safety issues and the potential dangers posed by pesticides and genetically modified foods. now, a debate on evolution versus creationism with evolution vs. creation debate. this is to announce hours. >> good evening. i am pleased to welcome you to legacy whole at the creation museum in northern kentucky in the metropolitan area of cincinnati. i am tom foreman and i am pleased to be tonight's moderator for this debate. this is a very old question, where did we come from? my answer is from washington by moreane but there is a

refound, longer answer that people have sought after for a long time. tonight's question is the following. creation of viable model of origins in today last modern scientific era? our welcome extends to hundreds of thousands of people who are watching on the internet. we are glad you have joined us. by 70 mediad representatives from many of the world's great news organizations. we are glad to welcome our debaters.

mr. bill nye. [applause] towe had a coin toss determine the order. speak first.d to nye's website describes him as a comedian, author, and inventor. he won seven national emmy awards for writing and producing the show. he won 18 emmys in five years. in between creating the shows he wrote five kids books about science including the latest title. bill nine is the host of three television series.

his program airs on the science channel. frequently appears on interview programs to discuss a variety of topics. he serves as executive director of the planetary society. the world's largest space interest group and is a graduate of cornell. mr. ken ham is the president and cofounder of answers it in genesis, the bible defending organization that holds the authority of the scriptures from the first verse. he is the man behind the popular high tech creation museum where we are holding this debate. the answers in genesis website is well trafficked. he is a best-selling author, a much in demand speaker, and the host of the daily radio feature covered -- carried on 700 plus stations. at harvard in the

1990's. this -- he is a native of [indiscernible] to go first soed you will be first with your five-minute opening statement. >> good evening. not everyone watching this debate will necessarily agree with what i have to say. i hope you enjoy me saying it anyway. the topic is this. is creation of viable model of today's scientific era? when this was announced there were lots of statements like this one from the richard dawkins foundation.

scientists should not create -- debate creationists. right here there is a gross misrepresentation. we are seeing people being indoctrinated to believe that creationists cannot be scientists. it is part of the secularists hijacking the word science. am a professor of engineering design. i publish over 130 papers on the science of design, engineering, and biological systems. i find the evidence supports creationism as the best explanation to origins.

>> here is a debacle creationist and creator.ntist the guide tofine origins and we need to define science. i want to concentrate on dealing with the word sign. i believe it has been hijacked by secularists. silent --k at science, there are different types of knowledge. there is experimental, observational science using the scientific method. that is what produces our technology. computers, spacecraft, jet planes, smoke detectors, dna, antibodies, medicine and vaccines. all scientists, creationists or evolutionists, have the same observational and experiment with science. here is an atheist who is a

great scientist. one of the first researchers to sequence the human genome. or dr. raymond, a man who invented the mri scanner and revolutionized medicine and is a biblical creationist. evolution has nothing to do with developing technology. when we're talking about origin, we are talking about the past, our origins. whether it is molecules to man or a creation account. talking about the past, we like to call that origins or historical science, knowledge concerning the past. here at the creationist museum, we make no apology about the fact that our origins are based upon the biblical account of origins. now, when you research science textbooks used in public schools we found this. by and large the origins of historical science is based upon man's idea about the past.

for instance, the ideas of darwin. our research found public school textbooks use the word science for observational science and historical science. they arbitrarily defined science as naturalism. they present molecules to man evolution as fact, imposing the theory of naturalism or atheism on generations of students. i assert that the word science has been hijacked by secularists, teaching evolution to force the naturalism on generations of kids. teaching that all life develops from natural processes from promoting a forms, which has great bearing on how we deal with life and death. >> it is hard for many to accept that when we die it is over. >> the bible gives a totally different account of origins. the meaning of life, our future. that god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. it is creation -- is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern era? i say the debate is two different accounts of origins of believe, and creation is the only viable science confirmed by observational science in today's modern scientific era >> that is -- era. >> that is time. i have the unenviable job of being the timekeeper. like the referee in football you don't like. if one of our debaters runs over, i will stop him in the name of keeping it there. mr. ham thank you for your comments. now it's mr. nye here. >> thank you. it is a pleasure to be here. i appreciate you including me in your facility here. looking around the room, i see just one bow tie. is that right?

just one? there's two, that's great. i started wearing bow ties when i was young in high school. my father, his father showed him. there's a story associated with this which i find remarkable. my grandfather was in the rotary and he attended a convention in philadelphia and even in those days at the turn of the last century, people rented tuxedos. the tuxedo came with an untied bowtie. he didn't know how to tie it. he took a chance, he went to the hotel room next door, knocked on the door, excuse me, can you help me tie my tie. the guy said sure, lie down on the bed. so, my grandfather wanted to have the tie on. wasn't sure what he was getting into. he said to him laying on the bed, the guy tied a perfect bowtie knot. quite reasonably, my grandfather said thank you.

why did i have to lie down on the bed? the guy says, i am an undertaker. that's the only way i know how to do it. that story was presented to me as a true story. it may or may not be. but it gives you to -- something to think about and remember. here tonight, we are going to have two stories. we can compare mr. ham's story to the story from what i will call the outside, from mainstream science. the question tonight, does ken ham's creation model hold up. is it viable? let me ask you all, what would you be doing if you weren't here tonight? that's right, you'd be home watching c.s.i. c.s.i. petersburg. i think it's coming. on c.s.i., there is no distinction made between historical science and observational science.

these are constructs unique to mr. ham. we don't normally have these anywhere in the world except here. natural law apply in the past apply now. that's why they are natural law. that is why we embrace them. that's how we nail these discoveries that enable all of this remarkable technology. c.s.i. is a fictional show and it is based absolutely on real people doing real work. when you go to a crime scene and find evidence, you have clues about the past. you trust those clues and embrace them and move forward to convict somebody. mr. ham and his followers have this remarkable view of a worldwide flood that somehow influenced everything we observe in nature, a 500 foot wooden boat, ages you keepers for 14,000 individuals and also. -- individual animals. every land plant in the world underwater for a full year. i ask, is that reasonable? you'll hear a lot about the grand canyon which is a

remarkable place. it has fossils. the fossils in the grand canyon are found in layers. there's not a single place in the grand canyon where the fossils of one type of animal crossover into the fossils of another. in other words, when there was a big slot on the earth you would expect drowning animals to swing up -- swim up to a higher level. not any one of them did. not a single one. if you can find evidence of that, you can change the world. now, i just want to remind us all. there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious. who get enriched almond who have a wonderful sense of community from their religion. they worship together. they eat together. they live in their communities and enjoy each other's company. but these same people do not embrace the extraordinary view that the earth is somehow only 6000 years old. that is unique.

here's my concern. what keeps the united states ahead, what makes the united states a world leader is our technology, our new ideas, our innovations. if we continue to choose -- eschew science, eschew the process and try to divide science into into an observational science, historic science, we are not going to move forward. we will not brace natural law, we will not make discoveries and we will not invent and innovate and stay ahead. if you ask me if ken ham's creation model is viable, i would say no. it is absolutely not viable. stay with us over the next period and you can compare my evidence to his. thank you all very much. [applause] >> very nice start by both of our debaters here. now each one will offer 30 minute illustrated presentation to fully offer their case for us to consider. mr. ham, you're up. >> the debate topic was, is

creation a viable model of origin in today's scientific era? i made a statement, creation is the only viable model confirmed by observational science in today's modern era. i say what we need to be doing is defining our terms. particularly three terms -- science, creation, and evolution. i discussed the meaning of the word science. what is meant by experimental, observational science, briefly. that both creationists and evolutionists can be scientists. i mentioned an atheist who is a great scientist, one of the first researchers to sequence the human genome. also dr. raymond damadian, who invented the mri scanner.

i want you to meet a biblical creationist who is a scientist and inventor of i am raymond damadian, a young earth creation scientist who believes god created the world in 624-hour days, just as recorded in the book of genesis. by god's grace and devoted prayers of my godly mother-in-law, i invented the mri scanner in 1969. the idea that scientists who believe the earth is 6000 years old can do real science is simply wrong. >> he's most adamant about that. he revolutionized medicine, he's a biblical creationist. i encourage people like that. let me introduce you to another biblical creation scientists. >> my name is danny faulkner. i received my phd in astronomy from indiana university. for 26 years i was president --

university at the university of south carolina lancaster, where i held the rank of professor emeritus. upon my retirement in january 2013, i joined the research staff at answers in genesis. i'm a stellar astronomer. that means by primary i'm interested in stars. i am interested in the study of eclipsing binary stars, and i published many materials in the literature, including the astronomical journal and the observatory. there is nothing in observational astronomy that contradicts a recent creation. >> i mentioned dr. steward in -- dr. stuart burgess, professor of engineering design in england. he designed a double-action gear set of the robotic arm on a very expensive satellite. if that had not worked, the whole satellite would have been

useless. yet dr. burgess is a biblical creationist who believes, as i believe. think about this for a moment. a scientist like dr. burgess who believes in creation as i do is a small minority in the scientific world. let's see what he has to say. >> many of my colleagues are not sympathetic to the treasonous you point -- creationist viewpoint. they are afraid to speak out because of criticisms they would get from the media and the atheist lobby. >> that's a real problem today. we need to have freedom to be able to speak on these topics. i just want to say that non-christians scientists are really borrowing from the christian worldview anyway to carry out their experimental observational scientist -- science. when they're doing observational science they have to assume the laws of logic, they have to assume the laws of nature. they have to assume the uniformity of nature. if the universe came about by natural processes, where did the rules of logic come from? did they just pop into existence?

i have a question for bill nye. how do you account for the laws of logic and nature from a naturalistic worldview that excludes the existence of god? in my opening statement i discussed a different type of science or knowledge, origin or historical science. there is a confusion here, a misunderstanding here. people by and large have not been taught to look at what you believe about the past as different from what you observe in the present. you don't observe the past directly. when you think about the creation account, we can't observe god creating. we can't observe the creation of adam and eve. we are willing to admit believes about the past. what you see in the present is very different. even some public school textbooks sort of technology

difference between historical and observational science. here is an earth science textbook used in public schools. we read this -- the aim of "historical geology is to understand earth's long history." we are talking about historical science trying to establish a timeline about a number of physical changes that occurred in the past. we studied physical geology before historical geology because we first must understand how earth works. in other words, we observe things in the present and then we're assuming that's always happened in the past. we will try to figure out how this happened. there is a difference between what you observe and what happened in the past. let me illustrate it this way. if bill nye and went to the a grand canyon, we can agree there is the sandstone and the shale and the boundary. we can agree on that. you know what we will disagree on, we can analyze the minerals, we would disagree on how long it took to get there.

none of the sandstone or shale -- there is a supposed 10-million gap there. but i don't see a gap. that might be different to what bill nye would say. there's a difference between what you actually observe directly and your interpretation. when i was at the goddard space center a number of years ago, i met creationists and evolutionists both working on the hubble telescope. they agreed on how to build the telescope. they disagreed on how to interpret the data the telescope obtained in regard to the age of the universe. we could talk about lots of other things. for instance, i have heard bill nye talk about how a smoke detector works using the radioactive element americium. we agree how radioactivity in naples that to work. if they will use radioactive elements and talk about the age of the earth, you have a problem because you were not there. we have to understand -- we

could agree whether you're creationist or evolutionist on, we will disagree on how to interpret the origin of mars. there are some people that believe there was a global site on mars and no liquid water on mars. we will disagree on the interpretation of origins. not from an observational standpoint, we only have the present. creationists and evolutionists both work on medicines and vaccines. it doesn't matter -- all scientists have the same experimental or observational science. i have a question for bill nye, can you name one piece of technology that could only have been developed starting with the belief in molecules to man evolution? creationists and evolutionists all have the same evidence. bill nye and i have the same grand canyon. we don't disagree on that. we would have the same fish fossil and the same dinosaur and same animals, same humans and same dna and radio active decay. we have the same universe.

actually, we all have the same evidences. it's not the evidences that are different. it is a battle over the same evidence in regard to how we interpret the past. you know why that is? it is a battle of world views and starting points, a battle over philosophical worldviews and starting points of the same evidence. i admit my starting point is god is ultimate authority. if someone doesn't accept that, then man has to be the ultimate authority. that's really the difference. i have been emphasizing the difference between historical origins science about the past when you weren't there. we need to understand, we weren't there. or experimental or observational science using five senses in the present, the scientific method, what you can directly observe, test, and repeat. there's a difference between the two. that's not what's being taught.

that's why kids aren't being taught to the think critically and correctly about the origin issue. it's also important to understand when talking about creation and evolution, both involve historical science and observational science. the role of observational science can be used to confirm or otherwise one's historical science based on one's starting point. when you think about the debate topic and what i affirmed concerning creation, if our origins are historical science based on the bible account of origins is true, then they should be predictions from this that we can test using observational science. there are. for instance, based on the bible, we'd expect to find evidence concerning an intelligence confirming and intelligence-produce life. the bible said god made animals after their kind and find each -- implying each kind produces its own, not that one kind produces another.

you would expect to confirm one race of humans, because we all go back to adam and need, biologically that would mean one race. evidence confirming the tower of babel. evidence confirming a young universe. i can go through all of those, but a couple we will look at briefly. in the creation museum, we have a display featuring replica is of darwin's finches. darwin collected finches in the galapagos and took them back to england, and we see the different species, the beak sizes. from the specimens darwin obtained in the galapagos, he actually pondered these things, how do you explain this. in his notes, he came up with this diagram here, 83. he actually said, i think -- he was talking about different species and may be the species came from common ancestors.

when it comes to finches we would agree that different species came from a common ancestor, but a finch is what it would have to come from. see, darwin wasn't just think -- pinging about species. darwin had a much bigger picture in mind. when you look the origin of species and read that book, you'll find he made this statement. from such low and immediate form, both animals and plants might have been developed, we must admit all organic beings which have ever lived may be descended from someone primordial form. he had in mind what we today know as an evolution tree of life. that all life has risen from some form. now when you consider the classification system, we would say as creationist, we have many creationist scientists research this, to say, the kind genesis one is the family of

classification. for instance one dog kind, one cat kind. you have different genera and different species, but you did not need anywhere near the number of animals on the ark you would need. you didn't need all the species of dog, just two. based on the biblical account there in genesis one, they are -- they have drawn up what they call a creation orchard. saying there is great variation in the genetics of dogs and finches. over time, particularly after noah's flood, if they were two dogs you could end up with different species of dogs, and incredible amount of variability in the genes of any creature. you expect the different species appear. but there are limits. dogs will always be dogs. finches will always be finches. as a creationist i've maintained observational scientists -- science confirms this model

based on the bible. for instance, take dogs in a scientific paper dated january 2014, scientists working at the university of california stated this. " we provide several lines of evidence supporting a single origin for dogs and disfavoring alternative models which dogs arise separately from geographically distinct wolf populations." that diagram is very similar to this diagram, that creationists oppose based upon the creation account in genesis. you have a common dog that gives rise to the different species of dogs. that's exactly what we're saying here. in the creation museum, we're showing the finches here. with the different beaks beside dog skulls, different species of dogs. there's more variation in the dog here than there are in these finches. yet, the dogs that's never used as example of evolution but the finches are. particularly in the public

school textbooks, children are taught, see the changes occurring here. here's another problem. not only has the word "science" and hijacked by secularists, i believe the word "evolution" has been hijacked using what i call a bait and switch. let me explain to you. the word evolution has been used in public school textbooks it's used for observable changes that we would agree with and use for unobservable changes such as molecules to man. let me explain to you what's going on. i was a science teacher in the public schools. and i know what the children were taught. i checked the textbooks. students are taught today, there are all these different animals, plants, but they are all part of this great big tree of life that goes back to some primordial form.

we see changes in finches, changes in dogs and so on. we don't deny the changes. you see different species of finches and dogs. but they put it all together in that evolution tree. that's what you don't observe. you don't observe that. that's belief there. that's historical science. i will say it's wrong. what you do observe, you do observe different species of dogs, different species of finches, but then there are limits. you don't see one kind changing into another. actually, we're told that if you

teach creation in the public schools -- i'm going to say wait a minute, actually, the creation model here based upon the bible observational science confirms this. this is what you observe. you don't observe this tree. actually it's a public school textbook that are teaching i -- they believed and imposing it on students. they need to be teaching them observational science to understand the reality was happening -- of what is happening. we found they accept the evolutionary tree but reject the creation orchard. but observational science confirms a creation of -- creation orchard. they are imposing a naturalistic religion on students. the word evolution has been hijacked using a bait and switch to indoctrinate students. let me introduce you to another scientist, richard lenski. of michigan state university. a great scientist known for culturing e. coli in the lab. he found there were some e. coli that he seems -- seems to develop the ability to grow on substrates. richard lenski, as he mentioned in this book, it's called "evolution in the lab." the ability to grow on citrate is said to be evolution. those say, this is against the creationists. jerry coin from university of chicago says, lenski's experiment is another poke in eye of anti-evolutionists.

you can get these traits by combining a combination of unlikely events. is it a poke in the eye for anti-evolutionist? is it really seeing complex traits involving? what does it mean that some of these bacteria are able to grow on citrate? let me introduce you to another biblical creationist who is a scientist. >> i got my phd from university of oklahoma in microbiology and teach at liberty university and do research on e. coli. i have published in secular journals, the american society for microbiology, infection and immunity, environmental microbiology, and several others. my work has been cited in the journal's "nature," "public library of science genetics," cited regularly in those journals. while i was taught nothing but evolution, i don't accept that position and do my research from a creation perspective.

when i look at the evidence, e. coli supposedly evolving over 30 years in the lab. 30,000 generations. people say it is now able to grow in citrate. i don't deny it grows on citrate, but that is not any new information. the information is already there, and it is just a switch that gets turned on and off. that's what they reported in there. there's nothing new. >> students need to be told what's really going on here. certnly there's change but it's not changing necessarily for molecule to man. we can look at other predictions. what about everyday confirming one race. let me look at the human population. based upon darwin's idea on human evolution, darwin did teach, there are lower races and higher races.

would you believe that in the 1900s one of the most popular biology textbooks used in the public schools in america taught this? there exist five races on earth, and the highest type of all our the caucasians. can you imagine if that was in the public schools today? yet that's what it was taught. but it was based on darwin's ideas that are wrong. you have a wrong foundation. you're going to have a wrong world view. had they started from the bible and from the creation account in the bible, what does it teach? we are all descendents of adam and he. -- eve. different people groups form with distinct characteristics, but there is biologically only one race of humans. i mentioned dr. venter, a researcher with the human genome project. in the year 2000 it was headline news -- they had put together a

draft of the entire sequence of the human genome and declared unanimously that there was only one race, the human race. who would have guessed? you see, there we have observational science confirming the creation account, not confirming at all darwin's ideas. now, there's much more that can be said on each of these topics. obviously you can't do that in a short time like this. you can do a lot more research. i suggest you visit our website for a lot more information. the debate topic is creation a bible model of origins in today's scientific era. i said we need to define the terms. particularly the term science and the term evolution. i believe we need to understand how they're being used to impose anti-god religion on generations of unsuspecting students. i keep emphasizing, we do need to understand the difference between experimental and observational science and historical science. the secularists don't like me doing this, they don't want to admit there is a belief aspect what they are saying. let me illustrate.

this is a statement from bill nye. >> you can show the earth is not 10,000 years old. >> i agree. you can show the earth is not flat. the galileo spacecraft is showing the earth, you speeded up, it is spinning and you see it is a sphere. you can observe that. you can't observe the age of the earth. you don't observe that. there's a big difference between historical science, talk the past and observational science talking about the present. i believe what's happening is this, students are being indoctrinated by the confusion of terms. the hijacking of the word science and evolution in a bait and switch. let me illustrate further with this video clip. here, i assert bill nye is equating observational science with historical science. i also say it's not a mystery when you understand the difference. >> people with these deeply held religious beliefs, they embrace literal interpretation of the bible.

as written in english. as a worldview. at the same time, they accept aspirin, antibiotic drugs and airplanes. but they are able to hold these two worldviews. this is a mystery. >> i suggest it's not a mystery. what i'm talking about antibiotic, aspirins, smoke detector, jet planes that's ken ham the observational science bloke. i am australian. we call guys blokes. i am willing to admit that. when bill nye talks about that -- i used to enjoy watching you on tv. that's bill nye observational science guy. but when he's talking about evolution and millions of years, i challenge that that is bill nye historical science guy. i challenge the evolutionist to admit the belief aspect of their particular world view.

at the creation museum, we also -- we are only too willing to admit are believed the bible, but we also teach people between -- the difference between beliefs and what one can observe an experiment. i believe we're teaching people to criticize critically and think in the right terms about the science. i think it's the creationist that should be educating the kids out there because we're teaching them the right way to think. we admit origins of historical science is based upon the bible. i'm challenging evolutionists to admit the aspects and be up front. i am only too willing to admit my historical science is based upon the bible. let me define the term creation as we use it. by creation, we mean here the we mean the account based on the bible. i take genesis as literal history as jesus did. here we walk people through that history.

we walk them through creation, god made adam and eve and sea creatures and so on. and then there was no death before sin. there was no death before sin. how can you have billions of dead things before men send -- sinned? if there was a flood you expect to find billions of animals in layers all over the earth. what do you find? billions of things buried in the rock. the tower of babel, god gave different languages, we get different people groups. this is the anthropological, biological history as recorded in the bible, concerning what happened in the past. then god's son stepped into history, jesus christ died on the cross and raised from the dead and one day there's going to be a new heaven and earth to come. not only is this a understanding of history to explain geology, biology, astronomy, connect the

present to the past, it is also a foundation for a worldview. in matthew 19 when jesus said, for this show a man be joined to his wife and they will be one flesh. he quoted from genesis as literal history. god invented marriage, by the way, that's what marriage comes from, to be a man and a woman. not only marriage, ultimately every single biblical doctrine of theology directly or indirectly is founded in genesis. why is there sin in the world, genesis, why is there death, genesis, why did jesus die on the cross, genesis. it's a very important book. it is the foundation to all christian doctrine. when you look at what i call the seven seas of history, think about how it all connects together. a perfect creation. sin and death entered the world,

that's why god's son died on the cross and to conquer death. and offer a free gift of salvation. a reminder that the flood was a judgment because of man's wickedness but at the same time a message of god's grace and salvation. we need to go through a door to be saved. jesus christ said i am the door. buy me any man who enters and shall be saved. we make no apology about the fact in we're on about is this, if you confess with your mouth lord jesus, you will be saved. as soon as i say that people say, see, if you allow creation in schools, if you have students hear about it, this is religion. let me illustrate this talking about the recent battle in texas over textbooks in the public schools. a newspaper report said -- textbook in classroom have long ranged in texas pitting creationists against academics. stop right there. notice creationists, academics. creationist can't be academics.

it's the way things are worded out there. it's indoctrination going on. you're worried about ideology trumping fact -- you're talking about what you observe, or you talking about your beliefs about the past. cathy miller is the president of the texas freedom network. she has vocally spoken out about this textbook battle there in texas. the mission statement of the organization she's president of, says the texas freedom network advances mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right. she makes this statement, science education, should be based on mainstream science education not on personal ideological beliefs. they want religious liberty and not personal ideological belief. i assert this -- public school textbooks are using the same word firsts -- for observational and historical science. they define science as naturalism.

they present molecules to man evolution as fact. they are imposing their ideology on students. that is a religion. what do you mean by religious liberty, they tolerate their religion. the battle is really about authority. it's more than just science or evolution or creation. it's about who's the authority in this world, man or god? you start with naturalism then what about morals? who decides right and wrong? it's subjective, marriage. what do you want it to be? get rid of old people, why not. they're costing us a lot of money, abortion, get rid of spare cats and spare kids. we are all animals. there are moral absolutes. god decides right and wrong, marriage, one man and one woman. sanctity of life. we are made in the image of god. life begins at fertilization so

abortion is killing human being. we do see the collapse of christian morality in our culture and increasing moral relativism because generations of kids are being taught the religion of naturalism and of naturalism and that the bible can't be trusted. again, i say, creation is the viable model of historical science confirmed by observational science in today's modern scientific era. i am a science teacher. i want to see kids taught science. if we teach them the whole universe as a result of natural processes and not designed by a creating god they might be looking in the wrong places or have the wrong idea when they're looking at the creation in regard to how you develop technology. if they are looking at random processes that can totally influence the way they think. if they understand it was a perfect world marred by sin, that and have a great effect and how they look to overcome diseases and problems in the world. i want children to be taught the

right foundation that there's a god who created them, who loves them and who died on the cross for them and they are special and made in the image of god. [applause] >> thank you mr. ham. it did occur to me when you had my old friend larry king up there, you could have asked him. he's been around far long time. he's a smart guy. [laughter] he can probably answer for all of us. now let's all be attended to mr. nye.

>> thank you very much. mr. ham, i learned something. thank you. let's take it back around to the question at hand. does ken ham's creation model hold up? is it viable? for me, of course, take a look. we are here in kentucky on layer upon layer of limestone. i stop the side of the road today and picked up this piece of limestone that has a fossil right there. in these many layers, in this vicinity of kentucky, there are quarrel animals, fossil. when you look at it closely, you can see they lived their entire lives. they lived typically 20 years, sometimes more than that. when the water conditions are correct. we are standing on millions of layers of ancient life. how could those animals have lived their entire life and form these layers in just 4000 years? there isn't enough time since mr. ham's flood for this limestone that we're standing on to have come into existence. my scientific colleagues go to

places like greenland, the arctic, they go to antarctica and they drill into the ice with hollow drill bits. it's not that extraordinary. many of you probably done it yourself to drill things to put locks in doors, for example. would pull out long cylinders of ice. long ice routes. these are made of snow. by long tradition it is called snow ice. snow ice forms in the winter as snowflakes are crushed together, trapping bubbles. the bubbles must needs be ancient atmosphere. there is nobody running with hypodermic needles squirting ancient atmosphere into the bubbles. we find certain of these cylinders to have 680,000 layers. 680,000 winter-summer cycles.

how could it be that just 4000 years ago all of this ice formed? let's run some numbers. these are some scenes from the antarctic. let's say we have 680,000 players -- layers of snow ice and 4000 years since the great flood. we need 170 winter summer cycles every year for the last 4000 years. wouldn't someone have noticed that? wow. wouldn't someone have noticed there's been winter and summer 170 times one year? find go to california, we stands of bristle cone pines. sweden, a tree in

9000 years old. how could the trees be there question mark i do not mean to be mean to trees but get a sampling and put it under water for year. it will not survive. in general, nor will the seeds. >> how could the trees be that old if the earth is only 4000 years old? when we go to the grand canyon which is an astonishing place i recommend to everyone to visit the grand canyon, refined layer upon layer of ancient rocks. if there was this enormous flood that you speak of would not have been turning and bubbling and roiling, your claim that the sold-out in an extra ordinary short amount of time is for me

not satisfactory. you can look at these rocks are younger and go to seashores. this is what geologists on the outside do, study the rate at which oil is deposited into rivers and deltas and we can see it takes a long time for sentiment to turn to stone. you can see picture we are one type of sentiment has intruded on another type. was uniform would we not even withoute intrusion? you can see an ancient reverb read on one side and the other on the colorado river has cut your it. if this great flood drain through the grand canyon when there have been a grand canyon on every continent? how could we not have grand canyon's everywhere if this water drained away in this short

amount of time. 4000 years. when you look at these layers carefully you find these i am inspiredils by them. their remarkable. we're looking at the past. you find down low what you might consider is rudimentary sea animals. up above you'll find the famous bites and clams and oysters and above that you'll find some mammals. you never, ever find a higher animal mixed in with a lower one. you never find a lower one trying to swim its way to a higher. if it all happen such a extraordinary short amount of time, wouldn't we expect to see some turbulence? by the way, anyone here, really, if you can find one example of that, one example of that anywhere in the world, the scientists of the world challenge you.

they would embrace you, you would be a hero. you would change the world if you can find one example of that anywhere. people have looked and looked, have not found a single one. here's an interesting thing. these are fossil skulls that people have found all around the world. it's by no means representative of all the foss sell skulls that have been found but these are all over the place. if you were to look at these, i can assure you not any of them is a gorilla. if as mr. ham and his associates claim, there was just man and then everybody else, there was just humans and all the species, where would you put modern humans among these skulls? how did all of these skulls get all over the earth and these extraordinary fashion, where would you put us? i can tell you we are on there. i encourage you when you go home to look it up. now, one of the extraordinary claims associated with mr. ham's world view, is that this giant boat, very large wooden ship

went aground safely on a mountain in the middle east. places like australia are populated then by animals who somehow managed to get from the middle east all the way to australia in the last 4000 years. now that toe me is an extraordinary claim. we expect them somewhere to find evidence of kangaroos. we expect to find some fossils or bones. somebody would have died along there. furthermore, there's a claim dallas a -- there's a land bridge. and that land bridge has disappeared in the last 4000 years. no navigator, no diver, no u.s. navy submarine. no one detected any evidence of this. your expectation is not met. it doesn't seem to hold up. there are 4000 years since ken

ham's flood. let's say as he said many times there are 7000 times today the very lowest estimate is there are about 8.7 million species but a much more reasonable estimate is 50 million or even a hundred million. when you start counting viruses and bacteria and the beetles in the tropical rain forest we haven't found.

we'll take a number i think is pretty reasonable, 16 million species today. if these came from 7000 times, let's say we have 7000 subtracted from 15 million, that's 15993 we have 365 and a quarter days in a year, we'd expect to find 11 million new species everyday. you go out into your yard, you wouldn't just find a different bird, a new bird. you find a different kind of bird. whole new species a bird everyday. a new species of fish, new species of organs you can't see. this would be enormous news, the last 4000 years. people would have seen these changes among us. the cincinnati inquirer would 'carrier a column right next to the weather report. we see no evidence of that. there's no evidence of these species.

there simply isn't enough time. as you may know i graduated from engineering school and i got a job at boeing. i worked on 747's. everybody relax, i was very well supervised. everything is fine. there was a tube in the 747 i think of my tube. that aside, i traveled the highways of washington state quite a bit. i was a young guy. he a motorcycle. i used to go mountain climbing in washington state and oregon. you can drive along and find these enormous boulders on top of the ground. enormous rocks, huge sitting on top of the ground. out there in regular academic pursuits, regular geology, people have discovered that

there was -- used to be a lake what is now montana. which we refer to as lake massua. it's not there. the evidence is overwhelming. an ice damn would form. when you drive along the road and there are these rocks. if as is asserted here at this facility, that the heavier rocks would sink to the bottom during a flood event, the big rocks and especially their shape instead of aero dynamic the hydro dynamic, the water changes shape. you expect them to sink to the bottom. here are these enormous rocks right on the surface. there's no shortage of them. if you go driving in washington

state and oregon, they are readily available. how could those be there if the earth is just 4000 years old? if this one flood cause that? another remarkable thing i like everybody to consider, along inherent in this world view is that somehow, noah and his family were able to build a wooden ship that would house 14,000 individuals. there are 7000 kinds and there's a boy and girl for each one of those. so it's about 14,000 people. these people were unskilled as far as anybody know, they never built a wooden ship. they had to get all of these they had to get all of these animals on them and had to feed them. i understand mr. ham have some explanations for that, which i frankly find extraordinary. this is the premise of the bit. it would twist this way in this way. it leaked. the crew did not keep the ship

tried. -- dry. it was built, and these were skilled guys. they could not build a boat as big as the ark would have been. is that possible that the best

ship holders could not do? men and their wives were able to do. if you visit the national zoo it is 163 acres. they have 400 species. this picture you're seeing was taken by spacecraft in space orbiting the earth. this place is often deeply concerning for how it treats its animals. the reason that they were able to maintain 14,000 animals and

their cells and feed them. -- is it reasonable that they were able to maintain 14,000 animals and their cells and feed themselves and feed them. aboard a ship that was bigger than anyone has been able to build. what we want in science, science is practiced on the outside. is an ability to predict. we want to have a natural law that is so obvious and clear, so well understood that we can make predictions about what will happen. we can put a spacecraft in orbit and take a picture of washington, d.c. and predict if we provide this much room for an elephant it will live healthily for certain amount of time. i will give you an example. the explanation provided by traditional science of how we came to be, we find as mr. hamm

alluded to -- a sequence of animals in what generally is called the fossil record. you find a sequence of animals, a succession. as one might expect when you're looking at old records there is some pieces seem to be missing. a gap. scientists got to thinking about this. they are frogs and toes -- toads. people wondered if there was not a fossil or an organism, and animal that had lived who had characteristics of both. people over the years had found in canada there was clearly a fossil marsh. a place that used to be a swamp dried out and they found all sorts of happy swamp fossils there, ferns and animals and fish that were recognized.

people realized with the age of the rocks as computed by traditional scientists this would be a reasonable place to look for an animal, a fossil of an animal that lived there. they found several specimens. they made a prediction this animal would be found and it was found. so far it cannot make predictions and show results. here is an externally one that i -- extraordinary one that i find remarkable. there are certain fish that have the remarkable ability to have

sex with other fish, traditional fish sex and they can have sex with themselves. one of the old questions in life science, everybody, one of the chin stroker's is why does any organism whether you are and ash tree or ec jelly, a squid, apartment, why does anyone have sex? there are more bacteria in your tummy right now than there are humans on earth. bacteria do not bother with that. they can split themselves and half and getter done, let's go. think of all the trouble a rose bush goes to to make a flower and thorns, why does anybody bother with all that? the answer seems to be your

enemies and your enemies are not lions and tigers and bears. oh my. no. your enemies are germs and parasites. that is what is going to get you. germs and parasites. my first cousin's son died tragically from essentially the flu. this is not some story i heard of. apparently the virus had the right genes to attack so when you have sex you have a new set of genes, a new mixture. people studied these top minnows and they found the one to reproduce sexually had fewer parasites than the ones that reproduced on their own. this black spot disease. there is more. any populations with putting and so on when river ponds get isolated and the river flows again, in between some of these fish will have sex with other

fish sometimes and they will have sex on their own that happens asexually. in this fish the ones that are in between, they have an intermediate number of infections. the explanation provided by evolution made a prediction and the prediction is extraordinary and subtle but there it is. how else would you explain it? and to mr. hamm and his followers this is something that we in science one. want the ability to predict and your assertion that there is some difference between the natural laws they used to observe the world today and the natural laws that existed 4000 ago is extraordinary and unsettling. i travel around and i have a great many family members in danville, virginia. one of the u.s.'s most livable cities, it is lovely. i was driving along and there was a sign in front of a church

from a big bang theory, you got to be kidding me, god. why would someone at the church, pastor put that sign up unless he or she did not believe the big bang was a real thing? i want to review briefly with everybody why we except in the outside world, why we except the big bang. edwin hubble was in pasadena. you can see where the rose parade goes. in the early 1900s, the people who selected the site-excellent site. the clouds and smog are below you and edwin hubble sat there at this very big telescope studying the heavens.

he found the stars are moving apart. the stars are moving apart. he was not sure why but it was clear that the stars are moving further apart all the time. so people talked about it for a couple of decades. and eventually another astronomer almost a couple of decades -- fred hoyle remarked it was like there was a big bang. there was an explosion. this is to say since everything is moving apart it is reasonable that it one time they were altogether. there is a place from whence or whence these things expanded and it was a remarkable insight. people went still questioning it

for decades. conventional scientists have been questioning it for decades. these two researchers wanted to listen for radio signals from space. radio astronomy. this is why we have visible light for our eyes and there's a whole other bunch of waves of light that are much longer. the microwaves in your oven or about that long. the radar at the airport is about that long. your fm radio signal is about like this. am radio signals are the size of several soccer fields. they went out listening and there was this hiss that would not go away. the thought there were some loose connector. they re-screwed it and made it type. they thought it was pigeon droppings that had affected the reception of this horn, it is called. this thing is still there. it is at a national historic site.

they had found this cosmic background sound that was predicted by astronomers. astronomers running the numbers, doing math, predicted that in the cosmos would be left over this echo, this energy from the big bang that would be detectable and they detected it. we built the cosmic observatory for background emissions, the kobe spacecraft and it matched exactly the astronomers' predictions. along that line is some interest in the age of the earth. right now it is generally agreed that the big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. what we can do on earth, these elements that we all know on the periodic table of chemicals, even ones we do not now were created when stars explode. i attended a lecture by hans

beata. the ones that interest me are our good friends rubidium and strontium. rubidium becomes strontium. it turns to rock and locks the rubidium and strontium into place so by careful assay, by careful by being diligent, you can tell when the rock froze. you can tell how old the rubidium and strontium are and you can get an age for the earth. when that stuff falls on fossils, you can get a very good idea of how old the fossils are. i encourage you all to go to nebraska on go to ash fall state

park and see the astonishing fossils. it looks like a hollywood movie. there are rhinoceroses and three toed horses in nebraska. none of those animals are extant today and they were buried catastrophically by a volcano in what is now idaho, illest on park. it is a remarkable thing. i can tell you as a northwestern are from around mount saint helens, i am on the mount saint helens board. when it goes off the gives a great deal of gas. it is toxic and knocks these animals off. the go to a watering hole and then when the ash comes they were all buried. it is an extreme replace. if in the bad old days you had -- extraordinary place. if in the bad old days you had heart problems, they would write away cut you open. now we use a drug based on rubidium to look at the inside of your heart without cutting

you open. my kentucky friends, i want you to consider this. right now, there is no place in the commonwealth of kentucky to get a degree in this kind of nuclear medicine. this kind of drugs associated with that. i hope you find that troubling. i hope you're concerned about that. you want scientifically literate students in the commonwealth for now. you can i get this here. he have to go out of state. as far as the distance to stars, understand, this is very well understood. it is february. we look at a star in february and measure and a goal and wait six months, we look at that same star again and we measure that angle. it is the same way that carpenters built this old thing and surveyors survey the land. you can figure out how far away it is, that star and the stars

beyond it and the stars beyond that. we certainly observe the rate of decay. whether there is uranium or lead or potassium argon. when you talk about the past we have a problem. in australia there were engineers that were trying to search for coal mine. when dr. andrew spelling said that to a lab in massachusetts, the used potassium argon dating. he also sent the woods to the radiocarbon section and they were dated 40,000 -- 45,000. there is a problem.

let me give you another example. there is a lot the dome forming after mount saint helens corrupted. we can put a spacecraft in orbit and take a picture of washington, d.c. and predict if

>> if you would like to begin with your rebuttal. >> if i was to answer all the points you brought up the moderator would think i was going on for millions of years. as i said in my presentation you cannot observe the age of the earth.

so you understand where i am coming from, the bible says god created in six days. adam was made on day six. that is how we get 6000 years. a lot of people say the urge is -- earth is billions of years old. we observe radioactive decay. but when you're talking about the past we have a problem. in australia there were engineers that were trying to

search for coal mine. when dr. andrew spelling said that to a lab in massachusetts, the used potassium argon dating. he also sent the woods to the radiocarbon section and they were dated 45,000. there is a problem. let me give you another example. there is a lot the dome forming after mount saint helens erupted. a geologist sampled the rock

there. he took all rock crushed it and sent it to the same lab created and got a date of 3.5 million years when he separated the minerals out and used -- he got 2.8 million. all these dating methods give all sorts of different dates. we can show two different dates. there is a lot of assumptions. the amounts of the parent and are isotopes in the beginning. assumption number two, all daughter atoms measured must have been derived in situ radioactive decay. there is a lot of evidence that is not so. assumption number three, the decay rates remained constant. there is lots of assumptions. 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. >> this is a question for you, mr. nye, but i guess i can put it to both of you. one word answer, please. favorite color? >> i will go along with most people and say green. and it's an irony that green plants reflect green light. >> did i not say one-word answer? [laughter] most of the light from the sun is green yet they're reflected. it's a mystery >> can i have three words since he had three hundred? [laughter] >> you can have three. >> ok. observational science, blue.

>> all right, we're back to you, mr. nigh -- nye. >> how do you balance the theory of evolution with the second law of thermodynamics? what is the second law of thermodynamics? >> 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. >> and your response, mr. ham. >> let me just say two things. if a minute goes that fast along. 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. metabytes 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 erseuniv >> and that's time. a new question for you, mr. ham, 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. ou 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. >> mr. nye? >> 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? >> new question, mr. nye, 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. 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. nd 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. >> mr. ham, a new question, 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 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 osmological account in the sense that genesis is. there's prophecy in the bible and there's literature in the bible you know 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's 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. >> and time on that. mr. nye, here's a new question. i believe this was miswritten because they repeated a word but i think i know what they're trying to ask.

have you ever believed that olution was accomplished through way of a higher power? i think that's what they're trying to ask here. this is the intelligent design question, i think. if so, why or why not? why could not the evolutionary process be accomplished in this way? >> i think you may have changed the question a little -- >> word for word, you have ever believed that evolution par took through way of revolution? >> 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 disapprove. 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 ediocre 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. >> and that's time. mr. ham? >> 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. >> mr. ham, 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. hey 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 gods 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 dvance 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 andrew -- and 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. >> mr. nye? >> there's a reason that i don't accept your ken ham model of creation. because it has no predictive quality as you touched on.

and something that i've always found troubling, it sounds as though you believe your worldview which is literal interpretation of most parts of the bible is correct. hat 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 ritish 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. >> mr. ham, a response? >> 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. this 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. which i will give to both of you. in the interest of fairness because it's to 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. the question is, what is the one thing more than anything else upon which you base your beliefs? >> what is the one thing upon everything else which i base my belief. 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 torah bible 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, believe in that, 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 niverse? 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. debatelive.org. it will be at that site for several days. you can encourage friends and family to watch.