True but the Atheist also holds the "belief" that there is not GOD. So which belief is more correct? For me to get into a biblical debate with you and the atheist sift community would be pointless. It's like the saying you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. So this makes me search the web for other ways to argue the point. Here is 1 of them.

Mathematically speaking evolution falls flat on it face..
Lifted from site: http://www.freewebs.com/proofofgod/whataretheodds.htm



Suppose you take ten pennies and mark them from 1 to 10. Put them in your pocket and give them a good shake. Now try to draw them out in sequence from 1 to 10, putting each coin back in your pocket after each draw.

Your chance of drawing number 1 is 1 to 10.
Your chance of drawing 1 & 2 in succession is 1 in 100.
Your chance of drawing 1, 2 & 3 in succession would be one in a thousand.
Your chance of drawing 1, 2, 3 & 4 in succession would be one in 10,000.

And so on, until your chance of drawing from number 1 to number 10 in succession would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in 10 billion. The object in dealing with so simple a problem is to show how enormously figures multiply against chance.

Sir Fred Hoyle similarly dismisses the notion that life could have started by random processes:

Imagine a blindfolded person trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. The chance against achieving perfect colour matching is about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. These odds are roughly the same as those against just one of our body's 200,000 proteins having evolved randomly, by chance.

Now, just imagine, if life as we know it had come into existence by a stroke of chance, how much time would it have taken? To quote the biophysicist, Frank Allen:

Proteins are the essential constituents of all living cells, and they consist of the five elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, with possibly 40,000 atoms in the ponderous molecule. As there are 92 chemical elements in nature, all distributed at random, the chance that these five elements may come together to form the molecule, the quantity of matter that must be continually shaken up, and the length of time necessary to finish the task, can all be calculated. A Swiss mathematician, Charles Eugene Guye, has made the computation and finds that the odds against such an occurrence are 10^160, that is 10 multiplied by itself 160 times, a number far too large to be expressed in words. The amount of matter to be shaken together to produce a single molecule of protein would be millions of times greater than the whole universe. For it to occur on the earth alone would require many, almost endless billions (10^243) of years.

Proteins are made from long chains called amino-acids. The way those are put together matters enormously. If in the wrong way, they will not sustain life and may be poisons. Professor J.B. Leathes (England) has calculated that the links in the chain of quite a simple protein could be put together in millions of ways (10^48). It is impossible for all these chances to have coincided to build one molecule of protein.

But proteins, as chemicals, are without life. It is only when the mysterious life comes into them that they live. Only the infinite mind of God could have foreseen that such a molecule could be the abode of life, could have constructed it, and made it live.

Science, in attempt to calculate the age of the whole universe, has placed the figure at 50 billion years. Even such a prolonged duration is too short for the necessary proteinous molecule to have come into existence in a random fashion. When one applies the laws of chance to the probability of an event occurring in nature, such as the formation of a single protein molecule from the elements, even if we allow three billion years for the age of the Earth or more, there isn't enough time for the event to occur.

There are several ways in which the age of the Earth may be calculated from the point in time which at which it solidified. The best of all these methods is based on the physical changes in radioactive elements. Because of the steady emission or decay of their electric particles, they are gradually transformed into radio-inactive elements, the transformation of uranium into lead being of special interest to us. It has been established that this rate of transformation remains constant irrespective of extremely high temperatures or intense pressures. In this way we can calculate for how long the process of uranium disintegration has been at work beneath any given rock by examining the lead formed from it. And since uranium has existed beneath the layers of rock on the Earth's surface right from the time of its solidification, we can calculate from its disintegration rate the exact point in time the rock solidified.

In his book, Human Destiny, Le Comte Du nuoy has made an excellent, detailed analysis of this problem:

It is impossible because of the tremendous complexity of the question to lay down the basis for a calculation which would enable one to establish the probability of the spontaneous appearance of life on Earth.

The volume of the substance necessary for such a probability to take place is beyond all imagination. It would that of a sphere with a radius so great that light would take 10^82 years to cover this distance. The volume is incomparably greater than that of the whole universe including the farthest galaxies, whose light takes only 2x10^6 (two million) years to reach us. In brief, we would have to imagine a volume more than one sextillion, sextillion, sextillion times greater than the Einsteinian universe.

The probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance and normal thermic agitation remains practically nill. Indeed, if we suppose 500 trillion shakings per second (5x10^14), which corresponds to the order of magnitude of light frequency (wave lengths comprised between 0.4 and 0.8 microns), we find that the time needed to form, on an average, one such molecule (degree of dissymmetry 0.9) in a material volume equal to that of our terrestrial globe (Earth) is about 10^243 billions of years (1 followed by 243 zeros)

But we must not forget that the Earth has only existed for two billion years and that life appeared about one billion years ago, as soon as the Earth had cooled.

Life itself is not even in question but merely one of the substances which constitute living beings. Now, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. We would need much greater figures to "explain" the appearance of a series of similar molecules, the improbability increasing considerably, as we have seen for each new molecule (compound probability), and for each series of identical throws.

If the probability of appearance of a living cell could be expressed mathematically the previous figures would seem negligible. The problem was deliberately simplified in order to increase the probabilities.

Events which, even when we admit very numerous experiments, reactions or shakings per second, need an almost-infinitely longer time than the estimated duration of the Earth in order to have one chance, on an average to manifest themselves can, it would seem, be considered as impossible in the human sense.

It is totally impossible to account scientifically for all phenomena pertaining to life, its development and progressive evolution, and that, unless the foundations of modern science are overthrown, they are unexplainable.

We are faced by a hiatus in our knowledge. There is a gap between living and non-living matter which we have not been able to bridge.

The laws of chance cannot take into account or explain the fact that the properties of a cell are born out of the coordination of complexity and not out of the chaotic complexity of a mixture of gases. This transmissible, hereditary, continuous coordination entirely escapes our laws of chance.

Rare fluctuations do not explain qualitative facts; they only enable us to conceive that they are not impossible qualitatively.

Evolution is mathematically impossible

It would be impossible for chance to produce enough beneficial mutations—and just the right ones—to accomplish anything worthwhile.

"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 10^50. Such a number, if written out, would read 480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000."
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10^50 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence."
I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong (1984), p. 205.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Watch-Atoms-Decay-in-Real-time-in-Cloud-Chamber

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Oh yeah? I thought magnets had something like energy stored in the same way as a battery. Something about the ordered parallel state of their electrons will decay into a disordered one, so eventually the magnet will lose its magnetism. Faster if its being used to push stuff around. Not so?

Who voted against this video? So far, the man who misunderstood the English language. I only post these things to draw out the worst of the rhetoric and shit-think dystop, you understand my ideas about how easily minds are swayed with loaded words, my disdain for the media and the decaying orbit of American culture and society, her politics, an abomination of abuse....Why the fuck are you making a project out of someone with more common sense that most?
Is it because I'm such a mean guy??

When victims are paraded in front of cameras to produce the desired effect for THEIR purposes, it should piss you off that they are allowed to continue to do so, it pisses me off.

Watching a train wreck in slow-motion having no way to divert the inevitable tragedy should make anyone uncomfortable.

Dude.....Yer thinkin' too hard.
1, Give the Brits their guns back and let God sort out the rabble, more guns means less brain-dead drunks who are prone to brawl anyway because of life under the decaying crown and their Nazi fucking rich family lineage of bend-over and take it. Hehe, to all you Brits: Now they gave it away and want you to like it? Fuck them.

2. True, so what, false or meaningless, guns are tools and a wedge against the ultimate douchebags...namely, any government gone fallow.

3. No man, live where you want, when you want, and take a gun with you along with your winning fucking personality...lifes' a bitch, and sometimes you need to improvise.

4. Create your own source of infotainment with a view to not listening to ass-magnets babbling about how you should think for yourself in light of such a world-wide ass-fuck.

Now. Breath. See?? Life is better with or without guns!

If people don't want to plant vegetable gardens, then what about habitat for something to live in? Lawns are a wasteland for native plant, animal, fungal, and bacteria species.
Also, I don't buy the carbon sink thing. Powered lawnmowers put out a lot of CO2. Also, a lot of cut grass decays... and that releases greenhouse gasses as well.
Oh.. and 'pesticides' were mentioned, but what about herbicide and fertilizer run off?
OhX2... and lawns are reeeaaaally ugly!

You're cherry-picking. That sentence isn't the key one. I'm not sure what is meant by that sentence (the use of "constraint" is ambiguous), but it would be utterly unscientific if it meant that the stratigraphic position pre-determined the outcome. Geology would be scientistic nonsense like ID, not science.

Yes, and that is the point. If Geology worked like that it would be scientific nonsense, and it does work like that. The stratigraphic position is determined by the index fossils and radiometric dating. The age of the index fossils is determined by the stratigraphic position and radiometric dating. Radiometric dating itself is "checked" by stratigraphic positioning. That doesn't sound like circular reasoning to you?

On the other side the date is determined by the uniformitarian assumptions about radioactive decay rates in the past, and many other things. It assumes, among other things, that the rate will never change. As I showed in my reply the Bicyclerepairman, the rates can indeed change.

Even the next two sentences demonstrate this: "There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied."

Now this is the intellectually dishonest part. They say they can't choose where a fossil will be, but they have already the determined that the presence of certain fossils and radiometric dating igneous layers above and below it determines the age of that layer. They don't choose where a fossil is, but they do choose what the age of the layer is that contains the fossil based on their assumptions. So they are basically saying that radiometric dating and stratigraphy is validated by index fossils and radiometric dating, and vice-versa.

The date that is returned is indeed chosen by the scientists as it is based on uniformitarian assumptions that they've made about the past. Perhaps you don't understand how it works, but there is nothing about the rock which reveals its age. They use the secondary evidence of how much radioactive decay of certain elements they believe have occurred, but if the rates aren't always constant, the measurement is worthless. As I showed in my reply to Bicyclerepairman, even secular scientists have acknowledged the rates can change. Therefore it is unreliable on its own, and what is essentially happening is that they are propping up one unprovable assumption with the evidence interpreted through another unprovable assumption.

If geologists were in the habit of treating data this way, scientifically-minded people who entered the field would be disgusted and leave, and form their own new scientific discipline of the study of the earth. The fact that this hasn't happened means the geological method appears scientific to scientific-minded people, if not dogmatists.

It's far more likely that you, a dogmatist and a non-geologist, are cherry-picking information to come up with data that supports your dogma. Dogmatists, by definition, cannot be relied upon for unbiased information that either challenges or confirms their dogma. Their dogma pre-disposes them to coming to wrong conclusions far more than non-dogmatists.

Your argument from incredulity not-withstanding, I think Max Planck sums it up rather nicely:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

There was a paradigm shift from catastrophism to uniformitarianism in the late 19th century. It was a deliberate move away from the idea of a global flood. To make their theories worked, they needed vast amount of time. Most of the contention comes down to how fast or slow certain geological features take to form. Scientists have staked all of their modern research on the theory of deep time, and they interpret all of the evidence through that conclusion. In other words, it has become conventional wisdom..IE, dogma. Please read my reply to Bicyclerepairman to see how bias effects interpretation.

If you examine the history of science, you will see that scientists have had it wrong many times and wasted decades and decades of research on things ultimately proven to be false. The near universal agreement of scientists on any issue is not any indicator of truth.

I'll take 10 minutes to respond to your comments, but I'm not taking 1.5 hours to watch more non-scientific nonsense framed in scientific terms. If there were strong enough evidence that the Earth were a few thousand years old, there would be a branch of geologists studying it. And I'm excluding the dogmatic "creation geology". It is pseudoscience.

In other words, you believe whatever the scientists say and there is no reason to understand the alternative viewpoint. Your dismissal of the material as "non-scientific nonsense framed in scientific terms" flatly shows your intellectual incuriousity, not even having looked at it. Dr. Emil is an accomplished geologist and his discussion is framed in the terminology and methodology used in that field. If you want to debate this subject, you should at the bare minimum understand the basics of the position you are defending and the position you are arguing against. Also, the video is about 1 hour with 30 minutes of questions.

FWIW, according to Wikipedia: "Flood geology contradicts the scientific consensus in geology and paleontology, chemistry, physics, biology, geophysics and stratigraphy". Do you think you can knock all those scientific fields down as well? Have at it.

It's all predicated upon the philosophy of deep time. Deep time is the cornerstone of modern research, and it supported by flimsy, circumstantial evidence. If you can show deep time is false, then all of it crumbles.

Also, "former atheist" means "current dogmatist". You don't find it astounding that his conversion happened to coincide with his discovery that the evidence didn't hold up? I do. Evidence of non-scientific thinking.

It's interesting you're still inventing reasons why you shouldn't watch the video. You don't know anything about the man but you make wrongheaded assumptions about him. Such as that he converted because he had doubts about the evidence in Geology not holding up. Yet, that isn't the reason he converted, and it had nothing to do with his work as a geologist. Your conclusions here are evidence of non-scientific thinking.

@BicycleRepairMan

Also vice versa. Which might sound circular, but isnt. Uniformitarianism is of course the simplest assumtion (occams razor) but it also correlates well with the available evidence. If natural laws acted differently in the past, we would presumably find EVIDENCE that it did. And correlating data is not a "hall of mirrors, it is evidence of correlation. This is basic statistics and empiri.

Thank you for your considered reply. Well see, here's the thing. Creationists and evolutionists are not looking at two sets of evidences. We are looking at the same evidence and interpreting it differently. There isn't creationist evidence and evolutionist evidence, there is just evidence which we both interpret according to the assumptions we bring to it. We are both looking at the same geologic record and saying it happened much differently. The evidence yields different conclusions depending on what assumptions you bring to it.

Uniformitarian is only the first assumption scientists bring to the evidence. The secondary assumption is that the different layers represent vast amounts of time. They come to this conclusion because they observe the rates of these processes are very slow today, and since in uniformitarian, the present is the key to the past, they assume that present day geological features must have taken millions or billions of years to form because of present day rates. Because of this, the completely exclude the hypothesis that the features we see could form very quickly. Therefore, they are biased in their interpretation and will miss the evidence which actually points to rapid formation. I'll give you a good example:

"Previously geologists had thought that constant, rapid water flow prevented mud's constituents -- silts and clays -- from coalescing and gathering at the bottoms of rivers, lakes and oceans. This has led to a bias, Schieber explains, that wherever mudstones are encountered in the sedimentary rock record, they are generally interpreted as quiet water deposits."

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/web/page/normal/7022.html

For a long time geologists believed that mudstones could only form a certain way, which is by slow moving water. They had completely ruled out that it could be formed rapidly. Therefore, whenever they saw mudstones the "story" the rocks told them was that of a slow process taking vast amounts of time. Yet, mudstones, they have found, can be deposited very rapidly. This is actually evidence for a global flood because mudstones make up 2/3s of the record for sedimentary rock. Yet they never saw that because of their assumptions of everything taking vast amounts of time to form. This is a classic example of how the assumptions you bring changes the interpretation of the data. Same mudstones, but the different assumptions yielded a different conclusion from the same evidence.

This is further complicated by the matter of evolution. Biostratigraphy has played a decisive role in determining the relative ages of rock layers around the world, which brings with it a whole other host of assumptions. Because evolution requires vast amounts of time, and they interpret a certain evolutionary progression through the fossil record, therefore they again make the assumption different layers must represent vast amounts of time, based on their evolutionary assumptions. They then use that assumption to validate their uniformitarian assumptions and call this evidence.

The main issue is the assumption of uniformitarian to explain the fossil record. It denies that a catastrophe like a global flood could have caused the features we see today. The geologists believe things happened very slowly, whereas creation geologists believe they have formed very quickly. There is a whole lot of evidence which shows that layers could be laid down rapidly, and canyons and other features could have been cut very quickly. Geologists do acknowledge this, which is why there is another branch of geology called Catastrophism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism

They can not deny that many of the things they thought took millions of years "stalactites forming, fossilization, formation of oil and precious metals) can actually happen very quickly. They still deny, however, that a global catastrophe could have been responsible for all of it, despite the fact that the whole Earth is covered by sedimentary rock which is primarily laid down by water.

And this is where we are with fossils and dating. We dont just make wild guesses on the basis of 2 or 3 fossils and one shitty chemistry experiment involving half-lives; We have literally thousands of datapoints. If this is a hall of mirrors, then Satan is truly one crafty bastard making a pretty impressive one for us.

Again, it is the assumptions you bring to that data which colors the interpretation. I can also tell you that the assumption that decay rates never change is wrong:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/286/5441/882.summary

Pressure and chemistry can alter decay rates according to that experiment. In that instance, they were able to alter the decay rate by 1.5 percent. In much more extreme conditions, however, the decay rate could change significantly. It shows that the uniformitarian assumptions of radiometric dating can and will produce unreliable data.

These are things that they don't teach you in science class. When it comes down to it, there is no actual proof for deep time in the fossil record, when we're talking about actual empirical evidence. We only have circumstantial evidence based on assumptions which I have shown to be faulty. That is where the hall of mirrors comes in, where everything you see is reflecting the assumptions you make. It is what is called a worldview, which is like a set of glasses you use to see the world. Everyone has a worldview. The apriori assumptions you make about reality constitutes your worldview. That is what is going on here..their worldview of the world forming from purely naturalistic processes, and that slowly over vast amounts of time, is a bias which skews all of their data to that direction, when as I showed previously with the mudstones that it could just as easily point in the other direction.

Here you go:
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Decay-the-full-movie-Shot-inside-the-LHC

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