It was a hot ticket on Feb 4 at the Creation Museum in Kentucky when Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” agreed to debate Ken Ham, founder of the museum and a Christian believer that Earth is no more than about 6,000 to 10,000 years old, several news organizations are reporting (Washington Post, NBC, ABC, to name a few).
Bad for debate: The Earth is round. Good for debate: The Earth is beautiful.
About 800 tickets sold out in minutes, and the museum plans to produce a DVD of the event. The Christian Science Monitor reported that about 3 million people tuned in to watch the debate.
The purpose of the debate was to address the age-old question of where we came from, how we got here. Although Mr Nye accurately and assuredly represented the self-correcting nature of science and its methods of discovery and experimentation, he didn’t heat things up too much against the dogmas of religious beliefs.
Of course, it’s widely known that convincing people their ideas are wrong by using logic and reason is a lost cause when those people never used logic or reason in the first place to convince themselves they were right. The Science Guy gave it his best try, though.
“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,” the Toronto Globe & Mail quoted Mr Nye as saying. “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.”
Mr Ham was unapologetic about the origins of his beliefs about science. “The Bible is the word of God,” he said. “I admit that’s where I start from.”
Some biologists criticized Mr Nye for even considering the invitation to debate a creationist. On his “Why Evolution Is True” blog, University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne said the debate was not an exercise in science or religious education but an exercise in rhetoric:
As I’ve mentioned, I don’t think this debate is a good idea for Nye. First, the issue is settled: evolution is a fact. Issues that are more congenial for real debate—that provoke true thought—are those involving opinion rather than pure fact, issues like politics, abortion, war, and so on. Second, giving creationists a place on the platform with evolutionists (or respected science educators like Nye) simply gives creationism credibility. It’s like putting a famous geologist up against a flat-earther to debate the question, “Is the earth really flat?” What’s the point?
Some conservatives criticized Mr Nye for completely different reasons. Glenn Beck, for instance, likened him to the Catholic Church, which silenced Galileo (YouTube). I think Mr Beck has his analogies working in reverse on that one.
I have always maintained a complete disbelief that people take what’s in the Bible as historical fact—not scientific fact but even historical fact. It’s a story, and it always was just that: a wonderful story about why we’re human. It does not address, as I read it—and I’ve read it through a few times in parallel with people I consider some of my best friends in the world—any of the questions debated Tuesday night in Kentucky.
Science, not religion, tells us how our molecules keep us functioning; religion, not science, tells us why we care about those molecules. Geez! We’re talking about apples and oranges here, folks, and all I can say is, I like apples, and I like oranges just as much.
Asking why we keep playing this game between creationists and evolutionary biologists, I shared in March a piece I had written for a religious education class whose director knew I was a biologist:
So let me be clear: Evolution, as religious fundamentalists use the word, is a fact, as religious fundamentalists use the word. Scientists call it a “theory” in the sense that everything in science is a testable, provable or disprovable concept. But evolution happens, because we have seen it with our own eyes.
Let me now clarify with an example: If I pick up a pencil and let go, it will fall to the floor unless something like a table stops it first. The pencil falling to the ground is a fact. I can see it with my own eyes. The answer to the question of “why” that pencil falls to the ground is a scientific theory. We call it the theory of gravity.
As a theory, gravity has a few flaws, but it is undeniable that the theory got us to the moon and back several times. Natural selection, the theory behind evolution, has a few holes as well. But it is undeniable that understanding it has helped us find cures for countless diseases and eased the suffering of many of God’s children on this planet, which God entrusted to our care.
