Bill Nye VS Ken Ham Debate On Earth Origins.

[Tom Bombadildo]

For those who don't know, last night Bill Nye and Ken Ham were involved in a debate on the origins of the origins of the Earth, and to be more specific, creationism vs evolution. DO NOTE I DO NOT WANT THIS THREAD TO BECOME A RELIGIOUS DEBATE THREAD, THIS IS NOT WHAT THIS THREAD IS ABOUT. IF YOU CAME HERE TO POST ANYTHING REGARDING RELIGION PLEASE LEAVE NOW. THIS IS PURELY A DISCUSSION OF THE DEBATE AND THAT'S ALL. ANY RELIGIOUS BASHING WILL BE REPORTED AND REMOVED.

Now that that's out of the way...here's a link to the video for the debate. It is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, so this may be a long watch.



I'm curious as to what others think about the debate, I myself am currently only an hour in but I find both Bill and Ken's arguments to be well thought out, unlike other creationist/evolutionist "arguments".

Thoughts?

 

[pyromaniac123]

>Thread about debate which is about creationism vs evolution
>Expects thread not to turn into religious debate

ok then

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

>Thread about debate which is about creationism vs evolution
>Expects thread not to turn into religious debate

ok then

This is a discussion about the debate, not whether one religion is better than another. It's certainly reasonable to ask for people not to be dumb-cunts...but knowing GBATemp...

 

[Haloman800]

Regardless of the outcome/debate itself, Ken Ham is a better public speaker/debater. I think they both made some good points (Just finished watching it).

edit: Tom Bombadildo I like your Knights Templar avatar/sig

 

[xcrimsonstormx]

I am personally a creationist believer, but in regards to Ken Ham being a better speaker I disagree. Personally Mr. Ne seemed to connect with the crowd a little easier mainly because he has been on national television multiple times. As for Mr. Ham he is the founder of a museum not a public speaker. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Danny350]

Evolution uses science as a backbone, Creationism uses the Bible as a backbone. Doesn't seem probable to show people all the evidence that evolution has whenever they cast it away as nonsense because it doesn't match the Bible. If the main argument you have is "It doesn't say that in the Bible!" why waste your time on people not willing to listen? Evolution is understood to the point that we(people with a scientific understanding) know it's true, we may not have all the answers, but we got a pretty good idea of how these things work.

Saying Humans were around with Dinosaurs is total nonsense, unless you have real evidence of Humans existing in that time frame of the earth you're going to look foolish. We have nothing to suggest such a unrealistic idea. If we find a 65 million year old Human fossil, or even Human tools we could consider the idea, but we have never found anything like that.

If you want to think the Earth is only a few thousand years old, don't expect scientist to agree with such a unrealistic idea. You don't mix Science with Religion, IT WILL NOT WORK.

If you have "Faith" and accept all the young earth ideas, Nobody can stop you, please just don't expect the people with real evidence to respect people believing things without any good reason. Keep it out of the classroom and keep it in Church.

Whenever the "Creation Scientist" start providing real proof(aka not from the Bible) and start studying real science, maybe they will come up with 1 argument that makes sense.

Evolution is a major part of our understanding of biology, and medicine. It works, and it makes sense.

Science has no hard proof of how Abiogenesis happens, so if you want to think a God created life, that part of science is still unknown. Go for that, not the parts like Evolution that we understand quite well.

I have no problem with people having a religion, or "personal relationship with God" just don't expect people without these convictions to throw away all of the hard work of discovering and understanding evolution because "It's not in the Bible..."

 

[Gahars]

I haven't had the chance to watch it yet, but I hope Bill Nye began every argument with, "Consider the following."

 

[Foxi4]

I'm afraid I'm with Nye on this one, despite being a Christian myself. I can't really "accept" that the Earth could possibly be 6000 years old and gone through a world-wide flood when all the tangible evidence points to the contrary. Biblical stories are just that - stories. There may be some truth in them, most is probably made up in the process of thousands of years of oral and written tradition and editing, but that doesn't really matter - they're not meant to be taken as historical accounts anyways. They're supposed to build a system of values, they're moralistic, they can be interpreted in a variety of ways and that's a good thing. They're a basis of belief, not a biology or history coursebook, and I really fail to see why people would take them as such.

 

[Oswarlan]

I just couldn't take anything that Ham was saying as even remotely believe-able. The entire time he was basing his arguments off of the bible, instead of science that we can verify and back up. Even with Ham supposedly being a better speaker, I don't see it at all. It may be my bias towards science, but I enjoyed Nye's side of the debate far more. It totally has nothing to do with growing up with Bill Nye the Science Guy. Nothing at all.


Edit:

Spoiler

 

[Thanatos Telos]

I'm afraid I'm with Nye on this one, despite being a Christian myself. I can't really "accept" that the Earth could possibly be 6000 years old and gone through a world-wide flood when all the tangible evidence points to the contrary. Biblical stories are just that - stories. There may be some truth in them, most is probably made up in the process of thousands of years of oral and written tradition and editing, but that doesn't really matter - they're not meant to be taken as historical accounts anyways. They're supposed to build a system of values, they're moralistic, they can be interpreted in a variety of ways and that's a good thing. They're a basis of belief, not a biology or history coursebook, and I really fail to see why people would take them as such.

The way I see it (as a follower of another Abrahamic religion), it's 6000 years to God, but WAY more to everyone else. (Time scale can be different for different organisms)

 

[Foxi4]

The way I see it (as a follower of another Abrahamic religion), it's 6000 years to God, but WAY more to everyone else. (Time scale can be different for different organisms)

That's one way of looking at it. I personally consider God to be timeless - why would he/she/it be bound by the laws he/she/it created?

 

[Thanatos Telos]

That's one way of looking at it. I personally consider God to be timeless - why would he/she/it be bound by the laws he/she/it created?

That also works well.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Finished the debate a couple hours ago, I have to say Ken Ham wasn't very convincing at all. As Foxi above said, he was basing all of his "facts" and "evidence" on biblical stories, using the "You weren't there, therefore you don't know. But the writers of the bible were there, therefore they know and that's a fact" argument the entire way through...

 

[CompassNorth]

edit: Tom Bombadildo I like your Knights Templar avatar/sig

Have you never played dark souls?


Anywho thanks posting this, will check this out when I can watch videos

 

[Foxi4]

Finished the debate a couple hours ago, I have to say Ken Ham wasn't very convincing at all. As Foxi above said, he was basing all of his "facts" and "evidence" on biblical stories, using the "You weren't there, therefore you don't know. But the writers of the bible were there, therefore they know and that's a fact" argument the entire way through...

The fun part being that except for the New Testament, the writers of the bible weren't there for the most part, at least if the accounts of, say, Genesis are supposed to be taken literally. If there was only Adam and Eve, only Adam and Eve "knew what happened". It's impressive what kind of stories you can create over centuries of "bush telegraph" and gossip, intermingling various mythologies in the process. Of course I won't dispute the existence of "the first humans" - to procreate, there must've been a first couple... but the rest of the story is a matter of symbolism more than anything else.

 

[Vengenceonu]

I skimmed through the debate and read reviews of it and i think Nye won.

Ham adamantly stated nothing was going to change his mind while Nye said only solid evidence would change his mind. The purpose of a debate is to observe 2 or more things from different angles and then explain why you are right while ALSO being open to another's opinion. If your not even going to look at something from a different POV then you've already lost.


Sidenote: I love Nye's combacks.

Ham: Fish didn't have disease until adam and eve sinned in the garden of Eden.
Nye: Are fish sinners?

Ham: Animals didnt kill until after Adam and Eve. Thry were all vegetarians.
Nye: I dont know much about lions but i don't think their sharp teeth were made for chewing broccoli.

 

[Saturosias]

Regardless of the outcome/debate itself, Ken Ham is a better public speaker/debater.

Better debater? He dodged about half of Nye's points with "if I counter that it'll take me hours" and he literally ignored a question asked directly to him: "What evidence do you have to support Creationism besides the Bible?" Nye took every single one of his points head on. Ham does not represent Christians, he represents a small minority of them that take an American English translation of the Bible literally when it's of use to them and poetically when it contradicts concrete observations. Nye's approach was extremely tactical, not targeting Christians or the Bible but Ken Ham's overwhelmingly under-supported, contradictory 'arguments' based off of literal English words in the Bible.

I personally found Ham's entire argument to be stupid, trying to turn it into a dictionary contest. He keeps using the argument "you weren't there, historical science is a fallacy" and yet, the Bible was written by various authors of whom Ham has never spoken to, is of events and "miracles" that are [not one of them] concretely verifiable like many other events in recorded history, and is about the past.

Nye's point of this debate was not to persuade fundies/Creationists away from their viewpoint, because they simply won't be -- he was trying to recruit (however small or large in number) the younger generation with more knowledge surrounding them in this day and age into the field of science, to innovate.



"Hypothetically, if we have concrete proof the earth was older than 4,000 years old, would you believe it?"
HAM: "You can never prove the age of the earth."

He said a hypothetical question was impossible. Wow, what a good debater right there.

 

[xcrimsonstormx]

"Hypothetically, if we have concrete proof the earth was older than 4,000 years old, would you believe it?"
HAM: "You can never prove the age of the earth."

He said a hypothetical question was impossible. Wow, what a good debater right there.

In a sense though he is right. We really never can tell how old the Earth is without a time machine.

 

[hhs]

The problem with the debate is that the entirety of Ham's debate was addressed way back in the 1590s with Cartesian skepticism. We can trust methodological natural data in the present to tell us about the past. If we buy into Descartes evil demon of doubting sensory data entirely then we can draw no conclusions of truths or universals of any kind. Without generalization we cannot fine tune predictions.

Without predictions and generalizations nothing is falsifiable and we can't learn anything or make anything.

 

[Saturosias]

In a sense though he is right. We really never can tell how old the Earth is without a time machine.

How does any of that relate to him refuting a hypothetical question itself? They asked if he'd believe it IF they had concrete proof, and he just says they won't have any. It's just another question dodge.

"Do you take the entire Bible text literally?"
HAM: Let me dodge that question by spending the next minute defining the term 'literally' in an abstract and incorrect way.