‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye Blasts Evolution ‘Deniers’

The Christian Diarist ^ | August 28, 2012 | JP

[CHRISTIAN DIARIST]

Bill Nye used to be “The Science Guy” on PBS. Now he’s just a godless hater.

The former host of the “educational” TV show targeted to preteens, which aired from 1993 to 1998, said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots. And that we ought not pass along that belief to our children.

“I say to the grownups,” Nye condescended, “if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, your world that’s inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it.”

Because, said Nye, who places his faith in Darwin, rather than God, “We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.”

As I considered Nye’s remarks, I wondered if he passed along his thoughts on evolution to Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, who presided over The Science Guy’s quicky marriage back in 2006 (which lasted a mere seven weeks before ending in a decidedly weird, decidedly ugly breakup).

What does it say about Nye’s integrity that he stood before a pastor who absolutely believes the creation story set forth in the Book of Genesis; that he exchanged marriage vows with his seven-week bride before a God in Whom he doesn’t believe?

Yet, he presumes to tell the rest of us what we should teach our children.

And while Nye may be scientifically “literate,” notwithstanding that he has no formal scientific education, he is not nearly as infallible as he makes himself out to be.

Just last year, in fact, The Science Guy demonstrated his scientific shortcomings when he appeared on CNN to discuss damage sustained by a Japanese nuclear plant in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Nye stated, incorrectly, that cesium is used to “slow and control” the nuclear reaction. But as any nuclear scientist would tell him, cesium is a nuclear fission product, not a control rod material.

Nye also stated, incorrectly, that the nuclear reactor involved in the Three Mile Island accident was still online.

And The Science Guy erred in telling CNN viewers that use of boron to slow the nuclear reaction is uncommon, when, in fact, boron-10 is commonly used in control rods and is circulated in the coolant of most, if not all, reactors in this country.

Now, the average CNN viewer could not be expected to know these things. But Nye, the so-called Science Guy, should have known better. Especially if he was going to discuss the subject on national TV.

It obviously doesn’t occur to Nye that, if he was dead wrong on nuclear energy, he could be just as wrong on evolution.

Otherwise the former Science Guy wouldn’t be so contemptuous of those of who are not scientific illiterates; who simply find less believable the science-fiction that ape transmogrified into man, than the Bible’s explanation that all-powerful God created man.

[CHRISTIAN DIARIST]

No surprise that Nye has come out in support of Obama's reelection.

[conservative sympathizer]

The battle isn't between evolution and creation, IMO. It's between strict materialism, which denies a spiritual realm, and idealism which permits its existence.

I'm fine with the idea that evolution brought into existence conscious things. I'm not fine with the idea that we're just lumps of meat.

[UCANSEE2]

Just like Obama, Nye is good at reading from a teleprompter.

AND.... he's clean and articulate.

[Alter Kaker]

Interesting - plenty of ad hominem un-christian attacks on Bill Nye, but nothing to refute the uncomfortable truth he stated.

I couldn't care less about the man personally -- but he happens to be right here.

[Uncle Slayton]

“The former host of the “educational” TV show targeted to preteens, which aired from 1993 to 1998, said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.”

Nye has spent years corrupting our youth and turning them away from their Christian faith and filling their heads with science mumbo jumbo.

He is guilty of Contributing to the Spiritual Delinquency of Minors.

[EGPWS]

.... he's clean and articulate.

said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.

Clean and articulate?

[trailhkr1]

said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.”

He never said there is no God but God created man through evolution.

[massgopguy]

“Evolution doesn’t explain Creation.” - Charles Darwin. So, why did the Universe create itself?

[pgyanke]

Interesting - plenty of ad hominem un-christian attacks on Bill Nye, but nothing to refute the uncomfortable truth he stated.

I think the argument made shows that "the science guy" isn't exactly a science expert. Sometimes, when the subject involves faith, it is a little easier to show the ignorance of the condescending offender than to recite the Summa Theologica.

Besides, if you aren't a Christian, who said you get to decide what is un-christian behavior? Good day.

[Olog-hai]

What uncomfortable truth? What is he right about?

You ever study college-level science? I have.

[trailhkr1]

So, why did the Universe create itself?

A higher power (God) created it and we have evolution which God created.

Nye does not say creationism is inappropriate for children... He says denying evolution is. I believe in intelligent design and also in evolution, I do not see these as mutually exclusive in the slightest. Religion must adapt to science and has no right to hinder its progress.

In a hundred years hopefully the 6 day creation myth will finally be in the dust bin of history just as the earth being the center of the universe was purported to be at one time..

Religion has done a poor job of keeping up with science and unless it adapts it going to be in trouble.

Even the Catholic church is heading up a serious science department and starting to work more science into religion.

[albionin]

Yes I noticed that too. The argument from intimidation is the standard fare when you can’t refute an argument with reason. Of course faith gives them a metaphysical and epistemological blank check drawn on an unlimited account so why bother with reason?

[cork]

Evolution is nothing more than a theory. One that I personally don’t subscribe to. Adaptation of a species to its environment isn’t a theory. Many confuse the two. Adaptation of a species to its environment is a trait endowed to it by its Creator. IMHO

[ontap]

that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots. Is this one of those uncomfortable truths he told!!!

[jaydubya2]

The Catholic church has stated that it’s open to the idea of evolution.

[qam1]

I agree he is mostly right but there’s no need to be a |)¡©|{ about it

He also said the same thing about people who denied his religion of Global Warming.

I don’t know what kind of career on TV this guy ever expects to have now

[manc]

well OK lets go with that then.

That means homosexuals is not natural either as it takes a man and a woman to reproduce.

Either way one looks at the homosexuals it is not natural, not healthy , not what nature intended etc

[Heartlander]

On the Derivation of Ulysses from Don Quixote

I IMAGINE THIS story being told to me by Jorge Luis Borges one evening in a Buenos Aires cafe.

His voice dry and infinitely ironic, the aging, nearly blind literary master observes that "the Ulysses," mistakenly attributed to the Irishman James Joyce, is in fact derived from "the Quixote."

I raise my eyebrows.

Borges pauses to sip discreetly at the bitter coffee our waiter has placed in front of him, guiding his hands to the saucer.

"The details of the remarkable series of events in question may be found at the University of Leiden," he says. "They were conveyed to me by the Freemason Alejandro Ferri in Montevideo."

Borges wipes his thin lips with a linen handkerchief that he has withdrawn from his breast pocket.

"As you know," he continues, "the original handwritten text of the Quixote was given to an order of French Cistercians in the autumn of 1576."

I hold up my hand to signify to our waiter that no further service is needed.

"Curiously enough, for none of the brothers could read Spanish, the Order was charged by the Papal Nuncio, Hoyo dos Monterrey (a man of great refinement and implacable will), with the responsibility for copying the Quixote, the printing press having then gained no currency in the wilderness of what is now known as the department of Auvergne. Unable to speak or read Spanish, a language they not unreasonably detested, the brothers copied the Quixote over and over again, re-creating the text but, of course, compromising it as well, and so inadvertently discovering the true nature of authorship. Thus they created Fernando Lor's Los Hombres d'Estado in 1585 by means of a singular series of copying errors, and then in 1654 Juan Luis Samorza's remarkable epistolary novel Por Favor by the same means, and then in 1685, the errors having accumulated sufficiently to change Spanish into French, Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, their copying continuous and indefatigable, the work handed down from generation to generation as a sacred but secret trust, so that in time the brothers of the monastery, known only to members of the Bourbon house and, rumor has it, the Englishman and psychic Conan Doyle, copied into creation Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and then as a result of a particularly significant series of errors, in which French changed into Russian, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina. Late in the last decade of the 19th century there suddenly emerged, in English, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and then the brothers, their numbers reduced by an infectious disease of mysterious origin, finally copied the Ulysses into creation in 1902, the manuscript lying neglected for almost thirteen years and then mysteriously making its way to Paris in 1915, just months before the British attack on the Somme, a circumstance whose significance remains to be determined."

I sit there, amazed at what Borges has recounted. "Is it your understanding, then," I ask, "that every novel in the West was created in this way?"

"Of course," replies Borges imperturbably. Then he adds: "Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote."
- David Berlinski

[trailhkr1]

The Catholic church has stated that it’s open to the idea of evolution.

They know they can only deny for so long...

[Heartlander]

"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
-Pope Benedict XVI