Day: February 7, 2014

Collected responses to the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham “debate” on evolution

~ Jeremy ~ Leave a comment

Bill-Nye-vs.-Ken-Ham-Debate_f_improf_645x254

I tuned into the live debate stream of the meeting between Bill Nye and Ken Ham the other night.

My response(s) boiled down to little more than this:

  • I applaud Bill Nye for putting the question of science and education back into the conversation. Many uppity ups in science have stopped this kind of discussion as it gives credence to ideas that have no merit or educational value.
  • If debaters won on graphics, give it to Ken Ham. His presentation notes were perfect for guiding 5 to 10 year olds in the way that only homeschoolers and Sunday Schools have succeeded. The Ken Ham’s slides and arguments, if you will, against evolution/science are best targeted toward that demographic, as well as people arrested in development who haven’t yet had an educational experience to help them blossom.
  • If your argument to complain that the science taught in public school classrooms is indoctrination, followed by an indoctrination statement of belief in a book written 2,000 to 3,000 years ago over modern books with modern advances, then explaining how that book offers salvation through belief in a man god who died and rose again from the dead, well, I’m pretty sure there’s confusion over the definition of “indoctrination.”
  • Bill Nye did okay, but missed some amazing opportunities to point out info like the above bullet.
  • I’ve seen that moderator in other belief related debates, and he, whoever he is, tends to upstage the debaters. He’s kind of a cool guy.

I accept science, and the day it gets jammed in the copier is not the day I get my believing legs back. I’m not for belief. I was taught to be a creationist. And the more I researched it, and the more I was told science and evolution were wrong, the more I discovered that creationism/Intelligent Design was simply a limp, lifeless dead horse.

Plain and simple. If perfection authored the magnanimity of the universe, the beauty of plants and animals on this planet, and also penned the Bible, writing words, phrases, catch phrases, prose, dynamic literature, ideas with foresight, those things are not that guy’s forte. 

I’ve been having fun reading some of the responses to the debate. Check them out below.

If you have any interest in this topic, I recommend all of the above links. I ended with Phil Plait, because he is responding directly to those who have been taught to accept