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.

Comments

bad idea

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:Debate?

[Joce640k]

You're expecting something worthwhile from this?

It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.

Mr. Nye should know better than to participate, let's hope he learns that today.

Re:It's not a debate

[MickyTheIdiot]

we don't have debates in the US these days. Debates imply that the discussion is fact based.

Re:Debate?

[i kan reed]

This debate will not convince anyone, even if Ham doesn't successfully pull rhetorical tricks to make it appear to dumbasses that he's being intellectually honest(and he does, Gish Gallop is the word of the day). The only real result is that his failing museum will get enough publicity among culture warriors to pull it out of bankruptcy.

That's it. It's free financial support for a de-educator and nothing else.

Sad

[GameMaster]

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.

Richard Dawkins has an opinion on this

[protest_boy]

Why I won't debate creationists:
http://old.richarddawkins.net/...

I couldn't agree more.

Re:Debate?

[Hatta]

It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.

It's not about convincing Ham. It's about exposing Ham's congregation to actual arguments. If fundie parents sit down and watch this with their kids, the kids might come away with a few new ideas. That's a good thing.

Re:huh?

[jockm]

Oh I don't know, it kind of worked the first way...

Re:Who Cares???

[Joce640k]

...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.

Re:It's not a debate

[Dr. Manhattan]

They usually boil down to who's the better public speaker. A written debate where there's time to think and avoid misstatements and marshal the best evidence and arguments might be useful, but a verbal debate's just a stunt.

Time for some yummy...

[synaptik]

Ham on Nye.

Re:Debate?

[xevioso]

The idea that the best way to deal with Creationists is to ignore them is a ridiculous one. These people don't go away if you ignore them. On the contrary, you have to engage them. You have to deal with their claptrap whenever and wherever you find it, because these people have political power in this country.

rationality

[Danathar]

You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.

Ham is going to drown Nye in FUD

[csnydermvpsoft]

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.

Re:Debate?

[MightyMartian]

I never said ignore them. I'm just saying debating them is the wrong way to go about it. On the first score, Duane Gish's infamous approach to debating; the Gish Gallop, is used by a lot of Creationists. A large number of claims are thrown out, almost all spurious, but so thoroughly overwhelm the other debater that the Creationist seems to have won. On the other score, it gives them the venue and legitimacy they crave.

Re:huh?

[Jason Levine]

Even if Ham leaves out the Bible verses/devil talk and goes straight "Intelligent Design" (aka Creationism Where God Is Hinted At Instead Of Explicitly Mentioned), Ham can toss "talking points" out faster than Bill can refute because it takes less time to say "X is a reason Evolution is false" than it takes to give the proof why that isn't the case.

Ham: {Creationist talking points #1-10}
Nye: {Refutes 1, 2, 3.... runs out of time}
Ham: {Creationist talking points #11-20}
Nye: {Refutes 11, 12, 13, 14.... runs out of time.}

End of the debate. Ham declares himself the winner because Nye "couldn't" counter points #4-10 or #15-20 so "obviously" that means Evolution is wrong.

I am reminded of pigs and engineers here

[swschrad]

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.

Re:I am reminded of pigs and engineers here

[Registered Coward v2]

Ken Ham is well spoken and should provide a reasonable point-counterpoint.

I don't think that the idea that we should not wrestle with pigs is the attitude of a responsible scientist. Eventually, all conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. At one time, you'd have been laughed out of a room of distinguished scientists for rejecting geocentricity. An idea has nothing to fear from examination if it is sound.

The problem with your point is you expect both sides to act like responsible scientists and approach the debate with an open mind. However, the creationists are not interested in being proved wrong as much as punching holes in the other side's arguments so they can say they "won" and gain legitimacy for their point of view. They are not interested in the scientific method, as far as they are concerned the Bible says it so it must be true. That is not a debate. Scientists test theories and see if they continue to explain what they observe, creationists have a belief and anything contrary to that is incorrect. Scientists, by nature, are open to new ideas and generally don't speak in absolutes, which put stem at a disadvantage to those who believe in absolutes. Even scientific language, such as theory, is used to argue that the creationists viewpoint is equally valid since sit is a theory as well; although the creationists generally leave out the crackpot in from of their theory.

Re:I am reminded of pigs and engineers here

[martinux]

While I agree with the general concept that everything should be examined and not taken at face value I would stress that this is not equivalent to "my non-fact based theory deserves as much time and attention as your evidence-based theory."

Ken Ham cannot provide a reasonable point-counterpoint because all he can do is make assertions that sound like science but are in fact not. It doesn't matter how polite and well spoken he is.

As Issac Asimov stated:
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

The only value that this 'debate' will have is it will further reinforce exactly how delusional creationism is.

Re:I am reminded of pigs and engineers here

[Alsee]

When people think "fossils" they generally think dinosaurs or other large animals. (Note that when I say "large animals" I am including the smallest mouse.) It is extraordinarily rare for a large animal to leave a fossil record, and the fossil record of large animals is extremely random and extremely spotty.

Large animal fossils are extremely glamorous, but often overlooked the largest proportion of fossils we have. The small animal fossils. Animals roughly the size of a grain of sand, such as Forams (phylum foraminifera). Forams are tiny animals that live in the ocean.... trillions of them. Every day vast numbers of forams die and settle down to the deep dark cold sea floor, in the slowly accumulating sediment. Forams have often elaborate mineral "skeletons" called tests. Every day vast numbers of these tests become ideal fossils in the undisturbed see floor sediment. Sediment that very slowly builds up in virtually perfect layers.

Back in the 1970's oil companies developed technology for deep sea oil exploration and started bringing up long exploratory drill cores from the deep seabed. Each drill core was filled with tens of thousands tests. An effectively limitless supply of ideal perfectly layered fossils.

We have a continuous and complete fossil record spanning tens of millions of years for a large chunk of phylum foraminifera. Not merely a continuous and complete record of each transitional species, but a continuous and complete record of all the transitional forms along each species-to-species transition. A continuous and complete record tracing diverse foram species back to a common ancestor.

(Note: The group "forams" is roughly equivalent to the group "mammals". There are herbivores and carnivores and even forams that grow internal algae farms. So when I say "diverse species of forams" traced back to a common ancestor, it's roughly comparable to tracing cows and lions back to a common ancestor.)

But animals the size of a grain of sand aren't glamorous. The fossils look like tiny specks unless you look at them through a low-power microscope. Almost no one has ever heard of "forams". Forams are a type of plankton, and while many people have heard of plankton almost no one knows or cares about it.

So the elephant in the room is that we *do* have a continuous and complete fossil record for a significant chunk of the tree of life. The best possible record a scientist would wish for documenting the fact of evolution in extraordinary detail. And virtually no one has heard of it because it's an incredibly obscure and otherwise unremarkable branch of almost microscopic animals.

The glorious fossil record 19 November 1998:
The fossil record may not be complete for all groups at all times and in all places. But, argues Dr Paul Pearson, when we have reason to believe that it is, the dates that can be assigned to fossils are invaluable for unravelling the paths of evolution.

PAUL PEARSON
In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin lamented that the imperfection of the fossil record detracts from the glory of geology. Fossilization is such a rare and capricious event, our collections are so poor, and sedimentary formations are so full of gaps, that Darwin could not point to a single example where fossils in successive geological strata showed evolution from one species to another.

Unknown to Darwin, uninterrupted sedimentation does occur in the open ocean, especially on aseismic ridges and plateaux. These areas experience a continuous rain of particles to the sea bed, and are among the most geologically quiescent places on Earth. A steady build-up of sediment is the result.

Now, after thirty years of systematic ocean drilling, many of these sites can be studied. Piston coring generally allows hundreds of meters of sediment to be fully recovered, spanning millions of years of deposition. Where gaps occur, they can easily be identified.

A co

Re:I am reminded of pigs and engineers here

[Registered Coward v2]

There is no need to discredit

Let me restate my concluding point in light of that statement: use valid reasoning, whatever your purpose may be.

Whether you're seeking to discredit them or not, you were providing invalid reasoning. Few things annoy me more than people I agree with giving the other side valid ammunition to make an invalid point. :P

So here is my reasoning:

Evolution is a theory that uses the scientific method to test it. Creationism as a belief that can neither be proved or disproved.

If you want to debate X vs Y you need a common reference to use for comparison so you can reach some conclusion on which side has better made their argument. If it is the scientific method, then both sides must be able to use it to test their theory.

Since that is not possible in this case because each side bases their conclusions on a different frame of reference, a debate accomplishes nothing in terms of which theory (in scientific terms - which I use here since Creationists argue their theory is equally valid as evolution since both are "theories" and neither can be conclusively proven correct) is a better model of observed phenomena and more predictive. Therefore, why debate?

Since one side's POV is predicated on a belief that can be neither proven nor disproven, there isn't a question of validity of the belief because, well, they believe it is true. Since you cannot prove it isn't true, there is nothing to discredit since it is simply what they believe. When any points can be explained away by "It's God's will" or "God did that to test us and our faith" there really isn't room for a reasoned discussion. Again, why debate?

Finally, the existence of a creator in no way means evolution cannot be the mechanism which resulted in life as we know it today. If you did debate, you could end it at the start by saying"Sure, God could have created man; he simply used evolution to do so. After all, who are we to question how God does what God does; we must just seek to understand how God does it. Now, let's discuss why God created the earth more than 6000 years ago and dinosaurs didn't coexist with "modern" mankind."

In the end, faith and science can, and do, coexist quite nicely. So, to answer "why debate?," ask "Who gains from it?" Creationists want to make their position appear to be worthy of the same consideration as the scientific theory of evolution. Not just to believe in one and not the other, but to give their POV equal time in scientific debate. Debating recognizable figures form science helps accomplish that and I think it is wrong for scientists to do so. That's my belief

So, to close, I am genuinely curious what you find invalid in my reasoning.

Re:It's not a debate

[globaljustin]

It's not a debate, it's...

pep rally. A high school pep rally mixed with a never ending argument.

each side cheers for themselves & at the end everyone debates the other side as to who won the debate.

Re:Can a creationist explain me?

[mark-t]

The answer to that question, from a creationist statndpoint, is the same reason that God allegedly created the first human beings as fully formed adults. Merely minutes old in actuality, but by all outward appearances fully matured, as if they had really grown up from childhood. To a hypothetical visitor from the future who was accustomed only to what they understood as the normal passage of time, even mere weeks after creation, it would invariably appear that things had existed for much longer than they actually had... but that's only because that's all that person knows, because they weren't actually around at the beginning to see it all unfold... not out of any real sense on God's part to deceive anyone, as it were.

Not worthless

[mugnyte]

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.

Re:Not worthless

[TheGratefulNet]

I like the phrase 'accident of birth'.

why do you follow religion A? accident of birth: you were born in a country where most people follow A. and so, you are taught and are 'sure' that A is true.

if you were born in country B, you'd be 'sure' that B's religion is true and factual.

this is the most powerful argument I've ever heard for why one religion is no better (or accurate) than another. yes, you are 'sure' about yours just like they are 'sure' about theirs. what makes yours uniquely true and theirs wrong?

it may take years for that to sink in, but eventually, a thinking person has to understand the global implications of localized religions and how they can't all be right (and actually, they are all dead-wrong!)

Re:It's not a debate

[amicusNYCL]

You think in a fight that features Bill Nye trying to wield what is essentially a barbell, that Bill Nye would win that fight? Have you seen him? He's not Bill Nye The Fitness Guy.

Re:Went over my head.

[Speare]

Emotion is a fact.

I take from this short statement the same sentiment that Bruce Schneier was speaking about, when he stopped whining about how everything "security theater" was completely irrelevant, and started exploring the real and tangible impact and importance of the feeling of safety IN ADDITION TO actual safety controls. You cannot just dismiss grandma's warm and fuzzy acceptance of strict authoritarian searches, you have to actually include it in the calculus, the whole of which can inform the security methodology.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Religion is the same: you can't just dismiss religion, it's a palpable phenomenon for a large number of stakeholders. Often, you can coexist with their philosophy while still doing real science. Galileo wasn't locked up in house arrest for his science, he was locked up for being an ass to the church. The church actually had little problem with the already-common views on the shape of the solar system, and would have "come around" on the matter much faster without his goading.

Ken Ham does not speak for all creationists

[robinsoz2]

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.

Re:It's not a debate

[bobbied]

I've heard Ham speak, he's not inexperienced. He is also in command of his facts and excels in making is point in easy to understand. I suspect that Nye will be at a disadvantage, unless he has studied the creationist positions and arguments well. I can assure you that Ham has studied evolution and is ready to debate the ideas and can articulate his position well. He's written a couple of books on this subject. Nye had better be prepared.

I expect that, as in politics, what observers will take away from this debate will be largely defined by what opinion and world view they bring in. Few will be swayed, although I expect many will be forced to think deeper about what they choose to believe on both sides. Which in my book, is generally a good thing.

Re:Can a creationist explain me?

[Voyager529]

A few answers here, starting with the foundational ones...

First off, there is a lot of confusion about what "creationists" actually believe. We have our fundies like everybody else, but the fact of the matter is that even the more rational creationists will disagree about creationism. From a Christian standpoint, we've got two parts - primary doctrine, and secondary doctrine. Genesis 1:1 is primary doctrine: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". This is agreed upon by basically everyone in the creationist camp - that everything in the known universe was created by God.

Everything else, regarding God's implementation, and the methods He used to actually perform the act of creation...that's secondary doctrine, and in any room of ten creationists, you'll have a dozen answers. This is an important distinction to make, because, if I may get on my soapbox for a quick moment, Slashdot seems to correlate "creationist" with "6000 years, fossils-meant-to-test-us, God gives 'Murica the right to bear arms" fundies, as opposed to "an individual who believes that there is a Supreme Deity in charge of causing the universe to exist". Simply because Biblical creationists don't have every single answer regarding God's implementation as to how He constructed the universe, and because we don't all 100% agree on the possible ways that God could have done it...doesn't mean that everyone who believes Genesis 1:1 is a completely irrational fundie...okay I'll get back off my soap box and actually get on with answering the question...

Biblical creationism based on Genesis 1 leaves a few avenues of possibility. First, the word "day" is frequently pointed to as being suspect in the first, second, and third "days" of the creation account...because the earth didn't exist until the fourth day. The argument that the term 'day' is not a literal 24 hour period is substantiated by the fact that the original Hebrew language used for the first day doesn't use the term "first day", but "day one", indicating that it was not compared to the other days in those terms. It's entirely possible that the first three days were entirely different units of time. Additional questions raised in this regard is the fact that the Bible repeatedly refers to God as an Entity that is not bound by time, and thus time itself being a creation...yet 'time' is not listed as one of the things that God created, nor gravity, magnetism, or the forces of Newtonian physics, or quantum physics. Since we understand that all of these laws manipulate time given sufficient amounts of these forces, there's plenty of reasons to believe that the notion of a 'day' was not a 24 hour period. Those on the 6-literal-day side of the debate point to the fact that the word 'day', even in the Hebrew, is used solely for the 24-hour time span, and never for an 'age' or any other indiscriminate span of time, so the authors of the Bible could have used the word 'age' if so directed by God, but did not. Whether human error, 'poetic license', or because God builds universes in a week...is amongst the points of secondary doctrine about which Ken Ham and Kent Hovind have gone back and forth about repeatedly.

With regards to the question about the ~6,000 light-year range of light we'd expect to see, the best answers I can personally give is two fold:
1. If we're assuming that 24 hour days are correct, then one could argue that it's no more difficult for God to make photons-in-transit from stars than it would be for Him to create the stars themselves. For bonus points, consider that 'light' was the very first thing created. To answer the question of "why would He do that", all I can say is "I'm trying to figure out the whole lice thing myself..."
2. If we're assuming 6 'ages' of significant time, then one could argue that there would be plenty of time between the formation of the stars and the creation of mankind, so the light-in-transit could easily have a few million year head start to work with.

The "why" is still my personal speculation

Re:Can a creationist explain me?

[Hatta]

First off, there is a lot of confusion about what "creationists" actually believe.

If you tried believing only in what there is evidence to support there would be a lot less confusion.

From a Christian standpoint, we've got two parts - primary doctrine, and secondary doctrine.

See, you've got this entirely backwards here. If creation is fact, you should be able to infer the Christian doctrine from observations made in the real world. Forget about what's in the book, and just look at the world. Do your observations lead you to the same conclusion the book does?

Everything else, regarding God's implementation, and the methods He used to actually perform the act of creation...that's secondary doctrine, and in any room of ten creationists, you'll have a dozen answers.

That's because they're all making it up. If you ask a room of biologists about the actual method by which speciation occured, you'll get one answer. Evolution by natural selection. That's because that's where the evidence actually leads.

Ask for proof

[nobuddy]

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...