I'm always a bit surprised that so many people debating creationists take the tactic of dealing with the physical difficulties of the ark.

Far more compelling, in my opinion, is the fact that the theory of the Flood can be debunked without recourse to scary science, but to basic logic and recorded human history and archaeology. If, in fact, there was a global flood ~4000 years ago, and assuming a very high rate of human fecundity, that means that at best, a few hundred humans built the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, and the Aegean (not even counting New World civilizations, which would have had to have been reached by some sustainable population number). Even someone with a very elementary grasp of engineering or history knows that this is a complete impossibility.

Here's your problem. Their grasp of these topics comes from the Bible. "The Bible is not a history book, but when it tells history, it's correct in every word. The Bible is not an engineering book, but when it talks about engineering, it's correct in every word."

I refuse to believe that's real. It can't be.

It can be, but it also can be filtered to a tremendous extent. We have no idea how many pictures were actually taken. (I seriously doubt the author asked exactly 22 people and stopped at that number arbitrarily. Shooting from the hip, I wouldn't be surprised if he took at least a couple hundred pictures over the course of a couple days before he had enough "good" ones to post.)

Edit: It's his job to create lists like that for Buzzfeed. He has the time and resources to do such things.

Someone needs to teach these people who George Lemaître was and what he believed in.

He said he took the pictures at the debate. As these are pretty standard YEC ideas, I see no reason to think he's lying. If he had dozens or hundreds to choose from, I doubt he would have duplicated the "only one Lucy" and "only a theory" messages.

It seems many are defending their belief in God rather than their belief in creationism. I don't think the two sides are as far apart as it might seem - at least for those who are reasonable.

The challenge seems to be convincing people that you can still believe in a higher power without taking the Bible literally.

To continue here's things learned at the Creation Museum

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/thing...useum?s=mobile

That video about teachers is just outright scary. I've certainly had my share of science teachers, and I can't remember a single one mention God. And I'm sure I would have remembered.

Nazi-Germany propaganda about Jews certainly come to mind. And yes, Godwin's law etc etc.

No wonder God felt he had to make Eve. Adam getting a little friendly with that lamb there.

That made me sad.

I think the worst was, "how do you explain a sunset if their is no God?"

similarly - "How can you look at the world and not believe Someone created/thought of it? It's amazing!!!"

I interestingly have a blend of sadness, anger and humor all at once reading these.

Whoops. You're right. My brain had interpreted the description as being about asking self-described creationists to leave a message (for the other side at the debate) -- meaning, to be brought to the debate like questions from the audience -- not that the people were already at the debate and they were just being asked to leave questions.

Lolmurica

I haven't finished watching the debate yet (but I have to say that it's not happening at the level I've got used to with people like WLC) but I caught this news item this morning;

Even Pat Robertson Thinks Young Earth Creationism Is A 'Joke'

Pretty damning. Maybe a debate between Ken Ham and Pat Robertson... Or maybe be Nye should have trotted out some famous/intelligent theists who don't believe in YEC as some appeal to intelligence (or fame) in the way that Ham has done all the way through what I've watched so far.

Ok, I gave up at about 2 hours in, that was awful. When Ham wasn't simply preaching from the pulpit, his arguments seemed to be as simple as 'No, you're explanations are wrong, it's simple, can't you see that Goddidit?'. It got to a point where I just couldn't listen to it anymore.

Someone earlier IIT mentioned Nye not attacking the accuracy of the Bible and since Ham's 'Historical' origins science is, by his own admission based on what the bible says, that would have been a good tactic - but, if that's what he was doing with his attempt to destroy the Flood story, I don't think he succeeded. Does anyone think that he did?

so great! lulz

Both are pretty good questions, really.

Unless you have been anesthetized to the wonder of existence by some sort of myopic ideology or worldview, or otherwise desensitized to the everyday encounters with the ineffable. Seems like an almost delusional sort of arrogance to snub your nose at these.

The first one is just a Bill O'Rilley rehash "you can't explain that"

You know, you don't have to try to defend every stupid thing that comes out of a Christian's mouth. And fwiw, your post misses the mark on what kurto's likely objections are quite badly.

Nah. You often romanticize ignorance and stupidity as a childlike, innocent approach to the world, which is why you are defending these signs.

No one is suggesting that sunsets and the universe don't have a majesty and beauty that we can't put into words or capture in equations. Rather, the mockery here is of people who are so ignorant that they can't conceive of this beauty outside of their own narrow version of Christianity.

Although that would make for an interesting discussion with a reductionist.

They would say the same, but hold out hope that we could someday do so.

Watched the debate. Or at least up till audience questions. Nye did an okay job of laying out the science, probably as reasonable an overview on what the science is for the age of the earth and evolution and the like as one is going to get in 30 minutes. Some of the evidence is pretty cool from a lay person's science perspective and I am glad that it will be just a bit more readily available at my finger tips now.

Ham was less impressive than Hovind who I have seen before in that he didn't really manage to discredit the science or really address it. He just made the (false) distinction between present observational science and past historical science. He kept repeating his base was the bible, which I guess is honest. But while he might make plausibility arguments for, say, the Noah's arc, he wouldn't attack why ice cores or old trees etc was wrong just dismiss it all out of hand as being historical science which is all by definition not knowable.

The problem is nye doesn't really attack that presentation. Spending a half hour talking about science when it is all dismissed in one word doesn't actually attack ham's position, it only bolsters your own. Because he didn't really need to defend against many specific advances against scientific claims by Ham, he could well have used some time to attack the flawed arguments going into Ham's presentation which he kind of left alone. He did skirt this issue but I would have liked him to really hammer the point that goddidit lacks any explanatory power, you can sort of respond "okay?" and thats it, where science offers an abundance of testable predictions that we can go out and observe.

I also think Nye defended radiometric dating weakly. Ham gave an example of a situation where radiometric dating worked poorly (one Nye was unfamiliar with and offered a silly resolution to), but an explanation for how we resolve the various uncertainties in dating, calibration with other dating mechanisms etc was largely not done (probably for time reasons). It ended up seeming a bit like "both sides have faith" which is precisely the equivalence the science side must avoid.

Strongest point imo came from the contrast of hams "fossils get into the grand canyon during the great flood" to the "there isn't a single example of an older fossil being in the wrong layer". Then when someone asked about what it would take to change their mind, Nye could offer the very convincing "one example of a fossil in the wrong layer" while Ham just didn't answer the question. Tie this in with the point about explanatory power how science can explain the divisions of the fossil record but creationism doesn't have an explanation for this phenomena and it is a lock.

For my piece I tend to lean towards the camp that sees creationism and intelligent design as more politics than science. The people who push it have a whole political agenda and the science of carbon dating etc are post hoc analysis. I think refuting the junk science is important but ultimately they want political control to teach old school Christian Conservatism so isolating them and and defusing issues such as showing that one can accept evolution and be a Christian, that evolution doesn't = nihilism and other political implications too help too.

Coincidentally, it is 15 years to the week that the Discovery Institute's "Wedge" document was leaked, exposing their political efforts to infiltrate mainstream US culture.