Bill Nye's 30 Minute Case Against the Biblical Model as a Viable Origins Position
The first thing Bill talked about was how Kentucky is upon thousands of rock layers and that clam fossils lived their entire lives and that there are thousands of layers with these clams. His claim was that there was not enough time for them to live their whole lives and have these layers form. He's got bigger problems than this. The fact is we have marine fossils in a non-marine environment. Kentucky is NOT near water. So how did the clams get there in the first place? Evolution states that the ocean once came up to Kentucky, as it does to Texas. Mt. Guadalupe outside El Paso, Texas is at 8700 feet, the highest point in Texas. It is filled with marine fossils. How did they get there? Interestingly enough, Evolution has to believe the entire planet was covered with water at one point. The question is just when and was it all at once. Bill did not demonstrate he researched how the fountains of the deep would burst forth, and bring tsunami wave after wave, carrying both marine fossils and sediments with them causing the rock layers. More on that later.
His next evidence is ice core dating. The claim is that when we pull a ice core that contains 680,000 ice layers that are supposed to be annual rings, representing summer/winter, summer/winter. This math leads to if the Flood was 4000 years ago, that would lead to 170 rings per year. There's a problem here. In WWII, several planes had to land on Greenland and they got lost. 50 years later, they were found, under 500 feet of ice, three miles away from where they landed, with about 137,000 "annual rings" between the planes and the surface. That's interesting. Now Greenland does get more precipitation than Antarctica, but two things are noted here. 1). The rings do NOT demonstrate annual trends, but warm/cold, warm/cold trends. 2). Glacial ice churns and rotates and moves. The planes did not just have snow fall on them, the glacier pushed them down. And if the glacier pushed them down, that means the ice around them was also pushed down. These two factors completely nullify any ice core dating because you cannot demonstrate any ages.
Next is dendrochronology. Tree-ring dating. The idea is that a tree produces a ring every year. Some trees date to 6800 years or even 9000 years. This is supposed to refute the Flood happening 4000 years ago. However, it has long been scientifically demonstrated that in years of heavy rains, trees will produce several rings in a year. A little research, Bill Nye would have at least heard this argument and would know not to use it.
Next he goes back to the Grand Canyon. He talks about how layers are rather uniform and shouldn't the flood have it all mixed up? Problem. There is no erosion in the layers. No indication of wind or water erosion in these layers. What does that tell us? They were not exposed for erosion to take place. It means that the layers were laid down very quickly in rapid succession. Not all at once as Bill seemed to think. But in rapid succession. If Bill had studied some Flood Models, he would get that we have addressed this issue already.
He claims that in studying deposits on the Mississippi River, it takes a long time for deposits to take place. This is a standard auditing case. In audits, you don't have time to examine every single receipt and transaction, so you take a sampling and use that to estimate how much you spend over a week/month/year etc. Here is the problem, when you have a major one-time expense that did not land on the audit's magnifying glass, your estimations are totally skewed. Likewise, if that major one-time expense is hit, still the rest of your results are skewed. Yes, we can examine the deposits of the Mississippi River to find the rates this is happening. Examine the differences when there is flooding to normal. A lot of water moving much faster will deposit much more than a little water moving slower over longer periods of time. Slow waters can't move or carve boulders. Fast and large amounts of waters can.
Still with the Grand Canyon. Bill makes the claim that the Colorado River carved the canyon and asks why aren't there other Grand Canyons in every continent. Well, let's look at a few. Fish River Canyon, Namibia; Blyde River Canyon, South Africa; Yarlong Tsengpo, Tibet; King's Canyon, Tibet, and while we are at it, the brand new Mt. St. Helens Canyon that is a 1/20 scale of the Grand Canyon and carved literally overnight. Again, fast moving water in large amounts will carve through solid rock. I now ask Bill, if the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon through solid rock, why hasn't every other river done the same thing through softer soil?
Still on the Grand Canyon, Bill addresses how lower level fossils are only found on the bottom and upper level fossils are only found on the top. Again, is the evidence of evolution or is this evidence of location and habitat? If the earth were to be flooded today, would you be found next to a lion? Not likely because you don't live by one. It is important to note that the Geologic Column is NEVER found anywhere in its entirety anywhere on the planet. Many layers in some places are missing. Why is this? It makes sense under Noah's Flood. It doesn't under deep time.
Bill then makes an extraordinary claim that if you found a single piece of evidence that would show Evolution to be false, they would laud you and embrace you. That is how science is supposed to work. What has actually happens is anything but. Any evidence found against evolution is typically ignored, silenced, or even modified. And if Bill did some basic research on his opponent, it would take him a very short time to find MANY examples of this counter-evidence.
Next, Bill shows a big collection of skulls that supposedly represent more than just apes and humans. And he asks where would he put modern humans amongst those skulls. He says we are on there, but says nothing else. All skulls and skeletons that have been attempted to be suggestive of a common ancestor between apes and humans have all proven to be 100% ape or 100% human. Nothing that is both.
Bill now switches topics to address the Flood itself. He wondered how Australia got Kangaroos and very unique creatures. He said we'd expect to find bones and fossils of kangaroos along the way. Well, you won't find fossils because you need quick and sudden burial to do that. Land Bridges? What routes were he looking for? Take the water levels about 300 feet down, and it doesn't take much to get across from island to island in Indonesia into Malaysia. And what if at the Tower of Babel, those that ended up in Australia took some kangaroos and koalas and platypuses? Just a theory but another explanation that is feasible and defeats Bill's claim of it being impossible. His expectation is not met because he has a false picture of what would realistic happen.
Then he addresses the number of species that would be on the ark. He gives an estimated 7000 kinds on the ark. He gives an estimated 16 million species alive today. That equated to about 11 new species every day. However, he has a major problem. His 16 million species includes all fish, plants, fungi, protists, and bacteria. He needs to count only the land-dwelling, air breathing vertebrates because those are who came on the ark and those who came off it. Bill's problem here is that he has the wrong equation because he has a strawman of the account he is addressing.
Next claim is large boulders on the ground in Washington State. His argument is that the Flood could not put them there. He's got a problem. Is that our explanation for how they got there? I've never heard it. What I've heard is that glaciers during the Ice Age got them there. The Ice Age would require heavy amounts of warm water more than we have today to create additional moisture in the atmosphere. Only Noah's Flood provided the conditions for generating a major Ice Age. Bill never addressed how they got there. He only address they are a problem for the Flood account. I don't know of any YEC who says the Flood put them there. He's making an argument against YEC that is not being made.
After that, Bill addresses the building of the Ark. He wonders how Noah and his family could build the largest wooden vessel ever build when in the 1900's their best shipbuilders could not do it. Several issues. Yes, the 1900's ship twisted, and buckled and eventually sank. But that ship was made with time and cost factors playing a role. Those ships were made with single planks on the hulls and NOT made out of gopher wood. He claims that Noah was unskilled. Noah was 500 years old when he started. His peers would all lived to the 900+ range. How much technology can you develop when you live 900+ years? Quite a bit. How do we know how skilled Noah was? We know God told him how big to build it, what wood to build it out of it, and how to seal it. Studies have been done on the ark that Bill is not aware of. Studies that show that Gopher wood is the best ship-building wood out there. Studies that show that the ratio of the 550 x 50 x 45 feet is the perfect, ideal ratio for all ship building that perfectly balances strength, stability, and comfort. Studies that show that the Ark's dimensions are the largest possible for a wooden vessel to float. Bill's ship that sank was made to sail. Lots of extra forces going on with a sailing ship that wouldn't be going on with the Ark.
His next issue is how could Noah and his family keep track of all the animals when at the National Zoo in Washington DC, they have a zoo with 400 different species over 163 acres. It can be seen from space it is so big. Lots of problems in that zoo, so Bill thinks that 8 people covering 14,000 animals could not manage it. But what are we dealing with on the Ark? Noah would not have taken full grown adult animals. He would have taken eggs or babies. Why? They take up less space. They eat less. They sleep more. They poop less. They live longer to reproduce longer when they get back off the Ark. John Woodmorrape has an excellent book called "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study". Bill Nye would do well to get this book and check it out BEFORE he continues to make this claims again.
Well, that is a good stopping point for this post. Half-way through Bill's 30 minute case. It will take another post to do the rest of it. Look for the 4th post of this series and 2nd part of Bill Nye's case shortly.
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