Bill Nye debates with Ken Ham over the question,
"is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era?"
My thoughts:
For those of you who would take the Ken Ham (pro-Creationism) side of the debate,
please forgive me.
Here is what I think after watching the first 60-70% of the debate (I will finish the video and edit this post sometime soon, maybe when I get home from classes).
Mr. Ham spends a great portion of his time showing some examples of Creationists who happen to be great scientists, that Creationism doesn't stop some people from being great scientists. The debate, however, was not about whether or not Creationists can function as scientists! The debate is about the validity/viability of the Creation model. Denying this model is not equivalent to denying the ability of Creationists to function as scientists. In fact, just as Ham says, aside from when it comes to finding the age of living things, objects, and materials we find on the planet, it's probably true that Creationism won't really get in the way of successful scientific thinking.
He does, however, point out (admit) that although we may use the same evidence in our studies, we will come to different conclusions. Mr. Ham believes in the story of Noah's Arc - that two of each animal were all collected and boarded onto a huge, enormous wooden boat created by eight normal people that out-sizes any boat we've ever been able to build up to now, even with a great number more people with a great deal more expertise. Somehow, two of every animal (Bill Nye states that Ham is claiming 14,000 animals in total here) were boarded on an unrealistically huge wooden boat in order to survive a huge, huge flood...for a year! Nye cleverly remarks later, using Kangaroos as an example (Ham is Australian), about the location of all the animals after the biblical flood, and how there is absolutely no physical evidence at all of Kangaroos having traveled from that location to Australia, nor a bridge of land across which to travel to it.
Let me add this - does that mean that before then, there were only exactly two of every animal, and they had never reproduced, died, or anything? But I don't know much about the bible, so I'll just continue on with the nutshell summary.
Nye adds a bunch of examples of things we find lying all over the place there are definitely older than Ham's bible claims the Earth to be; Mr. Ham believes the Earth itself is a mere 6,000 years old. I'm sorry, but that is just funny. Nye explains using ice and rock layers and natural wonders such as The Grand Canyon as examples with which to refute the arguments of Ham. He also explains by mentioning the huge number of different species that exist. This point is effective because Ham denies evolution. Nye shows through basic math that, in Ham's model that alots humans a mere ~4,000 years of history, there would have to be 11 new species every single day on average in order to meet today's vast plethora of world species.
Ham uses a lot of points against Nye's case that in all truth could be easily reciprocated by Nye at will; Ham fervently argues that our terminology, particularly the words "science" and "evolution" have been "hijacked", and continues also that when referring to our scientific statements about the past, our scientific "observation" is not so because some things were not directly "observed", and thus redefines it as "historical observation". Or something...
He complements this by stating that Creationists like him are more than willing to admit to their belief as, well, "belief"; Ham also refers to Creationism - "God's Word" - as "historical observation". He concedes that.
Well of course you concede that. The system is based on a book...
Mr. Ham in the video can't help but laugh when displaying in his presentation how Creationism and science are constantly termed as separate (or even opposite) things. But well, Creationism is based on a book.
A book.
Creationism is based on The Bible, a book full of supernatural events, supernatural power, hard-to-believe tales, and, well, let's not forget that it leaves no room for other religions or things like homosexuality. Ham himself implies/brings up to the supernatural-ness of Creationism.
Secular science is all based on direct physical observations, and everything based on more "indirect" observations are based on strong physical evidence and sound logic. Additionally, Because the fields of study under the name of (secular) science are all unified and synergistic, every major advancement in one field tends to expand and increase confidence for every other field. Natural science has the advantage of that kind of synergistic solidarity.
Ham very passionately wishes for the secularists to admit that some of their "observations" can be considered "belief", as some of it is not directly observable. But I think a lot of us can argue with fair power that a lot of our "indirect observations", such as the age of a given fossil, transcend the status of mere "belief" in that there is strong enough physical and logical evidence to call them "facts" with a large confidence margin. In fact, science is interesting and believable because facts and concepts from most or all of the secular scientific fields of study tend to interconnect like giant spider webs.
It seems like Ham has come not to debate about the viability of the Creation model, but to plea for the legitimacy of scientific work by creationists, a second look at our terminology, increased scrutiny and suspicion toward the education system, and for us to admit that there is sometimes a certain degree of "belief" attached to our scientific claims.
Sure, maybe some of our scientific facts or ideas that are not-quite-100.0%-proven can thusly be reduced to the status of "belief", they're still made pretty believable and logical using vast and concrete evidence and logic, are not supernatural, and furthermore are more than mere passages from a single glorified bundle of human-written pages (that's right, I didn't say man-written, so take that, too!). If we are to reduce our science to belief - that is, reduce it down to the same level at which Ham himself concedes that Creationism stands - what would stop us then from considering the prospect of our own nonexistence, of our own consciousness or... What is there to prove to us that we're not all inside of a videogame? Maybe it's God's videogame? I'm sure it's not PG-13.
Ham also directly stated that he wishes for us to believe in the supernatural as much as the natural. He has also thereby implied that our scientific methodology is "natural", then, and that Creationism is not. He implies this even despite his adamance in having us question the very "natural" quality of our "science."
Even if God exists or existed, I doubt he'd be as righteous as the Bible and its advocates make him (or her!) out to be. With all the horrors, tragedies, and misfortune in the world, wouldn't it be more logical and rational to assume that this "God" is a more neutral being? If he created everything and not just humans, I hardly think he/she should be so well-conformed to our most "good" virtues and ideals. This is a whole other debate I guess, but let me just put it out there that perhaps "good" and "bad" as absolute virtues are exclusively human thoughts - or if not, exclusive to a small percentage of the total number of species on the planet, even excluding micro-organisms. If Creationism wants to be a science too, well then, for starters it should probably take a more neutral stance when it comes to these virtues and how they pertain to God him/her self. But I guess to them, even that notion is rubbish since I used the word "her."
One more thing, something I have to bring up because so many Creationism advocates so illogically do so:
"If the universe originated from a single cell (or atom, or however their wish to quote us Big Bang-believing seculars), where did that cell come from?"
They may use this same example in arguing the origin of humanity.
Well, this may happen to some people in debates when their emotions and/or sheer blindness and refusal to admit even a hint of the possibility of their beliefs being proven false, but...
Can't...we...say the same thing back to you? Where did God come from, who or what was it that created him?? He can't just go "poof!" and suddenly appear in the middle of, what for the sake of his own awesome poof!-ness, must be the center of all nothingness. If Creationists even think of making that silly claim, then they should not dare to call this religion a "science", and nor can science be infused with it. This is what I mean when I mentioned how Ham doesn't get into any concrete explanatory details about this Creation he so adamantly advocates. It's not as though the silly, easily-countered question about the single cell is something necessarily representative of Mr. Ken Ham and his claims, but it is a very common (but very illogical and pointless) attempt by many casuals to defend the Creationist paradigm.
I have nothing personally against Creationism, but despite being the over-imaginative writer and dreamer that I am, I in this case tend to be more inclined to believe what I see. I find Ham's arguments lacking in concreteness - and they are. So far, Ham has done nothing to concretely explain the logistics of the bible's, well...
Outrageous tales.
Please don't hate me.
I look forward to watching the rest of this video!
If you find anything I've said harsh, please take note that everything I've said is based on a rational approach to this debate - and debates, by their rational and hopefully unemotional virtue, are a fun thing for me in either watching or partaking in.
So what I mean is... If you want to prove things, if you want to deny things, if you want to argue things... If you wish to engage in and properly carry out an intellectually oppositional discussion - i.e. a debate - you need to temporarily become as emotionally removed as possible. There is little room for emotion in an intellectual debate - nevermind a scientific one.
Thanks!
~Yukigami
P.S.
BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL-Bill Nye the Science Guy~~
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