Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham: Fight!
... er... Debate!
The big web event of last night seemed to be the debate between Bill "The Science Guy" Nye and Ken Ham, Christian young-Earth creationist. I tuned in for a fair length of it. At some times, it felt like a typically disappointing public debate, with questions being danced around rather than answered, but it has some interesting points and might provoke some thought here and there.
First, I have to say that Ham came across as a more confident and charismatic speaker. I suppose that's natural and unavoidable, given his "profession" is based more around those traits. Nye, by comparison, gave (IMHO) good and sometimes lovingly-rambling answers, but felt less focused and on-point. I don't think it will really sway anyone, demonstrating rather directly how strongly people can cling to beliefs.
I'm sure the video is available in several places for the curious.
One point that seriously bothers me with Ham's view is he puts forth the Bible as literal, word-of-God truth.* He argues that the creation scenario put forth in Genesis is what really happened and he bases the age of the Earth off the number of generations listed in the book and such.
*Except when he doesn't. At one point, he answered a question, saying parts of the Bible must be taken differently - with sections "meant" to be literal taken as such and sections "meant" to be taken as poetry taken as poetry and so on. This, to me, seems to fall into the same realm of assumptions that he accuses Nye of, only without any acknowledgement of possible error.
So far as I saw, he never addressed the concerns that the Bible he's drawing from is an old book translated several times over. Instead he just started withe the baseline belief that it is what is, and everything stems from there.
On the other hand, Ham repeatedly brought up a point that I very much agree with, though he took it to an extreme I don't. About ancient history and the timeline of the Earth, Ham argued: you don't know. We have all these means of dating things based on the decay of elements or layers of soil and ice, but they're all based on current understandings of how things work and the assumption that nothing has changed. We've been wrong before.
Essentially, mainstream science is based on a series of best guesses.
But... science doesn't say "this is absolute truth." As Nye repeatedly pointed out, science is as much the process as the body of knowledge, and the process allows for change in that knowledge. He invited evidence of inaccuracies rather than shuns them, because that can lead to a better understanding of the world, and better predictions about the future.
There was a question posed by a submitter about reconciling science and God. Nye... sort of danced around that one a little bit. He put forth that, scientifically, God has neither been proven or disproven. He also seemed to be saying essentially, "there are plenty of scientists who believe in God, and that's fine."
What he didn't say, but the question caused me to consider, is that scientific thinking does sort of conflict with belief in God. If you believe that one should seek truth with evidence, how do you also believe something for which there really isn't any evidence. I suppose there are tons and tons of people who rationalize that in some way, but it does strike me as some contradictory philosophies. You sort of have to choose to believe something for which there is no solid proof, and once you do that, doesn't that defeat the scientific process?
Of course, Ham's answer was simply that God exists, the Bible says so, and so there's no conflict.
I got a kick out of another question where someone asked something like "if evolution is leading to more intelligent humans, how do you explain wonders in ancient times that we can't been able to duplicate?"
Nye laughed and offered up that nothing about evolution says we're getting smarter. Rather, it's about "survival of the fittest," in the sense of what fits in best with the environment around.
Ham replied more to Nye than the original question and, in my mind, almost proved Nye's point. He brought up the change in cave fish that lost the ability to see, arguing "if evolution leads to survival of the fittest, why would they lose something they had before?" But that's exactly the "fittest" that Nye put forth moments prior - the fish adapted to their surroundings, even though that might put them at a serious disadvantage in a different setting.
Ham pretty much just ignored any insinuations that the Bible, or even his interpretation of it, could be wrong. He pretty much ignored any questions about the fate of the large number of humans past and present who aren't Christian. He tossed out a few sketchy examples of possible scientific dating errors as if it proved the entire body of evidence wrong.
Nye questioned the believability of the creation story and rambled about the joy of discovery.
So... overall, it was something interesting to listen to, but I doubt it will change many minds. Belief, be it in a religion, or a process, or anything else, is hard to shake.
The big web event of last night seemed to be the debate between Bill "The Science Guy" Nye and Ken Ham, Christian young-Earth creationist. I tuned in for a fair length of it. At some times, it felt like a typically disappointing public debate, with questions being danced around rather than answered, but it has some interesting points and might provoke some thought here and there.
First, I have to say that Ham came across as a more confident and charismatic speaker. I suppose that's natural and unavoidable, given his "profession" is based more around those traits. Nye, by comparison, gave (IMHO) good and sometimes lovingly-rambling answers, but felt less focused and on-point. I don't think it will really sway anyone, demonstrating rather directly how strongly people can cling to beliefs.
I'm sure the video is available in several places for the curious.
One point that seriously bothers me with Ham's view is he puts forth the Bible as literal, word-of-God truth.* He argues that the creation scenario put forth in Genesis is what really happened and he bases the age of the Earth off the number of generations listed in the book and such.
*Except when he doesn't. At one point, he answered a question, saying parts of the Bible must be taken differently - with sections "meant" to be literal taken as such and sections "meant" to be taken as poetry taken as poetry and so on. This, to me, seems to fall into the same realm of assumptions that he accuses Nye of, only without any acknowledgement of possible error.
So far as I saw, he never addressed the concerns that the Bible he's drawing from is an old book translated several times over. Instead he just started withe the baseline belief that it is what is, and everything stems from there.
On the other hand, Ham repeatedly brought up a point that I very much agree with, though he took it to an extreme I don't. About ancient history and the timeline of the Earth, Ham argued: you don't know. We have all these means of dating things based on the decay of elements or layers of soil and ice, but they're all based on current understandings of how things work and the assumption that nothing has changed. We've been wrong before.
Essentially, mainstream science is based on a series of best guesses.
But... science doesn't say "this is absolute truth." As Nye repeatedly pointed out, science is as much the process as the body of knowledge, and the process allows for change in that knowledge. He invited evidence of inaccuracies rather than shuns them, because that can lead to a better understanding of the world, and better predictions about the future.
There was a question posed by a submitter about reconciling science and God. Nye... sort of danced around that one a little bit. He put forth that, scientifically, God has neither been proven or disproven. He also seemed to be saying essentially, "there are plenty of scientists who believe in God, and that's fine."
What he didn't say, but the question caused me to consider, is that scientific thinking does sort of conflict with belief in God. If you believe that one should seek truth with evidence, how do you also believe something for which there really isn't any evidence. I suppose there are tons and tons of people who rationalize that in some way, but it does strike me as some contradictory philosophies. You sort of have to choose to believe something for which there is no solid proof, and once you do that, doesn't that defeat the scientific process?
Of course, Ham's answer was simply that God exists, the Bible says so, and so there's no conflict.
I got a kick out of another question where someone asked something like "if evolution is leading to more intelligent humans, how do you explain wonders in ancient times that we can't been able to duplicate?"
Nye laughed and offered up that nothing about evolution says we're getting smarter. Rather, it's about "survival of the fittest," in the sense of what fits in best with the environment around.
Ham replied more to Nye than the original question and, in my mind, almost proved Nye's point. He brought up the change in cave fish that lost the ability to see, arguing "if evolution leads to survival of the fittest, why would they lose something they had before?" But that's exactly the "fittest" that Nye put forth moments prior - the fish adapted to their surroundings, even though that might put them at a serious disadvantage in a different setting.
Ham pretty much just ignored any insinuations that the Bible, or even his interpretation of it, could be wrong. He pretty much ignored any questions about the fate of the large number of humans past and present who aren't Christian. He tossed out a few sketchy examples of possible scientific dating errors as if it proved the entire body of evidence wrong.
Nye questioned the believability of the creation story and rambled about the joy of discovery.
So... overall, it was something interesting to listen to, but I doubt it will change many minds. Belief, be it in a religion, or a process, or anything else, is hard to shake.
It's my take away that Nye wasn't trying to disprove Ham or "convince" fundamentalists. Rather, he wanted to encourage the next generation that the discovery he spoke so highly of was important and that science should be part and parcel with the education of the youth of not only our nation, but the world.
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