Nye-Ham debate an hour away

And we open with a brief commercial for the Creation Museum.

Confusing ... Ham trots out a creationist PhD and then he mentions "atheist" Craig Venter. What was his point?

He's knocking down the straw man of "creationists can't be scientists", which of course is not the same thing as "creationism isn't scientific".

How many of the scientists who are creationists he cited have published papers offering creationism as an explanation for anything?

That would be.......none.

Ham: pbservational vs. historical science. Word "science" hijacked by "secularists". Historical story of molecules-to-man evolution is just Darwinists' opinion.

Nye: bow ties. (Total waste of time). Tonight: two stories. (over to you all ...)

Bill's "Bowtie" story was too long ... but he recovered nicely with his remaining minutes.

And Ham starts off his 30 minute presentation by again knocking down the "creationists can't be scientists" straw man.

Good that Ham is banging away on the 6-day creation. Many listeners not so sure -- they will be worried. Nye did emphasize falsity of 6-days and of a global flood.

Ham a bit stuck on the "historical science" issue. Asks Nye to explain where natural laws came from.

Ham: name one piece of technology that was developed using molecules-to-man evolution.

Kudos to Matt Young for open opportunity for dialog during debate.

Both men registering good 5-minute opening statements, but Nye's opening move of claiming that creationism inhibits USA science was apparently anticipated and fully countered by Ham's counterexamples of Dr. Damadjian and later Dr. Faulkner.

Ham is disingenuous ... he brings up the Hubble Telescope and then makes is seem as though there was a huge disagreement among NASA scientists about the age of the universe. HIGHLY doubtful to the point where it's simply not true.

If Ham is going to repeat this "we just have different interpretations" rhetoric, then Nye needs to ask why creationists don't submit their "interpretations" to the relevant journals.

And when Ham inevitably says "they won't let us", Nye can point out that unsubstantiated conspiracy theories aren't compelling.

Ham: "Kinds" approximately the same as families in the classification system.

Ham is invoking my colleague Josh Akey's genealogy of dogs. Josh will be spluttering.

Ham: evolutionary trees "not observed". Oh yeah?

Everyone ... keep in mind that the many thousands watching Ham's "stuff" here, is probably hearing this for the first time. Bill needs to keep this in mind and counter accordingly.

Ham commercial for Rich Lenski. A "creation scientist" microbiologist says on video "not new information" when E. coli grows on citrate.

Ham: Darwin's ideas lead to racism, invokes Hunter's "Civic Biology".

Ham goes all "evolution = racism"?!! I'll bet Nye wasn't expecting that. We'll see if he brings up all the racism that was justified via the Bible (curse of Ham).

Ugh - Ham quotes Darwin's Victorian era language and attitudes to play the race card.

Ham: "Creationists should be teaching science since we're showing kids the right way to think." Please, Bill, jump ALL over this statement.

And now Ham is evangelizing and throwing in a bit of anti-marriage equality to boot.

Nye had better bring some good science, boiled down to the layperson level.

Ham starts by spelling out definitions, that's a correct move. Establishing definitions of observational science versus historical science (contra Nye).

Ham stressing the difference between what's being taught in public school pro-evolution textbooks, and what "observational science" is actually showing us. Tree of life versus (now) orchard or life

He also points out that the meaning of evolution has been "hijacked" via "bait and switch" (that is, blurred between micro and macro) by evolutionists. How will Nye respond on it?

Interesting words there from creationist microbio'st Dr. Andrew Fabich, microbiologist, regarding E. Coli and Lenski's work. Didn't know he existed.

Some will disagree, but Ham is using several Bible verses powerfully. The verses will NOT win the science debate, we all agree on that, but they are going to stick with some audience members. Sharp evangelistic awareness on Ham's part.

Bill has a great opportunity here ... Ham is a shallow thinking, spiritual racketeer. Please make him account for this ignorance.

Good move by Nye, going back to the original question of "Is creationism a viable scientific model". He could've spent more time on the limestone strata around Kentucky though.

Bill hammering away on fossil layers and ice layers, tree rings, which contradict the Flood.

Now checking out Nye 30 minute presentation. Nye will concentrate on evolution/geology to stress Old Earth Age and also to attack the Global Noahic Flood. He will try to stress them heavily I believe. Already Nye is starting out with ice cores and tree rings and fossil skulls.

Nye will have to rely on that approach, Nye will very likely NOT be able to compete against Ham on any Bible interpretation or exposition of any texts.

Joe Felsenstein said: Ham: evolutionary trees "not observed". Oh yeah?

Nye overstates not finding animals of different ages intermixed. Some geological processes can intersperse layers of different ages.

Unclear statement about fossil hominid skulls.

Good point now on how did marsupials get from the Ark to Australia.

The crowd isn't liking Nye tearing apart young-earth flood geology.

Nye finally talking about a prediction made from a phylogeny. Tiktaalik.

(PS lungfish aren't "in Florida", some other fish that can walk are).

Nye needs to get away from trying to defend evolution. Stick to demonstrating that young-earth creationism is contradicted by everything we see around us, and is therefore not scientifically viable.

Nye plays the Tiktaalik card, including showing an already debunked media-artist's impression of half-fish half-landwalker Tikkie.

Both sides are pressed for time, but Nye didn't even mention ANY of the subsequent bring-down and problems of Tikkie's status after further scientist review. Why didn't he?

Bill keeps calling it "Ham's Creation Model". Very smart, much less likely to put-off the many Christian's that Bill is trying to subtly influence.

Nicely done, Bill. Very good.

I'm going to have to go home in a few minutes. so over to you folks. I'll watch the rest on Youtube afterwards.

I'd judge that Ham did less well, did less Gish-galloping than he could have. Nye has held his own so far if not perfectly. Has hammered away on the implausibility of the Ark story. Gish has made crystal clear that everything he says comes out of the bible. That won't do much to convince the undecideds that his view is driven by science.

Some of Nye's explanations are too rushed. But in effect he is Gish-galloping Ham, somewhat nervously and klutzily.

There are some live-blog comments on Why Evolution Is True, but Uncommon Descent is rather quiet (and I just was unable to get it as well). One of the few early comments there was a whine about why didn't Nye debate an ID type instead. Don't think they are happy, but of course they'll later claim Ham won.

So far no disaster, at least.

Interesting. While discussing rubidium etc in relation to fossils, Nye brings up a bit of catastrophism in Nebraska and also brings up the Mt St Helens catastrophe. Don't know if Ham will respond on it, or even have time to do so, but Nye has opened a door to a brief discussion of biblical catastrophism and maybe in light of Mt St Helens.

Not bad by Nye. Not sure he needed to defend the big band and such, but we'll see how it goes in the rebuttal session.

*bang*

Oops...Nye needs to steer clear of attacking Christianity and the Bible. Just write those things off as religion, and remind the audience that we're talking about what's scientifically viable.

Ham chooses to briefly point to 1--- inconsistencies/assumptions/problems in dating methods 2--- countering Nye's point about Christians accepting evolution by pointing to the Death-Before-The-Fall incompatibility.

Nye is, as Joe Felsenstein suggested, attempting a Gish Gallop.

Now Ham is counterrebutting. 5 min. Ham reminds Nye of all those PhD scientists that were displayed via video "Not just my model, it's their model too."

Ham's not doing very well. "Some of our staff have PhD's"? *shrug* There are PhD's who advocate geocentrism.

Seriously Ham? The "planes on Greenland" YEC argument?

Idiot.

Ham counters Nye's point about lion's sharp teeth by pointing out, appropos for THIS forum, the panda's and fruit bat's sharp teeth *yet they are vegetarians*.

So Ham is now Gish Galloping Nye. Both sides very pressed for time and galloping. Ham brings up science's Horizon Problem to defend against Nye bringing up Ham's not believing in Big Bang.

Nye's turn now. "Fundamentally disagree ... on the nature of what we can prove to ourselves." Brings up issue of "natural law changed 4000 years ago" (at the Noahic Flood) and challenges to explain.

There ya' go Nye! If YEC is really scientifically viable, then "write it up". Don't just build fake museums, don't make videos, etc. Write it up and send it to the scientific community.

But we all know creationists won't do that.

Greenland planes: Ham says under 250 feet of ice; actually 38 feet. "Miles away from here it landed 70 years ago - Duh! Yeah! It was on a glacier. Never expected lies from the religious, but then I am extremely naive.

Nye fails to address the Death Before Fall Incompatibility, or ignores it (there is no evolutionist defense against it anyway), and instead switches to asks "What will become of Christians" who disagree with Ham's view (although Ham previously explained that they are indeed Christians and by implication not consigned to hell.)

Now time for audience questions.

Ham has gone to pure apologetics in the Q&A.

Good response by Nye regarding atoms prior to Big Bang, but good comeback by Ham regarding Nye's response, pointing to "a Book that tells where matter came from".

Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery".

But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

Nye has been very careful to call out Ham and not religion directly. This has been a good strategy and Bill came off much more reasonable and conciliatory than Ham's incessant and narrow evangelical ramblings.

Armchair hindsight is always convenient, but Ham could have responded to the question "What products have creationism produced", by directly mentioning the Terra geophysical software that Dr. John Baumgardner created several years ago to prove the Global Flood existed.

Scientists didn't accept that Terra proved the Flood but the actual Terra software itself proved to be wildly popular with the geophysicist community, whether they agreed with Baumgardner or not. This was covered in US News and World Report severa years ago.

Greenland planes: Ham says under 250 feet of ice; actually 38 feet. “Miles away from here it landed 70 years ago - Duh! Yeah! It was on a glacier. Never expected lies from the religious, but then I am extremely naive.

I think Ham was unnerved. He kept gripping his podium and mumbling.

Nye fails to address the Death Before Fall Incompatibility

FL said: Nye plays the Tiktaalik card, including showing an already debunked media-artist's impression of half-fish half-landwalker Tikkie. Both sides are pressed for time, but Nye didn't even mention ANY of the subsequent bring-down and problems of Tikkie's status after further scientist review. Why didn't he?

And so, the great debate is over.

I believe that Joe Felsenstein's phrase, "So far no disaster", summarizes the entire debate on both sides.

Both men seemingly "got their licks in" during the 2.5 hour debate.

FL

We know that death existed before there were any humans on the earth to sin.

Evolution by natural selection, you see, is an awful process. It is bloody, sadistic, and cruel. It flouts every moral precept we humans hold dear. It recognizes only survival and gene propagation, and even on those rare occasions where you find altruism and non-selfishness you can be certain that blind self-interest is lurking somewhere behind the scenes. All of this suffering, pain and misery, mind you, to reach a foreordained moment when self-aware creature finally appeared. What theological purpose was served by all this bloodsport? If humans were inevitable why didn’t God simply fast-forward the tape himself, thereby sparing all of those animals that died horrible deaths in the preceding hundreds of millions of years? Problem of evil, indeed. ...Reconciling evolution and Christianity is not as simple as theistic evolutionists often try to pretend. http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/06/21/my-review-of-only-a-theory/

For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just “death”, but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans?

FL said: For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just “death”, but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans?

phhht said:

FL said: For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just “death”, but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans?

Easily. By not existing.

Asshole for Jesus bleats: Karen writes,

We know that death existed before there were any humans on the earth to sin.

If we assume that Karen's statement is correct, then THAT is what sets up the Incompatibility between evolution and Christianity. For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just "death", but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans?

FL said: Karen writes,

We know that death existed before there were any humans on the earth to sin.

If we assume that Karen's statement is correct, then THAT is what sets up the Incompatibility between evolution and Christianity. For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just "death", but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans? Evolutionist Dr. Jason Rosenhouse explains the situation:

Evolution by natural selection, you see, is an awful process. It is bloody, sadistic, and cruel. It flouts every moral precept we humans hold dear. It recognizes only survival and gene propagation, and even on those rare occasions where you find altruism and non-selfishness you can be certain that blind self-interest is lurking somewhere behind the scenes. All of this suffering, pain and misery, mind you, to reach a foreordained moment when self-aware creature finally appeared. What theological purpose was served by all this bloodsport? If humans were inevitable why didn’t God simply fast-forward the tape himself, thereby sparing all of those animals that died horrible deaths in the preceding hundreds of millions of years? Problem of evil, indeed. ...Reconciling evolution and Christianity is not as simple as theistic evolutionists often try to pretend. http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/06/21/my-review-of-only-a-theory/

FL

Hey, if you need to get an archive copy, keepvid.com isn't letting you save the YouTube from Answers in Genesis (here).

But good old (!) Alex Jones has put the whole thing up in four parts, all of which are keepvid.commable.

I got mine!

What’s that? A full scientific discussion is impossible in a stage debate format? You don’t say!

Typo correction: the phrase should read "main article".

FL said: Ham starts by spelling out definitions, that's a correct move. Establishing definitions of observational science versus historical science (contra Nye).

Ham stressing the difference between what's being taught in public school pro-evolution textbooks, and what "observational science" is actually showing us. Tree of life versus (now) orchard or life.

He also points out that the meaning of evolution has been "hijacked" via "bait and switch" (that is, blurred between micro and macro) by evolutionists. How will Nye respond on it?

Interesting words there from creationist microbio'st Dr. Andrew Fabich, microbiologist, regarding E. Coli and Lenski's work. Didn't know he existed.

Some will disagree, but Ham is using several Bible verses powerfully. The verses will NOT win the science debate, we all agree on that, but they are going to stick with some audience members. Sharp evangelistic awareness on Ham's part.

For Ham, the whole thing is about magic. His trickster Loki god is a wizard who can make the continents fly apart in a jiffy and then hides all evidence of it. On the other hand he loves to create false evidence, and does a great job of it.

I think that speed with which Ham kept bringing things back to the Bible will be a hindrance to persuading the undecideds. It does firm up his usual base. I was surprised he didn't throw in lots of commercials for the Ark Project. Nye concentrated on the absurdities of the Ark, which can't help the Ark Project much. I believe that the Ark Project is facing a bond default quite soon.

Of course AiG collected vast numbers of email addresses on their live-streaming page, where they made it look as if you needed to give them the email address to see the live stream (you didn't). So he'll probably be mailing all them appeals to buy the bonds.

AiG got at least one 10minutemail address.

This was a great night for YEC creationism. Ham made a great presentation and in no way was defeated or made illogical by Nye.
I thought Nye was decent in manner but did a terrible job. Evolutionists on this forum could of done a better job by far. Even though they also would lose or not win.
Both wandered about a bit. Nye brought up theology and first nations. Nye aimed at the age of the earth and hardly talked about evolutionary biology.
This was a great night for YEC presenting creationism as at least a intellectual equal to ideas in biology or geology on origins.
It will be seen as a new year gift.
Its a victory and indeed evolutionists should either retire from all public discussion on these matters or organize and train better debaters who can hold their own.
I also think ID people should try for some big debates.
America and the world is ready for progress on these matters and debates like this will give all creationist species new expectations for change.
I don't think evolutionism will last 15 years.

Robert Byers said: This was a great night for YEC creationism. Ham made a great presentation and in no way was defeated or made illogical by Nye. I thought Nye was decent in manner but did a terrible job. Evolutionists on this forum could of done a better job by far. Even though they also would lose or not win. Both wandered about a bit. Nye brought up theology and first nations. Nye aimed at the age of the earth and hardly talked about evolutionary biology. This was a great night for YEC presenting creationism as at least a intellectual equal to ideas in biology or geology on origins. It will be seen as a new year gift. Its a victory and indeed evolutionists should either retire from all public discussion on these matters or organize and train better debaters who can hold their own. I also think ID people should try for some big debates. America and the world is ready for progress on these matters and debates like this will give all creationist species new expectations for change. I don't think evolutionism will last 15 years.

FL said: Karen writes,

We know that death existed before there were any humans on the earth to sin.

If we assume that Karen's statement is correct, then THAT is what sets up the Incompatibility between evolution and Christianity. For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just "death", but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans? Evolutionist Dr. Jason Rosenhouse explains the situation:

Evolution by natural selection, you see, is an awful process. It is bloody, sadistic, and cruel. It flouts every moral precept we humans hold dear. It recognizes only survival and gene propagation, and even on those rare occasions where you find altruism and non-selfishness you can be certain that blind self-interest is lurking somewhere behind the scenes. All of this suffering, pain and misery, mind you, to reach a foreordained moment when self-aware creature finally appeared. What theological purpose was served by all this bloodsport? If humans were inevitable why didn’t God simply fast-forward the tape himself, thereby sparing all of those animals that died horrible deaths in the preceding hundreds of millions of years? Problem of evil, indeed. ...Reconciling evolution and Christianity is not as simple as theistic evolutionists often try to pretend. http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/06/21/my-review-of-only-a-theory/

FL

Josh Rosenau, "How Bill Nye Won the Debate"

In the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate, the answer to those asking who won is: it’s clear Nye emerged the winner because he relied on a large amount of fossil and scientific evidence. Ham relied almost exclusively on the Bible and provided no fossil or scientific evidence whatsoever. As predicted, the debate was friendly and completely civil. In addition to this in depth synopsis and recap, the debate will be available at debatearchive.org for a few days, and on YouTube. By: Rebecca Savastio

Flint said:

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

"Documents" is of course a lie. There is no scientific explanation. Not that science is an impediment to Making Shit Up.

This "debate" proves one thing. The best folks to go up against these kinds of science inanity are elementary school teachers as all the science creationists can present is at that level. Nye is in the class of excellent elementary school teacher.

phhht said: That's not what the poll at Christian Today says. There 90% say Nye won.

How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans?

So it seems Nye did well and all the worried hand-wringing here was unnecessary. That's good! (I didn't watch the debate and have no interest in doing so, it's enough to read about it here). Well I wonder if there was a young teen creationist in the audience who has just been set down the path towards doubt and real science last night?

daoudmbo said: So it seems Nye did well and all the worried hand-wringing here was unnecessary. That's good! (I didn't watch the debate and have no interest in doing so, it's enough to read about it here). Well I wonder if there was a young teen creationist in the audience who has just been set down the path towards doubt and real science last night?

Marilyn said:

Flint said:

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

"Documents" is of course a lie. There is no scientific explanation. Not that science is an impediment to Making Shit Up.

The matter was assembled so to be able to accommodate consciousness for example like the car waits to be started. It's also what you do while conscious that's important. Because someone has an answer that doesn't accommodate "science", doesn't mean it is not a viable answer. Because God is to be believed or not to be believed doesn't mean you should dismiss the probability of an explanation being acclaimed to God, if it cannot be disproved by science. It is the mystery we try to unravel, to see if there is an answer to make things better.

eric said:

daoudmbo said: So it seems Nye did well and all the worried hand-wringing here was unnecessary. That's good! (I didn't watch the debate and have no interest in doing so, it's enough to read about it here). Well I wonder if there was a young teen creationist in the audience who has just been set down the path towards doubt and real science last night?

As one of the hand-wringers, I'll be the first to say that I'm glad I was wrong.

Actually, FL, the book in question, I mean Genesis, starts out "When God began to create heaven and earth--the earth being unformed and void.." (JPS trans.). In other words it says the matter was already there and all go was to fashion it into the world we see. I know you can't read Hebrew, but your ignorance doesn't change what it means. So this section was only the most vast of Ham's lies in the debate (pinning racism to evolution being the most offensive).

FL said: Karen writes,

We know that death existed before there were any humans on the earth to sin.

If we assume that Karen's statement is correct, then THAT is what sets up the Incompatibility between evolution and Christianity. For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just "death", but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans? Evolutionist Dr. Jason Rosenhouse explains the situation:

Evolution by natural selection, you see, is an awful process. It is bloody, sadistic, and cruel. It flouts every moral precept we humans hold dear. It recognizes only survival and gene propagation, and even on those rare occasions where you find altruism and non-selfishness you can be certain that blind self-interest is lurking somewhere behind the scenes. All of this suffering, pain and misery, mind you, to reach a foreordained moment when self-aware creature finally appeared. What theological purpose was served by all this bloodsport? If humans were inevitable why didn’t God simply fast-forward the tape himself, thereby sparing all of those animals that died horrible deaths in the preceding hundreds of millions of years? Problem of evil, indeed. ...Reconciling evolution and Christianity is not as simple as theistic evolutionists often try to pretend. http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/06/21/my-review-of-only-a-theory/

FL

Marilyn said:

Flint said:

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

"Documents" is of course a lie. There is no scientific explanation. Not that science is an impediment to Making Shit Up.

The matter was assembled so to be able to accommodate consciousness for example like the car waits to be started. It's also what you do while conscious that's important. Because someone has an answer that doesn't accommodate "science", doesn't mean it is not a viable answer. Because God is to be believed or not to be believed doesn't mean you should dismiss the probability of an explanation being acclaimed to God, if it cannot be disproved by science. It is the mystery we try to unravel, to see if there is an answer to make things better.

Actually, FL, the book in question, I mean Genesis, starts out “When God began to create heaven and earth–the earth being unformed and void..” (JPS trans.). In other words it says the matter was already there and all go was to fashion it into the world we see.

**In the beginning** God created the heaven and the earth."

Sorry, I repeated the same link apparently.

HERE's the Hebrew interlinear link I wanted you to especially look at:

http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/OTpdf/gen1.pdf

****

Again, it's clearly "In the beginning..."

FL

Apok, Rob, Helena,
I've made a comment related to Rosenhouse's evolution argument on the BW. Thought it might be better to move this topic to that thread.

We know that death existed before there were any humans on the earth to sin. If we assume that Karen’s statement is correct, then THAT is what sets up the Incompatibility between evolution and Christianity.

For according to the theory of evolution, there had to be not just “death”, but gazillions of years of bloody animal deaths, torments, sufferings, just to evolve a couple of humans. How could an ethical, caring God, the God of Christianity, allow all that bloodsport just to originate a couple of humans?

Another review of the debate, this one by Jason Rosenhouse: Debating Creationists.

A telling quote: "I do think there was a clear loser in the debate: the intelligent design crowd. This was the biggest event in the evolution vs. creationism battle in quite some time, and it was good ol’ young-Earth creationism that was on display. Once you factor in the extensive online audience and the other media coverage, the message everyone will have received is that anti-evolutionism is just equivalent to Bible-thumping obscurantism."

We've had this discussion before. FL, of course, ignored it.

The translation of the first verse of Genesis usually goes, "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth". There are other perfectly canonical readings, and Helena gave one.

The Hebrew verb participle translated "created" is bara. "Created" is a fairly close fit to its meaning, but it does not mean "brought forth from nothing". The sense is more "built" or "constructed", meaning that there is a suggestion that God fashioned the Universe from materials already present. Helena's translation gives this sense.

FL labours under the standard fundamentalist misapprehension that the words of the ancient languages have one and only one accurate English translation, which is known and agreed. It ain't so.

Dave Luckett said: FL labours under the standard fundamentalist misapprehension that the words of the ancient languages have one and only one accurate English translation, which is known and agreed. It ain't so.

eric said: Another review of the debate, this one by Jason Rosenhouse: Debating Creationists. A telling quote: "I do think there was a clear loser in the debate: the intelligent design crowd. This was the biggest event in the evolution vs. creationism battle in quite some time, and it was good ol’ young-Earth creationism that was on display. Once you factor in the extensive online audience and the other media coverage, the message everyone will have received is that anti-evolutionism is just equivalent to Bible-thumping obscurantism."

CNN's front page links to the video (as does their "US" page). I didn't see any journalistic coverage of it though, just the vid.

I agree that Nye won the debate (FL thought it was a draw -- need I say more?) but partly because Ham melted down, got off task, went into biblical apologetics mode, and showed himself to be the fool he is. Nye's performance, nevertheless, was strong, with minor exceptions.

I still wish Nye had not chosen to give that charlatan a national stage.

I thought that the Piers Morgan bit on CNN was worthless. Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC gushed a bit, but gave Nye a good platform to discuss the need for science literacy and the irrationality of a "theory" that cannot make sensible predictions. That O'Donnell chose not to include Ham in the interview made the interview more coherent.

"If we accept Mr. Ham's point of view ... that the Bible serves as a science text and he and his followers will interpret that for you, I want you to consider what that means," Nye said. "It means that Mr. Ham's word is to be more respected than what you can observe in nature, what you can find in your backyard in Kentucky."

harold said: It is not an argument against the theory of evolution or any other scientific findings about the nature of the physical universe. Children are going blind from vitamin A deficiency as I write this sentence. That's reality whether the universe is 14 billion years old or 6000 years old.

Good cartoon here, link again provided by Dan Phelps.

personally I was a bit unimpressed with Nye. I've always been a huge fan. At first I thought he would excel in this venue since he has so much speaking experience. I found he was a bit underprepared and lacked the consistent delivery i would expect from him. There were too many pauses.

I compare Nye's presentation to what I've seen from Ken Miller and there is no contest. Miller doesn't have the popularity to draw a crowd but his presentations on this subject are phenomenal. He also comes with the benefit of not opposing the existence of God but also understands the theological implications of Ham's position.

Nye did very well in the question/answer section. I just wish he could have done better at the defense of dating methods. Many of the arguments that Ham brought up have been thoroughly debunked and could have been prepared for with some prior research. Why a plane sitting on ice will slowly sink because its weight melts the ice below it (isotherm phase diagram of water).

Helena Constantine said:

Marilyn said:

Flint said:

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

"Documents" is of course a lie. There is no scientific explanation. Not that science is an impediment to Making Shit Up.

The matter was assembled so to be able to accommodate consciousness for example like the car waits to be started. It's also what you do while conscious that's important. Because someone has an answer that doesn't accommodate "science", doesn't mean it is not a viable answer. Because God is to be believed or not to be believed doesn't mean you should dismiss the probability of an explanation being acclaimed to God, if it cannot be disproved by science. It is the mystery we try to unravel, to see if there is an answer to make things better.

Your car wants something? I'd have that looked into if I were you. We don't accept premises that can't be disproved, only those that can be proved. If you don't understnad that, what do you say about Russell's teapot?

Marilyn said: I don't know about Russell's teapot but Bill Nye says America needs the engineers for it to move forward, as does a lot of countries, well then I don't think that because a person believes in God should be used as the reason they are kept out of training for those positions.

Marilyn said:

Helena Constantine said:

Marilyn said:

Flint said:

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

"Documents" is of course a lie. There is no scientific explanation. Not that science is an impediment to Making Shit Up.

The matter was assembled so to be able to accommodate consciousness for example like the car waits to be started. It's also what you do while conscious that's important. Because someone has an answer that doesn't accommodate "science", doesn't mean it is not a viable answer. Because God is to be believed or not to be believed doesn't mean you should dismiss the probability of an explanation being acclaimed to God, if it cannot be disproved by science. It is the mystery we try to unravel, to see if there is an answer to make things better.

Your car wants something? I'd have that looked into if I were you. We don't accept premises that can't be disproved, only those that can be proved. If you don't understnad that, what do you say about Russell's teapot?

Helena, I don't know about Russell's teapot but Bill Nye says America needs the engineers for it to move forward, as does a lot of countries, well then I don't think that because a person believes in God should be used as the reason they are kept out of training for those positions.

While I still think it is not a good idea to give ID/creationists a free ride and “legitimacy” in public debates, I think Bill Nye comported himself very well. The coaching that Nye received from the NCSE was evident.

For example, Nye didn’t chase Ham’s Gish Gallop but instead singled out a few glaring weaknesses in the major stories that YECs believe. Ham helped in making a complete fool of himself by jumping into his peculiar sectarian apologetics; and Nye made some good points about the fact that many other Christians and other religions have been able to accommodate the discoveries of science quite easily.

Nye’s experience with television and being in the fishbowl of public celebrity also helped. Most scientists and academics would not have the experience and stage presence that Nye brought to the debate.

I suspect that Ham will use this event to try to leverage more money from fundamentalist churches. I can see him using essentially the Gish line, “Well Nye didn’t answer 99% of the issues I raised.” In his presentations to churches and in his new propaganda material, Ham will then proceed to gather together all his canned material at AiG and “refute” Nye’s points.

I was pleased that Nye picked the ark story and hammered on it. That is a story that high school physics students can easily refute. Nye didn’t have to go into even that level of calculation; merely pointing out instead the qualitative features of the story that make no sense whatsoever in the light of what we know about what is required to house animals at a zoo and what is involved in building wooden ships. I think middle school students can easily understand the points that Nye made.

Nye’s later appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on MSNBC didn’t need O’Donnell’s gushing. It did reveal however, with O’Donnell’s admission that he doesn’t know much science, one of the problems with our public education; one can be a talking head on prime time television and not know science at even the middle school level. The politics of sectarian religion has played a significant role in the weaknesses in science education in the US.

After the debate I was fulminating about Ham’s performance, grumbling about his being a “liar for Jesus.” My friend said that no, Ham wasn’t lying—he truly believed the palaver he was spewing. And I realized that she was right. Ham’s brain has been so deeply marinated in his faith that that organ has simply become impermeable to facts. He really does believe in Noah’s Ark, the Fall, and talking snakes, and must reject or rationalize facts that don’t comport with his Sacred Book. That is a mindset that I don’t understand, and, being a scientist, perhaps can never understand. But it shows how religion can poison one’s mind so deeply that it becomes immunized to the real truth about the cosmos. Ham was not lying, but simply suffering from a severe delusion — one that should cause him cognitive dissonance but doesn’t. So much the worse for him, but his delusions also cause him to poison the minds of children, and that is not all right with either me or Nye. -- Jerry Coyne (emphasis added)

Marilyn,

What do you think would be the outcome of Ham training engineers? They "education" they got would consist of:

"The bible says it, I believe it and that's that."

Would you want a guy who never studied any science to design your car?

Evolution isn't stopping anybody from becoming an engineer. God isn't stopping anyone from becoming an engineer. Ignorance is what is stopping people from becoming engineers. That and the people who peddle ignorance as a way of life, (i.e Ham). When it comes to going to school and earning an engineering degree, all you have to do is ask:

"Were you there?"

Many of the long ice cores are drilled from Summit Camp, Greenland. It is called Summit Camp because the field laboratory sits at the summit of the Greenland Ice Cap, above 3,200 meters of ice. The GRIP and GISP cores extend back over 100,000 years. Antarctic ice cores go back about 800,000 years.

It is stupid of Ken Ham or any other young-earth creationist to claim that the World War Two airplanes somehow invalidate these ice cores. Climate scientists take cores from summits, or interior domes in Antarctica, because the ice sheets are more stable there and don't pile up as fast.

The GISP2 core site (Summit Camp) is at 72.58° North, 38.455° West; about 500 km inland. The crash site of the Lost Squadron is at 65.33° North, 40.33° West; that is an active glacier about 30 km from the ocean. The southeast coast of Greenland receives much more snowfall than the central interior because the Polar Easterlies blow moist air off the Denmark Strait and onto land. Greenland is a big place; a lot more snow piles up on the southern coasts than in the northern interior (see John Maurer's Figure 2). Summit Camp is about 820 km north of the Lost Squadron crash site.

Comparing the modern ice cores to the Lost Squadron is a very poor comparison; but that hasn't stopped YECs from repeating it ad absurdum.

The YECs are the more deserving opponents, for they’re honest about their position (not about ours, but that’s another issue) and make testable claims. If ID ever rises to that level of pseudoscience, maybe we could have a debate or two with them, too.

harold said: Glen Davidson said -

The YECs are the more deserving opponents, for they’re honest about their position (not about ours, but that’s another issue) and make testable claims. If ID ever rises to that level of pseudoscience, maybe we could have a debate or two with them, too.

I just want to record my emphatic agreement. "ID" is a clumsily legalistic BS strategy. It is literally almost 100% analogous to a "taking the fifth" strategy in a criminal case. "Who is the designer, what did the designer do, when did the designer do it, how did the designer do it, how can we test your answer, if YEC could be taught openly as science would you support that, what evidence would convince you of evolution...?" The ID answer - "I refuse to answer any of those questions on the grounds that they may tend to incriminate me". Actually, of course, even this is seldom honestly stated. Instead, either the questions are ignored - often with false and irrelevant claims of having "already answered them somewhere where you can't see my answers" - or else glib non-answers are thrown out, usually after a prolonged effort to ignore the questions, followed by belligerent declarations that the questions have been answered (not sure if this strategy was borrowed from former president "Dubya" or if it's just parallel evolution). The thing is, of course, when you take the fifth, everybody knows that it means you needed to take the fifth. And when you can't/won't answer the obvious questions, everybody knows that it means that you can't honestly answer the obvious questions for some reason. Virtually nobody cares about "ID". If ID came from YEC, why is there still YEC? Simple - because ID is not an adequate replacement for either science, or overt openly stated creationism. If ID had won in court in Dover, YEC types might have gritted their teeth and supported it as a compromising but successful strategy. It lost, so it's no use to anyone. So if "ID" stinks, why is there still ID? Because some people who liked the idea of using code words and bafflegab language to try to sneak sectarian science denial into public schools don't want to give up the fantasy. And some of those people are very rich. So they keep paying the six-figure salaries of the lazy low rent con men at the DI.

FL said: Helena says,

Actually, FL, the book in question, I mean Genesis, starts out “When God began to create heaven and earth–the earth being unformed and void..” (JPS trans.). In other words it says the matter was already there and all go was to fashion it into the world we see.

I'm still learning Hebrew, so I don't claim expertise on it. However, it's quite clear that Genesis, in both Hebrew and English, starts out with:

**In the beginning** God created the heaven and the earth."

Here's the proof, and with these two interlinear links, readers can check it out instantly even if they don't read Hebrew: http://www.biblestudytools.com/interlinear-bible/passage.aspx?q=genesis+1&t=kjv http://www.biblestudytools.com/interlinear-bible/passage.aspx?q=genesis1&t=kjv FL

Marilyn said:

harold said: It is not an argument against the theory of evolution or any other scientific findings about the nature of the physical universe. Children are going blind from vitamin A deficiency as I write this sentence. That's reality whether the universe is 14 billion years old or 6000 years old.

Just highlighting a fraction of what you said. But I think everyone would be in agreement that it took a certain amount of time for the Earth to form it could have took 6000 years but from that the Earth has been in existence supporting life and rearranging it's surface, and to think there is life still here especially after 4 billion years I think is a miracle. For it be deliberate human error that spoils it now in this day and age with all we've accomplished would be the shame, it's amazing what has been overcome by people.

Is it lost? I agree with your logic, but it seems to me to still be the most common creationist strategy (though maybe in its watered down version “teach the controversy”), most anti-evolution commentary I see in mainstream media on articles which touch upon evolution tend to be ID-phrased ones, I rarely see the likes of FL (and I guess I am thinking more of Canadian media than US).

As a vocal critic of this debate and Nye in particular I am perfectly content to gobble down a slice of Humble Crow Pie!

I thought the debate was a bad idea and still do. I thought Nye was a poor choice to go up against Ham but the performance proved otherwise.

Ham seemed off his game or perhaps in a longer venue than a 3-minute YouTube "interview" old Hambo just can't keep it up. Hambo has one message and he is unable to adapt to a longer discussion without repeating the same one message over and over. He's like a 2-year old who simply answers "No."

Nye, on the other hand, was very well prepared. Kudos to Nye for taking the time to prepare and to the NCSE for helping Nye prepare. The effort showed.

I was mostly concerned about Nye's seeming inability to answer softball questions quickly and concisely, however Nye did a fine job with his prepared statements and did a GREAT job at keeping on message: science needs educated young people, creationism has no predictive power and religion isn't the problem but Ham's view is a problem. Now, on that last point I think Nye skillfully avoided attacking religion in general and focused like a laser on Hambo.

My bottom line is that the evening went better than I expected. During the Q-and-A when Hambo had the rebuttal and threw out some monstrous lie I could see Nye's face tighten and knew he wanted to jump across the stage and strangle Hambo, but Nye kept his cool, obeyed the rules and let it go. Hambo, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable when Nye was laying out the evidence.

Finally, I appreciated Nye saying "we don't know" rather than going out on a limb and speculating. He mentioned Kentucky students a few times and that could have, in hindsight, been emphasized more for the crowd as being the generation that could answer these questions with proper scientific education and that creationism is a dead end. Also, Nye could have been a little more forceful in pointing out that Hambo's Biblical explanations always came after the fact. Granted, Nye kept pushing Hambo for examples of predictions but couldn't get Hambo to respond.

Finally (what does that word mean???), perhaps Nye lit a fuse. Perhaps Hambo in particular then creationists in general, including the Tooters, will be revealed for the dead ends they are and we'll get a bit smarter about all this. Who knows, that might be Nye's legacy.

To FL and other IDers: Ham was incapable of providing even a single fact that supported the utter nonsense that spews out of his mouth. Creationism is christian fundamentalism not science. Yes, it can be taught in private schools to keep your\his children ignorant about reality--but not in public schools. And just so you understand something. Creationism IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY. A scientific theory has been subject to rigorous testing and observation. There has never been even one experiment that has taken place in any laboratory on this planet that provides evidence for creationism.

Do you know why? I'll answer that for you. Science is the search for NATURAL explanations of NATURAL phenomenon. God and his ilk are not natural but SUPER natural. For creationism to be an accepted scientific theory then there has to be objective evidence discovered by way of the scientific method that God exists. You have to have science unambiguously prove that God exists.

If that were to happen your faith that God exists is tossed into the trash and God is merely a scientific discovery.

Is that really what you want?

Due to the continuous vulgar, harassing, and pornographic posts being added to Ken's page, we are temporarily suspending the ability for you to post to Ken's page ...

When I struggled through Genesis in Hebrew some years ago, I availed myself of various commentaries. The Jewish ones tended to construe the first line of the Bible to be "when in the beginning God began to create heaven and earth, the earth was void and desolate (tohu wa bohu)." The alternate reading is also possible though a bit of a stretch; but creation from nothing isn't the dogma in Judaism it is in most versions of Christianity so the Jews go with the more natural reading. Hey, it's their book. (Of course Christian theologians claim to find whatever they need in Tanach—the Trinity, infant baptism, and many other doctrines—it's kinda like seeing Jesus in a potato.)

Someone earlier posted that the big loser from the debate was the ID movement and, by extension, the Discovery Institute. I think this is VERY insightful. Clearly, Nye was the most reasonable and mentally healthy participant to any outside observer. Ham's unsettling world view will (correctly) taint the ID movement no matter how well they try to camouflage what is essentially the same message as Answers In Genesis.

• Who won the debate tonight? Creation vs Evolution
• Ken Ham 8%
• Bill Nye 92%
• Total votes: 38,379

Pat Robertson, the voice of reason? (almost)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I37wUKtX810

Has hell frozen over?

Well, it's not as though Robertson actually knows anything. The eighteen-hundreds were not the Middle Ages. Bishop Ussher lived in the seventeenth century. The strata that oil companies drill through were not laid down by the dinosaurs. Their fossils are not 1.6 million years old. And so on.

But Robertson has assimilated the idea that the evidence for an ancient Earth is overwhelming. That's something.

Yes, it is something good. I keep saying that we have to catch Pat Robertson Doing Something Right, and reward him when he does, so that we will get more of that same behavior. :-)

3 million?? Thats fantastic! That is the greatst audience EVER for a YEC presentation. It will be a historic event for us. it will excite and enlarge our support.
Ham made a great case and presentation for entry level or anyone. Nye was just reading off a paper or something.
Predictive power means nothing to normal people. This is about weighing the evidence.
Persuading people to or view is difficult unless one already believes in the bible as Gods word.
Thats not the agenda.
Its really about debunking evolution etc for our people and making our position as a competing position. We don't mean to persuade muslims.
Its just to establish that "science" does not prove the bible wrong. We have a case with the evidence and we can disprove the opposition.
For the millions watching this debate was a victory for YEC. The other side gained nothing intellectually.
If shows YEC should get equal time in the schools.
YES ID folk should also now seek a great audience with more debates.
Ask your selves. Would you really welcome a rematch?? We would.

Persuading people to or view is difficult unless one already believes in the bible as Gods word.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. -- David Hume

Marilyn said:

Helena Constantine said:

Marilyn said:

Flint said:

FL said: Question for Nye: How did consciousness come from matter? Nye honestly admits don't know, "a mystery". But that sets up another good Ham comeback: "there is a Book out there that documents where consciousness came from"

"Documents" is of course a lie. There is no scientific explanation. Not that science is an impediment to Making Shit Up.

The matter was assembled so to be able to accommodate consciousness for example like the car waits to be started. It's also what you do while conscious that's important. Because someone has an answer that doesn't accommodate "science", doesn't mean it is not a viable answer. Because God is to be believed or not to be believed doesn't mean you should dismiss the probability of an explanation being acclaimed to God, if it cannot be disproved by science. It is the mystery we try to unravel, to see if there is an answer to make things better.

Your car wants something? I'd have that looked into if I were you. We don't accept premises that can't be disproved, only those that can be proved. If you don't understnad that, what do you say about Russell's teapot?

Helena, I don't know about Russell's teapot but Bill Nye says America needs the engineers for it to move forward, as does a lot of countries, well then I don't think that because a person believes in God should be used as the reason they are kept out of training for those positions.

Jim said: When I struggled through Genesis in Hebrew some years ago, I availed myself of various commentaries. The Jewish ones tended to construe the first line of the Bible to be "when in the beginning God began to create heaven and earth, the earth was void and desolate (tohu wa bohu)." The alternate reading is also possible though a bit of a stretch; but creation from nothing isn't the dogma in Judaism it is in most versions of Christianity so the Jews go with the more natural reading. Hey, it's their book. (Of course Christian theologians claim to find whatever they need in Tanach—the Trinity, infant baptism, and many other doctrines—it's kinda like seeing Jesus in a potato.)

The debate poll at Christianity Today is currently running: •Who won the debate tonight? Creation vs Evolution •Ken Ham 8% •Bill Nye 92% •Total votes: 38,379 I’m calling that a landslide for science.

An unscientific online poll on Christian Today's website told a different tale: Ninety-two percent of the voters said Nye won the debate. However, such polls are notoriously vulnerable to ballot-box stuffing

FL said: Carl Drews wrote,

The debate poll at Christianity Today is currently running: •Who won the debate tonight? Creation vs Evolution •Ken Ham 8% •Bill Nye 92% •Total votes: 38,379 I’m calling that a landslide for science.

Maybe you do, BUT... (and probably by now somebody has already pointed this out I hope) (1) You're NOT talking about a poll from Christianity Today at all, but instead you're talking about a poll from "Christian Today", (a Christian website from the U.K.) http://www.christiantoday.com/ (2) NBCNews.com science editor Alan Boyle gives the following warning about THAT particular poll's reliability:

An unscientific online poll on Christian Today's website told a different tale: Ninety-two percent of the voters said Nye won the debate. However, such polls are notoriously vulnerable to ballot-box stuffing

Emphases mine. FL

Source for Alan Boyle quotation:

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/bill-nye-wins-over-science-crowd-evolution-debate-n22836

FL said: Source for Alan Boyle quotation: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/bill-nye-wins-over-science-crowd-evolution-debate-n22836

Pat Robertson, the voice of reason? (almost)

... Because the focus was so overwhelmingly on the age of the earth, the point was never made that a mainstream scientific view about the age of the earth is totally compatible with an intelligent design view that totally refutes Nye's intolerant, materialist beliefs about the history of life. For goodness sake, Bill Nye was the one defending Big Bang cosmology. Viewers would never know that the Big Bang is one of the best arguments for the design of the universe ever offered by science. People will walk away from this debate thinking, "Ken Ham has the Bible, Bill Nye has scientific evidence." Some Christians will be satisfied by that. Other Christians (like me) who don't feel that accepting the Bible requires you to believe in a young earth will feel that their views weren't represented. And because Ham failed (whether due to time constraints, an inflexible debate strategy, lack of knowledge, inadequate debate skills, or a fundamentally weak position) to offer evidence rebutting many of Nye's arguments for an old earth, young earth creationist Christians with doubts will probably feel even more doubtful. Most notably, however, skeptics won't budge an inch. Why? Because Ham's main argument was "Because the Bible says so," and skeptics don't take the Bible as an authority. They want to see evidence. That's why I strongly prefer evidence-based approaches to origins like ID. Skeptics who say "Show me the evidence" are challenged with evidence, because that's what ID argues from -- the evidence for design in nature, not in the Bible. In a debate where people want to know what the evidence says, that moves everyone in the right direction. This is really unfortunate. I know that Ken Ham means well, but it's extremely regrettable that the powerful evidence for design in nature was hardly discussed in the Ham-Nye debate. A huge opportunity was lost. ...

FL said:

Pat Robertson, the voice of reason? (almost)

To my understanding, Pat Robertson has always been an opponent of Young-Earth Creationism. But Robertson has never dared to publicly stand at a podium and debate a YEC of the stature of Ken Ham, Dr. Terry Mortenson, or the late Duane Gish. FL

Robert Byers said: 3 million?? Thats fantastic! That is the greatst audience EVER for a YEC presentation. It will be a historic event for us.

Persuading people to or view is difficult unless one already believes in the bible as Gods word.

If shows YEC should get equal time in the schools.

Ask your selves. Would you really welcome a rematch?? We would.

FL said: (2) NBCNews.com science editor Alan Boyle gives the following warning about THAT particular poll's reliability:

An unscientific online poll on Christian Today's website told a different tale: Ninety-two percent of the voters said Nye won the debate. However, such polls are notoriously vulnerable to ballot-box stuffing

Emphases mine. FL

Dave Thomas said: Poor Casey Luskin is upset! The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity [eric note - I've excerpted and reformatted for effect]

People will walk away from this debate thinking, "Ken Ham has the Bible, Bill Nye has scientific evidence."... ...And because Ham failed...to offer evidence rebutting many of Nye's arguments for an old earth, young earth creationist Christians with doubts will probably feel even more doubtful. Most notably, however, skeptics won't budge an inch. Why? Because Ham's main argument was "Because the Bible says so," and skeptics don't take the Bible as an authority. They want to see evidence.

Well that went just about as predicted. The hamster spouted his "were you there?" nonsense for an hour and Bill politely replied that that wasn't a valid line of reasoning. Oh sure he tried to gussy it up by calling it "observational science" versus "historical science", but no one with an ounce of sense would fall for that crap. Bill did the right thing by showing scenes form CSI shows, but he should have been much more explicit about exactly why it is a false representation of science. To be clear, there are NOT two different kinds of science, never were, never will be. The attack hamster just uses that as a convenient way to pretend that he accepts science while at the same time denying any parts of science he doesn't like. I though that was pretty obvious, but the audience may or may not have gotten it.

Thing is that kenny boy knows that he is lying. He's been telling the same lie for thirty years. He even contradicted himself when he tried to claim that there was evidence to support the biblical account of creation! WTF. He just said you couldn't do that! Bill should have nailed him to the wall on that one. Bill also should have nailed him on the radio carbon dating nonsense, but apparently he didn't know that that was a big fat whopping lie as well. He should have also been ready with an example of natural selection adding information, but nobody is perfect.

The most telling part was when the hamster admitted that there was absolutely nothing that would ever change his mind. He couldn't even admit that he could even imagine ever changing his mind. Bill simply replied that evidence was all it would take to change his mind. Now any reasonable person would know what to conclude from that. Unfortunately, most fundamentalists don't get it.

Casey wrote:

"This is really unfortunate. I know that Ken Ham means well, but it’s extremely regrettable that the powerful evidence for design in nature was hardly discussed in the Ham-Nye debate. A huge opportunity was lost. …"

There is a reason for that. There is no evidence of any design in nature. None whatsoever. Never was, never will be.

But don't be too disappointed. The emphasis on the age of the earth and the magic ark also meant that Bill presented very little evidence for evolution. He never mentioned genetics or phylogenetics. He never talked about developmental biology or developmental genetics, never mind evolutionary development. He barely mentioned the fossil recored, let alone all of the evidence for the radio dating methods. In short, he tried to dumb it down for the audience. That was probably a wise choice, especially for an engineer.

Three million viewers! That's fantastic. That's almost one percent of the US population. That's almost three percent of the number of people who watched the Super Bowl. And they all saw the attack hamster lose the debate miserably. Terrific. It was a lot more entertaining that the Super Bowl anyway (except the half time show).

FL said:

Pat Robertson, the voice of reason? (almost)

To my understanding, Pat Robertson has always been an opponent of Young-Earth Creationism. But Robertson has never dared to publicly stand at a podium and debate a YEC of the stature of Ken Ham, Dr. Terry Mortenson, or the late Duane Gish. If Robertson had ever done so, he would have simply been defeated, (period), because the debate would necessarily focus on what the Bible did or didn't point to, regarding the age of the earth. There's only one possible conclusion on that basis: a Young Earth.

So if Robertson were to participate in a public debate, Robertson would wind up having to openly deny the Bible in front of his conservative Christian base, and that would be a huge disaster for him.

At this point, regarding the origins debate, Robertson is only good for allowing himself to be exploited by the materialistic evolutionists. That's too bad.

Not surprisingly, Robertson left out the Bible's clear viewpoint again in his latest remarks. In fact, watching the video, it looks like Robertson has fully embraced some sort of Theistic Evolution and he's even abandoned Old Earth Creationism. A shame. FL

K-Ham talked a lot about "kinds." Has he worked out and published his list of "kinds"? Does he have "kind" fossils? Are we to believe that there was no evolution before the flood?

I looked around today for 5-6 new species but didn't see them. What happened?

… Because the focus was so overwhelmingly on the age of the earth, the point was never made that a mainstream scientific view about the age of the earth is totally compatible with an intelligent design view that totally refutes Nye’s intolerant, materialist beliefs about the history of life.

Karen S. said: K-Ham talked a lot about "kinds." Has he worked out and published his list of "kinds"? Does he have "kind" fossils? Are we to believe that there was no evolution before the flood? I looked around today for 5-6 new species but didn't see them. What happened?

It would be nice if thousands of real scientists form around the world were to E-mail kenny G whiz ham and let him know about the valuable research going on in the "historical sciences". You know, all the fields he claims cannot exist, such as: cosmology, climatology, archaeology, paleontology. Not to mention the entire field of history. Think of all of the professors who are going to be out of work when they finally realize that there is no such thing as "historical science". Bye bye CSI, it was nice while it lasted.

Doc Bill said: As a vocal critic of this debate and Nye in particular I am perfectly content to gobble down a slice of Humble Crow Pie! I thought the debate was a bad idea and still do. I thought Nye was a poor choice to go up against Ham but the performance proved otherwise. Ham seemed off his game or perhaps in a longer venue than a 3-minute YouTube "interview" old Hambo just can't keep it up. Hambo has one message and he is unable to adapt to a longer discussion without repeating the same one message over and over. He's like a 2-year old who simply answers "No." Nye, on the other hand, was very well prepared. Kudos to Nye for taking the time to prepare and to the NCSE for helping Nye prepare. The effort showed. I was mostly concerned about Nye's seeming inability to answer softball questions quickly and concisely, however Nye did a fine job with his prepared statements and did a GREAT job at keeping on message: science needs educated young people, creationism has no predictive power and religion isn't the problem but Ham's view is a problem. Now, on that last point I think Nye skillfully avoided attacking religion in general and focused like a laser on Hambo. My bottom line is that the evening went better than I expected. During the Q-and-A when Hambo had the rebuttal and threw out some monstrous lie I could see Nye's face tighten and knew he wanted to jump across the stage and strangle Hambo, but Nye kept his cool, obeyed the rules and let it go. Hambo, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable when Nye was laying out the evidence. Finally, I appreciated Nye saying "we don't know" rather than going out on a limb and speculating. He mentioned Kentucky students a few times and that could have, in hindsight, been emphasized more for the crowd as being the generation that could answer these questions with proper scientific education and that creationism is a dead end. Also, Nye could have been a little more forceful in pointing out that Hambo's Biblical explanations always came after the fact. Granted, Nye kept pushing Hambo for examples of predictions but couldn't get Hambo to respond. Finally (what does that word mean???), perhaps Nye lit a fuse. Perhaps Hambo in particular then creationists in general, including the Tooters, will be revealed for the dead ends they are and we'll get a bit smarter about all this. Who knows, that might be Nye's legacy.

DS said: Casey wrote: "This is really unfortunate. I know that Ken Ham means well, but it’s extremely regrettable that the powerful evidence for design in nature was hardly discussed in the Ham-Nye debate. A huge opportunity was lost. …" There is a reason for that. There is no evidence of any design in nature. None whatsoever. Never was, never will be.

Misha Golin said: Nye did very well in the question/answer section. I just wish he could have done better at the defense of dating methods. Many of the arguments that Ham brought up have been thoroughly debunked and could have been prepared for with some prior research. Why a plane sitting on ice will slowly sink because its weight melts the ice below it (isotherm phase diagram of water).

I do think that Nye missed a couple of really good chances to explain things. First, he should have emphasized that the existence, color, and temperature of the cosmic microwave background was predicted 16 years before it was discovered. Plus, he dropped the ball on the "dating methods other than radioactive decay" question...he could have cited so many other proofs of an old earth. Finally, he shouldn't have let Ham's "no new information added to the genome" assertion stand; a simple "That's flatly false; we see new proteins and abilities evolving every single day" would have been fantastic.

But Nye had two really fantastic slam-dunks.

He demonstrated that "I don't know; let's find out" is a far more powerful answer than "God did it and my book says so." For fundamentalists, hearing "I don't know" is paradigm-shifting.

Most importantly, Nye COMPLETELY demolished Ken Ham's most essential assertion: the idea that mainstream science must assume secularism. Nye resisted the urge to say "God is an untestable hypothesis" and instead simply asked for evidence. Over and over again, he asked for testable predictions, evidence, examples of fossils consistent with a flood. Ken Ham's worldview depends on the belief that scientists won't accept evidence for a young earth or a global flood, but Nye demonstrated that this simply isn't true. That final question was FANTASTIC.

david.starling.macmillan said: Most importantly, Nye COMPLETELY demolished Ken Ham's most essential assertion: the idea that mainstream science must assume secularism.

The age of the earth is supposed to be irrelevant to ID. ID is compatible with an old earth, a young earth, and an earth that was made last week (we’d have implanted memories).

Nye's calculation of post-flood speciation rates reminded me of a talk (no longer available on the Web) that Kurt Wise gave in which he gushed about 'new species popping up every day.' He was perfectly willing to accept post-flood hyper-evolution.

FL babbled:

Pat Robertson, the voice of reason? (almost)

To my understanding, Pat Robertson has always been an opponent of Young-Earth Creationism. But Robertson has never dared to publicly stand at a podium and debate a YEC of the stature of Ken Ham, Dr. Terry Mortenson, or the late Duane Gish. If Robertson had ever done so, he would have simply been defeated, (period), because the debate would necessarily focus on what the Bible did or didn't point to, regarding the age of the earth. There's only one possible conclusion on that basis: a Young Earth.

FL said:

Pat Robertson, the voice of reason? (almost)

To my understanding, Pat Robertson has always been an opponent of Young-Earth Creationism. But Robertson has never dared to publicly stand at a podium and debate a YEC of the stature of Ken Ham, Dr. Terry Mortenson, or the late Duane Gish. If Robertson had ever done so, he would have simply been defeated, (period), because the debate would necessarily focus on what the Bible did or didn't point to, regarding the age of the earth. There's only one possible conclusion on that basis: a Young Earth.

This is, of course, a lie.

DS said: Casey wrote: "This is really unfortunate. I know that Ken Ham means well, but it’s extremely regrettable that the powerful evidence for design in nature was hardly discussed in the Ham-Nye debate. A huge opportunity was lost. …" There is a reason for that. There is no evidence of any design in nature. None whatsoever. Never was, never will be. But don't be too disappointed. The emphasis on the age of the earth and the magic ark also meant that Bill presented very little evidence for evolution. He never mentioned genetics or phylogenetics. He never talked about developmental biology or developmental genetics, never mind evolutionary development. He barely mentioned the fossil recored, let alone all of the evidence for the radio dating methods. In short, he tried to dumb it down for the audience. That was probably a wise choice, especially for an engineer.

Sure, FL, just as soon as you finish your "rational" defense for the proposition that gods exist.

Gonna start soon?

eric said:

DS said: Casey wrote: "This is really unfortunate. I know that Ken Ham means well, but it’s extremely regrettable that the powerful evidence for design in nature was hardly discussed in the Ham-Nye debate. A huge opportunity was lost. …" There is a reason for that. There is no evidence of any design in nature. None whatsoever. Never was, never will be.

That's the scientific reason. There's also a political reason the 'huge opportunity was lost' - the DI won't defend Intelligent Design in any fora in which they can be questioned or rebutted. They won't even participate as expert witnesses in court suits they encourage. They choose to work behind the scenes, convincing local communities to pass policies and defend those policies themselves. It was Ken Ham that went up against Bill Nye for the simple reason that it was Ken Ham that asked him. It was Ken Ham who agreed to a reasonable debate question, a truly independent moderator, and reasonable debate conditions. It was Ken Ham who showed up on the figurative witness stand. If the DI doesn't want to lose their opportunity, they need to show up on the witness stand.

Sure, FL, just as soon as you finish your “rational” defense for the proposition that gods exist. Gonna start soon?

Did anybody notice that at about 1:30 into the debate, Ken said that he sent fossils dated at 45 million years to be carbon dated! Really? Really? You did what now? And guess what, they came back dated at 45,000 years old! Amazing. Who woulda thought? And the conclusion of all this hand waving nonsense? Well isn't it obvious, the earth is - wait for it - 6,000 years old! Literally unbelievable.

Now maybe he was just too ignorant to understand what a mess he made of that. Or maybe he was just being dishonest and lying. Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist. All he had to do was ask Kenny what the maximum age for radio carbon dating was and why and presto, the debate would have been over. He would have been shown up for the lying, ignorant blow hard that he is and that would be that.

david.starling.macmillan said:

Misha Golin said: Nye did very well in the question/answer section. I just wish he could have done better at the defense of dating methods. Many of the arguments that Ham brought up have been thoroughly debunked and could have been prepared for with some prior research. Why a plane sitting on ice will slowly sink because its weight melts the ice below it (isotherm phase diagram of water).

Thank you for this!! I had wondered about the solution to the Lost Squadron's sinking-through-the-ice problem, but it had never occurred to me that weight (rather than atmospheric heat conducted through the metal, as with a paperclip on an ice cube at room temperature) would cause enough of a phase shift to melt through.

FL said:

Sure, FL, just as soon as you finish your “rational” defense for the proposition that gods exist. Gonna start soon?

Oh, okay, I get it. Not going to discuss it any further in this thread, Phhht. I'll leave a comment for you at the BW.

FL said:

An unscientific online poll on Christian Today's website told a different tale: Ninety-two percent of the voters said Nye won the debate. However, such polls are notoriously vulnerable to ballot-box stuffing

Emphases mine. FL

DS said: Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist.

I’m sorry, Kentucky. We could have kept him here, you know. We have a large containment facility where we store all of our Ken Hams, a free range Wallyworld we like to call the Sunshine State. I’m not sure how Ham got out of the Queensland high school system where he had been teaching – ahem – science, and made his way to your fair shores, but, sorry about that.

get Mr Ham back here and make sure he’s securely confined again where he belongs. Teaching science in the Queensland school system.

eric said:

DS said: Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist.

Well, I wouldn't armchair quarterback too much. Speaking on a stage, in that sort of situation, you can always think of stuff you should have said afterwards...and it's always easy to do that because none of us are prefect at thinking of the perfect response while it's going on. IMO he did fine, I'm not going to take the guy to task or say he was the wrong guy because he missed a rhetorical opportunity here or there. We all do that. Heck, I'm about to hit 'submit' and I'm sure I've done that in this post. ;)

Matt Young said: A reader just sent me this apology from Qeeensland:

I’m sorry, Kentucky. We could have kept him here, you know. We have a large containment facility where we store all of our Ken Hams, a free range Wallyworld we like to call the Sunshine State. I’m not sure how Ham got out of the Queensland high school system where he had been teaching – ahem – science, and made his way to your fair shores, but, sorry about that.

The author promises to

get Mr Ham back here and make sure he’s securely confined again where he belongs. Teaching science in the Queensland school system.

I am afraid the cure might be worse than the disease, at least for Queensland.

DS said: And it wasn't just an isolated incident either. About four minutes later the attack hamster presented about fifty types of evidence that he claimed "contradict millions of years". Now is there anyone anywhere who knows of any evidence whatsoever that actually does contradict millions of years. Well, if you look at the list, none of those data sets actually do that. But they all, every one of them without exception, do absolutely contradict thousands of years! Why did Bill let that go unchallenged?

DS said: Did anybody notice that at about 1:30 into the debate, Ken said that he sent fossils dated at 45 million years to be carbon dated! Really? Really? You did what now? And guess what, they came back dated at 45,000 years old! Amazing. Who woulda thought? And the conclusion of all this hand waving nonsense? Well isn't it obvious, the earth is - wait for it - 6,000 years old! Literally unbelievable. Now maybe he was just too ignorant to understand what a mess he made of that. Or maybe he was just being dishonest and lying. Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist. All he had to do was ask Kenny what the maximum age for radio carbon dating was and why and presto, the debate would have been over. He would have been shown up for the lying, ignorant blow hard that he is and that would be that.

Matt Young said: The author promises to

get Mr Ham back here and make sure he’s securely confined again where he belongs. Teaching science in the Queensland school system.

I am afraid the cure might be worse than the disease, at least for Queensland.

david.starling.macmillan said:

DS said: Did anybody notice that at about 1:30 into the debate, Ken said that he sent fossils dated at 45 million years to be carbon dated! Really? Really? You did what now? And guess what, they came back dated at 45,000 years old! Amazing. Who woulda thought? And the conclusion of all this hand waving nonsense? Well isn't it obvious, the earth is - wait for it - 6,000 years old! Literally unbelievable. Now maybe he was just too ignorant to understand what a mess he made of that. Or maybe he was just being dishonest and lying. Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist. All he had to do was ask Kenny what the maximum age for radio carbon dating was and why and presto, the debate would have been over. He would have been shown up for the lying, ignorant blow hard that he is and that would be that.

Bill didn't let him get away with it -- he suggested that the strata containing carbon-dated petrified wood could have subducted under the older millions-of-years-old rock. Ham said that no, the petrified wood was mixed into the rock itself. Nye didn't have a chance to point out that contamination is probably (and, as it turns out in this case, definitely) a better explanation than "OMG all radiometric dating is false hurr hurr".

Earlier (yesterday?) someone mentioned that AiG had a post-debate. video. Hilarity ensues! Watch (or, as I did, listen while cleaning the toilets) as Ham and Purdum replay the debate in a 30-40 minutes mis-recollection of what transpired. They giggle together about how professional their graphics were compared to Nyes's, and other such important debate points.

eric said:

Robert Byers said: 3 million?? Thats fantastic! That is the greatst audience EVER for a YEC presentation. It will be a historic event for us.

I actually agree with you here, but I think most of the fence-sitters and curious, disinterested onlookers are going to swing Nye's way. Ham's arguments were based on biblical authority. They're only going to be convincing to the audience members who think biblical authority trumps observation. What, he, you, and FL always seem to fail to realize is that that's not the fence-sitters, the onlookers, and it's not the vast majority of people outside your own sects. What Ham did was preach to his own choir. You and FL seem to be of the opinion that he did a very good job preaching to his own choir, but if you think it was effective to people outside his choir, I think you're mistaken. IMO, the "historicness" of this event is as follows: up until Dover, ID and the DI was trying to portray itself as non-religious. It was part of their strategy to hide or downplay the God component. After they failed in Dover, the pendulum swung the other way: the movement started becoming more and more religious. Creationist attempts to change school curricula started to become more and more explicitly religious, and the DI started to go to more YEC conferences and try and pull more political/financial support from YEC groups. With this debate, I think they're going to have to retreat and retrench yet again, because (fairly or not), this debate is going to yoke anti-darwinism curriculum changes to explicitly religious YECism in the public's mind. It may not have the impact of Dover, but I think it could change the direction of the creationism bus just the same.

Persuading people to or view is difficult unless one already believes in the bible as Gods word.

I agree with this too. Which is why I don't think Ham's debate performance persuaded many people who weren't already persuaded.

If shows YEC should get equal time in the schools.

Not in the US. In fact, the explicit "the bible is my authority and no evidence will change my mind" tenor of Ham's presentation pretty much eliminates any doubt as to whether this would be constitutional or would count as science. (It's not and it doesn't.)

Ask your selves. Would you really welcome a rematch?? We would.

With standard caveats about picking the right people, venue, and debate question, I would too.

Robert Byers said: Why should they be persuaded in a hour!

Robert Byers said: Watch yourselves. this forum might be quoted negatively in decades to come by high school students studying the demise of evolutionary biology.

david.starling.macmillan said:

DS said: Did anybody notice that at about 1:30 into the debate, Ken said that he sent fossils dated at 45 million years to be carbon dated! Really? Really? You did what now? And guess what, they came back dated at 45,000 years old! Amazing. Who woulda thought? And the conclusion of all this hand waving nonsense? Well isn't it obvious, the earth is - wait for it - 6,000 years old! Literally unbelievable. Now maybe he was just too ignorant to understand what a mess he made of that. Or maybe he was just being dishonest and lying. Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist. All he had to do was ask Kenny what the maximum age for radio carbon dating was and why and presto, the debate would have been over. He would have been shown up for the lying, ignorant blow hard that he is and that would be that.

Bill didn't let him get away with it -- he suggested that the strata containing carbon-dated petrified wood could have subducted under the older millions-of-years-old rock. Ham said that no, the petrified wood was mixed into the rock itself. Nye didn't have a chance to point out that contamination is probably (and, as it turns out in this case, definitely) a better explanation than "OMG all radiometric dating is false hurr hurr".

Robert Byers said: Ham's group EXISTS JUST to use the evidence of nature to debunk criticisms of the bible. THEN it uses the bible to make some assertions.

I think this was a fantastic intro to heaps of people about creationism.

Why should they be persuaded in a hour! Yet they will of seen a smart excellent presentation that showed creationism is viable and not silly as critics present it.

For any young-earth creationists out there, let me ask you something. Suppose that YOU were standing there in Ken Ham's place at the debate hall, and suppose Bill Nye was throwing those same evolutionist challenges at YOU instead of Ham. How would you answer Nye's questions and challenges (assuming that all sides were given more time)? Well, over at Creation Ministries International (CMI), they have compiled a pretty good one-page Laundry List of where to find specific answers to most of Nye's questions/challenges. This is important because tomorrow it really COULD be you who gets asked by a sincere young inquirer to address a specific Nye question or challenge that maybe Ken Ham didn't have enough time to answer. Many young inquirers are genuinely open to a good biblical creationist response if they can find somebody who is ready to give one. So go to this link and bookmark it. Or print it off. It could make a difference. http://creation.com/ham-nye-debate **** By the way, the CMI article does omit one important Nye challenge. If somebody says to you, "Well, millions of Christians accept evolution", here's a very good response: "In 2007, evolutionist Dr. Jason Rosenhouse blogged at e-Skeptic that 'You cannot reconcile evolution with Christianity simply by declaring that many people see no conflict. The issue is whether they have a sound basis for their opinions.'" Anyway, check out that laundry list, if you'd like!

DS said:

david.starling.macmillan said:

DS said: Did anybody notice that at about 1:30 into the debate, Ken said that he sent fossils dated at 45 million years to be carbon dated! Really? Really? You did what now? And guess what, they came back dated at 45,000 years old! Amazing. Who woulda thought? And the conclusion of all this hand waving nonsense? Well isn't it obvious, the earth is - wait for it - 6,000 years old! Literally unbelievable. Now maybe he was just too ignorant to understand what a mess he made of that. Or maybe he was just being dishonest and lying. Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist. All he had to do was ask Kenny what the maximum age for radio carbon dating was and why and presto, the debate would have been over. He would have been shown up for the lying, ignorant blow hard that he is and that would be that.

Bill didn't let him get away with it -- he suggested that the strata containing carbon-dated petrified wood could have subducted under the older millions-of-years-old rock. Ham said that no, the petrified wood was mixed into the rock itself. Nye didn't have a chance to point out that contamination is probably (and, as it turns out in this case, definitely) a better explanation than "OMG all radiometric dating is false hurr hurr".

That is exactly what I meant by "letting him get away with it". He made it look like he had to come up with some kind of explanation and he just couldn't to it. But he didn't need to come up with any explanation other than "that's totally fraudulent and anyone with a modicum of competence and a shred of common decency would never make such an absurd and dishonest argument".

On a related subject (related to Ken Ham, at least), did AIG ever manage to sell the bonds it needed to keep Ark Encounter afloat?*

As I seemed to remember, they had to sell something like $25 million more bonds by Wednesday or risk defaulting on the entire $55 million issue.

Whatever happened with that? Did they find enough moronic suckers... I mean, ahem... "faithful investors" to back the rest of their junk bonds?

Now, in my personal opinion, that would be a miracle, but as PT Barnum always said...

Well, regardless, anyone know the score? Does Williamstown somehow get royally screwed for the gap between the $26 million that was already collected and whatever's left over at this point to pay back jilted investors?**

*_{Actually, it doesn't really float, it just sits in a parking lot, apparently, floating an ark is hard.}

**_{Which would serve them right for getting in bed with the likes of Ham and AIG.}

J. L. Brown said: Since creationists have a history of trying to pull 'gotcha' crap by sending samples in for dating by methods they know to be inappropriate, I was a little disappointed to see Nye let that one slide. Apparently the otherwise excellent preparations he made just didn't have room to counter all of the truly voluminous amount of sleaze available to Ham.

However, we know that there is a huge amount of variability in the human race, and many of the skulls in Nye’s graphic were undoubtedly within that range.

different dating methods give different dates for the same rocks, and some dating methods cap the age of the earth at thousands of years

Robert Byers said:

eric said:

Robert Byers said: 3 million?? Thats fantastic! That is the greatst audience EVER for a YEC presentation. It will be a historic event for us.

I actually agree with you here, but I think most of the fence-sitters and curious, disinterested onlookers are going to swing Nye's way. Ham's arguments were based on biblical authority. They're only going to be convincing to the audience members who think biblical authority trumps observation. What, he, you, and FL always seem to fail to realize is that that's not the fence-sitters, the onlookers, and it's not the vast majority of people outside your own sects. What Ham did was preach to his own choir. You and FL seem to be of the opinion that he did a very good job preaching to his own choir, but if you think it was effective to people outside his choir, I think you're mistaken. IMO, the "historicness" of this event is as follows: up until Dover, ID and the DI was trying to portray itself as non-religious. It was part of their strategy to hide or downplay the God component. After they failed in Dover, the pendulum swung the other way: the movement started becoming more and more religious. Creationist attempts to change school curricula started to become more and more explicitly religious, and the DI started to go to more YEC conferences and try and pull more political/financial support from YEC groups. With this debate, I think they're going to have to retreat and retrench yet again, because (fairly or not), this debate is going to yoke anti-darwinism curriculum changes to explicitly religious YECism in the public's mind. It may not have the impact of Dover, but I think it could change the direction of the creationism bus just the same.

Persuading people to or view is difficult unless one already believes in the bible as Gods word.

I agree with this too. Which is why I don't think Ham's debate performance persuaded many people who weren't already persuaded.

If shows YEC should get equal time in the schools.

Not in the US. In fact, the explicit "the bible is my authority and no evidence will change my mind" tenor of Ham's presentation pretty much eliminates any doubt as to whether this would be constitutional or would count as science. (It's not and it doesn't.)

Ask your selves. Would you really welcome a rematch?? We would.

With standard caveats about picking the right people, venue, and debate question, I would too.

Hams answers were not just biblical authority. they were based on debunking theb oppositions evidences from nature. Ham's group EXISTS JUST to use the evidence of nature to debunk criticisms of the bible. THEN it uses the bible to make some assertions. I think this was a fantastic intro to heaps of people about creationism. Why should they be persuaded in a hour! Yet they will of seen a smart excellent presentation that showed creationism is viable and not silly as critics present it. No fence sitters could of gone Nye's way. Who are these fence sitters that watched this? It 's people already with opinions. I think this was if not the Normandy invasion THEN the invasion of Sicily. This was a big deal in YEC history. After a few decades it takes on and prevails, I think, over evolutionism and company. From ID and YEC there is a revolution and invasion going on here that seems likely tp prevail on many of its criticisms of old Chunck Darwin. Watch yourselves. this forum might be quoted negatively in decades to come by high school students studying the demise of evolutionary biology.

J. L. Brown said: Anybody else notice that Ham was talking about dating basalt with Kr/Ar dating? Correct if I'm wrong, but part of using dating techniques correctly is knowing when they go all wonky -- and Kr/Ar is known to be inappropriate for dating pillow basalt lavas.

DId anyone notice that Ham listed the assumptions of radio dating techniques and implied that, because they had assumptions they were invalid? But when he presented his biblical chronology as his justification for a young age for the earth, he pretended that there were no assumptions! And Bill let him get away with that one as well.

Of course what the ham shank failed to mention is that real scientists test their assumptions. He forgot to mention that the methods are all consistent with each other and with independent data sets. He somehow forgot the fact that carbon dating has been reliably calibrated to about 45,000 years. Well, I guess he couldn't really admit that one. No he just implied that all scientists are either stupid or dishonest and that he was the only one who could be trusted to expose their flaws.

All BIll had to do was simply ask, "WHat are the assumptions of your biblical chronology Ken?" and it would have been over. Kenny would have hemmed and hawed and Bill could have listed a dozen, each one completely untested and untestable, each one completely and utterly ridiculous. That's all it would have taken. But again, the blatant double standard was allowed to stand unchallenged.

Now of course no reasonable person would be persuaded by the hambone argument. But remember, the audience was not filled with reasonable people. It was filled with people who applauded when kenny g whiz said; "I have a book..."

Dave wrote:

"It’s all lies. Sometimes it’s an appeal to ignorance as well. Sometimes the lies are purveyed skilfully, more often clumsily, but it’s all lies."

That's why I was disappointed that Bill never once just came right out and said "that's a lie". He said things like, "that;s troubling" or "that's unsettling", but he never once got across how fundamentally dishonest and hypocritical Ham was. Hopefully everyone could see it for themselves anyway, or maybe calling him out on his dishonesty would have backfired and made Bill look mean. But that's just one more reason why you shouldn't send a nice guy with a good clean image to confront the prince of lies.

Smitty said:

Robert Byers said: Watch yourselves. this forum might be quoted negatively in decades to come by high school students studying the demise of evolutionary biology.

Yeah, exactly ZERO chance of that.

DS said:

david.starling.macmillan said:

DS said: Did anybody notice Ken said that he sent fossils dated at 45 million years to be carbon dated! Really? Really? You did what now? And guess what, they came back dated at 45,000 years old! Amazing. Who woulda thought? And the conclusion of all this hand waving nonsense? Well isn't it obvious, the earth is - wait for it - 6,000 years old! Literally unbelievable. Now maybe he was just too ignorant to understand what a mess he made of that. Or maybe he was just being dishonest and lying. Either way, Bill let him get away with it. That's why you don't send an engineer to debate a creationist. All he had to do was ask Kenny what the maximum age for radio carbon dating was and why and presto, the debate would have been over. He would have been shown up for the lying, ignorant blow hard that he is and that would be that.

Bill didn't let him get away with it -- he suggested that the strata containing carbon-dated petrified wood could have subducted under the older millions-of-years-old rock. Ham said that no, the petrified wood was mixed into the rock itself. Nye didn't have a chance to point out that contamination is probably (and, as it turns out in this case, definitely) a better explanation than "OMG all radiometric dating is false hurr hurr".

That is exactly what I meant by "letting him get away with it". He made it look like he had to come up with some kind of explanation and he just couldn't to it. But he didn't need to come up with any explanation other than "that's totally fraudulent and anyone with a modicum of competence and a shred of common decency would never make such an absurd and dishonest argument".

J. L. Brown said: Anybody else notice that Ham was talking about dating basalt with Kr/Ar dating? Correct if I'm wrong, but part of using dating techniques correctly is knowing when they go all wonky -- and Kr/Ar is known to be inappropriate for dating pillow basalt lavas. Since creationists have a history of trying to pull 'gotcha' crap by sending samples in for dating by methods they know to be inappropriate, I was a little disappointed to see Nye let that one slide. Apparently the otherwise excellent preparations he made just didn't have room to counter all of the truly voluminous amount of sleaze available to Ham.

david.starling.macmillan said: Well, Ham didn't exactly explain it in a clear way; he did make it sound like it could be simple subduction. What actually happened was that Andrew Snelling found a chunk of sandstone (not basalt) with an embedded piece of something that might have been petrified wood but was probably just an iron concretion, most likely limonite. He chipped a piece off and sent it to a lab, claiming it was wood, and asking for it to be blind radiocarbon tested. Sandstone is obviously quite porous, and so the chances of contamination are high. The sample was not cleaned in accordance with typical procedures, either. Even so, I don't think Nye should have accused Ham of lying. Ham doesn't know the science well enough to recognize radiocarbon contamination; he really believes this is an example of how radiometric dating can be flawed. Here's what I wish Nye had said: "Hmm. I'm not a geologist, but one thing to keep in mind when you have one type of rock mixed with another type of rock is that you end up with a lot of cracks and crevices and pores where water can get in and bring in new carbon. We always use a lot of contamination tests and compare dates from multiple dating methods to make sure we haven't made a mistake like this."

And another thing, why didn't Bill ask for the reference? Why did he let the ham hock present something as fact when it was never published in any real journal? Why didn't he ask for references for anything? Why did he let kenny g whiz get away with presenting creationist propaganda as though it were as valid as the peer reviewed evidence that Bill presented? Wouldn't this be the first thing that anyone in a scientific debate should do? Asking this question would have shown that ham had nothing but green eggs and creationist nonsense.

DS said: And another thing, why didn't Bill ask for the reference? Why did he let the ham hock present something as fact when it was never published in any real journal? Why didn't he ask for references for anything? Why did he let kenny g whiz get away with presenting creationist propaganda as though it were as valid as the peer reviewed evidence that Bill presented? Wouldn't this be the first thing that anyone in a scientific debate should do? Asking this question would have shown that ham had nothing but green eggs and creationist nonsense.

DS said: And another thing, why didn't Bill ask for the reference? Why did he let the ham hock present something as fact when it was never published in any real journal?

eric said:

DS said: And another thing, why didn't Bill ask for the reference? Why did he let the ham hock present something as fact when it was never published in any real journal?

A debate format is not the best place to ask for references (IMO). The audience will know the 'defender' can't produce a reference just due to practical reasons, and so they're going to see the request as an unreasonable attack. Perhaps even an attempt by the asker to dodge or avoid the defender's point. Having said that, your first suggestion ("you don't have...") seems content-wise pretty good to me. No doubt Nye would be a lot less acerbic.

david.starling.macmillan said: What actually happened was that Andrew Snelling found a chunk of sandstone (not basalt) with an embedded piece of something that might have been petrified wood but was probably just an iron concretion, most likely limonite. He chipped a piece off and sent it to a lab, claiming it was wood, and asking for it to be blind radiocarbon tested.

Jon Fleming said: The basalt is Conflicting "Ages" of Tertiary Basalt and Contained Fossilized Wood, Crinum, Central Queensland, Australia. I have some vague recollection of someone debunking this but I can't find it now. I'll have a glance at the paper.

david.starling.macmillan said:

DS said: And another thing, why didn't Bill ask for the reference? Why did he let the ham hock present something as fact when it was never published in any real journal? Why didn't he ask for references for anything? Why did he let kenny g whiz get away with presenting creationist propaganda as though it were as valid as the peer reviewed evidence that Bill presented? Wouldn't this be the first thing that anyone in a scientific debate should do? Asking this question would have shown that ham had nothing but green eggs and creationist nonsense.

Good point. Maybe a response like this would have been more appropriate (acknowledging hindsight and so forth): "If that's really the case and it's not just a mistake of some kind, it would be unlike anything we've ever seen. All scientists would be thrilled to learn something new like that, so we'd want to see it verified and tested and published somewhere. That would be a really huge discovery."

This is pretty vile:
http://creation.com/creation-videos?fileID=ZzZTLVmYSyU

stevaroni said: On a related subject (related to Ken Ham, at least), did AIG ever manage to sell the bonds it needed to keep Ark Encounter afloat?*

Does Williamstown somehow get royally screwed for the gap between the $26 million that was already collected and whatever's left over at this point to pay back jilted investors?

xubist said: This particular bond issue allows Ham & Co. to keep all the money, in the event that they don't manage to get all the funds they need. So (a) Williamstown gets royally screwed, and(b) jilted investors get royally screwed.

I finally watched the whole thing. I found Bill Nye’s overall performance underwhelming. If I was to give him a grade, it would be in the “C+ to B-“ range. The only reason he “won” the debate was because Ken Ham got an F. Ham basically repeated “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” over and over again. But Nye repeatedly passed up opportunities to hammer Ham. I was screaming at the screen when Ham didn’t answer the question: “What science is based on creationism” (or something to that affect). Rather than pointing out the non-answer (which would have driven a clean stake into Ham’s claim), Nye chose to talk about how science is used to make discoveries. The only reason I can think Nye was not more aggressive is because he didn’t want to come off as being mean spirited.

Regardless, what traction did science education gain from the debate? Can ID, “critical analysis”, “alternative theories”, or other non-science ideas be forever linked to YEC in the public’s mind? Can Ken Ham forever be the branded as the poster child of the non-science side because he was the guy who debated Nye? If so, Ken Ham may very well have handed science education a gift from God.

Benen: And with that, the root of the problem became clear. Ham, defending creationism, effectively conceded he starts with the answer, then works backwards to support his conclusion. Nye, defending modern biology, starts with the evidence, then works forward to reach a conclusion. It was a reminder as to why faith and science, while not always incompatible, are dissimilar.

Adam Serwer: That exchange summed up more than two and a half hours of debate over science and the nature of human life, and the fundamental cleavage between creationism and science. Science requires the idea that a hypothesis can fail, that what is held to be true can be disproven. The central hypothesis of creationism, in the eyes of the creationist, can never be disproven, no matter the quality, quantity, or immutability of the available information. And where science is unable to answer a question–such as the nature of consciousness, creationism provides an answer that encourages you to stop looking. ... One of the first exhibits at the Creation Museum features a video of Christian Paleontologist at a dig site who explains that he and his “secular” colleague simply draw different conclusions from the same data, an explanation that warps how the science actually works. A young earth creationist scientist is working backwards from the conclusion that a deity created the heavens and the earth in six 24-hour days, not testing a hypothesis through observation and experimentation and adjusting conclusions based on the results. With young earth creationism, the data must always be fit to comply with the hypothesis that the creation described in the book of Genesis is literally true.

Robertson: “Let’s face it, [17th century Bishop James Ussher] added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years,” Robertson told his viewers. “There ain’t no way that’s possible…. To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.” He added: “We’ve got to be realistic that the dating of Bishop Ussher just doesn’t comport with anything that is found in science and you can’t just totally deny the geological formations that are out there…. Let’s be real, let’s not make a joke of ourselves.”

Dave Luckett said: Why no Grand Canyons on every continent? CMI handwaves, knowing it to be false. Actually, though Nye's point is good, and the same giant flood should produce the same effects everywhere, it's obvious that the Grand Canyon is not a flood relict. Huge releases of water from a sudden event (like an ice dam breaking) produce giant washaways, straight-sided, fan-shaped, wide ditches that can be deep enough (depending on the volume of the water) to strip the surface back to bedrock. The Grand Canyon is very deep, but very narrow, winding sinuously, the product of smaller amounts of water over much longer periods of time.

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20) After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Robert Byers said:

eric said:

Robert Byers said: 3 million?? Thats fantastic! That is the greatst audience EVER for a YEC presentation. It will be a historic event for us.

I actually agree with you here, but I think most of the fence-sitters and curious, disinterested onlookers are going to swing Nye's way. Ham's arguments were based on biblical authority. They're only going to be convincing to the audience members who think biblical authority trumps observation. What, he, you, and FL always seem to fail to realize is that that's not the fence-sitters, the onlookers, and it's not the vast majority of people outside your own sects. What Ham did was preach to his own choir. You and FL seem to be of the opinion that he did a very good job preaching to his own choir, but if you think it was effective to people outside his choir, I think you're mistaken. IMO, the "historicness" of this event is as follows: up until Dover, ID and the DI was trying to portray itself as non-religious. It was part of their strategy to hide or downplay the God component. After they failed in Dover, the pendulum swung the other way: the movement started becoming more and more religious. Creationist attempts to change school curricula started to become more and more explicitly religious, and the DI started to go to more YEC conferences and try and pull more political/financial support from YEC groups. With this debate, I think they're going to have to retreat and retrench yet again, because (fairly or not), this debate is going to yoke anti-darwinism curriculum changes to explicitly religious YECism in the public's mind. It may not have the impact of Dover, but I think it could change the direction of the creationism bus just the same.

Persuading people to or view is difficult unless one already believes in the bible as Gods word.

I agree with this too. Which is why I don't think Ham's debate performance persuaded many people who weren't already persuaded.

If shows YEC should get equal time in the schools.

Not in the US. In fact, the explicit "the bible is my authority and no evidence will change my mind" tenor of Ham's presentation pretty much eliminates any doubt as to whether this would be constitutional or would count as science. (It's not and it doesn't.)

Ask your selves. Would you really welcome a rematch?? We would.

With standard caveats about picking the right people, venue, and debate question, I would too.

Hams answers were not just biblical authority. they were based on debunking theb oppositions evidences from nature. Ham's group EXISTS JUST to use the evidence of nature to debunk criticisms of the bible. THEN it uses the bible to make some assertions. I think this was a fantastic intro to heaps of people about creationism. Why should they be persuaded in a hour! Yet they will of seen a smart excellent presentation that showed creationism is viable and not silly as critics present it. No fence sitters could of gone Nye's way. Who are these fence sitters that watched this? It 's people already with opinions. I think this was if not the Normandy invasion THEN the invasion of Sicily. This was a big deal in YEC history. After a few decades it takes on and prevails, I think, over evolutionism and company. From ID and YEC there is a revolution and invasion going on here that seems likely tp prevail on many of its criticisms of old Chunck Darwin. Watch yourselves. this forum might be quoted negatively in decades to come by high school students studying the demise of evolutionary biology.

FL said: You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20)

FL said: Hey, in another forum, an evolutionist just asked me a question about Ken Ham's presentation. His question was:

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

So I replied to him like this:

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20) After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Okay, thanks for taking a look. Just thought I'd put it on the Panda table. FL

FL said: Hey, in another forum, an evolutionist just asked me a question about Ken Ham's presentation. His question was:

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

So I replied to him like this:

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20) After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Okay, thanks for taking a look. Just thought I'd put it on the Panda table. FL

FL said: Hey, in another forum, an evolutionist just asked me a question about Ken Ham's presentation. His question was:

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

So I replied to him like this:

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20) After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Okay, thanks for taking a look. Just thought I'd put it on the Panda table. FL

phhht said:

FL said: You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20)

How can I test your assertion to tell whether or not it is correct, FL? Without such a test, I must say I think you are mistaken, at best.

FL said: After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

alicejohn said: I finally watched the whole thing. I found Bill Nye’s overall performance underwhelming. If I was to give him a grade, it would be in the “C+ to B-“ range. The only reason he “won” the debate was because Ken Ham got an F. Ham basically repeated “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” over and over again. But Nye repeatedly passed up opportunities to hammer Ham. I was screaming at the screen when Ham didn’t answer the question: “What science is based on creationism” (or something to that affect). Rather than pointing out the non-answer (which would have driven a clean stake into Ham’s claim), Nye chose to talk about how science is used to make discoveries. The only reason I can think Nye was not more aggressive is because he didn’t want to come off as being mean spirited. Regardless, what traction did science education gain from the debate? Can ID, “critical analysis”, “alternative theories”, or other non-science ideas be forever linked to YEC in the public’s mind? Can Ken Ham forever be the branded as the poster child of the non-science side because he was the guy who debated Nye? If so, Ken Ham may very well have handed science education a gift from God.

phhht said:

FL said: After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Why do you make baseless loony claims like this, FL? I look in the mirror every day. I see no reason there to conclude that gods exist. Only someone who hallucinates would claim the contrary.

FL said: Hey, in another forum, an evolutionist just asked me a question about Ken Ham's presentation. His question was:

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

So I replied to him like this:

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20) After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Okay, thanks for taking a look. Just thought I'd put it on the Panda table. FL

PA Poland said: All evidence thus far supports the idea of evolution - that all life IS a product of unguided materialistic evolution ('unguided' in that there is no ultimate goal everything is striving towards; all that is needed for evolution to work is for some variants to be slightly better or luckier than the competition. That is pretty much the only 'goal' living things need to evolve.) Evolution is demographics, not teleology (no matter how often you stamp your foot and whine otherwise).

Glen said: Look in the mirror with an ape standing next to you. Might as well add an ape skeleton and a human skeleton while you're at it. Oh, and you have to take the blinkers off of your eyes, too.

stevaroni said:

Glen said: Look in the mirror with an ape standing next to you. Might as well add an ape skeleton and a human skeleton while you're at it. Oh, and you have to take the blinkers off of your eyes, too.

A few decades ago I was in a zoo somewhere and they had some chimpanzees. A normal enough situation, but one of these apes had severe alopecia - its hair had fallen out. It was fascinating. It struck me as freakin' uncanny how little real structural difference there was once you get under the shag carpet.

Just Bob said: How about this? Evolution IS guided by the selection forces in the environment. Those forces have no 'goal' in a teleological sense, and they will change over time, often in unpredictable ways, but the survival and breeding success of any living thing is always guided by the constraints of its environment. Evolution is NOT random, and anything not random is being 'guided' away from complete randomness by SOMETHING.

ashleyhr said: This is pretty vile: http://creation.com/creation-videos?fileID=ZzZTLVmYSyU

FL said: Hey, in another forum, an evolutionist just asked me a question about Ken Ham's presentation. His question was:

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

So I replied to him like this:

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20) After looking in the bathroom mirror for three minutes, NOBODY should be claiming that they're an atheist or agnostic.

Okay, thanks for taking a look. Just thought I'd put it on the Panda table. FL

FL said: Hey, in another forum, an evolutionist just asked me a question about Ken Ham's presentation. His question was:

When did Ham address the topic of the debate: the scientific basis of the creation model?

So I replied to him like this:

Easily answered. Ham did it specifically when he referred to the scientific method, starting with observation. That's the basis. You should already know that you're NOT a product of unguided materialistic evolution, but instead a product of God the Creator, just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20)

[bolding added] In order to preserve the function and integrity of the ministry in its mission to proclaim the absolute truth and authority of Scripture and to provide a biblical role model to our employees, and to the Church, the community, and society at large, it is imperative that all persons employed by the ministry in any capacity, or who serve as volunteers, should abide by and agree to our Statement of Faith, to include the statement on marriage and sexuality, and conduct themselves accordingly. ... The scientific aspects of creation are important but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge. ... By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

Ah, but stevaroni, you misunderstand the purpose of Creation Science. It's purpose is to "prove" the Bible, not to "explain" the Bible. God wrote the Bible, not people. If those stupid Jews lost it, God would simply write another copy of the Bible. Verbatim. Just like when Moses broke the first set of tablets. God had to write another set.

Duh!

(Of course that totally ignores and in no way answers your question, but it fits the conspiracy theory model of Creation Science. YEC doesn't deal in "what ifs".)

stevaroni said: Assume for a moment that there had been a temple fire as the Israelites were making their way back from the Babylonian Exile, and the only existing copies of the Old Testament had been destroyed.

Scott F said: Ah, but stevaroni, you misunderstand the purpose of Creation Science. ... (Of course that totally ignores and in no way answers your question, but it fits the conspiracy theory model of Creation Science. YEC doesn't deal in "what ifs".)

stevaroni said: Here's the question Ham never got asked, the question that I would love to put in front of him in a venue where he had to respond. Assume for a moment that there had been a temple fire as the Israelites were making their way back from the Babylonian Exile, and the only existing copies of the Old Testament had been destroyed. (Yes, FL, I know this didn't happen - apparently didn't happen, since I wasn't there - but just assume. After all, if something like The Ark Of The Covenant can be lost, certainly it's a reasonable hypothetical to ask about some burned manuscripts) So, as result of that fire, here in 2014 there is no copy of Genesis to be had. Given the extant physical evidence, - of which there is tons be it geological, political, biological, ethnological, radiological, and so forth - given the evidence, how do you get the creation story out of it? How do we get a young earth and global flood from all those Australopithecus skulls from Africa and those tree rings from Norway and those finches in the Galapagos? How do we get the Tower of Babel from the worlds language distributions? Exactly how do we derive a 6000 year old Garden of Eden from the Gulf of Mexico's oil deposits? Tell me, FL. Explain it to me like I was 5. But don't quote the Bible, remember, that was lost when an oil lamp got kicked over. Go ahead, but I don;t think you'll try because I think you realize you can't. That's the thing, FL, evolution doesn't rely on any one book, because it rests on actual evidence. If, in a creationist wet dream, the Beagle had capsized a mile off Portsmouth, killing Darwin 20 years before he wrote Origin, I'd still be able to figure out that something like evolution must have happened just by lining up 2 million years worth of hominid skulls in chronological order. Something that, I daresay, is to be found readily displayed in almost every natural history museum I've ever been in. Assume that you have to start without a Bible. Just exactly how do you look at a couple of million years of hominid brain buckets lined up on a wall and jump to "Aha! obviously a 6000 year old garden!".

Oops, that should read "How can you tell a designed natural-appearing rock from a nondesigned one?

stevaroni said: If, in a creationist wet dream, the Beagle had capsized a mile off Portsmouth, killing Darwin 20 years before he wrote Origin, I'd still be able to figure out that something like evolution must have happened just by lining up 2 million years worth of hominid skulls in chronological order.

And see here, neither Darwin nor Wallace was some kind of commie atheist ivory-tower overeducated academic when they started on their respective journeys towards the foundational theory of biology. Darwin was a practising Christian in minor orders, while Wallace denied to his dying day that evolution was a non-teleological process. He always held that there was a Divine Mind at work. Nor was evolution the only cause of Darwin's retreat into something fairly close to deism, if it was a cause at all. A more likely one was the death of his children.

Neither of them had academic qualifications in science, not that much in that way was available in their day. Scientists studied an aspect of nature, read the literature, experimented and observed, and published. They did this through robustly practical methods, almost never as a profession, but out of intellectual curiosity and, yes, love of knowledge for its own sake.

Incidentally, did anyone notice how above I used the word "day" to mean "an indeterminate period of time that happened before our own"? Is there anything odd about the metaphor?

So much for the FL assertion that the Hebrew word "yom", day, has to mean a literal, absolutely 24-hour day, one complete rotation of the Earth, and it can't mean anything else nohow, because I say so.

DS said: Perhaps Floyd would like to explain the radio carbon dating results for us. That should be good for a hoot.

Does Williamstown somehow get royally screwed for the gap between the $26 million that was already collected and whatever’s left over at this point to pay back jilted investors?

This particular bond issue allows Ham & Co. to keep all the money, in the event that they don’t manage to get all the funds they need. So (a) Williamstown gets royally screwed, and(b) jilted investors get royally screwed.

For Ken Ham, one of those defining moments came when Bill Nye twice referred to origins as a “great mystery.” Each time, Ken Ham responded by saying, “There is a book . . .” Of course that book is the Bible, God’s Word, which gives us answers to the skeptical questions of the age.

Matt Young said: So now I am getting Spam from Ham, and I was invited to look here for a defining moment:

For Ken Ham, one of those defining moments came when Bill Nye twice referred to origins as a “great mystery.” Each time, Ken Ham responded by saying, “There is a book . . .” Of course that book is the Bible, God’s Word, which gives us answers to the skeptical questions of the age.

Was that a defining moment for me? You bet it was: It showed with crystal clarity that Ham was a crackpot whose intellectual curiosity extends no farther than a certain Bronze Age book that he reads uncritically, all the while denouncing paleontology as a "historical" science.

@Stevaroni: That’s exactly it. For FL and his sheeple, the Bible is evidence. No bible, no young earth. Whereas, as you said, without Darwin, Hutton, et al., someone else would have figured it out.

Matt Young said: Williamstown does not risk losing money on the bond offering, just their good name and reputation. According to the bond documents between Ark Encounter and the City of Williamstown, the Ark Encounter has to return all the money they raised via bond sales if the bond sales do not total about $45 million....

Matt Young said: So now I am getting Spam from Ham, and I was invited to look here for a defining moment:

For Ken Ham, one of those defining moments came when Bill Nye twice referred to origins as a “great mystery.” Each time, Ken Ham responded by saying, “There is a book . . .”

Am surprised no one has weighed in yet on new NCSE executive director Ann Reid and NCSE deputy director Glenn Branch's observations published in The Scientist:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39118/title/Opinion--Confronting-Creationism/

I am in full agreement. IMHO promoting public understanding of science should not be reduced into a spectator sport, and, quite frankly, that's how I view a creation vs. evolution debate.

John said: Am surprised no one has weighed in yet on new NCSE executive director Ann Reid and NCSE deputy director Glenn Branch's observations published in The Scientist: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39118/title/Opinion--Confronting-Creationism/ I am in full agreement. IMHO promoting public understanding of science should not be reduced into a spectator sport, and, quite frankly, that's how I view a creation vs. evolution debate.

Mike Elzinga said: Providing good information and educating audiences is best done in an environment that is not theatrical and high drama.

Just Bob said: How about this? Evolution IS guided by the selection forces in the environment. Those forces have no 'goal' in a teleological sense, and they will change over time, often in unpredictable ways, but the survival and breeding success of any living thing is always guided by the constraints of its environment.

Evolution is NOT random, and anything not random is being 'guided' away from complete randomness by SOMETHING.

Matt Young said: The above comment is not correct. Williamstown does not risk losing money on the bond offering, just their good name and reputation. According to the bond documents between Ark Encounter and the City of Williamstown, the Ark Encounter has to return all the money they raised via bond sales if the bond sales do not total about $45 million (I'm not clear about the exact amount; the bond agreement says ~$45 million, but I have seen other numbers in the press). The deadline to raise the money via bond sales is March 1, or else all money raised so far via bond sales must be returned the to bond purchasers.

fnxtr said: ... without Darwin, Hutton, et al., someone else would have figured it out.

And, once genetics was understood, natural selection and genetic drift would both be inevitable consequences if that understanding is correct, or even just a useful approximation.

With genetics being understood (at least by people who study it), the basic principles aren't all that hard to follow: reproduction routinely adds varieties that weren't there before, and both drift and selection routinely remove varieties that used to be there while increasing the numbers of the ones that remain.

Henry

Henry J said: And, once genetics was understood, natural selection and genetic drift would both be inevitable consequences if that understanding is correct, or even just a useful approximation. With genetics being understood (at least by people who study it), the basic principles aren't all that hard to follow: reproduction routinely adds varieties that weren't there before, and both drift and selection routinely remove varieties that used to be there while increasing the numbers of the ones that remain. Henry

If Darwin would have read Mendel, the world might have been a much different place. But then again, if creationists would read any scientific literature, the world wold definitely be a much different place, at least for them.

Just a thought with YEC in particular, it seems to me that YEC depends even more on James Ussher than the bible. Would there be any traction in attacking James Ussher? i.e. why should YEC Christianity slavishly follow a 17th century Irish theologian above all others? Maybe this wouldn't be fruitful, I am not familiar with bible chronology aside from Ussher (because I am not interested).

daoudmbo said: Just a thought with YEC in particular, it seems to me that YEC depends even more on James Ussher than the bible. Would there be any traction in attacking James Ussher? i.e. why should YEC Christianity slavishly follow a 17th century Irish theologian above all others? Maybe this wouldn't be fruitful, I am not familiar with bible chronology aside from Ussher (because I am not interested).

daoudmbo said: Would there be any traction in attacking James Ussher? i.e. why should YEC Christianity slavishly follow a 17th century Irish theologian above all others?

eric said:

daoudmbo said: Would there be any traction in attacking James Ussher? i.e. why should YEC Christianity slavishly follow a 17th century Irish theologian above all others?

No, no real traction IMO. First because you're trying to undermine one theological interpretation of the bible; the much much stronger case for TOE is the physical evidence for it. Second, because it would be easy enough for some YEC to just redo Ussher's calculation and get some time period with approximately the same order of magnitude. Ussher's background and even his math isn't really the issue; you're just not going to get a 4 billion year history of life on earth by counting biblical 'begats'. It's the calculation's starting premise - that the bible is factually correct and complete (i.e., there are no missing generations) - that's the issue.

daoudmbo said: I am just thinking along one of the lines Nye (I believe) took in his debate, that the issue is not really Christianity vs. Evolution, but Ham`s very narrow, small sectarian brand of Christianity, so maybe it`s a way to further discredit this narrow sectarian thinking.

Well it could be a three pronged attack:

1) It is OK to admit that the earth is millions of years old. As Ham already admitted, your salvation doesn't depend on this issue.

2) It is OK to accept the findings of science. All of the dating methods have assumptions, but they have been tested and verified, so you can accept the "historical sciences" and reject the implication of hysterical sciences.

3) There is no reason to believe that the bible can be used to answer scientific questions such as the age of the earth. If you do this, you are making assumptions. In this case, assumptions that are neither testable or verified. Why would you abuse your bible and your faith this way?

just from empirical observation alone. (Romans. 1:20)

Okay, happy Monday there! A sincere thanks to those who responded to previous post, wasn't expecting it.

Looks like Ham-Nye is automatically the Debate of the Year, and probably the next five years to boot. Albert Mohler points out exactly how Bill Nye demonstrated that evolution is incompatible with Christianity:

http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/02/05/bill-nyes-reasonable-man-the-central-worldview-clash-of-the-ham-nye-debate/

But meanwhile, let's go back to the bathroom mirror (not the bathroom wall, just the bathroom mirror).

****

I was fascinated by the closeness between what Stevaroni asked and what I wrote. If you never saw or heard of a Bible, if you never knew what Rom 1:20 said, would you be able to know that God existed?

The answer is YES, frankly. Even with no Bible. You at least have, is empirical observation. "The things that are SEEN", according to Rom. 1:20.

Observation, then form a hypothesis, then test your hypothesis (1 Thess. 5:21), then draw conclusions, rinse & repeat. That's the scientific method. Your scientific method is enough to at least move you away from atheism and agnosticism, if you are rational.

****

So, would your empirical observations suggest "theism" or "atheism"?

There's only one answer: THEISM. (Or, if you want to work your way up first, you could start with DEISM, just like the late famous atheist professor Antony Flew did when he dropped his atheism. )

No matter how you go, you wind up having to logically conclude that there's a God photo-bombing Himself somewhere in your selfie.

Why is that, you ask? Well, your eyes don't lie. Empirical observation.

****

You look in the bathroom mirror, what do you see first? Your eyes. And as you think about all the engineering design that's causing you to see, you start thinking about your brain, how it's auto-processing and auto-interpreting all your images like a massive warp-drive supercomputer that no human electronics engineer can begin to fathom.

You also notice your skin in the mirror, and you think about how well this organ of your body serves your protective needs and auto-heals minor damages like cuts. Like your eyes, how could such an organ derive from unguidedness, from purposelessness?

****

So, like Flew, you wind up having to ask, which is the more likely hypothesis? Which is more probable?

Atheism and unguided materialistic evolution? How does atheism, how does unguided natural processes, produce brilliant engineering designs, all interconnected into one astonishing living system, multiple times on multiple levels?

Isn't it more probable that an Intelligent Designer, or least the God of the theistic or deistic Eeolutionist, was involved?

FL

Actually no Floyd, Ken admitted that your salvation doesn't depend on your beliefs regarding the age of the earth or evolution. He directly contradicted you on that. Are you going to debate him? If not, why not?

And by the way, we is all still awaitn on you to explain radio carbon dating in your own words. Everyone could see you run away from that one as fast as your furry little monkey legs would carry you.

FL said: Observation, then form a hypothesis, then test your hypothesis (1 Thess. 5:21), then draw conclusions, rinse & repeat.

because YECs-in-particular can derive a young earth from a literalist interpretation of the bible even without Ussher.

FL said:

because YECs-in-particular can derive a young earth from a literalist interpretation of the bible even without Ussher.

Thanks Eric. That's an important point. Those seven literal 24-hour days of Creation Week automatically leaves the earth's age at ~~6000 or so. No chance (under ANY interpretation!) for 4.6 billion years as the evolutionists claim. The Bible is clear about earth's age, even if evolutionists disagree with it, or state that the Bible isn't consistent with reality.

So that would be a no. You have h=no idea whatsoever how radio carbon dating works, or why Ken was being dishonest in his claims. You are just going to let him get a pass on lying and misrepresenting science. And I guess you aren't going to confront him on your differences about salvation either. How courageous of you Floyd. Keep up the good work (of undermining your religion).

FL said: But meanwhile, let's go back to the bathroom mirror (not the bathroom wall, just the bathroom mirror).

FL said: If you never saw or heard of a Bible, if you never knew what Rom 1:20 said, would you be able to know that God existed? The answer is YES, frankly. Even with no Bible.

No matter how you go, you wind up having to logically conclude that there's a God photo-bombing Himself somewhere in your selfie.

You also notice your skin in the mirror, and you think about how well this organ of your body serves your protective needs and auto-heals minor damages like cuts.

Actually no Floyd, Ken admitted that your salvation doesn’t depend on your beliefs regarding the age of the earth or evolution.

Now, I want to make very clear that belief in a historical Adam and Eve is not a salvation issue per se, but it is a biblical authority issue and a gospel issue. When we deny the existence of Adam and Eve, then how do we explain the origin of sin and death in the world? And if we cannot explain how sin and death came into the world, or if we believe that it was always here, then what was the purpose of Christ’s death and Resurrection? Why was the atonement even necessary?

Of course, I do not want to have a person think that I question the legitimacy of their faith if they reject a literal Fall. But I do need to point out the inherent contradiction in such a compromise as it relates to the gospel message. Again, salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ (cf. Ephesians 2:8–9). But, to deny a literal Adam and a literal Fall is to deny the origin of sin, isn’t it? So for such a person who denies the literal historicity of Adam and the Fall, what does Romans 10:9 mean to them anyway?

FL said: Evolution is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself.

Your eyes don't lie?! Check out these illusions and then tell me that your eyes don't lie. People have been jailed for life because other people's eyes lied to them. Your eyes don't lie, indeed!

FL said:

because YECs-in-particular can derive a young earth from a literalist interpretation of the bible even without Ussher.

Thanks Eric. That's an important point. Those seven literal 24-hour days of Creation Week automatically leaves the earth's age at ~~6000 or so. No chance (under ANY interpretation!) for 4.6 billion years as the evolutionists claim. The Bible is clear about earth's age, even if evolutionists disagree with it, or state that the Bible isn't consistent with reality.

Matt Young said: Your eyes don't lie?! Check out these illusions and then tell me that your eyes don't lie. People have been jailed for life because other people's eyes lied to them. Your eyes don't lie, indeed!

Right. It's NOT a salvation issue. Therefore, no incompatibility with christianity as practiced m=by millions of people. If you claim it's a biblical authority issue, so what? That doesn't mean you can't be saved. So your supposed incompatibility is only an issue for those who read the bible a certain way. Therefore, it is NOT an incompatibility with christianity, but only for sects who insist that the bible is inconsistent with reality, Like you Floyd. You are incompatible with reality.

If you want, we can continue this discussion on the bathroom wall. I am done responding to you here. And you never answered my questions anyway, so why bother with you any more? Once agaoin, you are toast.

It’s NOT a salvation issue. Therefore, no incompatibility with christianity as practiced m=by millions of people.

It always seems strange to me FL, why you creationists accept Ussher rather than the traditional Jewish reckoning according to which creation was 5774 years ago. Why is that?

FL said: Never sweat the small stuff!

FL said: Evolution is the "Universal Acid", and I've never seen even one of you evolutionists dispute Daniel Dennett's label there. Universal Acid is incompatible with Christianity.

So, FL, you claim that gods exist, and that you are going to defend
that proposition rationally.

Gonna start soon?

No, of course you are not going to start soon. You're never going to start, are you, FL, because you can't do what you claimed you could.

It's just like all your other claims, FL. When it's time to put up or shut up, you shut up and run away and hide.

phhht said: So, FL, you claim that gods exist, and that you are going to defend that proposition rationally. Gonna start soon? No, of course you are not going to start soon. You're never going to start, are you, FL, because you can't do what you claimed you could. It's just like all your other claims, FL. When it's time to put up or shut up, you shut up and run away and hide.

Looks like Ham-Nye is automatically the Debate of the Year, and probably the next five years to boot. Albert Mohler points out exactly how Bill Nye demonstrated that evolution is incompatible with Christianity: http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/02[…]-nye-debate/

I was fascinated by the closeness between what Stevaroni asked and what I wrote. If you never saw or heard of a Bible, if you never knew what Rom 1:20 said, would you be able to know that God existed? The answer is YES, frankly. Even with no Bible. You at least have, is empirical observation. “The things that are SEEN”, according to Rom. 1:20. Observation, then form a hypothesis, then test your hypothesis (1 Thess. 5:21), then draw conclusions, rinse & repeat. That’s the scientific method. Your scientific method is enough to at least move you away from atheism and agnosticism, if you are rational.

So, would your empirical observations suggest “theism” or “atheism”? There’s only one answer: THEISM. (Or, if you want to work your way up first, you could start with DEISM, just like the late famous atheist professor Antony Flew did when he dropped his atheism. ) No matter how you go, you wind up having to logically conclude that there’s a God photo-bombing Himself somewhere in your selfie. Why is that, you ask? Well, your eyes don’t lie. Empirical observation.

You look in the bathroom mirror, what do you see first? Your eyes. And as you think about all the engineering design that’s causing you to see, you start thinking about your brain, how it’s auto-processing and auto-interpreting all your images like a massive warp-drive supercomputer that no human electronics engineer can begin to fathom. You also notice your skin in the mirror, and you think about how well this organ of your body serves your protective needs and auto-heals minor damages like cuts. Like your eyes, how could such an organ derive from unguidedness, from purposelessness?

So, like Flew, you wind up having to ask, which is the more likely hypothesis? Which is more probable? Atheism and unguided materialistic evolution? How does atheism, how does unguided natural processes, produce brilliant engineering designs, all interconnected into one astonishing living system, multiple times on multiple levels? Isn’t it more probable that an Intelligent Designer, or least the God of the theistic or deistic Eeolutionist, was involved?

FL said:

It always seems strange to me FL, why you creationists accept Ussher rather than the traditional Jewish reckoning according to which creation was 5774 years ago. Why is that?

I don't know why that is, but frankly I'm just as comfortable with 5774 years as with 6000. Never sweat the small stuff! FL

FL said:

It always seems strange to me FL, why you creationists accept Ussher rather than the traditional Jewish reckoning according to which creation was 5774 years ago. Why is that?

I don't know why that is, but frankly I'm just as comfortable with 5774 years as with 6000. Never sweat the small stuff! FL

Helena Constantine said: Why doesn't it surprise me you know nothing about Judaism? that number is the Jewish year. I guess it never occurred to you they don't date anno domini--they start from the traditional date of creation.

FL said:

It always seems strange to me FL, why you creationists accept Ussher rather than the traditional Jewish reckoning according to which creation was 5774 years ago. Why is that?

I don't know why that is, but frankly I'm just as comfortable with 5774 years as with 6000. Never sweat the small stuff! FL

FL said: Okay, happy Monday there! A sincere thanks to those who responded to previous post, wasn't expecting it. Looks like Ham-Nye is automatically the Debate of the Year, and probably the next five years to boot. Albert Mohler points out exactly how Bill Nye demonstrated that evolution is incompatible with Christianity: http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/02/05/bill-nyes-reasonable-man-the-central-worldview-clash-of-the-ham-nye-debate/ But meanwhile, let's go back to the bathroom mirror (not the bathroom wall, just the bathroom mirror). **** I was fascinated by the closeness between what Stevaroni asked and what I wrote. If you never saw or heard of a Bible, if you never knew what Rom 1:20 said, would you be able to know that God existed? The answer is YES, frankly. Even with no Bible. You at least have, is empirical observation. "The things that are SEEN", according to Rom. 1:20.

Observation, then form a hypothesis, then test your hypothesis (1 Thess. 5:21), then draw conclusions, rinse and repeat.

That's the scientific method. Your scientific method is enough to at least move you away from atheism and agnosticism, if you are rational.

So, would your empirical observations suggest "theism" or "atheism"?

There's only one answer: THEISM. (Or, if you want to work your way up first, you could start with DEISM, just like the late famous atheist professor Antony Flew did when he dropped his atheism. )

No matter how you go, you wind up having to logically conclude that there's a God photo-bombing Himself somewhere in your selfie.

Why is that, you ask? Well, your eyes don't lie. Empirical observation. **** You look in the bathroom mirror, what do you see first? Your eyes. And as you think about all the engineering design that's causing you to see, you start thinking about your brain, how it's auto-processing and auto-interpreting all your images like a massive warp-drive supercomputer that no human electronics engineer can begin to fathom.

You also notice your skin in the mirror, and you think about how well this organ of your body serves your protective needs and auto-heals minor damages like cuts. Like your eyes, how could such an organ derive from unguidedness, from purposelessness?

So, like Flew, you wind up having to ask, which is the more likely hypothesis? Which is more probable? Atheism and unguided materialistic evolution?

How does atheism, how does unguided natural processes, produce brilliant engineering designs, all interconnected into one astonishing living system, multiple times on multiple levels?

Isn't it more probable that an Intelligent Designer, or least the God of the theistic or deistic Eeolutionist, was involved?

FL said: Evolution is the "Universal Acid", and I've never seen even one of you evolutionists dispute Daniel Dennett's label there. Universal Acid is incompatible with Christianity.

The amnesty for FL is nearly over, and in future threads (of mine) he will be allowed perhaps 1 comment if it is coherent and on task. In the meantime I will be very grateful if pffft and perhaps others would refrain from posting comments that merely bait or insult FL. It ought to be clear by now that FL has nothing to offer beyond the claim that his bizarre interpretation of the Bible is both empirical and correct; continuing to grill him serves no purpose, since you already know how he will answer certain questions and ignore others. That said, I got better insight into FL's thought than I have had before, but frankly I do not want any more insight.

What has always astonished me is how FL is unblinkingly able to put an argument like "your sense of sight is evidence for a Divine Creation" in the face of what's happened over the last five centuries or so. To Paul of Tarsus, it was; but the same went for lightning and earthquakes and the rainbow. Even in his day, Paul was dimly aware that astronomers had learned to predict eclipses, which meant that God conformed to the expectations of astronomers. That in turn had to imply natural cause, but it is clear that Paul never even thought about that.

The first intimation about the eye came in the thirteenth century CE, when it was discovered that vision could be corrected - that is, that natural means could intervene in what was supposedly a divine gift - but in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE the dam broke. Optics demonstrated much about how the human eye worked. Anatomy and microscopy described its basic structures. Evolution explained the principles of its development. Cellular biology gave further insights. Then neurology advanced far enough to get a handle on how it fed information to the visual cortex, and a start was then made on understanding how that worked, down to the molecular level. That's going on now, today, as I write. The process was a successive breaking of barriers to understanding, and it is still going on.

And here's the thing: there's absolutely no reason to think that there is some barrier labelled "God", anywhere in the entire business. By thinking that there is such a barrier, FL is with Paul of Tarsus back in the first century CE.

But I'm a kinda sorta observer of humanity, I suppose, and it really shouldn't surprise me that there are pre-enlightenment minds out there, minds absolutely blind to evidence. But FL is completely blind to theology as well. That makes FL's mind not merely pre-enlightenment. It puts it back into the iron age, or even before.

Christian theology has long known that the doctrine of original sin and the fall of Man does not rely on a primordial couple eating a fruit at the tempting of a serpent. The death and resurrection of Jesus, and His redemption for the universal sinfulness of all humanity does not require that. Genesis tells mighty truths, but it tells them in the form of fictive narratives, just as Jesus Himself did.

There is no "universal acid" in evolution for Christian belief, which comfortably accommodates evolution as the method by which Almighty God created in His image. Most Christians know this. Only a far fringe deny it.

And yet, when these facts are put, FL's only response is silence initially, then simple reiteration. Genesis must be read literally, or all Christian belief crumbles, says FL. Then he says it again.

And again. And again.

But that's all he does. Nothing substantive. No actual argument from fact or logic, nor even from scripture, to support that contention. Nor for the contention that scripture must be read literally, wherever FL requires it.

(Did you notice above how again I used the word "day" to mean "an indeterminate period of time"? But FL says it can only mean a literal twenty-four hour day. Why?)

No consideration of the meaning of "original sin". No analysis. No actual exegesis. In fact, as we have seen repeatedly, when FL refers to scripture, he usually adds or subtracts words to pervert its meaning. It's as if it really didn't matter to him what it actually says.

Me, I don't think it actually does matter to him what scripture says. This is not about scripture. There's another overarching compulsion operating there, and it's not scriptural authority or Christian theology. That far I can go on the evidence of FL's output here, assuming that it's not simple trollery for the sheer joy of being outrageous. But identifying that compulsion would be speculation. I can go no further.

All I can do is observe, with horrified fascination.

[the "universal acid" of Darwin's dangerous idea] eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways. -- Daniel Dennett

Yesterday I noted how weird it was that Pat Robertson has become the voice of reason on, and I quote, "this young Earth nonsense".

Today, predictably, they start eating their own they start eating their own.

Yesterday I noted how weird it was that Pat Robertson has become the voice of reason on, and I quote, "this young Earth nonsense".

Today, with sad predictably, they start eating their own they start eating their own.

Dave Luckett said: What has always astonished me is how FL is unblinkingly able to put an argument like "your sense of sight is evidence for a Divine Creation" in the face of what's happened over the last five centuries or so. To Paul of Tarsus, it was; but the same went for lightning and earthquakes and the rainbow. Even in his day, Paul was dimly aware that astronomers had learned to predict eclipses, which meant that God conformed to the expectations of astronomers. That in turn had to imply natural cause, but it is clear that Paul never even thought about that. The first intimation about the eye came in the thirteenth century CE, when it was discovered that vision could be corrected - that is, that natural means could intervene in what was supposedly a divine gift - but in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE the dam broke. Optics demonstrated much about how the human eye worked. Anatomy and microscopy described its basic structures. Evolution explained the principles of its development. Cellular biology gave further insights. Then neurology advanced far enough to get a handle on how it fed information to the visual cortex, and a start was then made on understanding how that worked, down to the molecular level. That's going on now, today, as I write. The process was a successive breaking of barriers to understanding, and it is still going on.

Dennett, like most philosophers, must be read carefully. See how he uses "acid" in the sense of "an agent that produces a reaction"?

Of course Darwin's theory produces a changed world-view. One insight alone is enough to do that: the necessary implication that all living things are related. Not just all human beings, but all living things. We are cousins to everything that lives.

But the world-view it produces is not essentially anti-Christian nor even anti-theist. "the old landmarks are still recognizable" and in those that are changed, the changes are not necessarily destructive, even if they are subversive. It eats away at some ideas about scripture, but theologians and Biblicists had been doing that for generations before Darwin. It makes sharper the need for a theodicy - but that need was always there. It makes the resurrection and redemption of Jesus a special class of miracle, and it makes it impossible to understand Genesis as a literal account of the creation of the Universe - but that was also plain long before Darwin.

No. The theory and fact of evolution was not the solvent for me and for many. For us, the ideas that drove us away from Christianity were the very ones most fervently advocated by FL and his fundamentalist brethren. We were driven away by the very God that they worship, rage-obsessed, vengeful; by the canon of embittered bigotry that they embrace; by their unthinking convulsive clinging to authority; and above all (in my case) the revolting doctrine of eternal damnation, and their cheerful, gloating acceptance of it. To this I added my own observation that the outward marks of Christian piety are in pretty much inverse proportion to the actual practice of Christian behaviour.

Those are what is corrosive of Christianity. Compared to them, the theory of evolution is nothing.

And here’s the thing: there’s absolutely no reason to think that there is some barrier labelled “God”, anywhere in the entire business. By thinking that there is such a barrier, FL is with Paul of Tarsus back in the first century CE.

Oh wait a minute, that last post really WAS meant for the Bathroom Wall, not for here. My apologies.

stevaroni said: Yesterday I noted how weird it was that Pat Robertson has become the voice of reason on, and I quote, "this young Earth nonsense". Today, predictably, they start eating their own they start eating their own.

Oops, I meant in YEC's worldview.

While we are on the subject of eyes, see here.

I can only second daoudmbo: the fundamentalists' own attempt at theodicy "indicts the goodness of God" far worse than evolution. Evolution at least explains death and suffering in terms of natural necessity, and does not assume an incensed deity. To a fundamentalist, the explanation is that God cursed the innocent in vicarious revenge for being disobeyed.

daoudmbo said: A quote from that link: "First, the concession indicts the goodness of God. Modern science asserts that the geological ages are predicated on the fossil record, and these fossils speak to us of suffering and death millions of years before Adam and Eve – before the creation of man. That's a direct contradiction of the Bible's teaching that pain, anguish; travail, death and the dysfunctions of nature are a direct result of divine judgment because of man's sin.

Matt Young, I'm briefly answering your response concerning "Evolution's Witness", at the Bathroom Wall.

Stevaroni, same place also.

eric said:

daoudmbo said: Would there be any traction in attacking James Ussher? i.e. why should YEC Christianity slavishly follow a 17th century Irish theologian above all others?

No, no real traction IMO. First because you're trying to undermine one theological interpretation of the bible; the much much stronger case for TOE is the physical evidence for it. Second, because it would be easy enough for some YEC to just redo Ussher's calculation and get some time period with approximately the same order of magnitude. Ussher's background and even his math isn't really the issue; you're just not going to get a 4 billion year history of life on earth by counting biblical 'begats'. It's the calculation's starting premise - that the bible is factually correct and complete (i.e., there are no missing generations) - that's the issue.

FL said: Dave says (Dave says a lot of things, but let's do this one for now):

And here’s the thing: there’s absolutely no reason to think that there is some barrier labelled “God”, anywhere in the entire business. By thinking that there is such a barrier, FL is with Paul of Tarsus back in the first century CE.

I think that's the first time Dave have ever given me a compliment. I really rather like hearing that I'm in agreement with the likes of Paul of Tarsus. FL

david.starling.macmillan said: We had absolutely no way of apprehending the possibility that myth-a-la-parable could be intentionally incorporated in a divinely inspired text. The Hebrew of Genesis 1 doesn't even look like a narrative; its ACTUAL "plain sense" is that of poetry. Genesis 2-11 (and some following) are myth appropriated as fable, and this in no way challenges their inspired status. This is what you have to get creationists to recognize.

Not really. Even Paul recognized that Genesis's purpose was an allegorical one...see Galatians 4.

eric said: You would know these folks much better than I would, given you were one. But it seems to me that YECism is based on two important points, not one. There's the 'inspired status' as you say. But also a concept of God that is plain-talking (for lack of a better phrase) about the creation of the world. So one of those things has to give; either it's not inspired, or the God who wrote it is not exactly the God many in your creationist audience believes in. And I would guess that changing their mind from a plain-talking to an allegory-slinging God is just as difficult and world-wrenching as changing their minds from God-written-through-proxy bible to human-written bible.

Not really. Even Paul recognized that Genesis's purpose was an allegorical one...see Galatians 4.

Well I had to look that up. Interesting. No doubt FL would say that "this is to be taken figuratively" applies only to the Abraham/Sarah/Hagar story referred to in verses 21-23 (of Gal), and not to any other part of Genesis. But it's still amusing, because I have no doubt FL does or did take the Abraham/Sarah/Hagar story literally.

I've long ago lost count of the number of times that I've pointed out that there is absolutely nothing in the Genesis texts that indicates that they are not to be read figuratively. I've lost count of the number of times that I've pointed out the markers of fictive narrative embedded in them - narrative arc, fourth-wall narration, personification, human scaling, situation, complication, conflict, crisis, resolution. I've also many times pointed out the mythic reality of them - the explanation for nature and human institutions they present; and the deep truths about humanity they explore by these fictive means.

FL's reaction has always been baffled incomprehension. These tales read to him like literal history. Therefore, they are literal history. Heretofore, it made me think that he simply hasn't had any contact with fiction, and doesn't understand the concept.

But this discussion of cultural imperative is causing me to revise those views. FL may very well understand what fiction is, at some level, but he has an installed cultural value that absolutely prohibits him from thinking of the Genesis stories as mythic-fictive. As with evolution, presenting evidence for the idea is nugatory - it's as if you suddenly broke into Urdu. It's meaningless to him. He simply can't process it as evidence, or as having any meaning at all.

Can't? Or won't? What descriptors can be used of a culturally-mandated denial of objective reality? Phhht says it's delusory, and therefore ipso facto evidence for mental incapacity or even mental illness. I don't think that follows, necessarily.

But what it is, is more difficult to describe exactly, and one thing seems certain: in FL's case, the condition is intractible.

Dave Luckett said: Phhht says it's delusory, and therefore ipso facto evidence for mental incapacity or even mental illness. I don't think that follows, necessarily.

phhht said:

Dave Luckett said: Phhht says it's delusory, and therefore ipso facto evidence for mental incapacity or even mental illness. I don't think that follows, necessarily.

I am open to alternative explanations. I don't remember having heard one yet.

Here's an alternative explanation, then: FL's belief about Genesis is a culturally-installed imperative, not the product of mental incapacity or illness.

By the way, I wrote a follow-up to the Ham/Nye debate; HuffPost put it up here today.

eric said:

phhht said:

Dave Luckett said: Phhht says it's delusory, and therefore ipso facto evidence for mental incapacity or even mental illness. I don't think that follows, necessarily.

I am open to alternative explanations. I don't remember having heard one yet.

Context-based reasoning and compartmentalization is not insane. It's normal and, in fact, necessary for not only human society but many animal societies too. Even lions recognize that a cub growling and biting them is not to be interpreted as an attack. Contextual based reasoning is an adaptation that has provided enormous benefit to the animals that use it, because it allows for play, practice, nonlethal sparring for mates, etc... So, the fact that FL carves out a space for biblical beliefs and doesn't treat them the same as other beliefs isn't insane, it's a mis-application of a positive adaptation. The mental equivalent of an allergic reaction to peanuts...he's got an allergic reaction to applying standard rules of evidence to his religious beliefs.

eric said:

phhht said:

Dave Luckett said: Phhht says it's delusory, and therefore ipso facto evidence for mental incapacity or even mental illness. I don't think that follows, necessarily.

I am open to alternative explanations. I don't remember having heard one yet.

So, the fact that FL carves out a space for biblical beliefs and doesn't treat them the same as other beliefs isn't insane, it's a mis-application of a positive adaptation. The mental equivalent of an allergic reaction to peanuts...he's got an allergic reaction to applying standard rules of evidence to his religious beliefs.

Dave Luckett said: I've long ago lost count of the number of times that I've pointed out that there is absolutely nothing in the Genesis texts that indicates that they are not to be read figuratively. I've lost count of the number of times that I've pointed out the markers of fictive narrative embedded in them - narrative arc, fourth-wall narration, personification, human scaling, situation, complication, conflict, crisis, resolution. I've also many times pointed out the mythic reality of them - the explanation for nature and human institutions they present; and the deep truths about humanity they explore by these fictive means. FL's reaction has always been baffled incomprehension. These tales read to him like literal history. Therefore, they are literal history. Heretofore, it made me think that he simply hasn't had any contact with fiction, and doesn't understand the concept. But this discussion of cultural imperative is causing me to revise those views. FL may very well understand what fiction is, at some level, but he has an installed cultural value that absolutely prohibits him from thinking of the Genesis stories as mythic-fictive. As with evolution, presenting evidence for the idea is nugatory - it's as if you suddenly broke into Urdu. It's meaningless to him. He simply can't process it as evidence, or as having any meaning at all.

david.starling.macmillan said: The only thing I can think to compare it to would be another pseudoscientific conspiracy theory, like chemtrails. If you grew up being "taught" to distinguish between contrails and chemtrails in the sky, if you always believed weather patterns around major cities were manipulated via idodine-seeding chemtrails, if you were taught in school about chemistry from a chemtrail-assuming viewpoint, if you believed you could tell which tanker trucks carried chemtrail chemicals, if you believed the government had admitted to developing chemtrail technology decades ago...add all this up, and everything you see is interpreted through this extremely-specific lens.

That’s why I see YEC as fundamentally damaging to Christianity (even as I myself am unsure how much affinity I should maintain to Christianity).

Once the blinders come off and you face up to reality, there is no going back.

daoudmbo said: First time I've heard of "chemtrails", looked them up on Wikipedia, smacks head and sighs heavily for humanity...

FL said:

That’s why I see YEC as fundamentally damaging to Christianity (even as I myself am unsure how much affinity I should maintain to Christianity).

A telling statement, David. You despise YEC Christianty, but now that you're not YEC, it's sounding like just a constant fog and shade for you. So where are you, exactly? By your own admisssion, you don't have an answer for that question. But I'd like you to offer a response anyway, if you're comfortable doing so. FL

Whatever do you mean by “fog and shade”?

I would not reveal any personal information to Floyd. If this conversation is appropriate at all, (and it really isn't on a science web site), it should take p;ace on the bathroom wall. Meanwhile, Floyd might want to consider that this is one of the consequences of lying to people and trying to get them to deny reality. Many of them will end up throwing Jesus out with the bathwater.

FL said:

Whatever do you mean by “fog and shade”?

Well, it's hard to see where you're going when there's a lot of fog and not much light.

You yourself said, "I myself am unsure how much affinity I should maintain to Christianity." I don't have to tell you how serious such a statement is. You've lost a lot more than just your YEC beliefs. We've got 100 percent Evolutionist Christians in this forum who are TOTALLY sure they are Christian (even Stanton never folds under pressure, never abandons his testimony under pressure, and I've pressured him hard.) But not you. You don't have that. So I'm just asking you to (if you choose) go beyond the "Ag-Christian" label and really say where you're at.

As far as I can tell, FL is enjoying absolute denial, even about what to me seems like an obvious conclusion from the evidence of dendrochronology: The Earth is at least 10.000 years old.

Kind of a personal question, don’t ya think?

I have a good idea of what Christianity ought to look like, if it’s true (which, to the likes of you, would probably seem wholly heretical). Progressive, affirming. No hell, no homophobia, no substitutionary atonement

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm

Floyd is Incompatible with reality.

FL said: Evolution is Incompatible with Christianity.

phhht said:

FL said: Evolution is Incompatible with Christianity.

david.starling.macmillan said:

daoudmbo said: First time I've heard of "chemtrails", looked them up on Wikipedia, smacks head and sighs heavily for humanity...

Try my coworker, who keeps citing GMO research and Isaac Asimov novels as evidence that the theory of evolution has prompted humanity to try and guide its evolution into a technobiological transhumanist state.

david.starling.macmillan said: (the problem of divine hiddenness less so [of a problem], because Christianity handles that one pretty well).

Free will vs. God's exposure, etc.

No problem for folks like FL & IBIG: they have FAITH that paradoxical bogosities like that actually make sense!

FL said:

I have a good idea of what Christianity ought to look like, if it’s true (which, to the likes of you, would probably seem wholly heretical). Progressive, affirming. No hell, no homophobia, no substitutionary atonement

Okay. I can't lie about it. No disrespect, no attack, but "Wholly heretical", yes that's right. The "no hell" and the "no homophobia" would normally raise red flags among biblical Christians, but that final one -- "no substitionary atonement" -- wipes out Christianity itself. Total elimination. The Panda Christians usually remain silent when asked about their beliefs, but not one of them will dare cross that final line. Oh no no. It even kills the Nicene Creed.

We believe...in one Lord Jesus Christ...who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures. http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm

So yeah, your current position is a killer, even for the Nicene. It does wipe out the Cross.

Weren't sacrifices usually burned? Just sayin'...

I posted a reply to FL at the BW.

FL said: The "no hell" and the "no homophobia" would normally raise red flags among biblical Christians, but that final one -- "no substitionary atonement" -- wipes out Christianity itself.

david.starling.macmillan said:

FL said:

I have a good idea of what Christianity ought to look like, if it’s true (which, to the likes of you, would probably seem wholly heretical). Progressive, affirming. No hell, no homophobia, no substitutionary atonement

Okay. I can't lie about it. No disrespect, no attack, but "Wholly heretical", yes that's right. The "no hell" and the "no homophobia" would normally raise red flags among biblical Christians, but that final one -- "no substitionary atonement" -- wipes out Christianity itself. Total elimination. The Panda Christians usually remain silent when asked about their beliefs, but not one of them will dare cross that final line. Oh no no. It even kills the Nicene Creed.

Oh, FL...if you don't even know the history of your own religion, how could you possibly expect to convince anyone else of it? The Nicene Creed was written in the 300s. Substitutionary Atonement (and its more familiar demented cousin, Penal Substitution) wasn't invented until the 17th century; their predecessor Satisfaction Theory was only invented in the 11th century. I'm terribly curious to know how you could possibly think that a theology lacking Substitutionary Atonement would necessarily be inconsistent with the Nicene Creed, a theology expounded ten lifetimes before the slightest hints of Substitutionary Atonement were even dreamed up.

We believe...in one Lord Jesus Christ...who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures. http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm

So yeah, your current position is a killer, even for the Nicene. It does wipe out the Cross.

Let's see, this bit says Jesus came in order to bring us salvation, and that he died on a cross because of us. Salvation? Yes. Atonement? Yes. Penal Substitionary Atonement? No. Not at all. Nothing in there about how the crucifixion appeased the bloodlust of an angry diety who was judicially proscribed from extending forgiveness to mankind without first seeing Jesus be tortured to death.

eric said:

david.starling.macmillan said: (the problem of divine hiddenness less so [of a problem], because Christianity handles that one pretty well).

Since that one is a pet peeve of mine, I'll discourse with you on it. The classic defense of hidden-ness is that God showing himself would remove our free will ability to have faith in God. Its unclear to me whether Christians think this would prevent people from being saved or not, but even if "confirmed knowledge" (vs. faith) still allows you to be saved, the mainstream Christian view seems to belief based on confirmed knowledge is inferior to belief based on faith. The problem is, God is not hidden in the bible. Not in the OT, and not in the NT. What are we to make of the fact that the disciples got exactly the sort of proof that theologians tell us no human can have and still have faith? Does that mean the disciples had no faith? Are they in hell because they got to personally talk to God (in the form of Jesus) and watch him do his Godly thing? OTOH if the disciples had faith after seeing God show up in front of them, walking around with holes in his body, then there's no reason in principle that *I* or *phhht* or you or anyone couldn't do the same. If doubting Thomas could go to heaven after poking his fingers in magically ressurrected Jesus, then I see no reason why doubting phhht couldn't go to heaven given the same opportunity. So why doesn't God just give doubting phhht that opportunity? Secondly, this 'confirmed knowledge' clearly doesn't force people to worship god or simply obey him out fear, because again, there are biblical cases of people not doing that. Judas, for one. Adam and Eve for another. And the Israelites are given loads of signs and they constantly turn away. If you go just a bit wider than the actual bible, the standard story of the fall of Satan is a HUGE problem for the argument from free will: here is a guy with not some knowledge of God, but pretty much the best possible knowledge of God - yet he walks away. So clearly, it's possible to have evidence yet free-will choose not to worship. So, I don't really buy that the free will argument is consistent with Christianity, unless you completely divorce Christianity from the stories of the bible. The bible supports the notion (IMO) that God showing up on your doorstep does not prevent people from free-will rejecting him, nor does it prevent people from free-will having faith, because the bible is choc-o-bloc full of stories of God showing up on peoples' doorstep and both things occurring in response.

Looking up substitionary atonement, I see its the doctrine I know under the name of the Origienst heresy--so much for FL's Nicene orthodoxy.

Helena Constantine said: Looking up substitionary atonement, I see its the doctrine I know under the name of the Origienst heresy--so much for FL's Nicene orthodoxy.

Yeah, jumping over to the Wall for continuation of this discussion.

Helena Constantine said: Looking up substitionary atonement, I see its the doctrine I know under the name of the Origienst heresy--so much for FL's Nicene orthodoxy.

SWT said:

Helena Constantine said: Looking up substitionary atonement, I see its the doctrine I know under the name of the Origienst heresy--so much for FL's Nicene orthodoxy.

I'd be interested in reading more of your thoughts about this -- I'm fascinated by the idea that my fundamentalist friends have managed to adopt as a central tenet a doctrine that was declared heretical by the early church.

Rolf said:

Helena Constantine said: Looking up substitionary atonement, I see its the doctrine I know under the name of the Origienst heresy--so much for FL's Nicene orthodoxy.

Origenes?

SWT said:

Helena Constantine said: Looking up substitionary atonement, I see its the doctrine I know under the name of the Origienst heresy--so much for FL's Nicene orthodoxy.

I'd be interested in reading more of your thoughts about this -- I'm fascinated by the idea that my fundamentalist friends have managed to adopt as a central tenet a doctrine that was declared heretical by the early church.

"...recoiled humanity and god."

Umm, reconciled?

The Ark, it wasn't a bad idea.

Marilyn said: The Ark, it wasn't a bad idea.

Marilyn said: The Ark, it wasn't a bad idea.

If the world was on the verge of disaster how would the structural engineers tackle the problem these days. A mission to Mars series, but thats not going to happen for a number of years. Hopefully a world disaster won't happen but there are lots of extreme environmental signs just now. Who would admit the urgency and who will proceed to make way. Living in a dome on a -flattened- Earth might not be too far from reality, or the same on another planet. I hope we don't waist time by building structures of fashion in the city that don't serve a more practical dwelling.

i think you are waisting your time right now. Better get a bigger belt!

Bill Nye was on Meet the Press yesterday; you may see it here. He did a more than creditable job "debating" a ninny who was so fatuous that the moderator had to stop her from reciting what seemed to be a litany of all the climate denialists with scientific credentials. Tonight, Mr. Nye appeared on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell; you may see that interview here. One interesting point: Pose a scientific question, get a political answer. As long as the political answer is uncomfortable and at variance with the scientific consensus, nothing will get done.

Matt Young said: One interesting point: Pose a scientific question, get a political answer. As long as the political answer is uncomfortable and at variance with the scientific consensus, nothing will get done.