Ken Ham Vs. Bill Nye, Round One
AiG swashbuckles for Scripture in Times Square last October.
Like science? Like non-Christianity? Like guys? Like Bill Nye the Science Guy? Like evolution? Like evolutionists sticking it to creationists?
Like science? Like Biblical Christianity? Like ham? Like Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis? Like creation? Like creationists sticking it to evolutionists?
Either way you’re blessed — or fortunate due to random chance events — because Ken Ham will debate Bill Nye on Feb. 4 at the Creation Museum near Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ham couldn’t wait to share the news at the new year’s dawn:
Well the big news for 2014 as we begin this new year is that in February, at the Creation Museum, I will be debating the well known Bill Nye The Science Guy! In the next day or so we will post more details including how you can buy tickets to this event. It’s quite rare these days for such a well known evolutionist to publicly debate a creationist–so we do expect a lot of media interest. For now, I just wanted to let you know about this–keep watch for details!
Since then Ham has revealed his respect for Nye and his hopes for the debate at WAVE3.com. No matter which way you lean, this will be fascinating and fun.
Yet some atheist activists disagree.1 They’d rather not even “dignify” creationist advocates with a response. I say bring it on. Bill Nye is a popular-level science/evolution speaker. Ken Ham is a popular-level science/creation speaker. Neither is heavily research- or philosophy-oriented and each has strong religious views about the other side’s dangers. More popular-level, high-profile engagement like this can only help the conversation about origins, what science truly is, what assumptions scientists make, and what limitations science has.
And if I might say, for Christians who are uncertain about AiG or its respect for opponents, or who hold the erroneous view that AiG teaches “real Christians are only creationists”2, this can only help unity in the Body of Christ — even as we disagree over how vital the origins issue is.
- Such as these responding to Bill Nye’s FB update. ↩
- AiG fans may say this, but the organization doesn’t. ↩
I grew up in a Young Earth Creationist home, learning about the scientific basis for Noah’s Flood and a literal 24-hour creation week in homeschool and later private Christian school curriculum. But I also grew up watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on PBS! So, this really sparks the fanboy in me!
Thanks for reporting it, as I might not have known about it otherwise.
I hope so. I no longer care about the evolution/creation debate enough to argue about it, although I feel that evolution is both scientifically and theologically unlikely.
Creationists deserve to be respected as real scientists. In turn, creationists need to respect evolution — particularly theistic evolution — as a legitimate viewpoint (as opposed to some kind of vast, anti-God conspiracy). If a Christian creationist and a non-Christian evolutionist can respect each other enough to debate as dignified opponents, then maybe Christians can respect each other despite radical disagreement about Genesis.
I once heard a speaker say (and I really wish I could remember his exact words) that Christians who believe in creationism/young earth etc should not doubt the Biblical integrity of Christians who don’t, and that Christians who believe in evolution/big bang etc should not doubt the scientific integrity of those who don’t. Only he said it better.
Agreed.
Rather than asking of Christians who accept evolution, “Why are you willing to compromise your beliefs?” or “Don’t you know you’re falling for the lie?”, etc., as some creationists seem to ask, I prefer to ask, “Do you know the difference between operational science and ‘origins science,’ e.g. scientists speaking out of turn about matters of history/philosophy/religion? Are you sure that you are not intimidated by a kind of new magisterium whose clerical carb is a white lab coat?”
Mind you, I think the discussion and responses will lead at least to a legitimazing of Biblical (“literal”) creation belief, if not acceptance of it. But this seems a much more respectful and individual-based approach to it, rather than implying that the other Christian has intended to violate Scripture to appease worldly wisdom.
this is true, but the problem is that YEC is attacking operations science, not scientism. They have to attack geology as geology for it to work, not simply point out that scientists overreach when they think natural selection is the only rational way to explain our origins.
I’m confused. How is saying, “Geology and geologists can work fine with different assumptions about the Earth’s history, rather than the default assumed evolution assumptions,” an attack on operations science?
The big bang doesn’t have anything to do with evolution. I know Mr. Ham likes to wrap anything old-earth with evolution, but the big bang requires a level of fine-tuning so precise to create the universe/life we see, that chance could never do it.
I wasn’t equating the two.
But lots of people believe it could.
Here’s my challenge, though. Let’s stick strictly with two Biblical ideas:
I also presume this concept: that there is no “need” for “old-earth” ages without evolution, and in fact the extra-Biblical conceptions of history have no place for “old-earth” ages without evolution happening within them.
Therefore:
The primary questions are these:
Bear in mind, I support the views and (overall) mission of AiG. Yet I have concerns, which I’ve expressed on SpecFaith and elsewhere, about some of its “cultural panic”-based rhetoric as opposed to joyful “swashbuckling” that accounts for criticism — as opposed to viewing even creation-advocates such as me, who didsagree with the panic approach, as merely more of the same “compromisers.”
While this might sound crazy, it’s based on hard physics and astronomy: As far as scientists know now, the universe is ~13 billion years old (NASA, Slate). It’s possible things went faster than calculated during the “Big Bang”/creation event, but it’s also possible the universe was in full swing when God began forming the Earth and everything on it.
There are many viewpoints on Genesis/creation in the Christian world (I have a list of 15!). Ken Ham’s construction of it’s young-earthism or evolution and nothing else has caused him some problems. I respectively suggest there would be better people to debate Nye. Maybe Stephen Meyer (author of Darwin’s Doubt, Signature in the Cell). If the debate is on evolution alone, maybe Ham will do okay.
As a totally pointless side-note, I’d like to point out that based on the picture from the AiG announcement, Ken Ham and Bill Nye are each one-half of Abraham Lincoln. Ken has Abe’s beard, and Bill has Abe’s face.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I can’t decide whether this is evidence in favor of evolution or in favor of creationism.
So clearly if their powers were combined they could together preserve the Union.
I myself have thrown Young Earth Creationism out after a some years of trying to reconcile it with science. You might put me in with the God-directed-evolution peeps, but I can’t take the 24 hr/7 day interpretation seriously. And then there’s that whole inerrancy discussion we were having at one point, and I do think that the Creation story is just another one of those tribal identity kind of stories, about how we relate to the world and the creatures around us and each other. (Tangent: We read an interesting translation of the Creation story in my world lit class. Apparently it was an attempt at direct translation from the earliest Hebrew sources, and I remember it seemed a lot like transcriptions of oral literature. No complicated sentence structure, IIRC, and lots of the word “and.” Heck, I could/probably should write an article about it.)
But I’m one of those who wonder why Bill is even bothering with a debate. I don’t see that it will accomplish anything besides each side declaring a victory and how naive and thickheaded their opponent was.
Well, it doesn’t have to be evolution or young-earthism. Many old earth creationists have formulated some solid models that support biblical accuracy and expose the flaws of evolution (i.e. The Genesis Question and A Matter of Days and subsequent books in that series). There’s a tendency of people to put one or another model on Genesis, but it cross genres: There’s some literary framework, Near East cosmography and agreement with science. We shouldn’t over-complicate it (it’s not a science text), but not over-simply it (if we really believe it’s divinely inspired).
(What the hey, I’ll bite.)
Define.
But we’ve already been round and round about whether a reader-centric reading of Scripture is fair to Biblical authors (even if they were not inspired) and consistent with how we ourselves would prefer our own words to be read and interpreted.
And I don’t understand why you’re so stuck on author intent. As I said before, I can believe that they wrote in earnest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I believe exactly, literally what they wrote.
I’m not trying to speak for Stephen or even really trying to enter the debate, but just a thought:
What about author competence? They wrote what they believed or transmitted what they received from other sources, and they weren’t barbaric idiots.
I don’t think author competence is really a problem for me. I know very well that it’s apples to oranges to compare our worldview and theirs, but that cuts both ways. The authors probably wrote to the best of their capacity, but their capacity didn’t include the modern concept of science and its strict distinction between verifiable evidence and conjecture. We can run tests on a rock and find out about its composition and relative age, but all they had was the reasonable assumption that it showed up at some point from somewhere.
And that still leaves the question as to who the authors were. We pretty much only have tradition to work from (at least as far as the OT goes). Biblical scholars have identified at least two different authors within the first few chapters of Genesis, based on word choice and suchlike, and there are supposed to be at least three authors of the book of Jeremiah. I think they’ve even parsed out which author wrote what chapters, though I couldn’t tell you myself.
I think Peter Enns (I don’t know if that’s a red-flag name to anyone here) has done some interviews with people who have gone through seminary and had crises of faith because of it and its in-depth attention to stuff like the three authors of Jeremiah. I’ll see if I can find a link to throw out. [Can’t find the article I was thinking of, but there are a lot of creation/evolution articles and some mentions about his book on the possibility of a historical Adam: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/12/a-revealing-parallel-between-intelligent-design-and-conservativeevangelical-views-of-the-bible/; http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/12/did-the-apostle-paul-or-god-believe-in-a-literal-adam/]
Oh, here we go. Here’s that Peter Enns article I was first talking about: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/10/if-they-only-knew-what-i-thought-the-sad-cycle-of-evangelical-biblical-scholarship/
Great article. Peter Enns sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, so I’ll trust him when he says that the Evangelical intellectual culture is built on false pragmatism centered on preserving the system. I’m aware of the “apologetics culture.”
But this only stresses the need for intellectual freedom and honesty. It does not lead to the conclusion that everything learned in graduate school is inerrant. It does not rule out the possibility that secular intellectual culture could have its own authoritarian systems and institutional hang-ups.
A secularist activist and a hardcore Fundamentalist have something in common. They both want you to close your mind and accept a fallible human system as infallible. The secularist’s insistence on absolute faith in the accuracy of human scholarship and the superiority of the culture that protects evolution from being questioned is the same as the Fundamentalist’s blind acceptance of the ability of a fallible human system to accurately interpret both the meaning and the significance of the Bible.
One last thought:
If you honestly believe in higher criticism and scholarship and all that, fine. But make sure you believe in the facts, not in the system. Make sure you’re always free to disagree. Make sure you’re not being influenced by cultural conformity. Because I can’t believe that there’s no systematic cultural conformity going on in secular intellectual circles.
Actually, my experience is that secularists are pretty comfortable with doubts and questions, especially about cultural conformity, but you have to back it up with evidence. Showing your work is almost as required as in that math class we all hated. They will poke at your reasoning. I guess I’m more comfortable with this since my lit professors pretty much did the same thing.
(Wow, it’s occurring to me just how often I name-drop being an English major and having lit classes and professors. But honestly, that’s what challenged my upbrought ways of thinking and got me lalloping around the fields of pluralism. I guess I’m pretty much another example for Peter Enns’s point.)
Good, then, but that depends on their ability to trust that their opponents are capable of doing real research and showing real evidence. Creationists point to plenty of scientific evidence; I’ve read their books:
Fossilized trees span multiple geological layers, which suggests that the layers weren’t slowly accumulated over millions of years.
The progression of fossils in the geological column reflects what would be expected if the majority of the geological column were layed down by the Genesis flood, based on mass, location, and hydrolics.
Biological evolution is difficult to reconcile with the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy/chaos increases rather than decreases without the intervention of an energy source outside of the system. Order is not observed to increase by natural processes.
Radiological dating methods are demonstrably unpredictable.
Those were off the top of my head, and didn’t do the arguments any justice. Evolutions have good arguments against all of those points, I’m sure. I’m not a scientist, and I don’t really care whether the creationists are right or wrong.1
Rejecting creationists without giving them the time of day does demonstrate that the system is prejudiced. It implies that there really is some kind of absolute knowledge that can’t dispute by reasonable people, which is kind of what the Fundamentalists claim about the Bible. It’s reasonable to believe in absolute knowledge, because we all have to have faith, etc. But it’s not fair to accept that the establishment has gotten everything right, because all people are equally fallible. If you are wary of the abuses of one establishment, you should be wary of the potential for abuse in other establishments.
None of my professors ever challenged my worldview that much, but then, I’m a media major, and we just learn Photoshop. 😉 It was reading C.S. Lewis that made me unable to be a confident, happy Evangelical. I wanted assurance, but I couldn’t accept cheap assurance, and Lewis showed me how to struggle honestly with spiritual problems. Before reading Lewis, there were questions that I wouldn’t allow myself to ask, deeply-rooted doubts that I feared to face.
1(Although I kind of want the Earth to be older than the eight-or-so thousand years that creationists give it, because that feels stifling and disappointing. That’s just sentimental, of course.)
[edit] Bummer, neither HTML lists nor superscripts are working in this comment system, even though we have the buttons for them in the WYSIWYG editor. 🙁
This is an excellent point, and it even skips right past the debate over whether one author wrote this or that, or whether Moses did 100 percent original “work” for the Bible’s first five books. Use a little imagination here, I say. Why should Moses have not had access to material written before his time, and then with God’s inspiration, collected/edited those manuscripts into parts of Genesis? Moreover, if Moses did edit/author these books (n the human sense), what was the purpose of the project? It would have been for the audience of Jews redeemed from slavery and brought into God’s covenant life. It would not have been solely for the purpose of making an Epic Poem — though Genesis’s early chapters are certainly poetic — but for establishing the “backstory” of God, the problem of sin, and the need for sacrifice and obedience as specifically described by the Old Testament Law.
But all this is a secondary issue. If one professes belief in Christianity, or even believes in the existence of a good God, the problem of doubting the Bible worsens still further. I posit this: God is both perfect and loving. Thus:
Do we really want to consider these regarding our loving perfect Creator?
We could have an epic debate about the Bible Thing, because I think I understand the importance of trusting the Bible while disagreeing with your reasoning. (The only point of your argument that I follow is number 2, that God can and has transmitted His revelation without flaw.) But maybe this aging and derailed conversation is not the place for it.
(Shrugs) I’m merely saying that 1) that’s a bit rude to human authors, much less the capital-A Author behind them, 2) that’s not how we like our own words to be read. Anyway, I don’t bring that up to beat the horse, still living though it may be, but to recall that this relates to the origins issue and whose words we think more trustworthy.
I’m excited to follow this debate, but I hope the middle ground doesn’t get lost in the taking of sides. I can’t throw all my weight in with theistic evolutionists because I haven’t studied enough, but I’ve had my eyes opened in the past few years to great Christians who believe in evolution (as opposed to previous education where I didn’t learn about that side).
The thing I really hope for is for is both sides to be respectful and open. If we could all do that with the origins issue, maybe we’d be making more headway. It shouldn’t be us vs. them. It should be the pursuit of truth.
I don’t know if I can express how much this comment cheers me up, but I feel like I have to poke you to see if you’re real and not some ghost of consciousness cooked up in the strange ethers of the Internet. I guess this reaction to optimism just proves how cynical I’m feeling today.
Thanks, I think. To clarify, I still believe in 6-day creation, but possibly an old universe as well, if those can go together. There are some holes in evolutionary theory that I haven’t seen plugged to my liking yet. One thing my Bible professor told me when we discussed this was, Don’t allow yourself to be spiritually distracted by an issue that’s not vital to faith. That’s given me a lot more peace.
Pretty much the same for me, except that I don’t feel any particular need for the creation week to have taken place during six 24-hour days. There are a lot of holes in evolution, and it doesn’t seem to fit very well with common sense. I think most people only believe it because it’s a cultural belief.
The old Gap Theory is attractive to me, although I don’t think I actually believe it. It’s a really cool theory, though. If God acted dynamically beyond our recorded history, it would make our history and our everyday reality feel more significant. That’s an important (though subjective) sense that Young Earth theory lacks.
In fact, I think Young Earth theory can border on humanism. Not only is it Earth-centric, but it’s human-history centric. It implies that we know almost everything that ever happened in all history. It implies that there really isn’t anything special or magnificent in the universe outside of Earth and its brief history.
I don’t see that at all. Just because something takes up a bigger percentage of time doesn’t mean it’s more important.
Also – we can see that there are loads of magnificent things outside earth, and presumably many more that we can’t see. The age of the universe doesn’t make them any less or more magnificent. Human history is still full of mysteries, or archaeologists would be out of a job!
But even if it does imply that ‘there really isn’t anything special or magnificent in the universe outside of Earth and its brief history’ – maybe those things are more important? Maybe the earth is the centre of the universe? Maybe human history is the only significant thing that has happened in the universe? I’m not saying this is the case. But if it is, it’s not because humans are inherently special (a human-centred universe) but because God made them so (a God-centred universe).
There’s something to the beauty and wonder of the creation process. Who’s to say God wouldn’t have enjoyed watching the galaxies unfold and nudging the genetic code now and again to help evolution along? It would have been a show. “Very good,” as He put it.
Bainespal, I agree and would even go so far as to say there are holes in the six twenty-four-hour-day creation theory. For example, in the Genesis account, nowhere are we told when God created water. Then there’s the the fact that the word translated “day” is used before God created the sun, by which we measure those twenty-four hours. Add in the statement from the New Testament that to God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. Plus, when precisely did time begin? Is it something God created or something that took place only after death entered the world, an invention of Humankind to track our mortality? If time didn’t exist, how can we specify twenty-four hour days or know when to start counting?
We do know from Scripture that God created and that He did so in six time periods. On the seventh, He rested. Is He still resting or did He cease creative activity for twenty-four hours and then take it up again?
I have theories about all these things and others that Scripture raise, but I don’t think it’s possible to answer authoritatively, with the weight of inspiration. God simply didn’t tell us everything. And scientific observation doesn’t reveal everything.
I’ll say, I lean toward God speaking all of creation into being–so we have a fully mature universe as we have a fully mature Adam. From “observation” after the fact, Adam must have looked like an adult so I’m not bothered by the idea that the universe might look old even though it isn’t. I’m also not troubled by the fact that God didn’t tell us how old it all is.
The troublesome thing, for me, is that there are people diving into the issue as a way to “prove” that creation came about on its own and was not God-generated. That’s something we do know isn’t true since God told us He created.
Becky
I was going to say something similar. Thats the problem with a debate over a discussion.
From Mike Duran: a bit of a challenge to some of you lot. 😛