian, but we started this debate, is the ken ham creation model viable? does it hold water? can it fly?

does it describe anything? and i'm still looking for an answer. >> i believe this is ms. written because they repeated a word, but i think i know what they are trying to ask. have you ever believed that evolution was accomplished through way of a higher power? i think that's what they're trying to ask here. the intelligent design question, i think. if so, why or why not? why could not the evolutionary process be accomplished in this way? have you ever believed that evolution partook by way of evolution? >> let me introduce these ideas for mr. ham to comment. the idea that there's a higher power that has driven the course of the advance of the universe and our own existence is one that you cannot prove or

disprove. and this gets us to this expression, agnostic. you can't know. i grant you that. when it comes to intelligent design, which is if i understand your interpretation of the question, intelligent design has a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of nature. this is to say the old expression is if you were to find a watch in the field and you pick it up, you would realize that it was created by a somebody who was thinking ahead. somebody with an organizational chart with somebody at the top chart with somebody at the top and he'd ordered screws from screw manufacturers and springs from spring manufacturers and glass crystals from crystal manufacturers. but that's not how nature works. this is the fundamental insight in the explanation for living things that's provided by evolution. evolution is a process that adds complexity through natural selection. this is to say nature has its mediocre designs eaten by its

good designs. and so the perception that there is a designer that created all this is not necessarily true because we have an explanation that is far more compelling and provides predictions and things that are repeatable. i'm sure mr. ham here, the facility, you have an organization chart, i imagine you're at the top and it's a top-down structure. nature is not that way. nature is bottom-up. this is the discovery. things merge up, whatever makes it keep going, whatever doesn't makes it falls away. and this is compelling and wonderful and fills me with joy and it's inconsistent with a top-down view. >> what bill nye needs to do for me is to show me an example of something, some new function that arose that was not previously possible from the genetic information that was

there and i would claim and challenge you that there is no such example that you can give. that's why i brought up the example in my presentation of lenski's experiments in regard to e-coli and there was some that seem to develop the ability to exist on citrate but as dr. -- said from looking at his research, he has found that that information was already there. it's just a gene that switched on and off and so there is no example because you know , information that's there and the genetic information of different animals, plants, and so on, is no new function that can be added. certainly great variation within a kind and that's what we look at. but you'd have to show an example of a brand new function that never previously was possible. there is no such example that you can give anywhere in the world. >> name one institution, business or organization other than a church, amusement park or the creation museum that is using any aspect of creationism to produce its product?

>> any scientist out there, christian or non-christian, that is involved in inventing things , involved in scientific method is using creation. they are because they are borrowing from a christian world view. they use the laws of logic. i keep emphasizing that. i want bill to tell me and a view of the universe as a result of natural processes, explain then where the laws of logic came from. why should we trust the laws of nature? i mean are they going to be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday? in fact, some of the greatest scientists that ever lived, isaac newton, james clerk maxwell, michael faraday, were creationists. and as one of them said, you know, thinking god's thought after him and that's really modern science really came out of. that thinking, that we can do experiments today and we can do the same tomorrow. we can trust the laws of logic. we can trust the laws of nature. and if we don't teach our children correctly about this, they're not going to be

innovative. and they're not going to be able to come up with inventions to advance in our culture. and so, i think that the person was trying to get out that see , you know there are lots of , secularists out there doing work and they don't believe in creation and they came up with great inventions. yeah, but my point is they are borrowing from the christian world view to do so and as you saw from the video clips i gave, people like dr. faulkner has published in the secular journals. there's lots of creationists out there who publish. people might know that they're creationists because the topics do not specifically pertain to creation versus evolution but there's lots of them out there. if you go to our website, there's a whole list there of scientists who are creationists, who are out there doing great work in this world. and helping to advance technology. >> there's a reason that i don't

accept your ken ham model of creation. it is because it has no predictive quality as you touched on. and something that i've always found troubling, it sounds as -- next time around, you can it sounds as though you believe your worldview which is literal interpretation of most parts of the bible is correct. what became of all those people who never heard of it? never heard of you. what became of all those people in asia? what became of all those first nations people in north america? were they condemned and doomed? i mean i don't know how much time you spend talking to strangers but they're not sanguine about that. to have you tell them that they are inherently lost or misguided. it's very troubling. and you say there are no examples in nature, there are countless examples of how the process of science makes predictions.

>> since evolution teaches that man is evolving and growing smarter over time, how can you explain the numerous evidence of man's high intelligence in the past? >> hang on. there's no evidence that men, humans are getting smarter. no, especially if you ever met my old boss, no, it's that what happens in evolution, it's a british word that was used in the middle 1800's. it's survival of the fittest and this usage, it doesn't mean the most push-ups or the highest scores on a standardized test, it means that those fit in the best. our intellect such as it is has enabled us to dominate the world i mean, the evidence of humans is everywhere. james cameron just made another trip to the bottom of the ocean, the deepest part of the ocean,

the first time since 1960 and when they made the first trip they found a beer can. humans are everywhere and so it is our capacity to reason that has taken us to where we are now. if a germ shows up as it did for example in world war i where more people were killed by the flu than were killed by the combatants in world war i, that is a troubling and remarkable fact. if the right germs show up, we'll be taken out. we'll be eliminated. being smarter is not a necessary consequence of evolution. so far, it seems to be the way things are going because of the remarkable advantage it gives to us. we can control our environment and even change it as we are doing today, apparently by accident. so everybody just take a little while and grasp this fundamental idea. it's how you fit in with nature around you, so as the world changes, as it did for example for the ancient dinosaurs, they were taken out by a worldwide

fireball apparently caused by an impactor. that's the best theory we have. and we are the result of organisms that lived through that catastrophe. it's not necessarily smarter, it's how you fit in with your environment. >> i remember at university, one of my professors said that he was very excited to give us an evidence for evolution. he said look at this, here's an example. these fish has evolved the ability not to see and he was going to give me an example of a blind cave fish and he said see , in this cave, they are evolving because now the ones that are living in there, their ancestors have eyes but these ones are blind. and i remember telling my professor, wait a minute, now they can't do something that they can do before. they might have an advantage in this sense, in a situation that's dark like that. those that had eyes got diseases and died out. those that had mutations and no eyes are the ones that survived. it's not survival of the fittest. it's survival of those who survive. and it's survival of those who

have the information in the circumstance to survive but it's not you're not getting new information, you're not getting new function. there's no example of that at all so we need to correctly understand these things. >> we are down to our final question. it is a question for both of you. let's give each man two minutes on this. i will have you start first here, mr. ham. mr. nye will have the last word. what is the one thing more than anything else upon which you base your beliefs? >> well, again, to summarize the things that i've been saying, there is a book called the bible. it's a very unique book. it's very different from any other book out there. in fact, i don't know of any other religion that has a book that starts by telling you that there's an infinite god and it

talks about the origin of the universe, the origin of matter, the origin of light, the origin of darkness and the origin of day and night and the origin of the earth, the origin of dry land, and the origin of plants, the origin of the sun, moon and stars, the origin of the sea creatures, the origin of flying creatures, the origin of land creatures, the origin of man, the origin of woman, the origin of death, the origin of sin, the origin of marriage, the origin of different languages, the origin of clothing, the origin of nations, i mean it's a very , very specific book and it gives us an account of a global flood in the history and the tower of babel and if that history is true, then what about the rest of the book. well that history says that man is a sinner, that says that man is separated from god and it gives us a message we call the gospel. a message of salvation that god's son stepped into history and died on the cross and raised from the dead and offers a free gift of salvation because the history is true that's why the message based in history is true. i actually went through some

predictions and listed down some of these and there's a lot more that you can look at and you can go and test these for yourself. if this book really is true, it is so specific it should explain the world. it should make sense of what we see. the flood, yeah, we have fossils all over the world. the tower of babel, yeah, different people, different languages, flood legends very similar to the bible, creation legends similar to the bible, and prophecies and so on. and most of all, as i said, the bible says if you come to god, believing that he is, he will reveal himself to you and you will know. if you search out the truth, if you really want god to show you as you search out for the silver and gold, he will show you. he will reveal himself to you. >> would you repeat the question? >> what is the one thing more than anything else upon which you base your beliefs? >> as my old professor carl sagan said so often, "when you are in love, you want to tell the world." and i base my beliefs on the information and the process that we call science.

it fills me with joy to make discoveries everyday, of things i've never seen before. it fills me with joy to know that we can pursue these answers. it is a wonderful and astonishing thing to me that we are, you and i, are somehow at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself. you and i are a product of the universe. it's astonishing. i see your faces and we have come to be because of the universe's existence. and we are driven to pursue that, to find out where we came from. and the second question we all want to know, are we alone? are we alone in the universe? and these questions are deep within us and they drive us. so the process of science, the way we know nature is the most compelling thing to me. and i just want to close by

reminding everybody what's at stake here. if we abandon all that we've learned. our ancestors, what they've learned about nature and our place in it. if we abandon the process by which we know it, if we eschew, if we let go of everything that people have learned before us, if we stop driving forward, stop looking for the next answer to the next question, we and the united states will be out-competed by other countries, other economies. now that would be okay, i guess. but i was born here, i'm a patriot. and so we have to embrace science education. to the voters and taxpayers that are watching, please keep that in mind. we have to keep science education in science, in science classes. >> one tiny bit of important housekeeping, the county is now under a level two snow emergency. drive home carefully. you have a lot to talk about but drive carefully.

this debate will be archived at debatelive.org. it will be at that site for several days. you can encourage friends and family to watch. thanks so much to mr. nye and mr. ham. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[no audio] >> the national governors association began its national annual meeting this weekend in bc. it brings governors a from across the country to discuss a range of issues affecting their states. here is a brief portion. office of us came into during the throes of the great recession. for a lot of us, the progress has been sluggish. we have not seen the economy expanded. it has been a tepid recovery. i'm curious to know -- i have heard a lot of economists give us their theories as far as why. i would like to tell me what you think, what has been the cause of the slow recovery and what we should be doing to make sure it accelerates as a country? >> you know, again, i think -- i

can only describe what i see. a deepically had of -- in thelot financial service market, those tend to be sharper and take longer to recover from. yet the de-lever is the same time you are trying to build back. the thing i have not seen take place yet in the united states is capital investment by small and medium business. it is still anemic by any standard. consumer is taking out leverage again and investing again. that has happened. >> people talk about big-company investment, that is not like i can say to boeing, aon not going to investment nexgen engine because i am uncertain. we have to keep going no matter what.

the small and medium businesses from a and point, we saw in the fourth quarter last year that that first time the net new income was growing and that is what we have to solve for. how do we get capital expenditures? to get an economy that grows 3% per year, you have to have consumers backing and you have to have new formation in capital. people have to start building factories. it is the small and medium businesses that have gotten the hardest hit and have not come back yet from a an investment standpoint. >> you can watch more of the discussion from the injury a winter meeting later in the program or any time online on c-span.org. tomorrow, the meeting continues with a discussion about job creation led by the association you cand vice chair. watch that live on c-span at 10:45 p.m. eastern. day, there will be

discussion on prescription drug abuse at 2:45 p.m. eastern. general sitting in the witness chair, they tend to font over him --fawn over him. i noticed that with petraeus, i noticed it with gates in his hearings when he was nominated as secretary of defense by george w. bush. they were so thrilled he wasn't ask the, they didn't really hard questions and a lot of those pertained to his past activities. he was involved in iran-contra. he was a very prominent figure in the cia at the time. they required intelligence that iran was somehow moderating and that intelligence wa