Bill Nye & Ken Ham Science/creationism Debate

[AB Editor]

Morning.

The internet seems to have gone a bit mad for this debate:



(There's a lot of fluff at the beginning - skip on!)

Bill Nye is a popular children's entertainer and "science guy" - he likes to teach children about science. Ken Ham is a Ozzy creationist who likes a good, hard literal interpretation of an evening.

I've not had chance to watch it yet - but I thought you lot might be interested :)

[LazyGun]

Yep, although I have not had the chance to see it yet. I would imagine Ham will be using the strawman definition of science, with the nonsense about historical versus observational science, trotting out that tired old trope " the atheist lobby" who are allegedly stifling scientists from wheeling out all their evidence in favour of Young Earth Creationism,Trying to blacken Darwins character as well as calling Evolution "Darwinism", and probably something about Science being just a belief like religion.

Then throw in a few biblical verses, maybe the odd fringe scientist or two, and - thats it.

I would imagine Nye should win the debate :)

[jim360]

Historical science is indeed a bit of a Straw Man argument, used by a lot of people for various reasons. I've not really got the time to watch nearly three hours of Bill Nye v. yet another nutter, but I'll be amazed if Ken Ham has anything new to offer to the Creationist position. Their argument in a nutshell seems to often boil down to the idea that knowledge of this world was complete at the beginning of our history, which is self-evidently wrong given the fact that he has a computer in front of him, for example.

Never mind.

[Khandro]

Sounds a bit like Oscar's definition of fox-hunting; "The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible."

[woofgang]

I thought it was "uneatable" khandro?

[Old_Jim]

The arguments are:

1) The Universe is extremely old, best guess 13.8 billion years. We don't actually know how it got there. The Earth is also quite old and geologists reckon it's 4.5 billion years old. None of us were actually around to see it. There are a number of factors contributing to the diversity of life on our planet, but evolution is the most important.

2) No it's not. My Bible starts off with a sermon that explains the relationship between God, the universe and man told in terms of the days of the week. Since the Bible was personally dictated by God, it must be literally true. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the worldwide followers of Jesus Christ accepting that it's an allegory just proves that my little sect is the only one that's right. We also happen to believe in the calculations made by an inebriate 17th century Irish Anglican archbishop called James Ussher that the Earth was created on 23 October 4004 BC (although we reject anything else archbishops have to say.

These versions of the "truth" are set in stone and no amount of debate is going to change anybody's mind.

[LazyGun]

Some messages to non-believers from the theists attending the Ham/Nye debate.

Read em and weep/laugh ;)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio?bffb

[Mojo-Jo-Jo]

I'm in the middling watching it now.

[AB Editor]

LG. Sad isn't it? I am not sure what they're trying to achieve with some of those messages?

[emmie]

a bit of Ham on Nye.

[AB Editor]

Boom boom!

[emmie]

who me....

[AB Editor]

I've listened to it for a bit... probably 40 minutes worth.

I tried to see Mr. Ham's point... but it's impossible. He didn't want to debate it and instead would only engage with "politician answers" i.e. just repeating his script(ure?)

It's fine, but it is evident that he's from a certain sliver of Christianity, and not representative of the whole.

[LazyGun]

@Ab Editor Agreed.

Several science commentators had some fun answering the creationist questions listed in the previous links. This is one of the more polite ones ;)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/02/06/religion_and_science_answering_creationists_questions.html

And i think the take home message was this; When asked what would you need to change your mind?, Bill Nye answered Just one piece of credible evidence. Ken Ham said nothing would change his mind.

Just about sums up the ludicrous stance of Young Earth Creationists really. Even that venerable old firebrand theist Pat Robertson dismissed Hams stance as ridiculous!

http://www.christianpost.com/news/pat-robertson-to-ken-ham-lets-be-real-lets-not-make-a-joke-of-ourselves-114063/