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Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164, 712]

re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

GJ Flash said:
I define bigotry as intolerance towards the beliefs of others, which Bill has demonstrated numerous times.
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Sorry, but when people hold foolish beliefs, there is nothing wrong in pointing out that they are foolish. This absurd idea that everyone's beliefs are equally valid is ridiculous. Just because someone wants to believe something doesn't mean that they ought to believe it.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Cardinal said:
I also hope it's not just another debate where the creationist attacks evolution and the other guy just flails around defending it the whole time. I hope Bill takes the fight to creationism.
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Unfortunately, most creationists are slimy critters, that's why "debate" tactics like the Gish Gallop are ridiculously common among creationist "debaters". They just throw out so many absurd claims and the scientist has no time during their 3-5 minute rebuttal period, to disprove them all and the creationist says "see, they can't answer, therefore I'm right!"

I don't think Nye ought to debate Ham or even give him the time of day. It only makes Ham look better and it doesn't do Nye any good.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

GJ Flash said:
My belief system is a mix of faith and fact. I have been a man of faith my entire life. I have studied or followed just about every religion on Earth, but my "major" has been Christianity. I have never met anyone who thought the Earth was only 6,000 years old. Maybe I travel in different circles than some.

Your god, science, told me that avocados are full of bad fat that will kill me quickly. Then your god said oops, never mind, I made a mistake.
Now your god says that we will all die in a fire of global warming. Some of your god's apostles got trapped in a bunch of ice last month that was supposed to be melted by now. Just saying.

My point is, no one can say with certain factual evidence exactly how old the Earth is. No one was there to observe it. We can estimate, yes, but we can't name a number and call it fact, because facts change. Like avocado "facts". And global warming "facts".
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I think you are highly misinformed about who Ken Ham is and what is displayed in the creationist museum. It is a young earth creationist museum, meaning they try to push that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

A few goodies:
- Humans and dinosaurs lived together a few thousand years ago, and humans kept some as pets.
- The grand canyon was carved in a matter of weeks by Noah's flood.

Unless your beliefs line up with stuff like that, I would avoid sticking up for him in debates.

 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Cephus said:
Unfortunately, most creationists are slimy critters, that's why "debate" tactics like the Gish Gallop are ridiculously common among creationist "debaters". They just throw out so many absurd claims and the scientist has no time during their 3-5 minute rebuttal period, to disprove them all and the creationist says "see, they can't answer, therefore I'm right!"

I don't think Nye ought to debate Ham or even give him the time of day. It only makes Ham look better and it doesn't do Nye any good.
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I had to look Gish Gallop up.

The Gish Gallop, named after creationist Duane Gish, is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. Sam Harris describes the technique as "starting 10 fires in 10 minutes."
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Gish Gallop - RationalWiki

Yep, that's about right.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

RabidAlpaca said:
- Humans and dinosaurs lived together a few thousand years ago, and humans kept some as pets.
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I have proof!!!!

flintstones.jpg
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Cardinal said:
I had to look Gish Gallop up.
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Whereas I was around when he started using the thing. Geez, I'm old.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Cephus said:
Whereas I was around when he started using the thing. Geez, I'm old.
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The Gish Gallop tactic can best be summed up as taking attention off of creationism as fast as possible. The idea being that so long as doubt is cast on evolution then, in the end, creationism must be seen as more (or at least equally) valid. If that's how the Nye/Ham debate goes then frankly I'm not interested.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Cardinal said:
The Gish Gallop tactic can best be summed up as taking attention off of creationism as fast as possible. The idea being that so long as doubt is cast on evolution then, in the end, creationism must be seen as more (or at least equally) valid. If that's how the Nye/Ham debate goes then frankly I'm not interested.
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That's really one of the problems. Creationists have no way to actually defend creationism, they can't show that it happened, they can't prove anything, they have no evidence, all they can do is try to make the scientist look foolish and claim victory, even though they did nothing whatsoever to earn it.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

smb said:
Very similar but not the same thing. Before you go off on definition 3 I would caution you that it does not specify the validity of evidence just that evidence exists. You can believe in creationism based on the evidence of the Bible but that does not make it observable fact.

Belief

1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
2: something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

Faith

1a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>
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Lol @ second sentence.
I never said the evidence was necessarily valid.
Belief that something is true has some basis for it. Whether the basis is actually correct is another matter.
Faith is believing something to be true with weak or no evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

RogueWarrior said:
Lol @ second sentence.
I never said the evidence was necessarily valid.
Belief that something is true has some basis for it. Whether the basis is actually correct is another matter.
Faith is believing something to be true with weak or no evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence.
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That is not true. Belief does not have to have any supporting evidence to be belief. You are too closely parsing words. A belief can be based on some sort of evidence and it also can be based on nothing but feeling as the definition states.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

GJ Flash said:
My belief system is a mix of faith and fact. I have been a man of faith my entire life. I have studied or followed just about every religion on Earth, but my "major" has been Christianity. I have never met anyone who thought the Earth was only 6,000 years old. Maybe I travel in different circles than some.

Your god, science, told me that avocados are full of bad fat that will kill me quickly. Then your god said oops, never mind, I made a mistake.
Now your god says that we will all die in a fire of global warming. Some of your god's apostles got trapped in a bunch of ice last month that was supposed to be melted by now. Just saying.

My point is, no one can say with certain factual evidence exactly how old the Earth is. No one was there to observe it. We can estimate, yes, but we can't name a number and call it fact, because facts change. Like avocado "facts". And global warming "facts".
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We know the age of the earth through radiometric dating.

See: Age of the Earth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is how religion works compared to how science works:

Religion - Tribal stories / myths are passed down over hundreds of years are eventually recorded by Jewish Scribes around 500 BC or so (the Pentateuch). Several other books are written by various authors between 500 BC and 100 BC or so (the rest of the Old Testament). Various other stories and letters written by several different authors are then recorded between 50 AD and 150 AD. These are then collected and canonized in what we call the New Testament today. This collection of books we call the Bible represents the world views, morality, oral histories, and second hand biographies of various Jewish tribes from about 2000 BC until 100 AD or so. Some 2000 years later strict adherents to that religion reject out of hand any notion that contradicts the views of a people that lived over 2000 years ago.

Science - Doctors determine in the mid 20th century that dietary fats lead to arteriosclerosis and thus heart disease. Doctors then start to recommend low fat diets in order to prevent heart disease and early death. Research is continuously done to determine how dietary fats result in arteriosclerosis, and if all fats results in it, or just some. As a result of this continual research and its findings, it is eventually determined that some fats are actually good for you while others like trans fat are particularly bad for you. As a result they stop recommending a low fat diet and instead recommend a more balanced diet that includes good fats like what you find in nuts, avocados, and cold water fishes.

If science worked like religion then the first doctor that found fats resulted in arteriosclerosis would be considered a prophet of God, and any doctor that later disputed whether all fats were bad for you or just some of them would be called a heretic.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

GJ Flash said:
My belief system is a mix of faith and fact. I have been a man of faith my entire life. I have studied or followed just about every religion on Earth, but my "major" has been Christianity. I have never met anyone who thought the Earth was only 6,000 years old. Maybe I travel in different circles than some.

Your god, science, told me that avocados are full of bad fat that will kill me quickly. Then your god said oops, never mind, I made a mistake.
Now your god says that we will all die in a fire of global warming. Some of your god's apostles got trapped in a bunch of ice last month that was supposed to be melted by now. Just saying.

My point is, no one can say with certain factual evidence exactly how old the Earth is. No one was there to observe it. We can estimate, yes, but we can't name a number and call it fact, because facts change. Like avocado "facts". And global warming "facts".
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The difference is that science, when confronted with evidence that the avocado idea was wrong, will change. Nobody rewrote the bible when it was discovered that the earth is round.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

GJ Flash said:
And bigot is about the nicest word I'd use to describe Bill Nye.
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Bill Nye a bigot? I think people have really forgotten what that word means.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

RabidAlpaca said:
I think you are highly misinformed about who Ken Ham is and what is displayed in the creationist museum. It is a young earth creationist museum, meaning they try to push that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

A few goodies:
- Humans and dinosaurs lived together a few thousand years ago, and humans kept some as pets.
- The grand canyon was carved in a matter of weeks by Noah's flood.

Unless your beliefs line up with stuff like that, I would avoid sticking up for him in debates.

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I believed and in fact I'm absolutely convencied God created everything that exists and I do not believe the earth is 6000 years old except possibly from a different perspective. I understand this might be a difficult concept to grasp by people who do not understand the science of time dilation. Time Dilation | Einstein's Relativity - YouTube

Meanwhile 2,000 years before Einstein, the Bible said. 2 Peter 3:8
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Smeagol said:
I believed and in fact I'm absolutely convencied God created everything that exists and I do not believe the earth is 6000 years old except possibly from a different perspective. I understand this might be a difficult concept to grasp by people who do not understand the science of time dilation. Time Dilation | Einstein's Relativity - YouTube

Meanwhile 2,000 years before Einstein, the Bible said. 2 Peter 3:8
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Oh yes, please tell me more of your understanding on time dilation.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Ikari said:
Oh yes, please tell me more of your understanding on time dilation.
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I posted a YouTube video that does a decent job at explaining it. Time is not constant and 6 days or 6000 years from one perspective can be billions of years from another...if you believe Einstein got it right. Not everyone accepts the scientific evidence.
 
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re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Smeagol said:
I posted a YouTube video that does a decent job at explaining it.
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....so you can't explain it nor how it applies in this case?
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Ikari said:
....so you can't explain it nor how it applies in this case?
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I believe its possible that the 6 day creation account was conveyed from a perspective other than earth, therefore that persoective's 6 days is scientifically not an identical time frame as 6 days on earth although accurately 6 days from that perspective. Not very complicated IMHO.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Smeagol said:
I believe its possible that the 6 day creation account was conveyed from a perspective other than earth, therefore that persoective's 6 days is scientifically not an identical time frame as 6 days on earth although accurately 6 days from that perspective. Not very complicated IMHO.
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Not very complicated at all. So how fast must we be going to account for these differences in our inertial frame?
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Ikari said:
Not very complicated at all. So how fast must we be going to account for these differences in our inertial frame?
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Lol. So you expect me to be able to personally calculate the speed at which a object must travel relative to earth in 6 days in order for time dialation and by extension, Albert Einstein, to be valid? C'mon.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

GJ Flash said:
Unless you (or Bill) were here when the Earth was created, the circumstances of it's creation are neither fact nor observable.
We can make a series of logical conclusions based on the available evidence, but that isn't quite the same as "fact".
They are arguing two different belief systems. True, one belief system has more evidence than the other, but they are belief systems nonetheless.



His intolerant comments regarding creationists (and their children).
School of Fail: Bill Nye's Warning To Parents - Cheezburger
I define bigotry as intolerance towards the beliefs of others, which Bill has demonstrated numerous times.
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Then there is virtually no such thing as fact. We don't know that the American Revolution happened all we have are testimonials, archaeological evidence, and man made (therefore falsifiable) histories. It is therefore not a 'fact' that the American Revolution occurred.

Insisting on such practical absolutes for words like 'fact' is a weak shield for evading reality.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Smeagol said:
Lol. So you expect me to be able to personally calculate the speed at which a object must travel relative to earth in order for time dialation and by extension, Albert Einstein, to be valid? C'mon.
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I want to know if you even thought this quaint little notion out and have figured if it's even remotely possible, despite the fact that you're ignoring the totality of general relativity in your assumptions. You came off quite smarmy talking about time dilation and specific relativity. I like smarmy, but if you're going to be smarmy you've got to back it up. I want to see how far you can actually back up the smarmy. It's not very complicated, yes? Said it yourself. So a little algebra and you're there.
 
re: Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate Creation museum founder Ken Ham[W:164]

Smeagol said:
I posted a YouTube video that does a decent job at explaining it. Time is not constant and 6 days or 6000 years from one perspective can be billions of years from another...if you believe Einstein got it right. Not everyone accepts the scientific evidence.
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Ikari is a physicist.
 
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