Why I'm Debating the 'Science Guy' About Creationism

Looks like it will be streamed live ...

Pretty sure people are familiar with Bill Nye (at least in the states), but Ken Ham is the CEO of Answers in Genesis.

From the CNN article ...

I don't get the whole censorship claim, I wonder how people can say this with a straight face. I am pretty sure problems with evolution can be brought up - probably just not what the creationist would call "problems."

Though it has been a very long time since I was in a high school or middle school science class, so ...

Thanks for the reminder.

AiG are somewhat careful about how they present creationism in US classrooms, but the same can't be said from our own lawmakers: S Dakota Republicans recently drew up a bill titled "Prohibit schools from preventing the instruction of intelligent design." Difficult to see how it could pass, but just the fact that it was presented and supported (entirely GOP, if that's a surprise) is sad and troubling.

Pretty tired of these by now. Not sure what can be accomplished here. Basically 100% of the evolution denying lobby is motivated by religious reasons, so whether or not evolution is an actual fact is secondary. The media is already framing this as "science versus religion" which will further polarize people.

Yep. I totally agree. The framing of science v. religion is so counter productive. You end up with people just getting their backs up and not willing to be open minded and consider the arguments/evidence before them.

looking forward to the inevitable Nye romp.

Good thread nek,

Although I think most of the American public wont be watching this debate on CNN.com nor will they be watching the post debate stuff on Piers Morgan tonight. By numbers, plenty more folks in the USA watch Big Brother, American Idol, Modern Family, college basketball as opposed to a debate special on evolution

Not as confident as you are. Insofar as I know, Nye has very little to no formal debate experience, so he may end up performing a lot worse than one might expect otherwise. Hopefully not though.

in

Nye has experience making science accessible for the lay audience, but in general the science guys in these debates don't fare well. They think the debate is about science and logic, while the other guy knows it's all about pithy sayings.

The audience sits and listens to one guy drone on for ten minutes about fossils with latin names, then the other guy says, "Do you think life went from goo to you, via the zoo?" and the crowd goes wild.

Ham will make his big observational science vs historical science argument (aka "you weren't there") and Nye's jaw will hit the floor.

Is this gonna be Dawkins v. Wright Rd 2?

I would like to hear more about entropy. I don't think I've ever heard that come up in a creationist debate

I normally think these picture arguments are really silly and only a way to look clever without doing anything clever.

This one, however, was really good. I actually think it summarizes the entirety of Creationist arguments that I have yet to see, and it makes you realize how hypocritical this movement really is: If the honest goal was to combat bad science, why not go after (for example) Creationists who misuse and misrepresent something as basic and important as thermodynamics?

It's common. They say entropy speaks of degradation into chaos, and then proceed to argue that evolution runs contrary to this. Thus evolution can't be scientific because it is contrary to physics. It's basically just a rehash of their thermodynamics argument.

Typical creationist tack. Misrepresent. Present misrepresentation to people who don't understand. Profit.

oh, that's dumber than I was imagining. I guess I'm not sure why I expected something better.

Your best bet to win is going down the B column, though the second row from the top has possibilities.

Speaking of the second law... did anyone read this? Commentary/explanation here.

My knowledge is physics is limited to an undergrad course and pop-science, but I can't really see that this is "new"? We know thermodynamics in open systems differ from thermodynamics in closed systems, this is for example why entropy isn't necessarily increased in specific phenomena and you can for example see gas dissolve into water (something creationists using the "entropy argument", incidentally, are implicitly claiming is impossible).

So in essence all I'm seeing is a principle stating that "physical properties will dictate how evolution works, and given enough details our models might predict how for select instances". It is fascinating if this can be worked out in more detail (as using physics on very complex phenomena such as life is obviously difficult), but I don't understand why that explaining article treats it as a second coming...? Especially if it just an unproven model at this point, surely it is not the first and not the last either.

I think Ham is playing for a nil-all draw. Yeee-awwwn, should I even keep watching?

I guess the N column wins. I didn't think he was going to go to the eugenics argument, but he did.

Man, Darwin sure was wrong about a bunch of stuff huh. Guess the Bible is right.

This **** is beneath Nye, or I'd have liked to think so, anyway.

I think the new/exciting bit is supposed to be

1. Natural selection becomes the proximate rather than ultimate driver of biological systems (i.e. the primary 'purpose' of living things is to dissipate energy, rather than pass on genes)
2. That he is deriving this theory from his (apparently uncontested) equations.

But physics is not my forte either, so am waiting to see how his proposed experiments go...

Yeah that was pretty surprising. Lol at this.

7000 kinds on Noah's ark
16,000,000 species today
= 11 new species every day since the flood