Thoughts on the Ham - Nye Creation Debate

This is going to be my first in a bunch of Creationist-Evolutionist topics that I have in mind. More to come in the future (at some point).

Back in February there was a much politicized debate between Bill Nye (the science guy) and Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis CEO). Previously I had not had the time to sit and watch the 2.5 hour debate but recently I had and I have marked down my comments below. Pretty much they follow the course of the "debate" but I have not marked out clearly for the most case where each comment is in reference to, but they should make sense while watching it.

• Clearly, this debate already seems weighted in Ken Ham's favor being at the Creationist Museum, his home turf.

The first part is where the debaters were each given 2 blocks of talks involving a 5 minuted introduction and a 30 minute presentation.

• Ken Ham - Makes some great points (i.e., it shouldn't be Creationists vs scientists but evolutionists vs Creationists; both evolutionists and Creationists have the same source data that they are trying to interpret) but then he wanders off of the science point when questions of why are brought up (because God deemed it so, "there is a book"). He makes many good points but also leaves out large chunks of available contradictory information in order to prove his points.
• Ken Ham - also states that one does not NEED to be an evolutionist in order to contribute to the technological impact of society and there are no technological advances that required that particular discoverer to be an evolutionist. To this point I tentatively agree. You don't really need to believe in evolution to create an iPhone. However, a counter point to this is that many scientists, primarily geologists, use what is known about the age of the Earth and past processes to find oil and gas. To find this oil and gas they need to understand how plates move and the age of rocks in comparison to one another. Find me a "young Earther" who who can find oil based on their interpretations of the Earth.
• Bill Nye - His initial statement/comments really seemed to come out of left field (I'm sitting here going "what the hell?") and I felt he didn't fit the tone of the "debate" (as defined by Ham's performance). I feel this may have set the audience up on the wrong foot. During much of his introduction he often tried to throw too much data at the audience, many times without an explanation. Within his 35 minutes, he tries to explain everything in science related to the age of the Earth, the Big Bang Theory, and evolution. In the process his point often just gets muddled.

The next section is a 5 minute rebuttal by each person, followed by a 5 minute re-rebuttal (?).

• Ken Ham - One of the biggest problems I have with Creationist arguments is that they never seem to understand how radiocarbon dating works. He outright states they tried to date 45 million year old wood with radiocarbon dating. Any geologist who knows anything about carbon-14 will tell you the results will be crap.
• Ken Ham - Oh wait, all animals were vegetarians before the flood???? Sharp teeth does not mean carnivore apparently. I would love to see a lion even try to eat plants with its teeth.
• Ken Ham - Ham had posted several videos of Creationists, who were also scientists, stating there were no conflicting evidence that the Earth was not 6,000 years old based on the science. The problem I see is that he did not have any geologists or paleontologists on contributing to this (even though I am well aware that they do exist). 
• Bill Nye - And to the previous point, Bill Nye himself is not a geologist or a paleontologist, or a biologist, getting up there and debating topics that are outside his realm of expertise. Not exactly the person I would want debating my side. You don't get an accountant to be your lawyer.
• Bill Nye - I feel Bill Nye also harped on some non-essential problems. Does it really matter if Noah was able to build a boat of that size, which was able to to withstand ocean currents. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't. I think it is a moot point for this debate and one that did not need to even be discussed.
• Overall - I noticed that many of their "rebuttals" were talks with prepared slides. It's not much of a debate rebuttal is you already have prepared what you are going to say beforehand. 

The last section is a Question and Answer part where questions were asked by the audience to either participant. The person receiving the question had 2 minutes to respond and the other person had a 1 minute rebuttal.

• Ken Ham - Ham's God seems awful vain. "he created the universe in order to show us how powerful he is."
• Bill Nye - Nye calls out Ham's reliance on the Bible as the final word. Doesn't leave much room for actual science if all your answers are just "the Bible said so".
• Ken Ham - Ham makes another good point - just because the majority believes something doesn't make it true (something, I myself have stated in the past). 
• Ken Ham - Ham is also harping on the fact that evolutionists cannot prove what we say about the rock record because no one was there to witness it, except (of course) in the case of Creationism where we have the one "being" who was there (God) writing down his own eye witness account. He disregards the fact that the Bible was not actually written by God but by people many years after the supposed Creation.
• Bill Nye - Nye also states that any scientist who disagrees with the common thought in science is embraced. I would have to disagree with this as can be shown by the theory of plate tectonics, which was initially proposed back before 1910 and didn't gain ground until the 1960's and 70's.
• Bill Nye - One of the key things about scientists (of which I wholeheartedly agree with) Nye states is the simple phrase "I don't know". 
• We don't know everything and we (usually) aren't afraid to state when we don't know. That is what drives science, to know the unknown.
• Ken Ham - Yes, there is a book with the answers. We get it Ham.
• Ken Ham - Now, here is the big one. Question to Ken Ham - "What, if anything, would ever change your mind?" 
• The response "the Bible is the word of God...no one is ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true."
• Ken Ham - Another true statement by Ham. He states that scientists did not date Earth rocks to get the 4.5 billion year old age of the Earth, which is 100% true, we dated meteorites as he states.
• My questions is how does that change anything? Even in his Creationist view the Earth and the other planets/astronomical bodies should be the same age.
• Ken Ham - Ham is very good at acknowledging much of the data that is describes current Earth conditions (i.e. the plates are moving, we can see this). However he then goes on to blame the flood for a catastrophic movement of the plates putting them in their position close to today.
• His biggest point is that he dismisses the geological law of uniformitarianism (that things happening today happened in the past). He feels that things aren't constant and that rates of stuff can change astronomically (i.e. plate movement, bed depositional rates, etc.).
• Bill Nye - Nye does a piss-poor job of explaining the second law of thermodynamics and how that relates to evolution.
• Ken Ham - One thing I noticed a couple of times is that it seems that Ham equates Christian with Creationist. They are one in the same to him. I get the feeling that any non-Creationists are not Christians in his view.

My Overall Thoughts.

• What was the purpose of this debate? What was the overall goal? 
• That I do not know. Did they want to persuade more people to their "side". Well I know that the funding for the Creationist museum's has swelled since the debate. Not sure of the benefit to "evolutionists". 
• Although, this wasn't much of a debate either. I felt it was a back and forth presentation battle with the debaters not really responding to what the other person said. Even in the last round, they were more responding to the questions and not their opponent. 
• Overall the respondents did a rather poor job of just answering the questions they are asked and not going off on preplanned diatribes.
• Nye did a poor job of relating to the "common person". I'm not saying they "common person" is dumb, but that they aren't scientists and they don't know all the little parts of many scientific explanations. Nye glossed over many points that (I feel) would have left many people lost or confused. I myself was getting figurative whiplash with how fast he was jumping around topics and adding in stories. 
• Ham presented himself as intelligent and knowledgeable about a great many subjects but I also got the feeling he did not know what he was talking about when referring to geological concepts. He also fell back on "the Bible" as his be all and end all of debates. 
• In essence my thoughts can be summed up with: Why even debate someone who feels that the word of law is written in a book? He stated himself there was no way his mind would be changed. I feel this debate could have been better served by getting a Creation geologist out there who know the Creation science and is able to back up his claims with something other than "because the book said so."

A "...allow me to destroy evolution in 3 minutes" response from theScience Community

There has been this video that I have seen circulating through Facebook recently entitled "Dear Mr Atheist allow me to destroy evolution in 3 minutes!". I post the video here, not to give this person credibility, but so that people can understand what I am about to comment upon:

Upon my first viewing of this video I had to turn it off in about 1.5 minutes due to the shear stupidity of the ranter. Normally my response to such things would be "What are you, a moron?" and leave it at that. However I have been called out by one of my Creationist friends (yes I have at least one of those) that I need to discuss the points brought up by Creationists as valid points (not citing this video, just in general). I know I am frequently not patient enough to do this, however I do have a friend who is, Abel G. Peña, who responded to this video of which a mutual friend had posted on Facebook. Abel is a published author and a philosopher of science who is far more eloquent than I ever could be, so I will repost his response, with his permission, to the video:

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This gentleman speaks with great passion concerning his faith in God, with which I sympathize. He also asks good questions that many average people have who are not familiar with how science works. It's only unfortunate that he takes those questions as evidence for the "stupidity" of scientists and science only because he hasn't taken the time to research some of these concepts in greater depth. As a result, he is quite confused. Here are some common but important misunderstandings by this gentleman:

1) Evolution is *not* the idea of one man: Charles Darwin is most often credited with the formulation of evolution, but the idea was already circulating in the scientific community at the time of his work. (For instance, Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the idea of evolution by means of natural selection independently from Darwin at around the same time, and the friar Gregor Mendel is famous for discovering the mechanism of genetic inheritance, which is integral to evolution.) More importantly, many, many biologists that have come after Darwin, Wallace and Mendel have corroborated evolution through very careful research over 150 years.

2) Evolution is *not* a “theory” in the popular sense: This is one that people often get confused about. It’s understandable because words have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used and spoken. If the weather is chilly, and I say, “It’s cool out here,” while rubbing my arms for warmth, the meaning of “cool” I am using is in reference to temperature. But if I go to a club with bumping music in Ibiza, and I am sweaty from grooving on the dance floor, and turn to my fellow partier and say, “It’s cool out here!” what I mean by “cool” is now something completely different: that this foreign environment we are visiting is exciting and interesting. But if my fellow partier is a native-Spanish speaker rather than a native-English speaker, he might think I was insane for suggesting the temperature is chilly in a stuffy club.

This variation of meaning applies to the word “theory,” as well. The way the word “theory” is used in everyday speech is that a theory is like a fancy idea—maybe it is interesting or seems to have far-reaching consequences if true, but it is by nature questionable, which is why we aren't calling it a “fact.” But that is not how the word is used in the scientific community. (In fact, the word in science very close to the way we use “theory” in everyday speech is called a “hypothesis.”) In the context of science, the word “theory” instead means an idea that is both well-tested and well-substantiated: that is, it has not proven false in those tests, and is thus considered very likely true, especially when tested over a period of 150 years. It’s very natural to ask, “Why don’t scientists just say it’s true, then?” And that’s because it’s technically very difficult for something to be proven 100% true, and why science gives values of truth in terms of probability. We can ask the question, “Do we actually exist?” and I think most scientists would say we very, very probably do exist, but it’s technically true that our existence is not 100% certain. In Buddhism, for example, the concept of “emptiness” denies the reality of the self—that “I” exist.

This concept of belief expressed in probabilities is also directly relevant in reference to atheism: when an atheist says, “I don’t believe in God,” that person is not necessarily saying, “I 100% don’t believe in God.” Instead, what they are often expressing is shorthand for actually meaning: “I believe that God is highly unlikely to exist,” and they feel comfortable stopping their inquiry at that point until some significant piece of evidence (probably based on physics) is presented.

3) Mr. Feuerstein does not understand the second law of thermodynamics: This law of physics, often referred to as the law of entropy, basically states that all things in a closed system will generally devolve toward chaos. But when you oversimplify the law, as this gentleman has done, it ends up sounding like, “Things always become more chaotic” (an idea which seems to contradict the theory of evolution because, likewise, evolution itself is often oversimplified as meaning, “Everything becomes more orderly”). However, an important component that is left out of the second law of thermodynamics in this oversimplification is that the law applies to a “closed system.” This means an environment in which nothing can get in and nothing can get out, sort of like a box. But the process of evolution through natural selection actually needs to interact with the rest of the world to work: that is, the kind of process described by the theory of evolution does *not* take place in a closed system, and thus, the second law of thermodynamics does not contradict evolution. (And, actually, the second law of thermodynamics doesn't say that all things move toward chaos in a closed system, but only that they *statistically* tend to. This is another common misunderstanding of the law. With enough time—such as infinity—the law also predicts that inevitably all things in that closed system will move toward order.)

 I am not sure which religion Mr. Feuerstein professes faith to but, based on his arguments, I am going to guess it is some form of Christianity. That said, not all forms of Christianity believe the same thing. For instance, Catholicism—generally considered a very conservative form of Christianity—has absolutely no quarrel with evolution. In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared (in an encyclical called Humani Generis) that the teachings of the Church and evolution were not in conflict, stating that the only thing the Church insisted on was belief that God was the one responsible for placing souls in human beings, whatever the specific process by which men and women came to exist. Then, almost 50 years later in the mid-1990s, Pope John Paul II went further and praised evolution, saying:

"Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."

This is significant because we see that it's not impossible to be both a Christian and to accept evolutionary evidence from the scientific community.

In this video, Mr. Feuerstein also seems to think that acceptance of the Big Bang theory is incompatible with religious belief or belief in God. But that also is not true. Here, again, John Paul II—generally considered a very conservative pope—actually loved the idea of the Big Bang, because he felt that it not only actually *proved* that God exists but that the theory tells us when the act of universal creation actually took place. He said:

"Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took place. We say: therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists!"

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On a side note I would like to point out his mistaking what the word "universe" is derived from. The word universe is from:

"Uni" - meaning one (got that part right)

"versus" - The past tense of vertere, which means to turn. (Dictionary.com, Online Etymology Dictionary)

(It drives me nuts when people don't research such simple things as the origin of words before spewing their nonsense.)

News of the Day - Creationists at GSA?

Here is an article from Earth Magazine where the writer went on a field trip and later listened to a talk from a well known Creationist as a GSA meeting. What? A Creationist at a GSA meeting? What the hell?

But I think he makes a valid point and I agree that, should the science warrent it, they should be allowed to say what they think, let the science stand on its own, and let other people judge. It is when the science is crap and they ignore facts that I have a problem.

Creationism creeps into mainstream geology

Finally the TRUTH about Dinosaurs comes to light

Well now we finally have it. The truth about dinosaurs. I was recently sent this article and as it starts out it isn't so bad. It actually makes sense and is correct:

Technically speaking, the term “dinosaur” should be used only to describe a particular group of reptiles that lived on land. In some books, however, you may find an author describing some creatures that flew in the air as “flying dinosaurs.” In other books you may find the author calling certain animals that lived in the water “aquatic dinosaurs.”

We could call these creatures that flew in the sky and swam in the oceans “dinosaur-like” animals, but it would be incorrect to say that they are dinosaurs.

Not bad. But then we get into the meat of the story:

Whatever their differences, however, there is one thing true dinosaurs do have in common with dinosaur-like animals — we can know for certain they all were created by God!

Oh no. I have a feeling this isn't going to end well. Here are some other clips from the article.

Inostrancevia was not a true dinosaur, but one of the extinct reptiles of the order Therapsid, falsely imagined by evolutionists to be the ancestors of mammals.

Yup. Thats what I thought.

[Owen] realized that dinosaur fossils were the remains of creatures buried long ago, most likely in the global flood of Noah’s time.

Well I can't imagine what else would have covered them. Not river flooding or anything. People along the Mississippi river or Brazil wish to comment on that?

This is the best part. How a fossil is made:

1. The Great Flood suddenly buried a dinosaur under tons of water and mud. Escape was impossible.

2. The dinosaur’s body was trapped by layers of sediment laid down by the Flood’s waters. Soft body parts decayed, but the bones remained.

3. God caused high mountains to rise up and deep valleys to sink down so that the Flood waters “fled” and “hastened away” into new, enlarged ocean basins (Psalm 104:5–9). The earth began to dry out, and minerals in the mud, sand, and water replaced the bones — and they became like rock.

So, what happened to plate tectonics? You know that force that moves the continents and pushes up mountains? I'm pretty sure we can actually measure the movements of the plates. How does that come into this.

Well I just felt like I should pass on the pearl of wisdom that was bestowed upon me. Thanks (?) Brendan H. for the article.

Worst name for a Geoscientist Group - Ever

So I was catching up on GSA Today's from a couple of months ago and I came across this article on the Inaugural Young Earth-Scientists Congress being held in Beijing. I was interested because I had never seen anything for young-earth creationists in GSA Today before so I took a read at it. I noticed a lot of topics similar to normal geology meetings and I wondered why would they would go through the effort of hosting this thing if not to address the young-earth thing. Then I got to the line "need to educate policymakers on earth-science issues that will significantly affect the younger generation."

Oh.

I assumed Young Earth-Scientists meant Young-Earth Scientists or just Young-Earth Creationists. I was wrong. It was aimed at the younger generation of earth-scientists. It matters a lot where that hyphen is. But if I read it the wrong way, how many other people would read it the same way I did?

In the News: Must you believe in what you study?

I found this very interesting article today stating that Rhode Island University gave a PhD in Geoscience to a Young Earth Creationist (YEC). A YEC is a person that goes against the mainstream scientific viewpoint and believes that everything the Bible says is correct and the Earth is about 6-10 thousand years old, not the 4.6 billion years old the scientific community has adopted.

Actually, not only was his thesis about geology, it was a paleontology degree studying mosasaurs. These animals lived over 65 million years ago during the Mesozoic (The Age of Dinosaurs) and could not have easily fit into the YEC viewpoint. It was stated very clearly by the PhD recipient that he did not believe the science that he was studying, nor the conclusions that he came to.

This leads to my question: can you get a degree in something you profoundly feel is wrong? Most scientists I know feel that Creationists are just wrong based on piles of evidence upon evidence that has been produced for several hundreds of years and, like the flat earth theory, this hopefully will fade into the past. But people are entitled to their own opinions and a society that forces what to believe is not the society Americans signed up for. So let them believe what they want to and I will believe what I want to and we will probably both argue and yell and try to convince the other is wrong but when is life not like that.

But I have a problem with this degree that was granted without any apparent problems to a person who essentially lied through his teeth to get it. What was his point in getting it anyway. He does not believe in what most geologists or paleontologists do, why place himself into that sort of scrutiny? Does he want to convert the masses? Maybe, but then why proclaim that everything we have done was right and then go "I was just lying about that". It makes him look like an idiot where his viewpoints seem to have even less clout than they would have had before.

Go to any SVP (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology) or GSA (Geological Society of America) meeting and present your actual findings and I can guarantee that they will pick apart any findings you have. But don't take that as a religious thing, it's a science thing. Trust me I know. I had 2 years of work taken apart in one finding. But you know what, science moves on and no matter what you think you know. It will turn out to be wrong in the long run.

So again, I pose the question, should a PhD be presented to someone who is making a mockery of the scientific community?

Some links for this story
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-is-science.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/02/20/should-creationists-be-able-to-get-phds-in-geoscience/
http://trueancestor.typepad.com/true_ancestor/2007/02/can_a_student_p.html

In the News - Intelligent Design is Dead

In a recent article on Yahoo! It states that many Clergy are now on the side of scientists in the view of evolution:

"As a legal strategy intelligent design is dead. It will be very difficult for any school district in the future to successfully survive a legal challenge," Scott said. "That doesn't mean intelligent design is dead as a very popular social movement. This is an idea that has got legs."

But pastors are speaking out against it. Warren Eschbach, a retired Church of the Brethren pastor and professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania helped sponsor a letter signed by more than 10,000 other clergy.

"We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests," they wrote.
Catholic experts have also joined the movement.

"The intelligent design movement belittles God. It makes God a designer, an engineer," said
Vatican' Observatory Director George Coyne, an astrophysicist who is also ordained. "The God of religious faith is a god of love. He did not design me."