Young earth creationism is probable

Thanks to Pro for his arguments! Now, obviously, his argument is divided into two main parts: presuppositional and scientific evidence. I'll go on to rebut each part in that order Rebuttal to presuppositional evidences Now, according to my opponent, your initial bias will determine your outlook on evidence. This is true to an extent, but considering all the different viewpoints, is knowledge and truth subjective in this way? If what my opponent says is true, my presuppositions and evidences can be just as valid as my opponent if not more so. He has stated that God is a properly known fact among other things without at least giving a reason to believe they could be true. The BoP is on Pro to show why they are so. My opponent has simply stated his axiom and hasn't given any reason to believe it should hold any water, so the first part of his argument is invalid. I ask him to please do so. Rebuttal to scientific evidences Helium diffusion This argument was debunked almost ten years ago, allow me to show how. This theory rests on a few statements which I'll proceed to refute. Statement 1: "Note that although helium in a balloon will float, helium when unenclosed will just mix evenly with all the other gases, as per normal gas behaviour." It's well known that in any system that the less dense molecules will rise. Yes the Helium will mix to an extent but ultimately it will end up in the upper atmosphere and escape, it has an estimated atmospheric lifetime of about 1-2 million years so assuming conditions don't change there will be a complete atmospheric turnover of Helium every 2 million years. ( http://www.mantleplumes.org...) Of course this assumes that volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts have never occurred on the planet. Both of these would increase the rate of helium loss as they throw vast amounts of material into the atmosphere, resulting in more molecular collisions which brings us to the next incorrect assumption. Statement 2: "Collisions between atoms slow them down" Collisions between atoms transfer energy dependant upon the mechanics of the collision. A large molecule colliding with a helium nucleus travelling at a slower rate in the same direction will not slow the helium down. I'm also skeptical of the rate of Helium degassing that they quote. An example would be the U238 (the most common) - Th234 that they use. This has a half life of 4.4 Billion years and thus would not produce anything like the alpha emission required for 67 grams of helium a second. As for the zircon section. I would be very curious to know how they measured the helium diffusion rates. There's a very interesting section in one of the links i've posted about them having done the experiment in a vacuum and therefore have innaccurate rates. In addition as most of the earth's radioactive decay takes place in the core and lower mantle they need to factor in the time it would take to get to the surface before they can make a claim that there are 67 grams/s escaping to the atmosphere. The full debunking of this can be read here.(1) Refutation of supernova argument An essay by Dave Moore on the pro-evolution web site, The TalkOrigins Archives, sheds some additional information on SNRs (signal to noise ratios) and a young earth. (2) He writes: Most SNRs don't follow the standard four phase model. He cites five circumstances that can cause major changes in the SNR process. An 1994 article by Keith Davies appears to be the first piece of creation science literature that links supernovae data with a young universe. It is the product of a group called Creation Discovery Project from -- of all places -- Ontario, Canada. All of the creation science web sites which discuss supernovae appear to have derived their information from this article. The expected second stage SNRs calculated by Davies contained a mathematical error. It should be 126, rather than the 268 computed by Davies. Some creation science groups which have republished his data have corrected the value; others have not. The number of second stage SNRs detected is not 200 as listed in Answers in Genesis. According to a listing by D.A. Green, it was 225 in the year 2001. 10 Back-calculating from this value gives an age of the universe as 11,970 years, which is outside the upper limit of 10,000 years accepted by most "young earth" creation scientists. Of even greater concern to the creation science position is the rate at which new SNRs being discovered. There were about 160 first and second stage supernovae found in both 1997 & 1998; over 200 in 1999, and 172 in 2000. The estimated age of the universe using Davies' calculation methodology is obviously increasing over time well beyond 12,000 years. Moore criticizes on theoretical grounds Davies' estimates of the percentage of SNRs that should be visible: 47% and 14% for second and third stage SNRs. The estimate of one supernova per 25 years in our galaxy is based on an 1970 estimate by Gustaf Tammann. Other astronomers have estimated 50, 60, and 100 years. Tammann revised his estimate in 1994 to 40 to take advantage of new data. Using these new values, the age of the universe could be as much as quadruple the value computed by Davies, placing it many times older than the 10,000 year upper limit tolerated by young earth creation scientists. A serious objection to Davies' calculations is that "...within a few tens of thousands of years [after the initial explosion], most of the extended remnants which have survived to 'middle-edge' are expected to merge with the interstellar medium and be unrecognizable." Thus, most SNRs can be expected to be undetectable on earth long before they reach the age of 120,300 years -- the time when Davies says the third stage begins. But the finding that really blows Davie's calculations out of the water are the detection of at least six stage 3 SNRs. When creation scientist say that no stage 3 SNRs exist, they are just plain wrong. The references found in creation science articles on supernovae sometimes mention that Clark and Caswell were at a loss to account for the deficits of observed SNRs. As of 2002-MAY-30, they quote Clark and Caswell: As asking: "Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?" But this quote seems to be a rhetorical question that was extracted from the following sentence: "Thus two anomalies require explanation. Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected? Is it reasonable that E0/n should differ so greatly from our estimate for the Galaxy? Both anomalies are removed if we assumed that the N(D)-D relation has been incorrectly estimated owing to the small number of remnants used. So in other words, the argument has been debunked. Refutation of spinning galaxies argument What my opponent says about galaxies spinning quickly may be true, but this provides no reason to believe that they would fly apart. The article he's cited doesn't appear to say anything about that. I ask him to please explain how this can relate to a young universe. Conclusion It appears at its face my opponent has failed to fulfill his BoP at the moment. Even if his premises were sound, they wouldn't seem to give indication of an earth that is 6150 years old. At best it could be maybe 10,000.. I look forward to him reconstructing his points. Best of luck! Sources (1) http://www.talkorigins.org... (2) http://www.talkorigins.org...