Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution as an equally valid idea.

* Radiometric dating is accurate for billions of years. It depends on the half life of the atoms in question. Carbon-14 dating works for about 50,000 years, but others work far longer. Let's look at a specific example, Uranium Lead decay. The ratio of Uranium-235 to Uranium-238 (.72%) is well known and when you hear about uranium enrichment they are talking about getting a higher ratio of U-235 than U-238 as the 235 has the added property of allowing a chain reaction of nuclear fission. Now, why is this ratio important? Because Uranium decays into lead. U-238 decays to Pb-206, and U-235 decays to Pb-207 so we can look at the ratio of Pb-207 and Pb-206 calculating from the half-life that this was a standard bit of uranium and calculate how much of it decayed. Calculating from the half-life we can tell how long this bit of Uranium has been decaying for. There are plenty of different types of radiometric dating, Ar-Ar, He-He, I-Xe, La-Ba, Pb-Pb, Lu-Hf, Ne-Ne, K-Ar, C-C, Re-Os, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, U-Pb, U-Pb-He, U-Th, U-U... to name a few. Typically when we date something we use several different types of dating. Actually a number of geologists were pretty steadfast to the flood story some of the greats finally gave it up when the evidence against it became too great. There was no great flood 65 million years ago. There was a massive extinction event triggered by an impact in the Yucatan, at the PT boundary. The dating of that impact and size of it, and the world record of species which existed in many and varied ways prior to said impact are all very sound. Non-avian Dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. No. A massive flood would have a massive number of changes easily visible in the geologic record. The reason they are discounted is there's no evidence for it. You have failed to show me some number of assumptions, there are vast number of good scientific data exactly explaining your objections. There's a great foundation for geology, physics, and other science (you haven't touched on evolution yet) and nothing for creationism. Evolution isn't speculation. >> "This entire statement is an assumption. There is a large variety of life-forms, we line them up shortest to tallest, and presumed oldest to youngest and say "see...evolution" Categorically no. Which is more similar a rabbit to a cat or a rabbit to a lizard? Well we see that they are all about the same size, but fundamentally the cat and rabbit have hair whereas the lizard has scales. Which is more similar a rabbit to a cat or a cat to dog? They all have fur so that isn't a notable difference, but if you look at the bone structure and the teeth you'll note that the cat and the dog are the most similar even if the sizes vary. There are certain traits which are a constant across vast groups of animals. For example, placental mammals give live birth, whereas marsupials do not. Why is it that Australia is populated by marsupial mammals while Africa and Europe was populated by placental mammals? Well, the super-continent of Pangaea broke up up into Laurasia and Gondwanaland during the Triassic about 200 million years ago. With Laurasia consisting of North America, Europe and Asia. Gondwanaland consisting of South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and oddly India. Well due to this geographic isolation the mammals continue to along separate courses, Gondwanaland broke freeing up Africa and India to crash back into Europe. Antarctica, Australia and South America went their separate ways during the Triassic about 135 million years ago. This split the mammals into two groups one became the modern marsupials (pouched mammals) and another became the placental mammals (like us). So we find that Australia and South America have marsupials along with some later invaders after South America ran into North America. Though, Australia's native wildlife like Kangaroos, Wombats, etc are marsupials. Now what about Antarctica? Should it have marsupials? Well, it does... or rather did. Most everything is extinct now, but when you look at the fossils in Antarctica has they are definitively marsupial mammals. And, often similar to those found in South America and Australia for the time. You might think that this is just a fluke that all primates are similar to each other and all chiroptera are similar, and all lagomorphs. Clearly these groups were made up just to put similar organisms in them. However, this same concept bears itself out in the DNA of all life on the planet. All of the great apes for example have a broken gene which would and does synthesize vitamin C in other mammals (this is why your dog never eats citrus and never gets scurvy, unlike humans or chimps or any of the great apes). We have every other gene needed to synthesize the acid however we lack one and it's broken in exactly the same way throughout the great apes. All cats for example have a broken TAS1 gene which allows all other animals to taste sweet things. And all mammals have the nerves and blood for the ganglia of the eye in front of the incoming light; squid don't. Squid eyes are assembled properly. We can see that they need not have evolved from the same common ancestor as the mammalian eye, or at the very least broke off prior to the beneficial mutation which lead to mammalian eyes being put together backwards. The mammals as a group date back well before the K-T boundary. About 105 million years ago the Afrothera group (includes elephants and aardvarks) broke off from the Laurasiathera, Euarchontoglires, and Xenarthra groups (all placentals). Physics tells us plenty of things, and the Big bang theory doesn't say there was nothing, there just might have been nothing. In fact, there might still be nothing as everything seems to add up to nothing when you do the math. Certain energies and negative energies all seem to cancel each other out. I assure you, I know plenty of biology, and I am not a perfect system. My ulner nerve runs on the outside of my humerus, my appendix does nothing except occasionally kill people, my lower back is built for an animal that would walk on all four dooming me to back trouble (like most humans) later in life, my knees are poorly constructed and my left has had a number of issues, my hip has a good chance of starting to slip as I age and might need to be replaced with a prosthetic, my jaw is too small for my wisdom teeth and they are often removed rather than coming in sideways or being infected or problematic in one way or another. -- In fact, there's not too much intelligent design in most of this... although every last feature makes perfect sense under the light of evolution. >>"We dont need love, or an appreciation for art and music." Actually as I mentioned before, traits which lead to mate selection as well as offspring benefits are both evolutionary selected for... love, art, and music all accomplish these. >>Wow...sounds like a design to me. You believe that things get eaten is a design? Or that babies are born deformed? That wasps lay eggs inside the body of living caterpillars to be eaten alive? That animals get sick and die? -- These are all consequences of numbers and keep the struggle for survival going and preventing all species from overrunning the planet. What would this look like if it weren't designed? If everything was just running wild eating other organisms, breeding, etc? I asked you to give me one independent positive fact about intelligent design. What is one of the predictions the theory makes? Give me a specific claim about ID, a concrete fact about ID which *COULD* be taught in schools. -- You failed. How could we even teach ID if there's nothing to teach? We are suppose to overturn all of science as opinion and teach religion... because you don't understand science?