http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI
For anyone keen and with 2 and a half hours up their sleeve this the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham the other day. Leading up to it I and most other atheists were skeptical of it as Bill Nye is not a biologist and is not used to debating. On top of that the idea to give creationism a legitimate stage to debate is ridiculous and lends it credibility. Debating anyone with faith is also ridiculous as they're incapable of reason.
At first I thought it was going to be evolution and/or 'big bang' vs intelligent design and creationism (young earth). Instead it was Nye challenging whether Ham's theory held up to scrutiny. To my surprise Nye destroyed Ham. Nye consistently referred to facts and sources, while Ham trotted the expected circular logic crap. One of his common retorts were "you were not there so how can you know?" I was glad Nye didn't get sucked in as he could have just as easily said the same thing in reply.
When I was younger we had Optus Vision when it first came out I remember always watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on the Disney Channel. Haven't seen much of him since but glad to see he is still doing the rounds.
That was an interesting debate.
Ham is actually a smart bloke, but he bases everything he believes on something that cant be proved - that is an assumption. The most frustrating type of person to deal with.
I actually disagree with your comment about not getting sucked in about the "you were not there" lines, because the foundation of everything for Ham, is a book, and no one has any idea of who wrote the book and its legitimacy, and to base your whole fundamental beliefs on that is problematic. Ham was not there, so how can he be so sure that the bible is actually the word of god?
Ham often bought up assumption as an argument against scientific beliefs of the world, but his assumption is that the bible is actually the word of god, and therefore an accurate historical record. I would have liked to have that been posed to him, because most of his arguments are contradictory when you take this into account.
If you look through all the old cultures of the world, gods were used to explain the, to them, unexplainable. The Greeks and Romans, for instance had gods to explain what thunder was, what the sun was, etc. The real answer was beyond the comprehension of these people, so the simple, and comforting explanation was, a god.
In the question segment, Nye was asked a number of questions for which he, or science in general, does not have an answer. He happily said as much, and embraced the unknown .
Ham on the other hand, simply reverted back to god, and the bible, which was most probably written by an ignorant, by todays standard, people, to explain the unexplainable, as his explanation. Its simple, easy, and comforting.
This to me is the greatest difference, and why people like Ham are so dangerous, because they would rather simply say because god created it that way, rather that search for the difficult truth.
Nye's constant mentioning of using what you believe to be able to predict things is also a very important point, and one that Ham was never really ably to counter, not that he really tried.
Besides If God was so smart, and created everything, why did he not know that hares, which he created, do not chew cud?
