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How Did Bill Nye Become the Science Guy?
An anonymous reader writes "Whether he's debating creationists, taking selfies with President Obama, or 'Dancing with the Stars,' Bill Nye the Science Guy is no stranger to the spotlight. But what about the man behind the public persona? How did Bill Nye become the Science Guy?(video)
Bill Nye has made his debut on the PBS series, The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers, to reveal the story of how he rose from being a young comedian from Seattle to becoming a science icon.
In his profile, Bill Nye talks about his early days impersonating Steve Martin, why bow-ties are important in the lab (and with the ladies), and how Carl Sagan's advice helped to shape his hit television show."
captain obvious reporting for duty.
He was created by God just as you see him now.
Almost Live - a weekly half hour comedy skit show in Seattle in the 80s is what made Bill Nye.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
My favorite comedy from Bill Nye was Speeeeeeed Walker, a super hero that always adhered to the rules of the International Speed Walking Association: Heal Toe! Heal Toe!
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
You just described 2/3 of Slashdot.
Table-ized A.I.
Famous for being famous, and hailed as some sort of messiah of science. I find him to be so overrated.
Please, editors, for the love of science, do not allow bit.ly links in summaries.
http://bit.ly/1gkfa7z
is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KkKejZnazw
"Bill Nye: Change The World" by user "NOVA's Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers".
*smiles*
Spent All My Mod Points
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them. Well it really happened and now the people he debated received enough money and even MUNICIPAL BONDS to build a life sized Ark. Thanks Bill Nye.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Okay, then, what do you think it means?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
How did he become "The Science Guy" Because nye rhymes with guy, and he probably has a penis.
Need I say more?
The fact is that the science is dull, boring and heavy to pay attention to, even for most adults, let alone kids. Bill Nye making that a bit easy and somehow funnier to watch, people watch. in the end, we want people to watch science programs more, don't we?
... captain obvious
... He's no scientist.
... Bill Nye the Attention Whore
... Mr. Bill Nye is NOT and has NOTHING to do with science
This out of 31 posts so far.
This on a guy who makes science fun for kids.
Beta might not be Slashdot's biggest problem,
but going the way of kuro5hin is.
I have always enjoyed Bill Nye. Watching him in his early days on his show and on a local Seattle show "Almost Live". He was witty and funny.
From Wiki: "He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where one of his professors was Carl Sagan) and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977. Nye occasionally returns to Cornell as a professor to guest lecture introductory level astronomy and human ecology classes."
I would think that is sufficient education to be "the Science Guy". Why do we need to tear him down?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
He's a science educator. Some science educators *are* bona fide scientists, like Carl Sagan; but science is not mysticism. String theory might be beyond most people, but there's a lot of basic stuff most people can explore and understand, and if you can do that you can explain it to others.
If you think about it, a background in comedy is a very good preparation for being an educator. First you have to get and hold their attention. Second, you have to make really, really sure they get your point. People don't laugh at jokes they don't understand -- at least not the kind of laughter they paid to come experience. So comedy is all about making sure people get the point and are entertained along the way.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I miss his show so much (along with Beakman's World). That was some quality TV, since I have always loved science. I also loved how he appeared in that Star Gate: Atlantis episode!
Eliza Schneider was Liza on Beakman's world, looking at her IMDB credits she has mostly done voice work in quite a lot of well known video games. Very impressive, though too bad we don't see her in person.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Still a classic
http://youtu.be/YRg6CgxM0T8
Because bow-ties are cool.
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Bill Nye won out? Huh, that's interesting. Here in Brazil, back in the 90s, both shows were aired: Beakman's World was quite popular, while Bill Nye was completely ignored. In fact, I recall watching Nye once and thinking... "this Beakman-wannabe is much less fun."
Circumcision is child abuse.
On the other hand that Ken Ham makes Australians look like idiots even if he has been infected by some sort of fringe American pentacostal rabies :(
An antidote to that is Dr Karl who's sort of our version of Bill Nye only from more of a medical background (http://www.drkarl.com).
How's this for funny?
Yes, it ridiculous - that was the entire point. It was a radio talkback thing that grew out of a question from a listener. Entertain people and make them think at the same time.
So you can only come up with a rambling and vaguely confrontational statement of what you think it doesn't mean? Nice.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
He was an engineer at Boeing before turning to comedy and then to science education. He also is at least partly responsible for a "marsdial" instrument that was both a cheap and interesting experiment/tool on a Mars lander/rover.
Massive cultural assumption or what. What about international science presenters like David Attenborough or Brian Cox
Your feelings about the "Beakman wannabe" are exactly right.
However in the U.S, Nye was backed by Disney which meant he was pushed EVERYWHERE (including the Disney theme parks) while Beakman's show had a good run but then was cancelled. Disney just kept Nye going and going...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
he's now more about harassing religious fundamentalists and flame baiting people in the climate change debate.
I have very little regard for any of the so called scientist media personalities that spend most of their time engaging in various topics that are unproductive and rarely about science.
Religious fundamentalists cannot be argued against with science. Its utterly pointless. Their interpretation of their religion means they will not agree. End of story.
Possibly they can be argued off of it on philosophical, ideological, or theological grounds. But science is utterly futile in dealing with this issue. Yet many do this, piss off the fundamentalists for no reason, accept the applause of some atheist supporters, and then take a victory lap like they accomplished something.
As to the climate debate, that isn't a scientific debate either at this point. Its a political, economic, and ideological debate. Science doesn't even really come into it.
You have one faction that says the solution to fixing the climate is to nationalize everything, give the government sweeping control over the economy, jack up taxes hugely, and grant lots of power to non-democratic international organizations.
So... spoiler alert... many people have a problem with that. If you removed all of that from the climate change rhetoric, most of the opposition would be gone tomorrow. Yet, it is pretended that the issue can be solved by explaining the science again. Waste of god damn time.
Bill Nye was fun once... when he explained little science experiments on tv. He was great. But he hasn't done that in a long time and frankly since he stopped doing that I fail to see why anyone should give a damn about him.
Now I'm about to get attacked by some people that think I'm supporting creationism or anti global warming science or both. Right off, anyone that makes that accusation after reading the above post is a fucking retard. But this site is full of them. So let me explain again, IT DOES NOT MATTER and THAT IS NOT MY POINT. My point is that indifferent to the science, science is often not a viable answer to various debates. In matters of belief, politics, or economics you can't just cite the science and expect everyone to fall into instant obedient lockstep with whatever you want. That's foolish.
If you ACTUALLY want to solve the creationism issue... you need to respect the religious rights of people that find evolution to be a threat to their theology. We have a freedom of worship in this country which means people can believe the universe came from a cooked potato if it makes them happy.
Yes... public schools and public money... well, that's a problem because the government isn't allowed to infringe on their beliefs. Which means you might need to give them money to run their own home schools or whatever. I know... you're not happy about that. But you'd only need to give them their share of the education money which after all came out of their own taxes. So they're hardly taking anything away from you.
That is how you coexist. You either are happy to grant that or you want to dominate people and force your own beliefs on people... yes, your beliefs are backed by science. Show me where in the constitution that matters. It doesn't. Being right doesn't mean you get to force people to agree with you. They're going to be contentious. Tolerate their differences and demand the same in return.
In regards to climate change... We really need to go over some solutions to the issue that don't instantly piss everyone off.
Obviously we need to reduce our usage of sequestered hydrocarbons. So... to that end, nuclear power really needs to be put back on the table. If only as a stop gap until energy storage systems become more practical.
Doubtless that makes some people unhappy... its called a compromise... you're not supposed to be happy. In addition to that, we should look at syngas/biogas to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel. That will further reduce our dependence on sequester
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Truly fascinates me how atheists assume they are the authority on Scripture.
Most of the "pro-science" crowd doesn't give a damm about being productive or constructive. Being right is their goal, and because they're right anyone who doesn't believe as they do is completely wrong. (And even though they admit that "science isn't perfect" in the abstract.... they're loathe to deal with it in the concrete. It's all about the ego and the self image.) Anyhow, there isn't a real difference between the "pro-science" crowd and any other sub group. You could replace "right" in the above sentence with "blessed by God" or practically anything else and have an equally valid result.
The problem is, to not piss people off, you have to rewind the clock and undo years of fuckups by the climate change crowd - because they went political before they went scientific. It's been about weaponizing the discussion and humiliating the opposition from the very start.
Really, news for nerds? I've never heard that name before in my life. And what is a "science guy" anyway? Sounds pretty stupid to me.
Anyway, got to go to work now - science calls.
He's contributed more to science than the averge slashdotter. Jealousy makes you nasty!
The northern europe doesn't even believe god exists.
Not really. Look at these statistics from the eurobarometer poll:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#Europe
Europe seems to be split between Theism, Pantheism and Atheism.
Jan
Why would you find this fascinating? There have been numerous studies showing a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence.
Correlation != Causality. Also note that Lynn and Nyborg published the same kind of results for gender vs. I.Q. and race vs. I.Q.
Jan
Which is why the pro science crowd went out of their way to confront every religious fundamentalist they ran into over the last 1000 years and told them they were wrong.
Oh wait, no they didn't.
This is mostly a new development. Its a game. Its like bear baiting only with theologists.
It accomplishes NOTHING but making fundamentalists angry and annoying everyone else that is trying to actually get something done.
If I go up to someone that bases their whole life around some faith, philosophy, or ideology... exactly how dense would I have to be to think that I could simply walk up to them, contradict their most deeply held beliefs, and walk away from them having made an impression?
Its foolishness.
Everyone believe what they like... unless we want to have a theocracy or state religion/ideology and start shooting people that think otherwise. If we're not willing to do that... then just accept people are going to think the way they want to think which is likely to be diverse.
None of which really matters since the point I am making is that the point of communication is to be understood... and this form of communication does not cause party A to be understood by party B. To the contrary, it simply generates hostility for no reason and disrupts social cohesion.
Its counter productive which makes it stupid.
I would lay the blame there at some political activists that hijacked the cause for their own selfish ends. The fact that some of these people got very rich very quickly while not doing much for the environment and sucking up millions to billions in aid money is just one example of their real interests.
That said, there are some truly serious problems with our use of sequestered hydrocarbons. But none of that can be addressed without broad cooperation which would mean ostracizing any group that insisted on exploiting the issue for their petty political and financial ambitions.
The alternative is that the whole process locks with group A thinking they have a weapon they can use against group B and group B crouching down into a siege mentality that makes it utterly futile to get any sort of compromise.
Group B must feel the issue being discussed is ACTUALLY about the issue at hand and not merely a pretext for group A to increase their power, influence, and domination over group B. Group B will attempt to protect their power, influence, and self determination as their primary goal. So all the petty politics need to be put away with other childish things or it will never be more then a game played between rival factions with the only stakes that matter being which side calls the shots. The environment will be irrelevant until it is treated as the primary issue of importance.
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Never understood why Bill's TV show was ever popular. Beakman predates him, and that show was both sciency and a lot more fun.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I remember watching bumblebees. But Nova was too pathetic to find video of a bumblebee, so here's some pictures of a honeybee.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Causility != Implication
1) Smoking causes lung cancer, but not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer. If smoking would imply lung cancer every smoker would also be suffering from lung cancer. It is clear that religion does not imply a low IQ, because some really smart religious people do exist.
2) Lack of intelligence also does not imply believe in God, because there are stupid atheists as well.
3) There are many possible causes for both religion and low intelligence.
- If religion is one of the rare sources of hope in insecure situations, how would that make religions look bad? This would be like saying: Antibiotics are bad, they are consumed mostly by unhealthy people.
There can also be causality chains. E.g.:
- Higher Intelligence causes people to question the believes for neighbors.
- This makes it more likely to get a different set of believes than the neighbors.
- If the majority of the neighbors believes in god, mostly high IQ people will not share this believe.
If you look at Lynn and Nyborg's data you will notice that not that nations with the overall highest level of atheist have the highest average IQ, but instead the nations with around 10-20% atheists have the highest IQ.
Jan
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them.
Debating them directly is probably pointless. Your debating someone about something that is fundamentally irrational. You're almost certainly not going to convince them of anything and anyone listening probably has already made up their mind on the topic. It's unclear what the point of such a debate might be. Maybe if there was something directly at stake like in the Scopes monkey trial it might be worthwhile.
No, the way to "debate" them needs to be through education, media and legislation. Strong separation of church and state. Strong scientific education. Television and media that makes the absurdity of blind faith clear and uncool. The more educated people are the less likely they are to believe in fairy tales. You aren't going to convert the faithful but you might be able to keep their children from being brainwashed.
Never forget however that in many places (including the US) the religious crazies outnumber the sane people. There are numerous states where atheists cannot legally hold public office. How this has passed constitutional muster eludes me.
Well it really happened and now the people he debated received enough money and even MUNICIPAL BONDS to build a life sized Ark.
Glad to see they put the money to productive use. I would consider that something of a dodged bullet.
By doing science perhaps. Now, wheres my cookie
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
The only people who take the bible literally are reddit atheists and ultraconservative wingnut christians.
Actually, atheists don't take the bible literally; it's all a bunch of fairy tail bullshit.
But if you believe random parts of the bible are just metaphorical, then why take any of it seriously? Even if you *do* take the parts you don't like (And face it; that's what many people do.) metaphorically, it still has some rather disgusting and violent messages.
Thank you Dave Raggett
1. You are not dumbing[sp?] it down, if you are trying to target people who have no idea of the base concepts or your target audience isn't ever sure they want to be involved. What do you expect him to do? In front of a bunch of kids, who can barely do arithmetic, giving them the formulas mountains of raw data, and a formal proof and expect them to get it? Bill Nye the science guy doesn't teach a degree in science, he is really good at giving the introduction, and inspiring people.
2. Back in the 80's stereotypes were very popular, think what it would be if a science show was done by a person who looks like a football player. It would just mess up the cultures idea of the world back then. Either you are strong or smart.
Would Bill Nye get the fame today as he did when he started? Probably not, neither would have Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street. We are in a different culture then we were 30 years ago. Some things are better some things are worse. Bill Nye was smart enough to keep his personal brand up, over the time.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Broadly speaking: Religion (overall) attempts to subjectively answer 'why?'
Except they don't. Religion doesn't care about "why" at all. They make up some stories to tell people to achieve some social ends but they don't remotely actually address the question of "why". "Why" is a VERY difficult question. Richard Feynman said it better than I can. To answer the question of "why" you have to be in a framework that allows something to be true. Religion doesn't do this because religion is not concerned with truth - everything about religion is based on something that cannot be falsified. Saying some god did it is not any sort of answer to "why" anymore than your mother's justification when you were a child of "because I said so". They simply make up stoires until someone is satisfied and stops asking "why" but religion never actually answers any questions.
To my mind religion is fundamentally about power and money and influence. It doesn't answer any questions. It doesn't offer any real solutions. It certainly doesn't answer the question "why". At most it provides (false) assurance and thus comfort to some. It permits twisted and deluded people to gain positions of power over others based on nothing more than a lie due to their insecurities and mental limitations. Religion is like a virus of the mind to which we have built insufficient vaccines for.
The problem I think is small minds need a small God.
I'd modify that to say only small minds need a god at all. Saying there is a god if you think of the concept more broadly is simply variation of the claim that anything we don't understand must at some level be due to some deity. It's a god of the gaps argument more generalized. Maybe a useful tactic in the short run but I think ultimately self defeating.
Astrophysics is a subset of science, which is a subset of natural philosophy, which in turn is a subset of philosophy.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
The AC does have a point: "creationism" (and "intelligent design") are potentially ambiguous terms to people who aren't engaged in the evolution debate. To us here (I assume), both terms refer to anti-evolution philosophies. To others, the terms may simply suggest that the universe was "created" and "intelligently designed" by a Creator, a belief which is in no way incompatible with evolution or science in general. It just feeds the false dichotomy of "religion vs science".
As far as how a deity fits into their picture, it is generally understood that the biblical stories are allegorical and not literal tellings of an event.
I don't think they see it as allegorical - at least not completely. If they are christian at some level they either believe that Jesus was the "son of god" or they do not. Jesus is not seen as allegorical. Whether the stories are literally true or not is irrelevant to the purpose of religion. If they do see Jesus as allegorical then there is little point in continuing to worship under that structure because then Jesus isn't real and there is no point in worshiping something that isn't real.
In general, religious belief does not hinge on anything that can ever be proven/disproven by observation, and is purely the domain of spiritual fulfilment and ideas that exist outside of the physical universe.
That is NOT how it works in the real world for most people. For most people there is some (varying) amount of overlap with the real world. Anyone who is rationally thinking about beliefs that cannot be proven cannot logically put any structure on them. You cannot say that there is a holy trinity or that god sent his son to earth and still claim that you are talking about anything outside the physical universe. You are putting structure on something you by definition cannot know anything about. At most you can logically say that there might be some sort of deity the nature of which we cannot ever know. The End. It's a very short and boring story though an intellectually honest one.
Spoiler Alert! The Ph in PhD is for philosophy. The D is for Doctorate. In reality, NGT has a PhD in Astrophysics, which didn't stop him from becoming my favorite philosopher. He's also lectured and directed at several prestigious astrophysics positions around the country. Sorry to ruin what was clearly a joke aimed at the "Bill ain't no science guy without no science degree" crowd. Funny how most of the comments in stories about college have the theme "college is worthless, learn in the real world" and here we have someone that seems to have done just that but gets no credit because he doesn't have a science degree.
In fact, his only actual degree is a Bachelors of Science in mechanical engineering.
I grew up during this. I was a geeky nerdy kid, right in the target demographic of these lines of shows.
I never saw Bill Nye. I dunno man, I was 10 when it aired. I just never saw it.
I saw Beakman, but I honestly didn't like how goofy he was. It was over the top.
I preferred Mr. Wizard reruns.
You don't seem to understand the meaning of implication. If A implies B, then B must be true in all cases where A is true.
So if a lack of intelligence would imply believe in God then everyone who lacks intelligence would also have believe in God. So even a single person lacking intelligence without believing in a god shows that the implication does not exist.
You seem to understand "implication" as "contributory cause". They are not the same thing. A contributory cause makes something more likely. While a sufficient cause or a implication must ALWAYS have a specific effect.
Jan
to Bill Nye.
Beakman's assistant was *way hotter* than any bunsen burner Nye had. . .
Beakman had, frankly, way hotter lab assistants than Nye ever did (No offense meant to Suzanne).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Religion is a lie, undeserving of the undue respect granted it. Most of the people involved with religion are good, likable people. They would likely be that way whether they were religious or not. They like the idea of there being a plan and someone in charge. It comforts them. As long as they keep their religion in their churches and homes and social events they're fine, but a lot of them try to speak out, or impose their will, on public policy using their religion as the reason for their position. Their views on these items are not credible until they have a reason other than "God says so", whether they say it directly or it underlays their stated reasons.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself! And Spiders!
Hahahahaha- yeah, and with Atheists and Fundamentalists interpreting the Bible in exactly the same way, I'd say that reason is on the side of practically everybody else.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
But if you believe random parts of the bible are just metaphorical, then why take any of it seriously?
Answer from a theist in an honest-to-God rational religion- we don't. It's a bunch of nice poetry and some history about a group of people who had experiences with the divine, that sometimes coincides with our experiences of the divine because reality is reality and truth is truth and history keeps repeating.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Neither science nor religion can argue against each other effectively. Their fundamental basis is different.
Its like pitting sharks versus lions. You noted that if you throw a shark into the realm of the lion... throw it into the middle of the hot dry savannah... the shark always loses to the lion. It just flops around gasping... crushed under its own weight. It dies ultimately without the lion even having to do anything. An easy meal because the shark is a fish out of water.
However, reverse the situation and the lion is helpless instead. Released into the middle of the ocean the lion will eventually drown. Or the shark could eat the lion at any time without the lion being able to fight back.
This is the battle between religion and science.
It is the battle between physics and metaphysics. You are quite correct that if religion is thrown into science's realm and expected to defend itself by science's rules... religion loses. However, as you should know by now... do the same thing to science and religion eats it alive.
They cannot fight each other directly and have the conflict mean anything. What you need is some sort of hybrid that can go between land and water... that can go between physics and metaphysics and be equally at home in both.
Philosophy. This is a philosophical dispute. If you ACTUALLY want to accomplish something in this sort of debate you'll have to resort to philosophy. Doing that will give religion and science an equal footing to defend themselves and a common ground can be found between people.
Anything short of that is just two monkeys beating their chests and making noises at each other.
I'm not that primitive.
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If you have the debate then you should have it philosophically and not simply pitting religion directly against science. I said it better to another person in this discussion... I will quote myself:
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Properly used, "creationism" means "creation by an intelligent being", and -nothing else- is specified.
[shrug] You can define it that way if you want to, but don't expect everyone else to go along with you.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The AC does have a point: "creationism" (and "intelligent design") are potentially ambiguous terms to people who aren't engaged in the evolution debate.
Then if they want to engage in that debate, they should learn how those terms are used. AC's sub-Objectivist ranting doesn't make me think he's interested in that level of intellectual effort, though.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Sorry, but people with brains are past the point of being polite to lying cocksuckers like you.
Make yourself useful. Go fuck your mother with a rake or something.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Someone who thinks you can prove a negative, especially with an experimental setup, should perhaps not be expounding in such an elitist ass-holish way about science and engineering.
They are much more closely linked and more similar than you think.
The child is not correct, his project is not a failure, provided he learned at least one thing. Likewise the Higgs Boson experiment will have found much positive useful information, whether or not the Higgs Boson itself is found.
Mindless noise.
You contribute nothing and will never achieve anything in these issues. If people like you are in charge, we'll be arguing about this for the next 10,000 years.
Follow my path and the fight ends tomorrow and we can mutually cooperate on shared problems immediately.
If you find your path more desirable then I have to wonder why? Your idea wastes more time and accomplishes less.
Empirically, if you desire to end the controversy and achieve meaningful results, you should favor my path or something like it.
Do you fail to approve of my path because you desire chaos and waste or do you literally not understand that you're just spinning your wheels to no purpose while screaming? Because that's what morons do... Can you honestly disagree?
*jams the "rake" up asshat's twat and walks away*
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But if you believe random parts of the bible are just metaphorical, then why take any of it seriously?
Much of Sun Tzu's masterpiece is metaphorical, but is great philosophy when it comes to conflict - either in actual war or business. Likewise most of the I Ching is metaphorical - and is quite salient to daily life. Metaphors are great ways to communicate, and there is a lot of valuable underlying philosophical concepts contained in all 3 of those works (the bible, Sun Tzu's Art Of War, and the I Ching). Throwing away writings as nonsense (not to be taken seriously) because parts of it are metaphorical would really leave a person missing out on a lot of well-developed and carefully considered philosophy.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
great.
Carl Sagan was great, and I still love watching James Burke's stuff; it's just as fascinating and relevant now as ever.
Speaking as an atheist, much used to kicking monotheist god-squaddies in the mental nuts (*), I don't claim to be the authority on scripture. I just claim to be no less an authority on scripture than you are, and one who doesn't blind myself to it's wickedenesses, contradictions and stupidities.
(*) Don't worry ; I use good industrial boots with a protective steel toecap. So I don't hurt myself, or get too much contamination from the contact. Just being reassuring.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The only problem with your analogy and statement is that while the desert and ocean are real, religion's environment is made up.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself! And Spiders!
You're missing the point.
There is metaphysics and physics and neither one can argue against the other.
If you absolutely refuse to acknowledge metaphysics as having any right to a domain... then what about philosophy itself?
Could you argue against Slavery with science? Could you argue for democracy with science?
Not really. Its not a matter of facts.
Understand this... when you argue against a religion, its sort of like arguing about freedom or slavery or whether you should be nice to kittens. Its not really something science has any ability to argue against.
At the same time... religion can't argue against science either. You can't use the moral treatment of kittens to argue for a theory on thermodynamics. They don't relate.
That is the problem.
So... again... Sharks in the Sea and lions in the Savannah.
Each a master of its domain and neither able to challenge the other in the opposing domain.
Every time religion attacks science in the domain of the empirical... it flops around on the hot dry sand and is crushed under the weight of its own unsupportable suppositions.
Every time science attacks religion in the domain of the metaphysical, moral, ethical, and philosophical... it flails around desperately for purchase. Those strong legs desperately trying to find a fact they can stand upon where none exist. And eventually... though it strives... it will tire and drowned as it always does... and will get gobbled up by some metaphysical/philosophical/theological/ideological entity that is more at home in those waters.
Neither one can dominate the other in their domain.
To attempt to do so is merely to profess ignorance of their contrasting states.
Its an insane contest... its octopuses versus eagles. Its a stupid conflict.
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Get to be considered an Astrophysicist considering he only has a PhD in Philosophy?
You really aren't very smart are you? "Ph.D." = Doctor of Philosophy, duh. He has a Masters and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Columbia University.
A little late back to this but- I agree, it's stupid. Religion has no place in any kind of cohesive argument. It has no place because it is entirely made up. It's fiction. It's trying to answer questions but the answers are without merit. Why are we here? Why not? Why is there something instead of nothing? Why not? What is our purpose? Whatever we make it out to be, there's nothing external defining it. We're bits of animated mud that get to sit up and look around for a while.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself! And Spiders!
I think often people are so infused with anti theism that they're philosophically simplistic.
The issue is not whether religion has a place in this or not but whether philosophy itself has a right to argue its points... and whether science can answer any philosophical question?
My point is that philosophy which both science and religion are branches of deals effectively with everything. There are some things that science as a branch of philosophy is ill suited to deal with... issues of morality, ethics, and other immaterial issues.
Science has no place in that argument. By the same token, neither do many branches of philosophy that are suited to ethics able to deal with debates involving very material questions.
The old term for science was "natural philosophy."
The point is that science has its domain. It rules it. Anything entering its domain will lose to it.
But that domain is not infinite. The scientific method itself is a philosophical construct that is extremely useful but it has limits. Other branches of philosophy ATTEMPT to deal with other issues. Their natures being more arbitary you will never get the clear results you get from science. But you will at least get SOME results which is more then you can get from science when it leaves its domain.
People like Bill Nye are less scientific activists at this point then political activists. This statements do little to educate people about anything they don't already know or to expand knowledge or to render convincing arguments that change any opinions.
He's a rabble-rouser. Which is too bad.
Understand, I am not defending theism or the theistic interpretation of the natural world. Rather, I am saying that Bill Nye isn't helping the situation and that if he both understood what he was doing and cared he would do it differently.
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