This is near the end of this series on the Ken Ham - Bill Nye Debate. The last segment: the Question/Answer period. The moderator, who by the way did an excellent job and was truly neutral throughout the whole debate, sorted out the questions from the audience into two piles, one for each speaker, starting with Ken. Each person got two minutes to answer and the other got one minute to rebut. There were 14 questions in total finalized by one question to both speakers. For the sake of keeping this short, I'll break up this section in half, so you don't have full length novel on one post. Here is what they said along with my responses to them.
Question 1: Ken, How does the Creation Model account for stars, planets, galaxies, ect. moving away from the center of the universe?
Ken: God created all the stars, planets, and galaxies, then in the Bible God stretched the heavens. What is happening fits with what is described in the Bible. The universe shows how big God is. Yet it is remarkable how small we are, and yet God still focuses on us, died for our sin, so that we might have eternal life with him.
Bill: The first question we all ask ourselves: Where did we come from? This is why we invented all our science fields. When "God created the stars also." that's satisfying. We can stop there. He wants to know more. Can Ken come up with something he can predict?
Me: As I have already explained earlier, Russel Humphrey's model is a pretty good one that explains this expansion. His model accounts for everything including the Pioneer Anomaly, the Hubble Constant (which is a problem for Big Bang, and why they had to come up with it), and the acceleration of the expansion. Ken did not mention this specifically, but it's a good one to have up your sleeves. Bill is partially right. We invented the science fields in part to answer how we got here, but not from a naturalistic position. We invented them to discover what God did. We don't stop with 'God created the stars'. We start there. Big difference. Can Ken come up with something Biblical models can predict? The planetary magnetic fields of Mercury, Mars, Uranus, and Neptune is a good place to start. Dr. Humphrey's did that. He was dead on. That doesn't include what Ken already mentioned that Bill seemed to not recognize happened.
Question 2: How did the atoms that created the Big Bang get there?
Bill: Great mystery. Hit the nail on the head. That question is what drives us. We used to think it would expand, contract, expand, contract, repeatedly. But it is expanding faster and faster. Why? Nobody knows why. That is why we have dark energy, dark matter, which are mathematical expressions for what we are seeing. What if someone from Kentucky were to figure out the answer?
Ken: Bill, actually, there is a book out there. It's the only thing that makes sense. Same with information and language. Matter cannot produce information or language. He quoted Hebrews 11:3.
Me: Bill basically said "I don't have a clue. Someone go out and find the answer." Ken gave the best answer of the whole debate here: "There is a book." Also, Bill references dark matter and dark energy. He doesn't know that no scientist in the world has any clue what it actually is, let alone observed it. Bill said: I don't know. Ken said: We know exactly how matter got here. Which one is more reasonable?
Question 3: What supports the Bible besides a literal interpretation of Scripture?
Ken: The majority of scientists have presented evidence of an old earth but the majority can often be wrong. What supports the Bible? He made some predictions. All life originates from their kinds. We have one race. The issue is historical events, not present science. You can't scientifically prove the age of the earth.
Bill: If anyone makes a study that forces us to re-look at natural law, the scientific community will embrace him. The majority only has sway up to a point. Evolution's mechanism is adding complexity over time. The sun adds energy to the earth to make life forms more complex.
Me: Good response from Ken. It is not a scientific issue. It is a worldview issue. He did present scientific evidence in his case that matches what the Bible predicts. Bill, you love how science is supposed to act, but it doesn't act that way. The Big Bang is explicitly held in today's scientific community by majority opinion, not anything else. Adding complexity over time? I'd love to see that one, Bill. I'd also love to see the sun adding energy to make more complex life forms. There is no such thing as a 100% efficient machine invented by man or in nature. 100% efficiency just breaks even. To add complexity, you need GREATER than 100% efficiency or you need intelligent intervention.
Question 4: How did consciousness come from matter?
Bill: Don't know. Dogs are now known to have consciousness. We know it is deep within us. Could life start "another way"? Our tax dollars are going to look for those answers. Could there be another sci-fi esque type of life-form? If we do not embrace "outside" science, we will fall economically.
Ken: Bill, there is a book out there that documents where it came from. Genesis 2. But when you die, do you no longer exist? Then what is the point of the thrill of discovery? Creation gives us reason to love the joy of discovery.
Me: A lot of great enthusiasm for "I don't know," from Bill. Yes, are tax dollars are try to seek the answers but as Ken clearly pointed out: there is a book out there that tells us exactly how consciousness came about. They are doing whatever they can to support their theory and find the unknowns when those unknowns were given to us 3500 years ago. But the scientists on the "outside" want nothing to do with any divine intervention because ultimately if we are created, we are held accountable to the Creator. And that is what these "outside" scientists will never consider. Ken nails it on the head about the joy of discovery without God in the picture. It is meaningless. Why learn anything at all about science if there is nothing after death and the entire universe is going to go back to nothingness? There won't be a legacy to keep on. Creation demonstrates the joy of discovery to be reasonable and ability to create again.
Question 5: What if anything would ever change your mind?
Ken: I'm a Christian. I can't prove it to you, but God has very clearly shown himself through Scripture and Christ. You can check out the prophecies and the statements in Genesis. I can't prove it to anyone else. But if you search, God will reveal himself to you. Nothing will convince him that the Bible is not the word of God. But models based on the Bible are not Gospel truth. Those can change. The historical account cannot change, but how we think it may have happened is subject to change.
Bill: We just need one piece of evidence that contradicts dating methods or supports the Biblical account. Just one would change him immediately. What can you prove? All Ken did was try to explain away problems but didn't prove anything. He needs predictability as per the scientific method.
Me: Once you are born-again, there is no turning back. If you have been eating dung your whole life and then get a super-nice fine fillet, and you can get that and more every meal, you will never go back to the dung. The truth is not open to change or to compromise. You cannot re-write history. What happened did happen no matter what anyone says. Bill, I can't believe you on your claim that just one piece of evidence would change your mind. Ken brought quite a few and you treated it like he never did. You do not know how the scientific community actually acts in practice. And you also forget a key fact about science. It does not deal with proofs. Logic, math, and religion do, but not science.
Question 6:Besides radiometric dating, what is the best evidence that supports the age of the earth?
Bill: Radiometric dating is pretty compelling. Deposition rates, referencing Charles Lyell, a geologist. It was a mystery on how there would be enough time to enable Evolution to take place. Radioactivity is why it all works, and is why the earth is still warm and why the earth was able to sustain it's eternal heat all this millennia. It is asking "If there is any other way?" Radiometic dating does exist. Neutrons do become protons. Universe is expanding. It's provable facts. Flood is not provable. Evidence for me as a reasonable man is that it could not happen. Ken never addressed the skulls.
Ken: No earth rock has ever been dated to 4.6 billion years. Only meteors. Over 90% of possible dating methods show the earth to be less than billions of years old. No scientific method can produce an absolute age. Can't prove young or old scientifically.
Me: Radiometric dating sounds compelling but it's actually not what he thinks, because he's not checking with realism of the process. Bill references Charles Lyell as a geologist. Lyell is as much of a geologist as Bill is: not at all. Lyell was a lawyer who was an amateur geologist. In his most famous world: "Principles of Modern Geology", Lyell falsified data about the erosion rate of Niagara Falls to demonstrate the earth was older than what the Biblical account described. With the heating of the earth, yes, radiometric decay does heat the earth, but is that the only factor? Bill says radiometric dating does exist because neutrons become protons. No, Bill, radioactive decay does happen, but you have no way of knowing how long it has been happening or how fast. The Flood has something that Evolution does not: an historical account of the event. He claims there is no evidence for it, but actually, he is just not looking for it and won't look at it when it is presented. Ken was good on mentioning that no method has ever actually dated the earth itself to be 4.6 billion years old and refreshing the audience that 90% of possible dating methods don't show billions of years. Some show less than 10,000 years. Science alone cannot date anything. Not without a known starting point and an established historic account.
Question 7: Can you account for Continental Drift?
Ken: This demonstrates the core issue between observational and historical science. Tectonic plates do indeed move. Ken would support catastrophic tectonic movement due to the Flood. What we see today is a remnant of that movement.
Bill: It must have been easier to explain a century ago before tectonic plates was discovered. Not every clock in a clock store will ever read the same time. Are they all wrong? We see sea floor spreading and the earth's magnetic field has reversed and they leave signature marks as the plates drift apart. Mt. St. Helens is due to a subduction zone.
Me: Ken is right. We see movement today and how they move today. But there is no historical documentation of how it moved before. Noah's Flood, with the fountains of the deep bursting forth, gives us an idea that massive tectonic movement was going on. No geologist in the secular world to my knowledge can explain how the tectonic boundaries got there. They know full well how they work and interact, but why isn't the crust one solid piece of rock? Noah's Flood gives a reason for that. And Bill really doesn't have a clue about how to address this issue. Will ever clock ever read the same time? Address calibration first. How are clocks calibrated? How are the dating methods calibrated? Bigger question. ARE the dating methods calibrated with historical events? The answer is no. They are calibrated with each other. If you have a room full of clocks that roughly agree but are all calibrated on a wrong clock, yes, they are all wrong. Bill would do well to study Mt. St. Helens a bit more. It gives a mountain worth (pun intended) of evidence that supports the Flood account.
Okay, this is getting pretty long and here is the half-way point of the Q/A session. I'll cut it here and continue with my next post. And that will wrap up the Ken-Ham, Bill Nye Debate Analysis and response.
No comments:
Post a Comment