Saturday, February 8, 2014

Ken Ham - Bill Nye Debate: Response to Bill Nye's Opening Statement

In my last post, I took apart Ken Ham's opening statement and 30-minute presentation and addressed the issues he brought up. Now I will do the same for Bill Nye. Just doing the opening statement filled a good post's length, so I will cut it here. Looking at Bill's claims in the 30 minute presentation, I'll likely have to break that up too for bite sizes pieces.

Bill Nye's 5 minute Opening Statement
   
 Bill did a great job at breaking the ice for his opening statement. He told a story about how and why he wears a bow tie. It was comical and related to the audience quickly. It was a good move by him. 

  He then quickly makes a claim how observational science and historical science are one and the same and he references the CSI and forensic crime scene shows where the audience often wants to try to outguess the scientists in the shows. CSI does not make a distinction between the two types of science. But that does not mean the distinction is not there. CSI has some issues in their science that are far from realistic. In CSI, you can scan a computer lickity split and no matter how poor the quality video feed is, you can zoom in and get the tiny print on a document that you only have a glimpse of. This is totally unrealistic and is passed off as science. Bill would have made a stronger case if he used the Mythbusters. That is the best illustration of historical science put to the test and working. Why? Because there are three things you must have for historical science to have any validity. 1). A starting point. You need to know the initial conditions. 2). A historical record of what happened. You need to know what was supposed to happen. And 3). And ending point. What was a result of these events? Everyone has the ending point, otherwise it would not be historical science. CSI units typically have a starting point. When someone dies, they know how the body usually acts before a tragic event would kill them. When a fire burns down a building, they know what the building looked liked before the fire started. From a starting point and an ending point, you can figure out through science a possible scenario of how you got from the starting to the ending points. But all this can do is demonstrate that such a scenario is possible. It does not prove that was the case. You can scientifically demonstrate Christopher Columbus could have sailed the Atlantic and discover the American continents. But you cannot prove he did it. You need a historical record that shows this is what he did. The Mythbusters do this correctly. They have a starting point, they have the account, and they have the ending point. They can accurately, scientifically test if the account is valid. 

   Bill then talks about how he found a fossil on his way to the museum and made a comment about how he was standing on millions of years of rock. He said nothing else about how he knows that the rock was millions of years old. There is observational science that even when used in a historical context that can show that rock layers can form over millions of years. More on that later. 

   Bill talks about the fossils found in the Grand Canyon, and claims that there is nothing that shows animals trying to swim up to the top and mixing between layers. That is true. There is nothing that shows this happening. Nor is it anything that WOULD happen by a creature that is fossilized. To be fossilized, you need a quick and sudden burial. You can't have gradual burial or a creature attempting to escape. It would not fossilize if that was the case. There are polystrata fossils with trees and this could not happen gradually. They show quick and sudden burial. Any of these creatures would already be dead so no attempt to swim out would be possible. What is also interesting is how the vast majority of fossils we find are totally mangled and scattered. This is something we should expect in a massive worldwide flood. Animals being smashed against each other and other objects before being buried quickly. This argument shows Bill did not take the time to research and study the various Flood models and how they would have happened. 

   Bill then appeals to the masses of proclaimed Christians who don't embrace the YEC view. It is true that YEC is not a majority view but this is just an appeal to majority fallacy. What people believe is not the determining factor of what is true. The majority has often been wrong. 

  Bill then talks about how it is science that keeps the US ahead in terms of technology etc. I do agree that science and technology has helped us keep ahead and be a world-power. However, believing Creation will do nothing to hinder that drive. In fact, by understanding the world and it being a creation, helps encourage scientific discovery. The founding fathers of the majority of science fields we know today were Biblical creationists and they were not just satisfied with "God created the universe" as Bill said. They sought out what God did when he made the universe.

  Bill closed his opening claiming that the Biblical account is not a viable account for origins. 

  Post is already getting quite long so I will cut it off here and continue with Bill's 30 minute case in my next post. That may take two posts to do because he had a lot of bad science and strawmen of the actual accounts Ken Ham believes. More to come.

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