Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #7

How would young ladies respond to the historic Creation-Evolution debate between Creation Museum founder Ken Ham and Bill Nye the Science Guy?

This seventh installment of web reaction to the debate includes a video rebuttal of Bill Nye from two young ladies. (Links to previous installments are at the end.)

An estimated 10 million viewers watched the live stream of the debate:
Is Creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?

Additionally, as of press time, the YouTube video of the February 4 debate has been viewed over 2.2 million times. Interest and conversation about the debate continues to be intense and vigorous.

Commentary on the Debate from the Web (Part 7)

Gary DeMar, author, speaker, and president of American Vision believes the debate was sidetracked by arguing about the age of the earth and Noah’s Flood. Here are some of his comments from Where the Bill Nye v. Ken Ham Debate Went off Track

I put in my two cents worth on how Ken Ham should have approached the debate. Here’s some of what I wrote:

“Make the UnScience Guy account for the stuff of the cosmos, the organized information to make the cosmos act the way it does, how non-life became life as we know it given the fact that spontaneous generation is rejected by the scientific community on scientific grounds.

“Also make Nye account for non-physical entities like reason, logic, and morality and why the things that we evolved entities do or don’t do have eternal consequences, and if they don’t, then what would be morally (not socially, legally, culturally, or pragmatically) wrong for someone to put a loaded gun to Bill Nye’s head and pull the trigger.”

To be fair, Ken Ham did touch on these topics, but he didn’t drive them home. He wasn’t the proverbial junk yard dog.

The age of the earth and the global v. local flood question are part of an intramural debate among Christians. These topics don’t need to be part of a creation/evolution debate.

Does this mean that the Bible should not be referenced? Not at all. The first verse of the Bible is the Christian’s starting point: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” … God as creator explains the origin of matter, mind, and morality. There is no comparable materialist mechanism. Bill Nye made it clear that he did not know how it all began. The reason he doesn’t know is because he doesn’t have any real science to make the case for evolution. That’s what the viewing and listening audiences needed to take away from the debate.

At one point in the debate, Bill Nye said that Ken Ham’s view was “troubling” to him. This was Ham’s opening. Ham should have come back with example after example of how a godless, matter-only cosmic origin strips meaning and morality from what makes us human.

He could have quoted Richard Dawkins:
“In the universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

After reading this, Ken Ham should have looked into the camera and spoken directly to parents and said the following:
“This is the raw edge of evolution. In the end, this is what evolution teaches. Over the long term, what do you think will happen to a population of young people who are told that this is what they really are? Not only don’t Bill Nye and his fellow evolutionists have any science to prove that life spontaneously appeared and evolved into the intricately designed beings that we are, but they don’t have any way to account for meaning, morality, reason, love, hope, and justice.

“Evolutionists like Bill Nye can’t live consistently with their matter-only worldview. The worldview that troubles him is the only worldview that gives his life meaning. We’re more than a conglomeration of molecules. He, like your children, was made in the image of God. So you have a choice. You can believe in an approach to origins that claims that we are nothing but a ‘purposeless and materialistic process,’ ‘a sort of animal,’ or you can believe that you and your children are special creations of a loving and just God.”

 
Sarah and Grace Mally of the Bright Lights Ministry prepared this excellent short video (4:44) to refute Bill Nye’s false debate claim that the Bible was supposedly handed down through the centuries like a game of telephone, thereby resulting in an unreliable Biblical text. The Mally sisters have packed a lot of valuable truth into less than 5 minutes. Bright Lights is their discipleship ministry training young ladies in godliness and equipping them to use their youth years for Christ.

 
Consultant and freelance journalist Alex Newman contributes frequently to The New American website. Here are excerpts from his report on the debate, Science Debate on Evolution vs. Creation Draws Huge Audience:

The huge viewership highlighted the deep and ongoing interest in the subject among Americans, who according to polls still remain sharply divided on the origins of life.

“I think it shows you that the majority of people out there, they’re interested in this topic, they want to know about this, they don’t want debate shut down,” said Ham.

Not all Christians…support a literal interpretation of Genesis, although polls suggest that the numbers are growing despite government schools teaching only the evolution theory.

Throughout the debate, Nye consistently tried to portray the issue as a supposed battle between “science” and the Bible. He also repeatedly referred to himself as “reasonable” — implying that those who disagree with the evolution theory are unreasonable. However, as Ham pointed out multiple times during the debate, the alleged conflict between science and religion is largely manufactured by secular forces trying to claim the mantle of science.

Ham, for example, cited a vast amount of scientific evidence that he said supports his views: that the Earth and life were created just as the Bible says in its opening chapters. He also argued that the term “science” has been hijacked by secularists, and that it is deeply misleading to suggest that “science” somehow contradicts the Bible. No such evidence exists, Ham explained, arguing — as even many evolutionists have — that accepting the evolution theory requires belief in processes that are not observable.

Nye acknowledged not having answers to a broad range of major questions, which he said scientists were still working to understand. What started the alleged “Big Bang,” for example, is a “great mystery,” Nye said. He also admitted to not having answers about how “consciousness” emerged. If the United States is to succeed, however, Americans must start rejecting the creationist worldview, he told the audience.

Ham, meanwhile, pointed out that many of the greatest scientists in history — Sir Isaac Newton, for example — were actually Biblical creationists. Today, many respected scientists around the world continue to adhere to that view, he said, noting that they publish their work in secular journals just like secular scientists. Ham also strongly emphasized the division between observational science, which can be observed, and historic science dealing with the past. On the evidence, the two agree, said Ham. Where they differ is on how to interpret it.

“Secular evolutionists teach that all life developed by natural processes from some primordial form, that man is just an evolved animal, which has great bearing on how we view life and death,” Ham explained during the nearly three-hour event, pointing out that Darwin’s theory taught that the white race was higher than other supposedly inferior races. “For instance, as Bill [Nye] states: ‘It’s very hard to accept for many of us that when you die, it’s over.’ But you see, the Bible gives a totally different account of origins, of who we are, where we came from, the meaning of life, and our future.”

After decades of failing to eradicate Biblical creation theories by exclusively teaching the evolution theory in taxpayer-funded government schools, even the staunchest evolutionists knew the latest debate would be unlikely to change any hearts or minds. According to a 2012 Gallup survey, about 46 percent of Americans believe that God created man in the present form within the last 10,000 years — more than the 44 percent who answered that way two decades ago. About one-third of Americans believed God guided evolution, and just 15 percent thought man evolved from other life forms without divine intervention.

 
Read the prequel articles on this debate:
Creation-Evolution Debate: Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye – background info & the YouTube videos that sparked the debate.
Ham on Nye Debate Update
Who Won the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye Debate? – includes YouTube video of debate
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #1 – 4 web commentators
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #2 – 4 web commentators
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #3 – comments from debate moderator and post-debate challenges from debaters to each other
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #4 – Albert Mohler’s assessment
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #5 – Nye’s debate coach comments
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #6 – astronomer, CMI, WORLD mag

Read the sequel with more web commentary:
Post-Debate Buzz Heats Up for Ham vs. Nye #8 – apologetics prof, science historian, debater

Questions to Ponder

1. If you saw the debate, who do you think won and why?
2. How can you use the buzz about the debate as a natural starting point for spiritual conversations?

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

Soli Deo Gloria.

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:4)
Tuesday February 25, 2014 A.D.

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:11)