Monday, February 10, 2014

Ken Ham - Bill Nye Debate: Response to Bill Nye 30 Min Case: Part 2

Okay, here is the rest of the analysis of Bill Nye's 30 Minute case. I left off halfway through it and had too much to keep going. So back at at.

Bill Nye: 30 Minute Case: 2nd Half

 One thing Bill Nye keeps saying and he say it again at the 1:14:00 mark is the repeated references to the scientists outside the Creation Museum in comparison to the scientists inside. He seems to be making a claim that AiG or YEC scientists in general cannot be considered real scientists because they do not agree with Bill Nye's origins assertions. Yet every scientist Ken Ham mentioned in his statement were not on the payroll of AiG. And I do believe this is why he did not include Russel Humphreys. Because Humphreys is known to be part of the Institute for Creation Research and part of the RATE Project that put radiometric dating, the darling of Evolution's time measuring, into severe question. But the idea that non-YEC scientists get it right and YEC scientists do not just because they place the Bible as the center of the source for their authority shows ignorance about what kind of research is really going on. YEC scientists usually can't get the funding that the mainstream scientists can do so that is why they can't put up the research totals that everyone else can do. But that does not make them any less scientists. And no scientist is free of bias, especially when a bunch of scientists who have the same bias get together (peer-review anyone?). 

  Bill talks about how real science can make accurate predictions. I full agree with this. He missed the part where Ken brought several scientific predictions that we can make from the Bible that science has fulfilled. 

  His attempts to prove this point that if there is supposed to be a common ancestor for all life, there should be gaps that need to be filled. He then says Tiktallik is a perfect example of the predictions that Evolution-based science should make. Here is the problem. Tiktaalik is NOT the missing link he hoped it would be. In fact a few days before the debate, a paper came out showing the "hip feature" of the Tiktallik actually had nothing to do with forming legs but everything to do with helping it swim. Tiktallik was 100% fish and 0% amphibian. 

  Bill then says that the Biblical model cannot make such predictions. Again, Ken gave six in his presentation just 30 minutes before Bill made this statement. I wonder if he was even paying attention to what Ken was saying. Bill did say before he came up that he learned something. Apparently not what he needed to learn with this comment. 

  His next evidence is with top-minnows who can reproduce sexually or asexually. He wonders why sexual reproduction is so necessary. His reasoning is because enemies including parasites, viruses, germs. So life evolved sexual reproduction to mix the genes and provide protection against these enemies. Problems. There is no time for anything to "evolve" defenses against these things. You are either already protected or you aren't. This is how antibiotic resistant bacteria actually have resistance. They are already immune before the antibiotic is introduced. I don't have time to explain that one here. So his argument actually works much better for the creation model than it does for his own model. Then he makes the wild statement that this is a "prediction" that evolution makes. It is not a prediction at all. This is reverse engineering. Big difference. 

  Bill then addresses a church sign that mentions the Big Bang, and Bill wonders why a pastor would do that unless said pastor didn't believe the Big Bang was real. The sermon was likely on the problems of the Big Bang and there are many. Bill did, however, a great job at bringing some up as "evidence" for the Big Bang. He then went to explain why the Big Bang is accepted. Here is the real reason why. Majority opinion amongst the scientific community. That's it. It's just the more popular model of the ones out there besides the Bible. But let's see what Bill thinks is why the Big Bang is accepted. 

  Edwin Hubble found out that stars were moving apart. This discovery brought up the idea that it was by a "Big Bang", because everything is moving apart. Yes, this is true, everything is moving apart. In fact they are moving apart faster and faster. And what is more, they are moving apart in precise concentric spheres in sections. We have a bunch of stars, a break in space, a bunch of galaxies, a break in space, a bunch of galaxies, etc. Totally against what the Big Bang predicts, which would require uniform spacing. But the Bible talks about the stretching of the heavens. It makes perfect sense with the stretching of the heavens, and with that the stretching of time with it. The expanding universe is actually a problem for Big Bang because of HOW it is expanding.

   Next Bill address Cosmic Background Radiation. He claims this is a prediction that Big Bang successfully makes, however he has a problem. Of this Cosmic Background Radiation only 1/4 of the radio waves generated actually remotely point towards a Big Bang center. Bill shoots himself in the foot by citing evidence as a "prediction" that is actually much more of a problem for his model. I actually wonder if this can actually be classified as a prediction because in what I heard, they found the background noise, then did some numbers and figured out what it was.

  His next thing is Radiometric dating, namely Rubidium-Strontium. He tells how he attended a lecture by the guy who discovered how stars created all the elements we see. Oh really? What he means is the guy who came up with an idea of how starts come up with elements. Not one of us have been close enough to a star to see any of this happen. We don't even see it happening in our own sun. We can't get close enough to see it.
  He describes how Rubidium's radioactive decay is useful for medicine. I agree. Rubidium is a great tool that allows us to see into the heart instead of doing open-heart surgery all the time. But Rb-Sr has a half-life of 48 billion years. I've been doing a lot of research on this personally and the numbers are not good. Based on the maximum amount of time we have observed Rb's decay, we have observed it for about 0.00000002% of the time. What is more is that to observe a decay of just one part per million, we'd need to observe it for nearly 68,000 years. These are totally unrealistic numbers. I really doubt Bill Nye knows how the half-life is determined. I honestly cannot find it on any of the major cites that have all the major info you need for radiometric dating.
   Bill says you cannot find an undergraduate program for radioactive medicine in Kentucky which has been proven false. He makes a jab at the entire state of Kentucky for being "uneducated" in this particular field. Why? Because the Creation Museum is located in Kentucky? Would he have said anything different if they were in Colorado or California? It is interesting that Bill continues to talk about the need for America to stay ahead so Creation needs to stay out. He fails to see that YEC is most predominate in the US and the US is ahead of the rest of the world. He fails to see that Evolution is very predominate in Europe and they have fallen by the wayside. 
  
  His final evidence is the Starlight Distance Problem. It is an issue for YEC. They understand this. It is also a problem for Big Bang. Bill does not understand this. He references the Parallax distance method but has a problem. It is only accurate for most astronomers up to 6000 light years away. Then the angle of measurement is too small to make an accurate reading. The absolute best case scenario if we can get within 10 decimal places of a degree with our telescopes is just one million light-years away. Does that invalidate YEC because the numbers are still bigger than 6000 years? No, because what it does is invalidate the Old Universe thinking.

  Bill considers himself to be a reasonable man. If he was being reasonable, would he not have done some homework and found that all these objections have well be answered? He makes the claim of being a reasonable man as though Ken is not. Really? It did not take long to figure out the problems of each one of Bill's evidences against a young earth, but it is really interesting in that some of his evidences are actually better supporting of the Creation model than working against it.
 
  The last thing he says is that the US Constitution calls for the advancement of science and the arts. Very good point and I fully agree. He calls upon the Kentucky voters and taxpayers that they need great US scientists who know their place in the cosmos and know natural law. He wants innovators who can keep the US at the top. I fully agree with this. His problem is that it is the Bible believers who put the US at the top. It is the Bible-believers who discovered the natural laws. It is the Bible believers who, while allowing for miracles and supernatural activity, support the natural laws. He fails to see that Evolution has done the greatest amount of damage to the US by undermining the authority of Scripture and actually degrading the understanding of science. He fails to see that Evolution has been a primary cause of the US' decline because of how it teaches students to confuse philosophy with actual science. And he fails to see is that we, as images, as reflections, of our Creator carry the creative gene to be able to about to do this stuff. Evolution has no explanation for intelligence or the ability to create. But Creation does. 

  That concluded Bill Nye's 30 minute case. Next post will cover the two 5 minute rebuttals for each and the two 5 minute counter-rebuttals for each. The one after that will address the Q/A section.





2 comments:

  1. What is the paper that came out a few days ago that says that Tiktaalik's hip feature was for swimming?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I do believe this is the original article being referenced.
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/01/08/1322559111.abstract

    ReplyDelete