Bill "The Science Guy" Nye Says Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children

timeOday writes "BigThink has released a video missive by Bill Nye ('The Science Guy') in which he challenges the low level of acceptance of evolution, particularly in the United States. He does not mince words: 'I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.'"

Comments

No, he didn't.

[TemperedAlchemist]

Bill Nye said kids shouldn't be taught that certain scientific theories are wrong. He never even said creationism, once.

This headline is just sensationalist garbage.

Re:No, he didn't.

[oh_my_080980980]

It's in the title of the video, "Creationism Is Not Appropriate for Children," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/bill-nye-science-guy-creationism-evolution_n_1835208.html

Re:So which field of engineering

[Jerom]

bio-engineering

Re:So which field of engineering

[zerobeat]

Never heard of biochemical engineering? Why is this even moded up to a score of 2 already?

Re:So which field of engineering

[scorp1us]

Computer science with genetic algorithms.

Re:1+1=3

[WillAdams]

mu.

The Catholic Church doesn't teach Creationism.

Yes, that is exactly what he says.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Nye talks specifically about denial of belief in the theory of evolution. While he doesn't use the word creationism, his comments can only apply to that "world-view" which he believes is contrary to the evidence around us.

This headline captures exactly the message of the video, I have no idea why someone would interpret that video otherwise.

Re:Evolution just isn't that relevant

[zerobeat]

Well, engineers that solve problems in biological systems will use 'that'. But there is an additional problem with your comment. An engineer that accepts electrons can move through a metallic conductor when a voltage is applied because the evidence says so, but refuses to believe evolution despite the overwhelming evidence that it is true, is an engineer acting on faulty principles.

No, I don't trust them.

I can't be the only one bothered by the title.

[schitso]

Bill "The Science Guy" Nye? No no no. It's "Bill Nye The Science Guy"! (Billlll Nyeeee the Scienceee Guyyy.)

Re:prove your memory

[Hazel Bergeron]

How do you know that all this technology is around you? More specifically, how do you know that everything you are looking at does what you think it does?

Also, if philosophy is bullshit then we might as well crawl back to ~C4 BC and start again. This is why there are rarely any bright individuals in computer engineering classes: they simply don't see the value of any learning beyond how electricity works.

Re:Personally, I don't see a conflict

[Barlo_Mung_42]

It is incompatible in the claim that we all descend from two "first" humans. It is also incompatible in the ego centric idea that this is all about us. Evolution doesn't plan ahead or work that way.

Re:prove your memory

[Hazel Bergeron]

I accept my memory as reliable. My acceptance is an act of faith.

The same applies to you, whether you want to admit it or not.

Re:So which field of engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

As a practising engineer, I would say I use computer models based on evolutionary principles such as genetic algorithms and genetic programming. So the underlying theory that things can change over time to fit their niche seems true, but I as the programmer set the world with all the rules in place. The fact that evolution works does not necessarily lead to the exclusion of a creator.

Re:A friend of mine link to this on Facebook recen

[MightyMartian]

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

Your worldview is ignorant, and not based on where science is. Evidence for speciation has been around for decades. Do you always base your beliefs on nonsense that has to be over a hundred years old by now?

Re:Translation for the "Normal Guy"

[sanosuke001]

I got a troll rating for people probably not reading the comment title ;(

Re:Yes!

[Abreu]

Mommy, what did they do in Sodom that was sinful?

They taxed the job creators.

Actually, the contrary:

Ezekiel 16:49 "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy."

So no, it was not the buttsecks

Re:Let's trade one priesthood for another!

[Ksevio]

You failed science class didn't you?

Science is about creating theories and working to prove or disprove them. Scientists never ask for unquestioning obedience, they want you to be able to verify their work. We don't give credibility to scientists that don't provide evidence or ways to duplicate their results.

Science isn't about magic or faith. All civilizations will eventually come up with the same scientific theories - the same obviously isn't true for religion. If we as a society want to progress forwards technologically and scientifically we need to push rational thinking and science on kids, not blindly believing centuries old myths.

Re:Why are we still talking about this?

[MightyMartian]

Evolution, in its current state, is religion, though.

No, it is not. It is a scientific theory.

Evolution is an organism's way of adapting over the course of millions of years to become a completely different organism in order to survive in a habitat in which the original organism would no longer thrive.

Let us stop right there. You don't even appear to know what evolution is. Evolution works on populations. In simple terms evolution can be defined as the change in the genetic makeup of a population over time.

-- A basic definition that's obviously incomplete, has exceptions, etc. but covers most of the bases in the theory. Now tell me: How is that not religion? How do you not look at that, reasonably, and realized it's completely fucked-up theory that's full of stupid and guesswork? "Takes millions of years" is the first clue. We haven't been monitoring it for millions of years. A con man would say "Millions of years" so he could never be proven wrong. We simply don't have the number of fossils it would take to support such a claim. (So the tiemframe gives the theory a little elbow room, so what?). We also don't have the realtime observations to support it. Millions of years is hundreds of thousands of generations for horses, but billions of generations for, say, fruitflies. The closest we've come to a realtime observation would be seeing a bacteria get over its citrus allergy.

That the Earth is many times older than the Genesis account has been known since the 18th century. As I said to another poster, this absurd claim that we have to directly observe every moment is as absurd as demanding to know the syntax of every generation of spoken language from Proto-Germanic to Modern English.

The fossil evidence isn't even the only line of evidence. In general, the molecular data agrees with the fossil data giving us two independent lines of evidence; the twin-nested hierarchy. It has not been reasonable to attack evolution based on fossil evidence for over a century, and certainly not reaosnable to claim the relative scarcity of fossils (which there are far more of than you seem aware) for half a century.

Second -- It assumes that the organism's internal, blind workings can predict, accurately, not only that the environment WILL change, but HOW it will change, and adapt accordingly, MILLIONS OF YEARS before the environment changes (as environmental changes on the scale that necessitate evolution don't take millions of years. They take thousands.) I could write a thousand pages on why this is so stupid, but no one would listen, because you'll just "explain it away" -- which is precisely what religious zealots do when confronted with truth that shatters their doctrines. "Only a tenth of a percent adapt correctly, and the rest go extinct!" Oh ok. Whatever

I have no idea where you learned above evolution, but certainly not from any biology source. Every population has variability, it's always present. Some members of a population will be more able to survive the environment some will not. Those traits which tend even slightly to give a reproductive advantage will be selected for. Many traits are in fact neutral, and thus have reasonably good odds of simply being selected for (neutral selection or neutral drift), but can in fact at a later time either prove beneficial or harmful. Some genes in fact remain, but are suppressed through developmental processes (a whole other area that I challenge you to learn about), but can be re-expressed, thus leading to humans with long body hair all over their body or snakes with limbs and many other atavisms which are suppressed developmentally, even though the genes remain in our genome.

Third -- We assume that everything in our nature is product of evolution. Comparing apes to men, this is simply ridiculous, especially given the supposed timescales. To assume that evolution chan