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Bill Nye To Debate Creationist Museum Founder Ken Ham
New submitter cusco writes "Creation Museum Founder and AiG President/CEO Ken Ham will debate Bill Nye at the Creation Museum on Tuesday, February 4, at 7 PM. According to the Washington Post, 'Ham had been hoping to attract the star of TV's 'Bill Nye The Science Guy' to the northern Kentucky museum after Nye said in an online video last year that teaching creationism was bad for children. The video was viewed nearly 6 million times on YouTube.'"
The debate isn't about convincing the creationists - it's about convincing anybody on the fence.
It's an unfortunate fact that it's necessary to constantly have fact-based evidence floating out there to counter the enormous amount of irrational nonsense. It's not necessarily the best voice that wins, but often the loudest.
I'd upvote this if I have any points today!
I used to be a creationist who was closer to the fence than most, and it was material like this proposed debate that finally lit a bulb in my head and allowed me to cross over.
I listened to an old interview with the late Carl Sagan on Science Friday last week, and one of his bones of contention was the haughtiness of the scientific community in regards to reacting to pseudo science.
I have a question for the readers with professional qualifications (ie - PhD's):
Is Bill Nye qualified?
His Wikipedia article lists him as a scientist. He has no advanced degree, only a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell. He has a couple of patents, including one for ballet pointe shoes, and served as "honorary professor" for five years.
Every time the "can amateurs do real science" question comes up, the response is always a resounding NO! from the professional readers of this site. You can't do real science without an advanced degree, institutional funding, and collaboration.
In particular, he doesn't have a degree in evolutionary biology. He's an entertainer.
Does he qualify as "gentleman scientist"?
Is he the right person as spokesman for science in this debate?
(I applaud Bill Nye's contributions to science and education, and think he's eminently qualified. I just wanted to hear what the professionals think of his status as a scientist.)
Bullshit. The theory of evolution does not require that you prove that god does not exist. It just redefines what god (if you believe in him) did and didn't do.
Thinking that your opponents don't believe what they say they believe is almost always a mistake.
There are millions of creationists who believe, utterly and sincerely, that God created the world and everything in it in six days a few thousand years ago. They believe that the same way you believe in gravity. Of course their beliefs are "patently ridiculous"--it doesn't matter. The belief itself is real, and you underestimate that reality at your peril.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Especially when it will be in Kentucky at their pet "Museum" in front of a cheering section consisting of a stacked deck of closed minds.
Really, what's the point?
If Bill Nye is able to ignite the flame of reason in even one mind, then it was a sacrifice worth making. This is a war of minds and we're fighting an uphill battle.
People are stupid by nature--we are biologically wired for faith of all sorts. Most people will never actually see reason for themselves. Human beings pretty much require some form of faith system and best we can probably hope for is that those systems will eventually accept a quieter, more private role in peoples' lives.
Besides that, theists are necessarily skilled and practiced at this. They know how much work it requires. How many times do you think those Mormon kids get doors slammed in their faces in just one day? I doubt most of them get beyond a brief confrontation in a parking lot, but I bet they live for the chance to make a difference in just one person's life. I think a lot of critical thinkers could learn something from that. It's easy to humanity as a lost cause because most of it really is. But you have to be willing and eager to fight for the few that are ready to listen.
Why? The point of a proper debate on stage is not to convince the other person. It's to convince the audience. No one believes either Ham or Nye will change their views; that doesn't mean there's no value in an audience hearing their viewpoints and making up their own minds.
I think you have a misunderstanding of the point of a public debate.
I'll have you know I had to type this almost twice because I fumbled my mouse. :)
So there is video evidence of the big bang happening.
Yes, actually, there is. Tune an old TV to an unused channel. A certain percentage of the static you see is a remnant of the Big Bang: the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Mapping the CMB helped us understand the cosmology of the early universe.
That said, the Big Bang is just the leading hypothesis. In fact, the Big Bang is probably also one of the LEAST interesting (or perhaps most "conservative") of the modern hypotheses out there now.
And also video evidence that god does not exist?
Um... what? Do you have video evidence that invisible pink unicorns do not exist, too? Or perhaps you caught a leprechaun on tape in the act of not existing? Seriously, think that question through for a minute.
What everyone on both sides needs to realize is you literally cannot prove either theory. And when I say literally, I mean literally. It is impossible.
Yes and no. Mostly no.
For starters, a scientific theory is basically just a big hypothesis. A hypothesis is only valid if it is designed to be falisfiable. That is you must be able to design an experiment or collect data that could prove it false. You cannot prove a hypothesis true, because that is not how the scientific method works.
Gravitation is still a theory, by the way. Is gravity impossible to prove? Well, no, because gravity is both an observable fact (objects with mass clearly do "gravitate" toward one another) and a set of hypotheses (various explanations for this phenomenon, some of which are pretty far out there because we're still not sure).
Evolution is the same way. We observe evolution as a fact all around us. Modern biology and medicine are basically entirely about evolution on various scales. Practically everything we eat comes from sources we have manipulated directly through evolution to be more productive or more appealing. New species exist today that would have been "literally" impossible even a few decades ago (bacteria that depend on man-made materials and waste like the famous nylon-eating colonies, for example). In that sense, evolution is an unavoidable fact. The study of it is where the theories come in, but we have pretty much reached consensus on the big picture; now we're just working on the details.
The problem for deniers is that the theory of evolution is "literally" better supported than even the leading theory of gravitation. There is simply overwhelming evidence. If we were wrong about how evolution works, you would be dead right now, many times over, from disease or starvation or worse. Scratch that. You probably would not have been born.
The theory of evolution requires that god does not exist, which cannot be proven. The theory of creationism requires that god does exist, which also cannot be proven.
Let's break this into four parts:
"The theory of evolution requires that god does not exist."
False. The theory of evolution says nothing about any sort of deity. There are many theists (pretty sure the Pope is one) who are quite content to accept both the fact and theory of evolution with their deity being the "agent" responsible. So basically this deity saw fit to give live the means to evolve so that it might fend for itself, express free will on a greater scale, and perhaps as part of a bigger plan for humans to learn the skill of genetic manipulation to prosper. Numbers from those recent polls would suggest this position actually being more common than evolution denial among Christians.
"The theory of Creationism"
Creationism is not a theory. It makes no predictions and there is no experiment to perform or evidence to be collected to render it falsifiable. Creationism is a faith. By definition.
"The theory of Creationism requires that god does exist."