Posted on 02/07/2014 9:42:01 AM PST by The Looking Spoon
It's easy to confuse actors and "defender of science" claimants with scientists these days.
Those crickets are deafening!
How can one dispute evidence like that?
For a biographical summary on Nye, you might start here.
Nye is reasonably well educated and has worked for many years educating others as:
Of course, I "get" that you wish to cast vague aspersions on Nye's qualifications and/or character, but they are not really justified.
Rather, Nye's problem, in terms of this particular discussion, is that he was not fully prepared to discuss the issues raised by Ken Ham's invitation to debate if "Creation is a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era."
I say that only because Nye apparently made no favorable impressions on Ham's audience of mostly creationists.
Whatever Nye was trying to sell them, they weren't buying.
In my view, that means Nye wasn't really addressing the issues they care about, in a way they could relate to.
So I consider Nye lost that debate to that audience.
Of course, it's impossible to say if anybody could have a more successful debate, given that it was, after all, Ham's institute filled with Ham's followers.
Doubtless, if Ham had expected a more serious challenge from Nye, he would have selected somebody else to "debate".
Bottom line: the reason Nye could not persuade that audience is because Nye cares everything about science and nothing about religion, whereas the audience cared everything about its religion, and very little about science.
Ham "spoke their language", while Nye had no clue to it.
Just because you can use the word "belief" with both doesn't make them equivalent. The Big Bang theory is no more than (quoting Wikipedia)
the scientific theory that is most consistent with observations of the past and present states of the universe....It offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background, large scale structure, and the Hubble diagram.That's all it is. There's a big pile of observations and measurements, and scientists generally agree that at the moment, the Big Bang theory explains them better than anything else. If somebody comes up with a better explanation, or one that explains more, scientists will work with that one instead. It would not be a threat to their faith.
That's not the same kind of belief as "belief that God’s hand created everything" (unless you think He worked through the Big Bang). That doesn't really explain any of the observations--you can't draw a line from a specific action of God to why there are so many light elements. Since it explains everything, it explains nothing. It truly takes an act of faith, because (as Ham admitted) evidence has nothing to do with it.
These days, it's easy to confuse actors, stand-up comedians, TV entertainers, and "all-round science-educator type guys" with scientists.
The usual definition of "scientist" requires only "expert" knowledge of a scientific subject.
Holding "expert" knowledge means:
For a summary of Nye's years of work as a scientist, you might start here.
Clearly, Nye is more of a science-educator & popularize than working scientist.
But isn't education precisely what Nye's debate with Ham was all about?
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