Also interesting wikipedia article for the 'evolution is only a theory' people is the 'Evolution as a theory and fact'. Basically an explanation of how in science the terms are complementary (one is an observation, the other an explanation) and evolution fits both.

I don't know whether this is poe or not, it just seems a little too, er, medieval. But I'll answer it anyway...

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There are absolutely no facts that point to a young Earth; all of the facts point to one answer, the Earth is 4.54 Billion years old. This has been tested repeatedly and verified by many independent parties using a variety of methods.

The "evidence" behind young Earth creationism is on par with the evidence for geocentricism and flat Earth myths, i.e. none. The "evidence" that is presented is not valid in any sense, it is always speculation.

The vast majority of young Earth creationists see speculation such as "the speed of radioactive decay could be dropping, and light could be slowing down" as evidence. This is not evidence in any sense, there are no signs whatsoever that radioactive decay happens at different speeds due to a change in the laws of physics and there is no evidence that light is, ever has, or ever will slow down.

And yet people are ready to believe the lies that "Answers in Genesis" and "Conservapedia" tells them because it fits with their predetermined answer. Well, unfounded speculation would not fly in any other environment.

Either the evidence agrees with your statement or it doesn't. If you have to change the goalposts as it were so that the evidence agrees with your beliefs, then you are lying to yourself. If you have to change the goalposts, then you have not got the correct answer.

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There is no fact or science that proves evolution true? Give me a break.

Again you have been lied to and you are spreading the lie. No Science that proves evolutions? How about evolutionary Biology? A whole science dedicated to evolution, and one of the most well established fields of science. The fields has literally millions of researchers the world over, whose work is peer reviewed and obtained from observational and testable means. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming to be quite frank... Just go on to Google scholar, search "evolution", and see the millions of papers published on the subject too see just how overwhelming it really is.

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Oh, and I love (hate) the creationist misinterpretation of the word "theory". You guys either refuse to understand the definition of theory, or just plain outright have been lied to about the definition. I can tell straight away by the way you wrote "unproven theory", the fact that you have used such a blatant oxymoron and you are unaware is just astonishing.

Do you realise that a theory is an answer derived from the available facts that have been presented, and has to be falsifiable so that the answer can continually be better defined into the correct model?

In other words, a theory is based on proven facts, and  facts that are ever improving in accuracy at that.

What's sad is that this is like the fourth time I've explained this in this thread alone.

Ya, if you look about my response, I basically had to tell the same thing over and over again about how evolution is a fact such a DNA sequencing, transitional fossils, radiometric dating, morphology, etc.

@Highwaystar. I had not read conservapedia before. Thank you for introducing me to hours of entertainment.

Edit: Haha, Obama is a friend of Gates who was the supposedly the inspiration behind a Maoist apologetic. OBAMA IS A MAOIST!!!!

Oh god this thing is brilliant.

Ok, anyone who incorrectly assumes that "creationism" automatically means "6000-year-old earth" is not up to speed on the different camps that make up creationism. Not all creationists believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old, so the vast majority of you who are jumping straight onto the "lol creationists r n00bs"-bandwagon need to quickly educate yourselves before making such foolish statements.

As expected (in regards to my earlier post), people are saying that "it takes a different kind of faith or lesser faith to not believe in God that to believe" or "while it takes faith to believe in an unprovable God, there is no faith involved in not believing in something that can't be proven." I think you're missing something.

Anyone who has had a lengthy discussion with a creationist on the topic of the origin of the known universe will know that creationists love to talk about statistics and probability... and for good reason. (See "fine-tuning argument".) When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. I won't get into the exact numbers, but our life-sustaining planet is unbelieveably rare. So you can either believe that it was all by chance, or that it was done on purpose. The ultimate question is, which is easier to believe?

Consider this analogy: in a poker game, the dealer deals himself twenty straight hands of four aces. As the other players are about to kill him for cheating, the dealer says, "wait, you can't prove I'm cheating; there are a trillion parallel universes and we just happen to be in the one where the chances of dealing twenty straight hands of aces has been realized." Technically, he's right--it is possible that there are trillions of universes and that this is the one universe in which all those aces are dealt. But the other players still kill him, because, after all... which is more plausible: that he is lucky, or that he is cheating?

Or this: If someone broke into your house through a living room window one night intending to steal something, and you came and saw them standing in there red-handed, and they said to you, "unbelieveably, while i was walking down the sidewalk outside your house, a car struck something on the road, which then hit me on the head and made me crash through your window", what would you believe? Did this unlikely thing really happen, or did the person purposely break into your house? And which would you do first: call the cops, or give this person medical attention? (haha)

@Bimmy. So you're saying that it's amazing that advanced life exists only on planets that are capable of supporting advanced life?

Also while our planet is incredibly rare, the universe is even more incredibly massive.

Edit: I'd also like to say that while creationists love to discuss statistics, they abuse them horribly. Often claims are based on flawed assumptions, the big three are;

1) Evolution is random. It's not, evolution is random mutations followed by a selective process. Not random.

2) The current state of things was the 'aim' of evolution. Basically they start with the current time and then work out the probabilty of getting there, which assumes that if things were not exactly as they are now then intelligent life would not exist.

3) Your one of 'what are the chances of us being on this perfect planet?'.

@Bimmylee

Those analogies are misleading, for an evident reason: they postulate right in their description the complexity sources known as human beings that are perfectly capable of cheating or making up a story on the spot and known to do so.

That's why in both cases anyone will find it more likely to believe that the dealer manipulated the cards or that the guy is really a thief: it's the simplest option given the known hypothesis including the dealer or the man standing in my house.

In the case of creationism, god is part of the thesis. In other words you're putting the complexity of there being a god that is somehow able and willing to create the universe or drive its evolution on the scales of plausibility against strictly natural laws. Since this god is more complex than a human being and harder to explain, this nets to being more complex than the godless option that originated humans.

Or in simpler words, if I met god in the street and (s)he demonstrated to be able to create universes on a whim, like I know a man can cheat at cards or lie about stealing, then I could say that the creation of our universe would be a very likely conjecture. But that was a big if, hiding all the implausibility of the situation.

PS I was going to say something about the anthropic principle and the misusue of statistic, but Rath already did. Darn.

First, about the  4004BC creation myth, I have seen  it cited many many as the date of creation by Christians and people from other abrahamic religions. I specified the source when I made my arguments.  I used the Abrahamic creation story because the "exact date" is cited so frequently, but to be honest it works with any young Earth theory date. It's not an exact date that I have the problem with, it's the idea of a young Earth and any time that's given. The problem I have is that all evidence goes against the idea of a young Earth and that young Earth "evidence" is usually speculation and false information, usually started from an unreliable source such as Answers in Genesis.

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For the Universe thing, you miss out one major thing; the odds are unlikely, but we live in a Universe of huge numbers.

Consider this, life may be rare, life may only occur in every other system, every thousandth system, every galaxy; we just don't know. But there are an estimated 100 billion  stars in our galaxy, and billions, perhaps even trillions of galaxies. The amount of planets that exist are just uncountable.

We can't work out the figures for the Drake equation, but even if it turned out that life only has a 1 in a Billion chance of forming, that still means there would be a 100 planets with life in our galaxy alone. The odds are astronomical, but they do happen.

An analogy would be people winning the lottery. The lottery has astronomical odds of winning, one in millions upon millions, but people the world over beat these odds week in week out. It doesn't matter when the odds are so large because there is a such a huge number of people taking those odds, far more than the odds actually are, so statistically someone has to beat the odds.

Even if the odds are huge, the Universe is so vast that the odds have to be beaten time and time again.

Also. It's takes life to recognise that life exists. We can only pose this argument because our defying the odds has allowed us to observe life. We only know that we are here, because we are here. (like a lottery winner only being able to enjoy the lottery winnings because they beat the odds to win it. You can't enjoy it if you didn't win the lottery).

You also  assume that we are the only type life that can form and that all life has to have our exact conditions. This is not true. Perhaps we are just inhabit one of billions of potential combinations that allow life to form. Why does life have to have our exact combination? You assume that it does, but I don't see this written anywhere in the rulebook. For example, we could assume life needs Carbon as a base element. But on a planet with low amounts of Carbon, life could just as easily use silicon or another element as its base. We know silicon life can form so I don't see as so far fetched. This is just one example of potentially millions (perhaps billions). I know, this is hypothetical, but it is also extremely plausible that life does not have to take our form.

If this is the case, then life would likely be common.

We've also found organic molecules, the building blocks of life, from non-terrestrial sources. So the building blocks of life certainly exist elsewhere in the universe, you just a need a solvent for them to form (usually water, the third most common molecule in the Universe, one of just a wide range of other mediums for that). It's a slow process and we've never "observed" abiogenesis, but we think that life will form, even if it's just simple self replicating molecules that eventually evolve into simple cells. We can't be sure, but our current evidence certainly points to this type of scenario.

@Highwaystar. Out of genuine interest (and almost entirely off topic) what elements apart from silicon and carbon due you think life could form from? Or was that just based on the idea that the human species really doesn't have anywhere near enough knowledge to rule out other forms of life?

This is a flashback from highschool but I had understood the reason carbon makes a great base for life, is that a. it is capable of forming four bonds and is hence very stable b. is light enough to have been created in relatively large quantity in the very early universe.  I think it is supposed that Silicon is the only other element that fits those criteria well enough.

@Highwaystar: a good book which takes an in-depth look at the probability of life forming in the universe is the Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies.