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Watch Bill Nye and Ken Ham Clash Over Creationism Live
New submitter Max McDaniel writes to point out this live stream of the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham concerning the viability of creationism in a scientific age taking place at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky (of which Ham is the founder). Note: the presentation is scheduled for 7 p.m. Eastern; the live feed is likely to remain less interesting until then.
Will be a divine creation.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's not a debate, it's an episode of American Gladiators without the pugli sticks.
Seriously though, I'm not sure Mr. Ham is going to actually respond to Bill Nye. If Mr. Nye responds, and Mr. Ham doesn't, it only puts the "science" of creationism in a valid light, as if it were worth debating.
Here's hoping they stay mostly on whether it should or should not be taught in schools, not whether either is true or not. Science isn't so much about "truth" but about the best understanding based on available evidence. That is what should be taught, right from the get go.
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For us lazy geeks, what's that as UTC?
as a WWE Free For All.
I would rather watch paint dry. That would be more informative, too.
You can already make an outline for the transcript.
Nye:
Ham: You're wrong!
Nye:
Ham:
Sorry.. there isn't going to be anything accomplished. You can't have a debate when there is no acknowledgment about facts.
This is a bad idea because it gives an air of credibility where it doesn't belong. What's next, debating 9/11 truthers? I respect Bill Nye and his decision, however i feel he degrades himself doing this.
Wonder if they'll discuss how this will have some useful effect on people's lives beyond making people yell at each other on the internet?
The empty chair on the left is clobbering the one on the right.
I hope they got Mills Lane for this event.
I love Bill Nye's work, but personally I think he made a mistake in getting involved in this. He's not going to convince the die-hard creationists of anything. The only thing that can be accomplished here is to provide the nutter museum high-profile publicity (which is, almost certainly, the reason Ham was interested in doing this in the first place).
Creationism is, even still, a fringe group of nutters that seem to psychologically thrive off of single-minded obstinance and a belief of personal exceptionalism in their willingness to throw away actual logic and facts. The fact that their beliefs are so fringe is the reason why, almost anywhere else in society outside their individual congregations or this crazy freak show^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMuseum they have to try and water it down by calling it "Intelligent Design" in an attempt to get somewhat more rational people to go along with it.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Never try to teach a pig to sing. You'll waste your time and annoy the pig.
Why I won't debate creationists:
http://old.richarddawkins.net/...
I couldn't agree more.
...they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
One more reason for them to make jokes about Americans. KY, for cryin' out loud ! Seriously: this confirms so many biases that I can't even begin to count.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
...except that religion isn't just a harmless social thing that people do on Sundays.
They're in government, deciding how to run the country (eg. Bush deciding to go to war).
They're trying to remove evolution from the education system.
They get tax breaks.
etc.
No sig today...
Ham on Nye.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Why if the universe is ~6000 yr old virtually all the astronomical images returned since a century or so show objects at distances requiring more than 6000 yr for light to reach us?
Why would the Creator be so deceptive to create 6000 yr ago in the most exquisite details images of the universe looking precisely 13.8 billions yr old, and this false impression would have been reserved just for us in the recent decades?
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
This isn't going to be pretty. Just as the oil industry uses FUD to create false "uncertainties" about climate science, Ken Ham misrepresents evolutionary science to make it appear that there is a debate. There is no way for a logical person like Nye (who is a mechanical engineer by training, BTW) to effectively counteract Ham's bullshit.
The very fact that this debate is happening is already a win for Ham (and not just because of the millions of dollars that AIG is raking in): The amount of media coverage that this "debate" has received creates the impression that there is a debate to be had - when the basic science is very well-understood and unambiguous. Ham's work is FUD at its finest.
We see all over the place folks who insist on sticking to their beliefs regardless of the evidence to the contrary.
Ham specifically said why he holds his beliefs in that Bill Maher movie -"Religulous". It's on NetFlix - FF until you see the old guy with the Abe Lincoln beard. Also, a; MUST see is the bald priest at the Vatican - Father Foster. I won't paraphrase or quote here because I am unable to capture his spirit and intellect.
But debating is a waste of time. Leave it alone. I know - I have Fundamentalists in my family - some of them have engineering degrees from Texas A&M. I once mentioned about the physicists' hypothesis about multi-verses and he brushed it off as something "we did with imaginary numbers long ago.". He's so analytical but when it comes to his faith - Pfoof! - it's all believable. He told me that Einstein is WRONG about traveling fast than light because we "wouldn't have been put here if we couldn't travel faster than light." - yes that is a quote of exactly what he said.
What do I do - oh worshipers of the intelligence of Slashdot? He IS smarter than me and he holds those beliefs.
There is an ice storm warning for the area right now. I bet they'll be postponing the debate soon.
Why do I think Ken Ham will "win" this debate? Well, not because I think Ken will prove conclusively that Evolution is wrong and Creationism is right. I don't believe that at all. Evolution has a ton of evidence supporting it and Ken would have to pull out an Everest-sized mountain of hard evidence (*not* coming from "the Bible says...") to even come close to proving Creationism.
The reason Ken will "win" is because when Creationists "debunking" Evolution, they don't require proof. They spew a talking point or three and then declare victory. Those supporting Evolution, however, are careful to lay out all of the facts and supporting evidence. This takes more time than spewing talking points. Ken will rattle off a dozen talking points and Bill will only have time to tackle one or two. Of course, given enough time, he could refute every talking point Ken Ham spews, but I'm sure Ken can toss out the talking points faster than Bill Nye can refute them merely because refuting with evidence takes more time than making a baseless accusation.
So unless Ken speaks in slow-motion and Bill Nye channels an auctioneer, Ken Ham will "win" the debate.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
basically:
They shouldn't debate because .... blah, blah, blah
and
Can the creationist explain this....?
Can't have it both ways.
an engineer should never get into a mud wrestling match with a pig. everybody is going to get dirty, but only the pig enjoys it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
For insight into how Mr. Ham twists logic, read this opinion piece from him:
Why I'm debating the 'Science Guy' about creationism.
If this mirrors his arguments tonight, Mr. Nye should be able to debate circles around him. Anyone minimally trained in logic and debate should be able to beat him.
I hope this does[n't] end up like the last debate between science and creationism:
http://www.websitesonadime.com...
--Joe
Emotion is a fact.
Could you expound on that?
Nye isn't stupid, he's thought about the implications of this debate. He's already talked about the promotion of the debate as a leveling effect of the two approaches, when really they are nowhere similar. (Creation Mythology and Scientific Inquiry).
However, I think if Nye plays his cards right, he'll not fall into the trap of a tit-for-tat banter of each little Creationist pseudo-doubt. Instead, he'll address the general sociology of the subject: The Christian religion is just one of dozens of creation myths, popular in certain places of the world at this time in history. It simply cannot admit it is wrong, although it has been proven wrong many times and simply abandoned those historical issues (Copernicus onward, for just a few examples). Additionally, there are still the hangups in Christianity with gender (both women and gays) as lesser actors on the stage. Combined with the peculiar Politically-rightward stance in the US, defining their positions on the environment, poverty and interventionism - Christianity cannot explain many parts of the modern world well, let alone creation.
Nye could also simply state that there are too many religions to include them all in an Origins class, and all of them arrive with only scriptural evidence that it's best left to a comparative-studies class on mythologies. Which is exactly where they are today.
Also, if everyone started empirical scientific exploration over again (really, we do this all the time in teaching) - the same models would be arrived at - simply because the models fit the observations. They aren't dictated from any secret cabal, exactly opposite the Christian method. Nye can do this, as well as any of us. The evolutionary discrepancies Ham will blubber on about are not worth the time, but this entire use of one religion to define all things in the universe can easily be made to look silly.
All of Nye's arguments will be discounted as the words of the Devil and the kids won't be allowed to watch it.
I'm a product of fundie parents.
What changed me? I don't know exactly. I was waking up one day when I was 9 and thinking, "If Santa Claus and Zeus are fake, why is God real?"
Long talks with my priest - (HE was THE nicest MAN I have ever known - NOT in the Biblical sense!!!!)
Faith is what it boils down to, I have none.
Do this - try to convince someone that they don't love their Mother.
Good luck with that.
I am a creationist myself (in the minority here on Slashdot) and frequently listen to Christian radio. I often find myself cringing when Ken Ham's little segments come on. He usually uses circular reasoning to prove his point - the following is an exact paraphrase of something I heard him say recently: "The Bible states that the world is less than 6000 years old and therefore evolution is wrong. Because evolution is wrong because the Bible says it is wrong, we have proved the evolutionists to be an unreliable source and therefore we can not trust the evolutionists criticism of the Bible." I personally know a number of scientists who believe in creation/intelligent design (plus one atheist leaning agnostic with doubts about the probability of life arising by chance) who would represent the creation side of the argument better than Ken Ham.
Some fossilized questions for a transitional and healhty debate, for instance: is there evolution if there is no time? How will evolutionary biology meet new physical paradigms about time, space and so on? Will new conceptual changes deny evolution? Or on the contrary, will it become a more extraordinary process, full of astonishing implications? If so, will past human beings and the rest of living beings become something different as science progresses? After all, is life something fix-finite-defined? That is, can one understand it by means of using a flesh brain and its limited words, axioms and dogmas? Does the whole of life fit inside a bone box? Indeed, will science add indefinitely without understanding completely, is there an infinite pool of knowledge and ignorance waiting for us? Otherwise, will religions use the word God forever and ever, as if it were a death thing, a repetitive thing that is part of human discussions? And, in order to speak about God, are they using his limited brain or do they use unknown instruments? Along these lines, there is a different book, a preview in http://goo.gl/rfVqw6 Just another suggestion in order to freethink for a while
I am doubly disappointed in this. Ham because he tarnishes my religion with narrow thinking and basically missing the point of Christianity, and Nye even bothering to speak on the topic. It makes me sad though that great scientist public speakers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye get sucked into Dawkins "destroy religion" attitudes though. For centuries religion and science were not at odds. Indeed, the *church* was a significant obstacle against science, but not the *religion*.
Physicists in general are pretty arrogant people, I've found ( I've worked in a university Physics Dept. for 20 years, and married one too )
This doesn't have to be a black and white issue.
The pursuit of knowledge is a noble one, and we should be humble for what we find.
Wow, so all members of all religions are in a conspiracy to take over the government?
Generalizations - mostly false, including this one.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
*IF* Nye manages to make Ham look silly is a big "if". Nye is a wacky guy. Sorry, he may be your hero, but he's a wack job. I've never heard of Ham ... he might be all of those things, too. But I wouldn't be so glee about Nye defending my personal conviction. He's a scientist due to his celebrity, not because of his body of work. He's got extreme convictions about energy conservation and vegetarianism that most here couldn't stomach (no pun intended). Most puzzling, he was married by Rick Warren, a famous Christian preacher (?) but for some reason the marriage certificate wasn't legit (?) so he completely abandoned the relationship seven weeks later (?) Again, wacky.
Religion is a much smaller voice than corporations in all those things. It's not where the fight is. If you think that we went to war in Iraq over religious ideology then you are a deluded person, and the people who modded you up. You are picking the wrong group to fight against simply because of your idiotic, liberal BS.
Where did the Bible claim that? Facts, or shut up. Ptolemy, a 2nd century Greek astronomer -- A SCIENTIST of the day -- in his model, the earth was at the center of the universe, with the Sun, moon and stars all orbiting us in perfect circles. When his earth-centric universe theory was re-discovered in medieval Europe, it was eagerly embraced by church-sponsored scientists who believed that man was God's unique and special creation. The Biblical passage they used as "proof" is in Joshua 10, in which Joshua commands the sun to stand still in the sky to preserve daylight. That wasn't the Bible's claim.
The moment a machine is poofed from thin air that solves our food, water and space travel needs
Aliens landed on my lawn and presented me with such a machine. I took it apart.
Have gnu, will travel.
mediator: each side has 5 minutes.
Opponent: here are 50 unrelated yet complex to explain concepts that I claim are wrong.
You: 5 minute explaination completely destroying item #1. Out of time, so Creationism has "proven" you cannot answer 49 problems with evolution.
Opponent: round 2; here are 50 more, fuckface. good luck.
As opposed to "scientists are afraid to debate us! look, no debates accepted in years!"
Man, where did you find the ones that waited weeks? I'd see them close their argument with the very same claim that had just been destroyed.
My hope is that Nye sides steps the idea of debating Creationism v. Evolution and starts a dialog with Ham about the difference between religion and science. That one of these belongs in a philosophy class and the other belongs in a science class. As other people have noted above there is no way Nye (the guy who is logically and rationally right in my eyes) can win a debate with this guy to the point where anyone who supports Ham will change their mind about Creationism; however maybe he can deflect the conversation to be actually useful. I think the reality is what Danathar posted above said. That.. "You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into." Which I'm sure is all of Ham's section..
You cannot be a fundie AND have considered the evidence. the two are mutually exclusive, fundamentalist religion requires the rejection of reality. You may have seen that evidence was available, but chose to reject it unexamined.
Yes, that is indeed exactly the point being made. Anyone with any religious belief whatsoever is part of a global conspiracy to take over the world. I'm glad your reading comprehension is good enough to pick up on that.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
No holes have been poked in either of those. Both stand strong and uncontested in science.
people with an agenda for power and money convince the uneducated such as yourself that there are holes, in exchange you give them money and power.
His website and all the others are in a very incestuous relationship. Anything he says is a parroting of what they have shared with each other. I guarantee every claim you see him make will already be found on every creationist website you can find.
They have nothing new, and refuse to discard what is old and already debunked.
Run along. No point in trying to explain physics to you any more than explaining biology to creationists.
if YECs would just do their thing and leave the rest of us out of it, no one would care. But they won't. they have been trying for 50 years to take over the school system to spread their gospel.
which is why it's going to be a mud-wrestle.
on the one hand, you have observable science, discovered facts, and theories that have been verified by science for possibly hundreds of years.
on the other hand, the yardstick is the Bible as God's own inspired word with many scribes.
and they do not coincide. put it down to divine mystery if you prefer, or stubborn obstinacy if you prefer, but at some point there will be a wide divergence that Science answers with theory, and Religion answers with a smile and faith.
I'm not taking my beartrap into that minefield and testing it after it's set. just saying, no minds will be changed...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Complete and utter bullshit.
creationism and ID are the same thing. Once creationism was trounced in court, the same people in the same buildings making the same arguments appeared under a new name. Only an idiot would fall for such a transparent ploy.
He is a smug asshole. he's just very good at what he does.
Calvin and Hobbes or Dilbert are better comedy sources.
http://i.imgur.com/1OkSYp2.jpg
Please point us at the Bible passage that says the Earth is 6000 years old.
hint: you are in for a rude shock. The bible never makes this claim anywhere. It is an entirely man-made claim.
http://www.oldearth.org/questi...
what you've just said... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
the other is proven fact. You cannot change facts, so that only leaves the creationists as possible converts.
"the church" is not "religion"
Yes, that is indeed exactly the point being made. Anyone with any religious belief whatsoever is part of a global conspiracy to take over the world. I'm glad your reading comprehension is good enough to pick up on that.
Hey - if you don't want people to think you're generalizing, don't fucking generalize.
Otherwise you just come off as a holier-than-thou asshole, and most rational people will, at that point, start ignoring you.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Say a "designer" visited a long time ago and let some simple single celled organisms loose. Say he came back and tweaked some hominid DNA to give homo sapiens a little push in the right direction. Why does this have to be the Christian God? Why can't it be the Vulcan Genetic Institute or the Klingon Speciation Company or what-the-hell-else? The literal claims of the Bible are SO far off what we observe they seem to be the LEAST likely way to be Intelligent Designing.
Or they can't present a cogent argument, and resort to childish name-calling.
So you're against all forms of religion then?
The world would definitely be better without religious people, certainly. We should find some way to get rid of them.
What if we put them into camps? Then exterminate them like the vermin they are.
I'm feeling deja vu.
That's not the way creationism has worked historically, but that's okay, even when it has worked that way, the beneficiaries stopped believing after only a short time period, so who could blame you for not believing when you have never seen it happen.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
So much hatred in the comments here... Are you really concerned about truth? Because the majority of comments here have the same ring: trashing on religious people. There's a difference between expressing facts and expressing your hatred for a group.
Well, what are you going to replace it with? Advocates of what some call "scientism" think that science can replace value systems, like religion, when it comes to making decisions about how one should act. In the aftermath of 20th-century megalomania, Eric Hoffer called out the True Believer who, although godless, was nevertheless anything but irreligious.
Will there ever be evidence that anything at all is "good" or meaningful? There are self-styled rational people who want to help others live lives that are free of "delusion" and contribute to the "well-being" of humanity, as if those things were somehow valuable. Yet, when pressed on what exactly well-being consists of, or whether people ought to have it or not, or the point of humanity in the first place, I get the sort of make-believe these people are trying to save me from.
There is no meaning in the universe that isn't utterly make-believe. Our existence is an absurdity; nothing can be proved beyond its physical nature, and there is even a certain tenuousness about that. Perhaps the most dangerous and deluded people of all are the ones who think they are free from delusion because they haven't got religion.
At least Creationists aren't dangerous, they're just stupid. Climate deniers are both stupid and dangerous because they undermine attempts to mitigate the problems.
Who generalized? Where in any of the posts preceding yours is a generalisation?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Next debate, chemistry vs alchemy, astronomy vs astrology or medicine vs voodoo?
Ham Debating Nye is like a chimp debating a Human Physicist, sure they both can use tools and share almost the same DNA but chimps simple didn't take the extra steps up the evolutionary ladder we did.
This is kind of a shit answer.
There are some theories to explain chirality, such as polarized UV which can affect left and right handed amino acids to different extents. But even if that weren't true, and we had no idea how the amino acids could possibly have ended up with such a disparity...
This would still be a shit answer.
I'm going to quote Tim Minchin here: "Throughout history, every mystery, ever solved has been: Not Magic."
Before we understood chemistry, people said that certain compounds could only be created by life (there's a reason it's called "organic chemistry"). Before we understood evolution, people said that humans had something special that separated them from the animals. This is no different.
"They get tax breaks!!!!!"
I'm always quite dismayed when people come about and propose that things like churches need to be taxed. Why?
Let us consider first what religious expression IS. It is free speech, pure and simple. It is the free exercise and expression of speech of a person or groups of people. This has been ruled on since time immemorial by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Now, what is a church? It is a building where Christians gather to express their speech in a collective social assembly. It is a place to go to express your speech, and most are generally non-for-profit, albeit a few may be.
Now we get to the meat of the argument, what is the church essentially? It is a non-for-profit entity existing to promote and secure a form of free speech in a social setting. But the real question is, aren't there many non-religious organizations that also fall into this role? Art associations, guilds and other such cooperatives that are non-profit exist also to promote a certain form of free speech in a collective manner. They take in dues and donations, work to further political goals and function under administration staffed with people that get paid for their services. There are many painter's, writers, dancers associations and other such groups that function like this, in the same manner as a church, if only non-religious. Yet, all these groups, in MANY areas are also COMPLETELY tax-exempt themselves. They do NOT pay property taxes, income taxes or any tax on donations they receive. They are one in the same with churches in this regard.
Most people are quick to judge churches, and says that they should be taxed. Yet, how are you to do this, with a blanket taxes of all kinds on ALL religious entities? Or should we just set up special standards of which groups we will consider taxable and judge each religious entity by certain standards to see if they are exempt from taxation?
The most telling thing about all of this is that there is no outcry to force taxation on an art association or any other group that is organized, non-religious that enjoys tax-free status from both income and property taxes. The real question is WHY?
Because they do not like religion. Very simply, they no longer see religion as a form of free speech and therefore no longer think it should enjoy the protections that all other free speech organizations enjoy because they disagree with the message the religious people are trying to get across and find it unworthy of protection!
Many people try to weasel out of this by trying to say that they are just trying to tax the church, while somehow believing that this does not affect one group of people adversely. Buy does the church pay taxes? Does the land the church is built on pay taxes? Does the steeple pay taxes? No sir.
People pay taxes. Only people. So what you REALLY want to do is to use the power of the majority to declare that religious expression is no longer protected speech. From there you want to use political power to force the government to levy a tax on religious institutions since you disagree with their message.
The effect? You believe it is the duty of government to place financial burdens and arbitrary punishments on non-profit forms of speech because their speech has been deemed dangerous and unpalatable by the majority. That is the fundamental problem I have with this. You are singling out one form of speech you despise for punishment because you do not like the message and then want government to stifle said speech with unnecessary burdens, while other forms of speech you do care for continue to enjoy tax exempt status.
Now if you wanted to levy a tax on ALL associations that promote and celebrate forms of free expression, then you might be said to be impartial. There are many non-profit private museums, corporations, schools, art guilds, writers guilds and other such things that promote and support forms of free speech, that also take up land and use public services for which t
Well, inertia _is_ a property of matter.
Bill Nye should not debate with Ken Ham because agreeing to debate acknowledges Ham as an equal in scientific academia.
...except that religion isn't just a harmless social thing that people do on Sundays.
They're in government, deciding how to run the country (eg. Bush deciding to go to war).
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Bush is not a religion. He is a person, who hold views, many of which may disagree with yours. Tough luck on that. Your obsessional focus with his belief in God (which many who opposed the invasion of Iraq share), speaks mostly to your own personal prejudices.
Lots of new species are discovered.
Here is Time's top ten for 2013. I assume there where more than 10 to choose from last year. PLus prior years. For how ever long you are considering. Must make hundreds of 'new' species. Now convince us ALL of these have ALWAYS been here and noone noticed. Surely some of these new species may actually be NEW.
http://science.time.com/2013/1...
None of those count because you didn't see them arise, right? Just have faith :P
"Religions Institutions do not pay taxes!"
I'm not certain what people mean when they say things like this.
What is the average church? It is a non-profit exercise of free speech, and all of the services it provides for it's congregation, the poor, overseas missions and other such things are further expressions of their communal free speech.
Let's look at the tax law regarding, say, federal income tax:
501(c)(3) exemptions apply to corporations, and any community chest, fund, cooperating association or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, to promote the arts, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.[14][15] There are also supporting organizations which are often referred to in shorthand form as "Friends of" organizations.[16][17][18][19][20]
You will notice that this law specifically is written to give all non-profit forms of expressions tax relief, so that free speech is not hindered by taxation.
Take note of this part of the law, " exemptions apply to corporations.....cooperating association or foundation.......organized and operated exclusively for religious....literary....to promote the arts.....or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals."
That is proof positive. It is blanket tax relief for all non-profit free speech institution.
Also, most states and areas give property tax relief to any and all such organizations, religious or otherwise. Yet, even though most non-religious non-profit free speech organizations and institutions do not pay property tax, for some reason you insist that non-profit religious ones should.... even though they ALL use public services equally, without paying for them.
If find you are making an irrelevant distinction here when you are clamoring for taxation of religious institutions, specifically, while leaving other speech institutions alone. Why?
If I may make a supposition, I believe that you personally do not hold that religious expression is a form of free speech, and thus should lose its protections in regards to tax-exempt status, because you and others no longer consider the practices being enacted or the things being said to be popular or relevant.
I do not think that you realize what you are doing here, exactly. What you seem to be indicating is that it is the role of government to police and target forms of free speech it no longer considers popular, or even worse, considers dangerous, and then upon labeling them enacts legislation to force taxation as a form of punishment for that now condemned form of speech. As if it is OK for the government to establish which forms of free speech are valid, and thus deserving of protection.
That is the very thing the First Amendment was written to prevent, period.
The fact that you want to burden one form of free speech with taxation, while remaining silent about all the others is quite telling.
I believe you are prejudiced against religious expression and therefore you think it is the role of government to punish people for unpopular speech, and it shows, quite clearly too.
ken ham is so slimey. neanderthals have quite different genes, different subspecies, but new data shows we carry some of their genes (ie: post split) which is interbreeding. and telling a bunch of people a plethora of claims without proper peer reviewed evidence, but citing (and repeatedly introducing by video) specific scientists who do not represent the body of evidence is not proof. but to be fair, his lovers this jesus is going to fly back on a white steed and murder all the jews within a few decades :)
...can't you just like, *stop* with the batshit-crazy superstitious nonsense for five minutes? The last 200 years of the Enlightenment seem to have passed you by.
I mean, try it after me: "Whoa! For a few years back there I thought I was created in the image of a divine being! Boy, that sure was silly. I'm alright now, though."
...I'd want my money back. If you listen to his "testimony", he testifies that studying astronomy has "nothing" that contradicts a "recent" earth creation (roughly 6000 years). Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't most astronomy contradict "recent" earth creation? Even with an expanding universe, most observations are at over 10 billion years for the existence of the universe (roughly 4.5B for the Earth, itself). So, does "god" have gas, brake & clutch pedals? He floored it for the first 6 days, slammed on the brakes, swerved, while hitting the clutch?
(not having watched the entire video yet) I hope Bill Nye asks (Ham) point blank: Why do you insist on a creator that dictates natural laws, rather than just accepting a supernatural being created the universe. (assuming said supernatural being did, in fact, create the universe, what created the supernatural being? what does he/she/it exist? Turtles all the way down...).
"Evidence confirming an INTELLIGENCE produced life". It would seem to me that blinding accepting without independently observable proof that anyone accepting his (Ham) evidence would be inherently lacking intelligence. Intelligence requires critical thinking that judges the available evidence. And no, superstition is not evidence. It needs to be independently observable.
At the time you speak of you wouldn't have even been laughed out of a room of distinguished clergymen - the Cardinals vote on Galileo was close to a tie. Of course that was also long before anyone was called a scientist.
I suppose it's appropriate to bring up something from so long ago though because we're writing about a bunch that want to rewind back three or more centuries to before it was widely accepted what fossils were.
To me this is tricksters versus logic and the truly amusing thing is that the tricksters would be considered heretics back in the time they want to drag us back into. Those closed minded groups only exist because everyone else was open minded - they are a bunch of radicals that pretend to be conservative to excuse being stubborn. They give Christianity a bad name.
I watched the debate and it really appears that Bill Nye wasn't listening to anything his opposite said.
In the end, I don't think Bill Nye gave a very strong defense of his views.
However, I suspect few people in the audience changed their views on the issues discussed.
I guess you are "Anonymous Coward" unless you register and then logon. Don't need another account so I'll just be "AC" for now...
I could not find this in a search. Here is a link to the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
But it is of value. Look back a few decades; remember how repressed and "in the closet" atheism was? Most kids were inculcated with religion by default because that's all that really made it into the public square.
Now, through the auspices of high profile objectors like these, and the rising tide of audibility on the networks, tons of kids know that theism is a subject of great controversy, not one that is settled, as the religionists would very much like them to believe.
The huge holes in theistic reasoning are now on the table, and subject to dissection by some of the finest minds out there. Baseless-assumptions-as-axioms are revealed for what they are; the cries of "but you don't know how X happened" are revealed as minefields constructed by the god of the gaps ideas; the idea that it is ok to have questions with no obvious answer is beginning to percolate about the population without inspiring fear. No longer do all citizens feel that they have to profess a theistic viewpoint in order to be socially adequate. Even the false middle ground of agnosticism is eroding, and all of this is not just good, it's great.
No, a debate like this probably won't move a single member of its local audience to the opposite view; but it serves to strengthen the atheist standing and presence in the community and that makes it very valuable indeed. Here, on Reddit, etc., this debate is very much an important topic right now, in the sense that lots and lots of attention is focused that way. All good, my friend, all good.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ham's organization is cash strapped. Attendance to his fake museum fall off year after year and his fantasy ark project is stalled due to a serious lack of funding.
The debate was nothing more than a tool for Ham to gin up his crazy followers into giving him money. Unfortunately Nye fell right into it. Nye should have taken this piece of advise from Ham's most valued scientific reference.
"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, " Matthew 7:6
Unfortunately Nye's attempt to spread the truth may have done more damage than good.
Ham's organization is cash strapped. Attendance to his fake museum fall off year after year and his Ark project is stalled due to a serious lack of funding. The debate was nothing more than a tool for Ham to gin up his crazies into giving him money. Unfortunately Nye fell right into it. Nye should have taken this piece of advise from Ham's most valued scientific text. "Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, ” Matthew 7:6 Unfortunately Nye's attempt to spread the truth may have done more damage than good by pumping more money into Ham's abomination.
... but I'd rather stick a needle in my eye than listen to that debate.
Anyhow, I am not done yet with reviewing the medieval debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Would it be appropriate to say, after seeing the debate, that Bill Nye has the patience of a saint ?
When your opponents answer to every question is "Because god" it's like debating a small child. How hard it must have been to refrain from just saying " The fact that you don't know the answer to these questions does NOT mean you get to make shit up ! "
Please God don't let ignorance win out over knowledge and science. There.
Science isn't there to replace value systems, but you don't need to believe in any higher being just to be a good person and not a prick.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Why there is no debate between creationists and linguists?
Creationism claims that modern languages were created in more or less modern form several thousands years ago. Linguistics claim that languages are constantly evolving, but they have no actual knowledge on "what was the first language" and "how unstructured comunication became structured language".
Moreover, although we have proofs of "microevolution" of languages, the actual process of differentiation of a single language into two different languages is hard to observe.
This is _exactly_ the same problem as in biology. Why there are no such debates?
Is it because even religious fundamentalists know that "language creationism" is totally wrong?
you apparently have been already too strongly indoctrinated by the prevalent bullshit-machine...what in the world have those concepts to do with being left?
I wish you would/could see how retarded this sounds!
But I doubt you have the same meaning of "active belief in the absence of gods" as either the GP or Hitchens.
Do you take time out to not pray to god(s)? No? That's inactive belief.
What you may be claiming is that you actively state your lack of belief in god. That's not an active belief in no gods.
Who generalized? Where in any of the posts preceding yours is a generalisation?
...religion isn't just a harmless social thing... They're in government... They're trying to... They get...
If that's not a generalization, I've somehow ended up in an alternate dimension where words have different definitions.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Nye's error in judgment, namely by showing up and attempting to debate a "Ham" was described in the Bible here:
"neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." Matthew 7:6
Well, all these speculative comments are well and good, but now the debate is over.
I think it went different than what most people (me included) were expecting. Bill Nye, while making a few strong points (and wearing, as usual, an awesome bow tie), overall failed to convey his side, falling back on the "We need to keep teaching science" phrase over and over and over (without realizing he was talking to a science teacher), using ice core layers and radiometric dating as his main arguments (which aren't very solid), and making accusations of Ken that were unfounded. Overall, he didn't seem to be listening to any of Ken's arguments. I was actually kind of embarrassed watching him. I grew up watching his show, and expected more from him.
Ken used a lot of scientific points to argue his case (some strong, some not), but took a pretty philosophical approach to the issue. This resulted in a very unsatisfying debate, since Bill never really used philosophical arguments in his case, and it seemed they were fighting on different fronts several times. I felt neither of them answered as many questions that the other put forward as they could/should have.
Overall, I walked away from the debate with this reflection: both sides have interpretations of the data that seem to explain things pretty well. Both have their problems. I think I agree with Ken on this point, that there's a difference between observational science (what we see in the world around us), and historical science (making extrapolations about the past). We have data we can observe in the here and now, but can only make educated theories as to what happened to get it there, how old it is, etc. Thus both sides are prone to lots of error in their theories as more data presents itself. I think someone can be a reasonable, thoughtful person and hold to either theory. The question is not "is only one of them reasonable", it's "which is more reasonable". I would recommend every person look into this on their own.
Cheers
You don't need to believe in a higher being, it is true; but you must believe in something.
Just as in mathematics there are things that are undecidable. The real question is not whether evolution exists, it is whether god exists and if so, did it create the universe yesterday, last Thursday, 6,000 years ago, 13.7B years ago, -Aleph0 years ago, in parallel or in series, as a quantum (over the Rational), or continuous (over the Reals) space.
Myself, I think the universe exists as a serial expression of all possible states in a countable universe (-Aleph0 to Aleph0 in every direction, x,y,z,t, others) and we travel through it as an information set on top of that universe, with the possibility that we can exercise free will over that countable universe using randomness generated over the Reals, not over the Rationals. That makes our decisions unpredictable in every sense, even if our choices are countably infinite. But that is actionable (it gives me a foundation for making decisions) but not testable (yet). It may never be testable.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
I'm writing an S.F. novel, "The Sage of Saggitarius" ,that features an enhanced woman, Zila, searching for the "secret of life" with the aid and funding of a very unhuman sentient over a thousand years old.
I've done years or research on evolution. The modern basis is molecular biology, not fossils, and the key constructs are the conserved genes that are 100 million years old. Evolution turns out not to be "survival of the fittest" because no one can define fitness with all the implication of the relationships among the environment, competitors, predators and their feedback loops. These are impenetrable webs of non-linear equations. Fitness landscapes probably exist, but most of the hill climbing leads to dead ends. And what happens when a particular species, such as humans, is no longer dependent on a particular fitness niche?
The work of Jeffrey England may be the great breakthrough. He sees evolution as part and parcel of of entropy. It cannot be observed by examining instances. It's an emergent phenomenon, like entropy itself. Life serves the Tree of Life. Evolution serves entropy.
These are not easy things to explain, and perhaps harder to understand.
I got through the first 2/3 of this, and gave up after Ham kept repeating the same themes:
On the other hand, I'm not sure Nye was that great of a counterpoint. He focused far too much on the flood, I suppose because if creationists start from the Bible as absolute truth, and infer creation from that, disproving any part of the Bible would disprove creation. I don't think it's effective. The idea of "creation" is not predicated upon the flood actually happening and an ark; attacking the flood only rebuts the Bible as an authoritative source, there are plenty of other myths and legends of spontaneous creation. I am guessing that Nye's very valid point that splitting science into "observable" and "historical" is bogus was lost upon the attendees that were creationist-friendly. So was the point that non-testable beliefs are not science.
For me, this was a discouraging insight into the mindset of a religion I had walked away from. These people feel free to hijack terms, ignore evidence that leads to conclusions they don't agree with, and do so only so they can try and feel superior over their secular countrymen and co-opt education. If you don't believe science supports a truth that you don't believe in, fine. Science does not answer all questions. But don't wrap scholarly terminology around bogus arguments and call it science. I will return the favor and not call my lack of belief in the divine a religion.
I am very disappointed because I am an atheist and a science enthusiast, and I feel like Ken Ham actually won this debate. I don't think he is right about Christianity or the bible. I think he argued his point in a way that was better than Bill Nye. I think the points Ken Ham brought up were flawed, but I thought they at least attempted to answer the right questions. I felt Bill Nye's answers seemed to indicate that he didn't even really understand what Ken Ham was saying.
As an example, Ken Ham was forced to repeat over and over that he did not think that the assumption that natural laws were constant was correct. Bill Nye kept pooring on more examples of how science, which inherently makes this assumption (e.g. that radioactive decay rate has remained the same) shows that Ken Ham is wrong, but it doesn't. This debate should have taken a philosophical turn towards the question of whether it's reasonable to assume natural laws are constant. If Bill had said "I just don't accept that this could be possible", I would be ok with it, but it seemed like Bill Nye was unaware that this was where the debate was going.
I just don't think Bill Nye is a good debater, nor do I think he has the expertise to really make his points confidently. I saw Bill Nye debate Richard Lindzen in a short TV segment, and Bill Nye just seemed like a climate change believer/cheerleader rather than someone who actually knew anything about climate change.
There is nothing more frustrating than watching someone argue a position you hold badly.
All over the internet I see people proclaiming that Bill Nye won the debate, but that's only because he was on the side that they agree with (and presumably still agree with). He did not really present any arguments that, if I were a young earth creationist, I would find even remotely convincing or even thought provoking. He seemed just to regurgitate the same statements about how science is great without actually meeting Ken Ham's claims head on. He seemed to not even understand Ken Ham's attacks on a philosophical level.
If you want to see an example of how I think these debates should have been conducted (from the secular point of view), I would refer you to debates between Dan Dennett and various theologians. Dan is a really great thinker and the people he debates (while wrong), are people who would probably destroy Bill Nye in a debate.
I will say that at the end, I was satisfied with Bill Nye's answer to the question about Evolution and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. He correctly brought up the fact that earth is not a closed system. And I was happy that he ended by stressing the point that what makes "normal (i.e. secular) science" different from Ken Ham's brand of creationism in terms of "historical science", is that normal science makes predictions that turn out to be true. Ken Ham's citations of predictions made by creationism are only back formations. He can't come up with any examples of predictions that were not known to be true when they were made. It's easy to say that the Bible predicted everything we see today. The way to test a prediction is to make a new one that isn't known to be true yet.
I think Ken Ham is an interesting debater, and I'd love to see him debate someone a little more clever than Bill Nye
Fact: Romney lost to Obama despite having much better hair therefore there's more to the matter than hair alone.
First define the topics. It is the THEORY of Evolution and the THEORY of Creationism. To declare eother as fact is not science. Science fact is observable, demostratable, repeatable. So since neither can do all 3, they are theories. I see the element of discussion is Faith. Do you believe in random progress, or intelligent design.
As a scientist and parent, the most profound takeaway that is most likely to ruffle the most feathers:
* We can only know what we have observed and kept track of
(and even that is subject to our interpretations and limitations on observation)
We have between 50 and a few hundred years of documented scientific observation, depending on the area of focus. We have belief that the world environment has never changed, and many assumptions about things we have not tested and verified (or cannot). As a scientist, I don't care whether you believe in creation or some other explanation. But let's not ruin science by misclassifying theories as law. We cannot expect the next generation to think critically if we refuse to teach them attention to detail and proper coefficients of faith in sources of information. At the end of the debate, we all place faith in something.
Computer science has suffered from something we find largely in the general scientific world: avoiding the discussion by calling the opponent "stupid" in whatever terms and language chosen.
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
“If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”
– St. Augustine of Hippo, 5th Century AD (considered by some Protestants to be one of the theological fathers of the Reformation)
- See more at: http://truecreation.info/