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, thats a great theory. If you have a theory that disagrees with relativity, youve changed the world, thats great. But if your theory disagrees with the second law of thermodynamics, i can offer you no hope. I cant 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. Thats it, thermodynamically. Thats 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 theres energy pouring in here from the sun, if i may day and night, cause at night its 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 youre 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 its nuclear fuel or fossil fuel or some extraordinary fuel to be discovered in the future. The second law of thermodynamics will govern any turbine that makes electricity that we all depend on and allowed all these shapes to exist. Let me just say two things. One is you know what, heres 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 thats 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, its going to decay. And its not going to produce life. From a creationists 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 doesnt hold everything together as he did back then. So now we see in regard to the second law of thermodynamics wed say sort of in a sense a bit out of control now compared to what it was originally which is why we have a running down universe. Hypothetically, if evidence existed that caused you to have to admit that the earth was older than 10,000 years and creation did not occur over 6 days, would you still believe in god and the historical jesus of nazareth and that jesus was the son of god . Well, ive been emphasizing all night. You cannot ever prove using the Scientific Method in the present. You cant prove the age of the earth. So you can never prove its old. So theres no hypothetical because you cant 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, theres hundreds of physical processes that you can use to set limits on the age of the universe but you cant ultimately prove the age of the earth. Not using the Scientific Method, you cant 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. Ive said it to you before and i admit again that the reason i believe in a young universe is because of the bibles 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 theres 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, thats why i really challenge christians if youre going to believe in millions of years for the fossil record, you got a problem with the bible. And that is youre going to have death and disease and suffering before sin. So theres no hypothetical in regard to that. You cant prove scientifically the age of the earth or the universe, bottomline. Of course, this is where we disagree. You can prove the age of the earth with great robustness by observing the universe around us. And i get the feeling mr. Ham that you want us to take your word for it. This is to say your interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago as translated into american english is more compelling for you than everything that i can observe in the world around me. This is where you and i, i think are not going to see eye to eye. You said, you asserted that life cannot come from something that is not alive, are you sure . Are you sure enough to say that we should not continue to look for signs of water and life on mars, that thats a waste. Youre sure enough to claim that. That is an extraordinary claim that we want to investigate. Once again, what is it you can predict . What do you provide us that can tell us something about the future, not just about your vision of the past . Is there room for god in science . Well, we remind us, there are billions of people around the world who are religious and who accept science and embrace it and especially all the technology that it brings us. Is there anyone here who doesnt 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 doesnt use emails or is there anybody here who doesnt eat . Because we use information sent from satellites in space to plant seeds on our farms. Thats how we are able to feed 7. 1 billion people where we used to barely be able to feed a billion. So thats what i see. Thats how we have used science and the process. Science for me is two things. Its the body of knowledge. Atomic number of rubidium. And its the process, the means by which we make these discoveries. So for me, thats 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. Thats the problem for me. You want us to take your word for whats written in this ancient text to be more compelling than what we see around us. The evidence for a higher power and spirituality is for me separate. I encourage you to take the next minute and address this problem of the fossils, this problem of the ice layers, this problem of the ancient trees, this problem of the ark, i mean really address it. And so then we could move forward but right now i see no incompatibility between religions and science. Yeah, i actually want to take a minute to address the question. Let me just say this, my answer would be god is necessary for science. In fact, you talked about cellphones, yeah i have a cellphone, i Love Technology. We Love Technology here in answers and genesis. And i have email. We have millions of them as we speak up here. And satellites, and what you said about the information we get, hey i agree with all that. See, they are the things that can be done in the present and thats 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 heres 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 thats very different than talking about our origins. Two very different things. Do you believe the entire bible is to be taken literally . For example, should people who touch pigs 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 thats what you mean by literally, i would say yes i take the bible naturally. What do i mean by that . Well, if its history as genesis is, its written in typical historical narrative, you take it as history. If its a poetry as we find in the psalms then you take it as poetry. It doesnt mean it doesnt teach truth but its not a cosmological account in the sense that genesis is. Theres prophecy in the bible and theres 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, thats how i take the bible. Its gods 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 theres 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. Its a misunderstanding of the old testament. Its a misunderstanding of the new testament and you know again its important to take the bible as a whole in interpreting scriptures. If scriptures really is the word of god then theres not going to be any contradiction which says not, and by the way when men were married to multiple women theres 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 its 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 theres 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 youre going to take what you like, interpret literally and other passages youre going to interpret as poetic descriptions of human events. All that aside, i would say scientifically or as a reasonable man that it doesnt 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 im 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 im still looking for an answer. Have you ever believed that evolution was accomplished through way of a higher power . I think thats what theyre trying to ask here. The intelligent design question, i think. If so, why or why not . Why could not the evolutionary process be accomplished in this way . Have you ever believed that evolution partook by way of evolution . Let me introduce these ideas for mr. Ham to comment. The idea that theres 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 cant 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 hed ordered screws from screw manufacturers and springs from spring manufacturers and glass crystals from crystal manufacturers. But thats not how nature works. This is the fundamental insight in the explanation for living things thats provided by evolution. Evolution is a process that adds complexity through natural selection. This is to say nature has its mediocre designs eaten by its good designs. And so the perception that there is a designer that created all this is not necessarily true because we have an explanation that is far more compelling and provides predictions and things that are repeatable. Im sure mr. Ham here, the facility, you have an organization chart, i imagine youre at the top and its a topdown structure. Nature is not that way. Nature is bottomup. This is the discovery. Things merge up, whatever makes it keep going, whatever doesnt makes it falls away. And this is compelling and wonderful and fills me with joy and its inconsistent with a topdown view. What bill nye needs to do for me is to show me an example of something, some new function that arose that was not previously possible from the Genetic Information that was there and i would claim and challenge you that there is no such example that you can give. Thats why i brought up the example in my presentation of lenskis experiments in regard to ecoli 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. Its just a gene that switched on and off and so there is no example because you know information thats 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 thats what we look at. But youd have to show an example of a brand new function that never previously was possible. There is no such example that you can give anywhere in the world. Name one institution, business or organization other than a church, Amusement Park or the Creation Museum that is using any aspect of creationism to produce its product . Any scientist out there christian or nonchristian, that is involved in inventing things involved in Scientific Method is using creation. They are because they are borrowing from a christian world view. They use the laws of logic. I keep emphasizing that. I want bill to tell me and a view of the universe as a result of natural processes, explain then where the laws of logic came from. Why should we trust the laws of nature . I mean are they going to be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday . In fact, some of the greatest scientists that ever lived isaac newton, james clerk maxwell, michael faraday, were creationists. And as one of them said, you know, thinking gods thought after him and thats 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 dont teach our children correctly about this, theyre not going to be innovative. And theyre not going to be able to come up with inventions to advance in our culture. And so i think that the person was trying to get out that see you know there are lots of secularists out there doing work and they dont 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. Theres lots of creationists out there who publish. People might know that theyre creationists because the topics do not specifically pertain to creation versus evolution but theres lots of them out there. If you go to our website theres a whole list there of scientists who are creationists, who are out there doing great work in this world. And helping to advance technology. Theres a reason that i dont accept your ken ham model of creation. Because it has no predictive quality as you touched on. And something that ive always found troubling, it sounds as though you believe your worldview which is literal interpretation of most parts of the bible is correct. What became of all those people who never heard of it . Never heard of you. What became of all those people in asia . What became of all those First Nations people in north america . Were they condemned and doomed . I mean i dont know how much time you spend talking to strangers but theyre not sanguine about that. To have you tell them that they are inherently lost or misguided. Its 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 mans high intelligence in the past . Hang on. Theres no evidence that men humans are getting smarter. No, especially if you ever met my old boss, no, its that what happens in evolution, its a british word that was used in the middle 1800s. Its survival of the fittest and this usage, it doesnt mean the most pushups 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 well be taken out. Well 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. Its 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. Thats the best theory we have. And we are the result of organisms that lived through that catastrophe. Its not necess