Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham, live debate, going on now

[Reincarnate]

It annoyed me that he mentioned stuff like prophecies in the Bible coming true or whatever / having predictive value, when you can pick out tons of predictions that the Bible flat-out got wrong. Of course, anything is flawless if you ignore the flaws.

[qqwref]

Every prediction will eventually come true if you're willing to read it sufficiently metaphorically And remember, if you don't think something's true or possible, you're probably just not smart enough to understand it. God's got it all figured out, and he's way smarter than you.


PS: I do agree Bill Nye isn't the best person to represent the anti-creationist side of a debate, but remember he's basically a pop-sci educator, not an atheist activist. I didn't expect him to have a deep understanding of all the misconceptions, arguments, and neologisms an extreme YEC would use. Many of their arguments are essentially just references to previous published creationist writings, which you can't even try to argue against without having looked into it beforehand. Their rules and axioms are just so different from those of the scientific community that you might as well be talking about the interpretation of a novel you haven't read.

From my perspective, most of the sentences coming out of Ken Ham's mouth had several dubious or demonstrably false assumptions behind them, and he was often making several different claims a minute (or even 90 at once, in one case where he lists a bunch of random, unrelated dating methods designed for different things and then claims they give inconsistent results, without statistics or numbers to back it up). It's no surprise that Bill couldn't, and didn't try to, properly respond to most of that - you'd need a whole science textbook (or some kind of rational wiki) to refute all of what Ken said, if you wanted to go to enough depth to potentially convince someone. At least the appeals to the scientific method, the joy of discovery, the value of science education, etc. might get someone to look more deeply into the philosophy of science and how it differs from creationist dogma.

[choof]

what the fuck is historical science

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by qqwref

PS: I do agree Bill Nye isn't the best person to represent the anti-creationist side of a debate, but remember he's basically a pop-sci educator, not an atheist activist. I didn't expect him to have a deep understanding of all the misconceptions, arguments, and neologisms an extreme YEC would use. Many of their arguments are essentially just references to previous published creationist writings, which you can't even try to argue against without having looked into it beforehand. Their rules and axioms are just so different from those of the scientific community that you might as well be talking about the interpretation of a novel you haven't read.

I don't think you give Bill Nye enough credit; he's not just a children's show host. This ain't his first rodeo.

You seem to suggest that an atheist activist would have been ideal, but honestly, I think a Christian scientist (not to be confused with Christian Scientist) would have best shown how evolution is science and that science doesn't conflict with religion.

Originally Posted by choof

what the fuck is historical science

It's the idea that we can't design an experiment to watch evolution happen, that we can only analyze what's happened in the past and call that science.

It's total horse pucky, but I believe that's what "historical science" means.

--Guido

[choof]

if that's really what historical science is then that's absolutely idiotic

[igotrhythm]

Originally Posted by eastsideman09

Pointless debate, at its core. I liked some of the audience questions though, because they intentionally tried to rustle the debaters jimmies.

Also, if I hear the term "Historical Science" again, I might have an aneurysm.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messa...ve-in-evolutio

I like the shit-eating grins on these people's faces. The questions themselves make me want to give a blowjob to a shotgun.

[ilikexd]

Originally Posted by igotrhythm

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messa...ve-in-evolutio

I like the shit-eating grins on these people's faces. The questions themselves make me want to give a blowjob to a shotgun.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH



DONE

[stargroup100]

Originally Posted by igotrhythm

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messa...ve-in-evolutio

I like the shit-eating grins on these people's faces. The questions themselves make me want to give a blowjob to a shotgun.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not

[MracY]

This isn't a debate. It is a display of a collection of the simplest cookie-cutter arguments.
It is a farce. It could almost be considered sensationalism by some.

If you want an actual good debate, you would need two scientist philosophers who actually understand both sides of the issue.
Otherwise the debate will end like a children's squabble, as it tends to.

edit: I'm not interested in discussion on this topic.

[qqwref]

Originally Posted by MracY

edit: I'm not interested in discussion on this topic.

Good thing you didn't post in this thread, then!

[kmay]

that tree is 6800 years old? where you there to watch it grow? no? well HISTORICAL SCIENCE SAYS WE CAN'T PROVE ITS AGE BUT THE BIBLE CAN PROVE IT.

[Crazyjayde]

This center video was suggested as related material:



I enjoyed it much more.

[Reincarnate]

Another interesting debate

[Cavernio]

Creationism is pretty irritating.

The opposite of 'not knowing what happened with certainty' isn't 'divine intervention'
Why would God give us a brain capable of imagining and learning everymore things about evolution if God didn't want us to use it?
The laws of physics could be called God's laws, how life exists and all the biology behind it could all be God who initiated it. But the very nature of all our knowledge is deterministic, one thing leads to another, everything affects everything else. Evolution just makes sense. There is still plenty of mystique that humanity will never know about the existence of our world, questions like why and did we come from nothing or was there always something...so many reasons I could see that someone would be rational, intelligent and still believe at least in the possibility of God.
If I were religious at this point in time I certainly wouldn't believe in creationism. But, if I did, I might as well not believe anything my eyes see or my ears hear either, as that's how much I'd have to doubt my own observations and understanding of the world around me in order to believe that creationism is real.

[korny]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Another interesting debate

I watched that the other week. Pretty interesting. I would like to see Dawkins or some other prominent scientist or evolutionary biologist debate with Dr. William Lane Craig.

[GuidoHunter]

Evolution is what the evidence suggests is the case. The overwhelming amount of evidence, at that.

Science has no "jurisdiction" over God, nor does it care to; it is concerned solely with the realm of the observable, testable, repeatable, and makes conclusions of varying degrees of certainty in response. As such, evolution has gotten the gold star of support from science.

Could God have created the world six thousand years ago with pre-buried fossils and other age-suggestive elements as initial conditions? I suppose; this is God we're talking about, after all. Hell, he could have created the universe yesterday and just implanted us with false memories and imagined thoughts for all we know. Is entertaining that possibility a worthwhile intellectual endeavor? Hardly. "I know nothing and anything is possible" is only a brick wall for the development of knowledge and, as Cavernio said, a gross insult to the minds God gave us.

Since it would be foolish to accept those premises and halt our intellectual development, it is fully reasonable to examine the world around us and draw conclusions based on what the evidence suggests.

Again, that may not be what *really* happened (though the argument is pretty damn convincing), but who cares? Your belief in the true origins of the world and your acceptance of (note: not belief in) evolution are two completely different issues. Evolution, as a science-based theory, merely shows what the evidence suggests. Since the evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution, you'd be foolish not to accept it even if you believe the Earth is actually 6000 years old.

--Guido

[stargroup100]

okay seriously why is this even a topic of discussion

fucking creationism

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by stargroup100

okay seriously why is this even a topic of discussion

fucking creationism

I don't know, but I liked Guido's point. I've always taken the stance that things that are untestable are irrelevant, but that way of wording it makes more sense. Although of course it would never make sense to someone that doesn't understand it in the first place.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by stargroup100

okay seriously why is this even a topic of discussion

fucking creationism

I think, at some level, it becomes a matter of:

1. Emotion. Some people have lived their whole lives believing in Creation, and so it's really troubling to them for science to come along and say, "Uh, here's what really happened." It's not exactly easy to outright drop such a huge component of your mental process/life/psyche/emotional worldview/whatever. It's much easier to just stick with shitty arguments that substantiate your view even if you have to be willfully ignorant to the rest. It's always easy to keep in mind that you can't be proven wrong 100% (the "beauty" of unfalsifiable paradigms), so that means there's a chance you're right -- and for some, that chance, no matter how small, is enough to resolve the cognitive dissonance.

2. Intellect/education. I seriously think some people just lack the means to understand the arguments, either because there's so much science they simply haven't learned yet, or they don't have the capacity to make sense of it.

[qqwref]

One problem I have with the whole creationism viewpoint is that some people take fundamentalism/anti-science to an extreme, where everything they are sufficiently confused by gets explained away with a "well God did it that way, and we just can't understand His reasoning" argument. Like why God apparently created light from all these stars and galaxies and pulsars, appropriately red-shifted, and sufficiently far along on their journey to make us think they are billions of years old when they're not. That's all well and good if you're just talking to a bunch of people who believe exactly what you do, but from the perspective of someone who doesn't agree, the same argument can be used by a believer in any all-powerful deity. There's really no difference to an atheist between "God did it that way and doesn't have to tell us why" and "Aten did it that way and doesn't have to tell us why", except that people tend not to believe in Aten anymore. And it hasn't explained anything, either.

In fact, a lot of arguments I've seen for a God fall into this same trap: even if there is a supreme being out there, how do you know it's the one you believe in? I've seen some Christians making argments for the existence of God that are so general they could even apply to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And even if all the 6000-year-old-earth stuff is true, it could actually be the Mormon or Jewish version of God that did it, or even an entirely different being, and you may be eternally punished for obeying the wrong set of rules. People of other religions believe in their holy book as much as Christians believe in theirs.