I just finished watching Bill Nye vs Ken Ham’s debate of creationism versus evolution and the origin of the earth. The debate was both entertaining and educational, but really bothered me because I felt that every single argument reached a dead end where the two academics chose to agree to disagree.
Before I proceed, I think its important to state my biased opinion: I believe in evolution, I believe that the earth is billions of years old, and in general, I believe in the science that is taught in schools. I’m using the word believe because even though I have some understanding of how a lot of things work, I usually just take the textbook’s word for it. That being said, I’ll try to remain as neutral as I can and even play devil’s advocate because Ken Ham did raise several good points.
If you haven’t already watched the debate, I recommend that you check it out here if you are at all interested in the subject matter of evolution, creationism, religion, and all that other good stuff.
One of the first topics Ham was discussing were Darwin’s finches. They’re the perfect example of evolution, with their cool looking beaks, which he does not deny for a moment. His argument is simply that species do not cross paths with other species. In other words, a bird does not evolve into giraffe. I can see that. After all, we’re still looking for the missing link between ape and man, let alone the missing link between amoeba and mammal. Nye’s rebuttal: if that were the case, we should be seeing 11 new species every single day since the earth is only 6000 years old. Ham’s implicit (what I think he was getting at) counter rebuttal: you can argue that new species used to diverge at an extremely high rate until the very recent past, where this growth slowed down (a lot like the adoption of many social networks :p). Well, I guess we’ve reached a dead end hereā¦
Another big theme of the night was Noah’s Ark. How can one man, with three sons, and their wives build the biggest wooden arch that will exist for several centuries to come with no prior experience? Let alone the fact that the ship has to withstand heavy tides, contain a bunch of animals, and hold enough food to feed them for an extended period of time. Ham’s rebuttal: It’s possible, who says Noah wasn’t a master at building ships? Nye’s counter rebuttal: highly unlikely. Another dead endā¦
Bill Nye brought up the argument of the relationship between tree age and tree rings. As you might well know, the age of a tree can be determined directly by the number of rings that can be observed from the cross section of the tree’s trunk. Using Ken Ham’s model of observational science, we can plant a few trees, and see whether or not this theory holds. It probably will. Bill Nye brings up the fact that there are tree with over 6000 rings, and assuming they somehow managed to survive the flood, they still prove to be older than the earth itself. Ham’s rebuttal: there is no proof that the same theory held a couple millennia ago. Well, doesn’t seem like we can go anywhere from hereā¦
I want to point out that they discussed radiometric dating of fossils for quite a bit, but I don’t know the science behind it that well so I’d rather not get into that topic.
During the back and forth in the latter part of the debate, Ken Ham used the phrase “there’s this book” as the basis of most of his arguments. When Bill Nye faced the questions of what existed before the big bang, or how is it that consciousness evolved from a single molecule, he was kind of stumped. Ham had an answer: The Bible. Technically speaking, Ham has the upper hand, but as my professor would say, does it have a source? I don’t even require that the source be formatted in IEEE notation. No source, no point.
Ken Ham is very much pro science. He is all about observation science, but simply states that it cannot be used to observe the past. Bill Nye kept arguing that Ham’s methods cannot be used to predict the future. Both of them kept arguing their own points and in my opinion, did a very poor job at addressing each other counter arguments. That being said, I must say that I like Ham’s ideas of observable science not having existed in the past. Maybe the laws of nature are kind of like the position of a quantum particle: as soon as you observe it, it changes. Cool idea, but highly unlikely; he didn’t have me convinced.
Taking a side step, I really wanted to mentioned that I had one big issue with both debaters. Whenever asked if anything would change their minds in relation to the existence of God or the age of the Earth, both men avoided the question as much as possible before ultimately finishing off with a concise NO. Ham being a true Christian, I felt that that he resisted his scientific urge to say that if he observed differently, he would change his mind. What if God himself told him he does not exist? Putting the paradox aside, shouldn’t that suffice for a true believer? Ok, bad example. But he avoided agreeing to a hypothetical situation in which the earth is more than 6000 years old. Similarly, Bill Nye said that nothing would ever make him believe in a supernatural power. He did not consider the possibility of a scenario where he’d find proof for such an all-powerful being. Why not? As a scientist, I think you should always keep questioning fact, and similarly, always keep questioning theory.
Although I’ll always respect Bill Nye the science guy, I was kind of disappointed when he was making statements like “I find it troubling to understand” or “I find this hard to believe”, when Ken Ham chose not to accept his theories. I was also very disappointed when the debate almost reached a point where the two men were debating the meaning of life. That argument really has no meaning.
So who do I think won the debate? Bill Nye. Who do I think raised the better arguments? Ken Ham. Do my biased beliefs play a role in this conclusion? Yes.
@olshansky