I studied a great deal of religions on beliefs on an objective basis, a search for truth. Objectively like with any theory, you have to put a hypothesis up to every form of scrutiny to find out if it will stand up. To this end I had open honest debates with people of many many faiths, and as it turns out every single religion on earth is a 100% correct, even the ones that contradict one another, because no religious person in the history of religion has ever "lost" a debate. No matter what, they are always right. Even if they don't have the answer, they are right. Even If there is a pile of evidence stacked against them, they are right. If they said something they later think is wrong, they were right both times. The only way a religious person could lose a debate is if they were arguing against their wife of a different faith, because women like religious beliefs are right no matter what.

I have debated with catholics, church of christ, mormons, jehovah's witness's and despite all their vast theological differences they have one thing in common. Under no circumstances can any of their beliefs be wrong. If you're really good, you can get them to shrug their shoulders and say "it's a mystery of god", or "I don't have the answer personally, but I'll do some research"

Sometimes I fall into the trap of debating a religious person still, even after all the insanity I went through before. After a few minutes I remember that I might as well walk up to a klan member and explain why black people aren't an inferior race. The result will be the same.

 I actually read an article in Time magazine, that some schools are doing just that. It's a neutral religious class, where they don't teach that the bible is right or wrong, but rather have students study and examine it from an objective standpoint. Does the bible have contradictions? Is the morality presented in the bible perfect or flawed? What is the message of the bible? Is it a cohesive message? It doesn't try to say one way or another if it's right or wrong, it just tries to get students to look at it and think. And that I'm all for. Have a bible class, have a science class. But don't present the bible as science.

So, what makes Intelligent Design worthy of being taught in school? Because some people believe it even though there is no scientific evidence of it? You have also made a comment out of ignorance. It doesn't sound like you know much about evolution. Evolution has gone far beyond Charles Darwin. The studies of evolution go down to the cellular level. I won't profess more knowledge than I have studied myself (I study geology, not biology beyond what I had to), but you would be well served to talk to a molecular biologist. There are no inconsistancies, there are only gaps in what you can actually find in the fossil record. There is a problem with the fossil record, not all animals live in areas where they are likely to fossilize, and some do not have body structures that fossilize well.

Even though I can't go into detail about the the cellular variations, I can tell you about fossils. Sometimes, in geology we are very lucky and we find certain rocks that do have a specific chemical makeup that allows them to preserve micro-organisms and larger organisms with soft-bodies, like early arthropods and softer planktonic organisms. Are record of marine organisms is much more complete because they live where they are likely to fossilize. Land animals that don't live near water they can be buried in often only fossilize because they were caught in a landslide or some other natural disaster. So, you get a very good record of evolution in the ocean. Fossils are useful to us because we can use them to date rock layers quickly and correlate them with other rock layers around the world. We can see how animals changed in response to their environment and in response to each other.

If you are going to start teaching some people's religious beliefs in school then which one are you going to chose? There are people in New Guinea that believe, or believed, that the world was created by a great mother who gave birth to her son and left him to grow up on the island on his own. When he turned 15 he missed his mother so much that he cried until he filled the oceans, which is why the oceans are so salty, and his mother returned. When she returned they had children and gave birth to all the people of the world. So, there is about as much proof of Intelligent Design as there is of a goddess that had sex with her 15 year old son to beget the world. Which, by the way, had to happen in the biblical explanation since if there are only Adam & Eve, someone had to "know" their brother, sister, mother or father.

Also, stop associating theory with a guess. Theory in science is an explanation for natural phenomena backed up by reliable evidence. Evolution will never be a law of science because laws are natural mechanics, not explanations. For instance, we have laws of gravity which describe gravity's behavior, but how gravity works is a theory.

Who said anything about teaching Intelligent Design?

You are still going on about that... I made my point and thought there wouldn't be any contention about it... I conceded you your points, and left myself my beliefs. Lets leave it at that.

 luinil made a comment about teaching both.  This is a common belief by many in the US that see it as a choice between two sound "beliefs".  The problem is that one is a belief, the other is a scientific explanation.  They cannot coexist side by side at school.  I find this opinion is caused by ignorance and has the potential of spreading ignorance to children through school.  So, that is who I was responding to.  The problem is that it took me a while to write that post so it appears a bit down the list from the post I was responding to.

Just one quick question Profcrab, in all seriousness, don't fossils date rocks and rocks also date fossils? If there has been any progress in this field I would like to hear it.

As a person that believes in creationism I don't it should be taught at school. Problem with creationism is that their isn't one creation story for all people unlike evolution which is pretty much standard. It is dependent on your religious beliefs and I don't faith should be taught as fact in school unless you attend a religious school which I have no problem with but if its publically funded then no. Like some creationist believe the world is 10,000 years old, I don't. I think its billions of years old. Also some creationist believe that the everything was created as is, I don't. I believe variations can occur within species that allows for things like phenotypic changes (different patterns of fur etc..) but I don't believe in speciation however.

It's true that you can't date sedimentary rocks directly using radiometric dating because the rocks that make them up were preexisting. You can use radiometric dating to date ash deposits or basalt (lava) layers that frequently can be found covering already deposited sediments. So, since we know that newer rocks are deposited on top of older rocks and any geologic structure that cuts through another structure has to be newer than what it cut through (i.e. magma coming up through existing sedimentary rocks has to be newer than the sedimentary rocks) we can use those igneous rocks to tell us how old the sedimentary rocks are, or at least the age range they fall into. That dates the fossils in those rocks as well. There are several isotopes that are used for radiometric dating, some are more accurate for shorter durations, like carbon-14, and others like Uranium have isotopes that can be used to approximate ages into the billions.

The oldest rocks on earth that we can date are 3.8 billion years old. Before that, the Earth is assumed to be molten. We get the 4.5 billion year age of the earth by dating rocks that were around at the time that the earth, and other planets in the solar system, were forming. These are easy to find, the fall to earth all the time. The age of most of the meteorites that fall to earth is about 4.5 billion years. I know you didn't ask, but I thought I would throw that in there.

@ kazadoom,

Is it true that Liberty college has 3000 year old dinosaur bones on display?