While I don't support the Creationist Museum and I am not a creationist, I think this debate revealed a lot, and like Bill Nye said, I did learn something from Ham in his opening statement. It was only when the real debate part started that I got extremely agitated with him. He CONSTANTLY appealed to authority, deferring to all the creationist scientists he mentioned in the beginning as if because if someone can be both creationist and a scientist alone that makes the theory viable.
He also frustrated me by constantly falling back on the fact that we cannot see the past so we can't predict it. One of the questions which unfortunately did not get posed to Nye but I saw on a Buzzfeed gallery of creationist submitted questions regarded a mature universe. The question asked why is it impossible for the universe to be born mature; for Adam to be created as an adult as Ham argued or as it's been argued on DV, if a dream is created in a state of maturity why can't the universe? I think this is a very good question, but the answer is that even IF the universe was created in a state of maturity nothing about life becomes predictable. Like Bill Nye argued, we're looking for predictability so we study evidence left by the past in order to predict what happened then and therefore what direction the future is likely to take. Frankly, this very moment was created in a state of maturity, and there's no proof all our memories weren't generated for us just now. It's a great philosophical question, and the answer remains that evidence provides the best data to make decisions upon. Evidence shows an old universe and an old planet, even if God created all the evidence we should still base our decisions on what the evidence tells us.
And this becomes the foundation of the debate. Creationists call it science to try and find scientifically viable explanations for the bible. Ham admitted multiple times that the bible is his starting point and his goal is to confirm his bias through scientific means. Those who oppose creationist theory accept theory which can be predicted, and the whole point of science, from my mind, is not to find "truth" but predictability. In other words we want the best data possible to make decisions, just as Nye put it when he described the connection between understanding the world and the inventions that spring from that understanding. Ham refuted this by making up "historical science" and "observational science," which was his weird way of stating that the conclusions you draw from your observations are not necessarily true. No shit, but at least they're conclusions based on what we observed rather than confirmation bias.
The next foundation of the debate is my favorite part, when Bill got life's deeper mystery questions that science has not found an explanation for. The two he was given were "Why is there something instead of nothing?" and "How does consciousness come from matter?" and his answer was the same, "I don't know, that's a beautiful question and we love beautiful questions because they drive us to think and grow." And Ham's counter was also the same, "Bill, there's a book that has the answer to that question..." I found this drop of dialogue, each time it occurred, a brilliant show of the difference between evolutionary theory and creationism. Evolutionary theory developed by embracing the mystery, creationism developed in rebellion to mystery, seeking easy but unproven ideas. Ham received laughter from the audience each time he gave that counter, but with nearly half a million viewers at home it's easily revealed why this debate was so important and why Bill Nye was the perfect guy to participate in it.
This is really about the children, and so long as some asshole australian is teaching kids, from exhibits on vegetarian lions to exhibits and giant boats, explanations of the world based on the bible and then parading them as science, even inviting a debate on whether or not what he's doing is for the good of humanity or the country, of course someone must answer the call otherwise it only confirms Ham's claim hat science has been hijacked. And who better than a man who has spent his career helping children understand science and how it works. It doesn't matter that Ham would never change his view, it's not his view they're after. Ham held utter confidence he could tear Nye apart and prove Creationism as a viable scientific theory and he actually made a strong opening argument, you can tell exactly why he was so confident, but when the audience questions came up at the end it all back fired. I believe more future scientists were born from this debate than if it had not occurred whether or not it funded the Creationist Museum. I believe creationist parents, also confident in Ham's ability to prove their beliefs and unswayable in them, potentially invited their children to watch, and most children were probably bored but I bet Nye got through to many more young people than Ham. The minute Nye emphasized questioning everything and embracing the unknown and Ham, for the second time said "Don't question your reality, just trust in this random book," Nye won.
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