RSR Analysis of the Nye-Ham Debate
This is the show from Friday February 7th, 2014
Summary:
* Nye Backed Up Claims with Claims; Ham Wrong on Historical Science: Bob Enyart and Fred Williams critique both sides and answer Bill Nye's many wild claims with specifics and show how he repeatedly used claims to back up claims, instead of evidence to back up claims. Our Real Science Radio review also shows that Nye used a number of 30-year-old arguments that leading evolutionists themselves have rejected. We are thankful that Ken Ham put the debate in it's proper biblical context and that he shared the gospel with millions of people! When addressing science, Ken Ham tended to use evidence to back up his claims. However, below, we challenge Ken's claims about observational vs. historical science.
* Ken Ham's Unused Evidence: A criticism of Ken was that regarding science he didn't take the offensive, and left unused powerful evidence like:
dinosaur soft tissue * short-lived carbon-14 everywhere it shouldn't be * the tree of life demolished by both genetic sequencing and out-of-sequence fossils * the fine tuning of the cosmos and red-shift evidence for a center to the universe * major discoveries that undermine the big bang * irreducible complexity and everywhere evidence of design * layered strata from Mount St. Helens * Grand Canyon nautiloids and a clearer statement of its flat gaps!
* On the Claim that Creationism Will Harm America: Regarding the repeated claim that creationism will hurt America technologically, and that it is a lack of education that results in belief in God as Creator, Ken could have pointed out that America leads the world in both the promotion of creation and in scientific progress! And also, so many fathers of the physical sciences, along with hundreds of thousands of highly educated U.S. PhDs in science and the applied sciences say that the origin of human life requires God's hand.
Please help RSR reach our telethon goal of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
Funds here go a l-o-o-n-g way toward reaching many people!
Please help. We need you! Just browse our Science Department at the KGOV store,
or make a one-time or automatic monthly donation to Bob Enyart Live!
* Observational and Historical Science Not as Different as Claimed: Ken Ham was not only reaching out to Bill Nye, but also to the Christians who have been misled into believing in millions of years. It was a tough job and he did admirably. When Ken did present scientific evidence, his was current and relevant. He lost points, however, for wasting ten precious minutes needlessly emphasizing the distinction between observational and historical science. That is not the significant factor that so many creationists make of it. With their argument, creationists are unwittingly conceding to the materialist claim that you can only know that which your five senses tell you. (Rebuttal: Says which of the five?) No one has to see the builder to know, even in a scientifically certain way, that their home had a builder. What's worse for Ken's point: meeting the builder and even watching him build a house does not give you any more certainty that the house had a builder than those who had never seen him. Just as Nye used out-of-date claims of evidence, the claim that scientific knowledge is only really obtainable through observation is likewise out of date with important work being done by philosophers of science. There are various ways to acquire careful scientific knowledge. Visual observation does not trump reason, math, logic, and the mind the way that Ken Ham's emphasis implies. Ken presented the origin of the term science, from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge, which by our usage refers to carefully acquired knowledge of the cosmos and everything in it. Yes, there is a difference between observational and historical science, but that difference is not a qualitative difference that somehow prevents one from obtaining certainty about the past in the careful and scientific sense. We also presume that Ken's diminishing of the value of historical science was not a winning argument when Bill Nye so easily pointed out that forensic science is as powerful as other branches of science, and that all of astronomy (including then that at AiG), is historical science since we are observing only the affects of past events.
Please help RSR reach our telethon goal of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
Either browse our Science Department or make a one-time or automatic monthly donation!
* Stronger (and briefer) Rebuttal to Airplanes and Cell Phones Claim: Atheists like Nye say that creationists are confused because we use the benefits of modern science, like phones and planes, but we deny science itself. Rather than lecturing on the different kinds of scientific inquiry, we just expose the logical fallacy directly. We ask:
Do cellular network engineers at T-mobile know where electrons came from? Are Boeing's engineers able to show how gravity originated? Of course not. Bill, you are commiting the logical fallacy of argument from authority. Being an authority in the use of energy and materials does not make someone an authority on how those things originated.
That reply is strong, concedes nothing to materialists, and saves fifteen minutes!
* Ken Ham's Unanswered Question: The invention of technology does not require a belief in Darwinism or the Big Bang. To make that point Ken asked Bill Nye to name a single technolgy that required a belief in evolution to invent. Of course, Nye did not, and of course he could not, provide an answer. We provide a convenient list at rsr.org/technologies:
Light bulb, vacuums, pasteurization, railway, typewriter, electric motor, carburetor, loudspeaker, telephone, phonograph, microphone, photographic film, seismograph, solar panels, punch cards, cars, combustion engine, AC transformer, contact lens, tractor, ballpoint pen, cinematography, wind energy, zipper, escalator, X-ray, remote control, tape recorder, air conditioning, fire fighting foam, neon lamp, EKG, airplane, seismometer, sonar, radio, TV, rockets, radar, sliced bread, transfusion (think Harvey here), EEG, steel, radio telescope, jet engine, computer, Velcro, transistor, atomic clock, nuclear reactor, fiber optics, hard drives, satellites, spandex and spam, lasers, digital photography, optical disc, 3D holography, LED, mouse, lunar lander, Venus lander, video games, video cassette, space station, e-mail, karaoke, LCD, microprocessor, MRI, Ethernet, PC, DNA sequencing, Internet, Plasma TV, GPS, MP3 player, flash drive? (See more inventions and discoveries.)
* Bill Nye's Claims Easily Refuted (if you have the time): You are invited to come back later for more details in this show summary, include a list (that looks like the paragraph just above) of the claims that Bill Nye made. It'll be fun! You'll see!
This is the show from Friday February 7th, 2014
Summary:
* Nye Backed Up Claims with Claims; Ham Wrong on Historical Science: Bob Enyart and Fred Williams critique both sides and answer Bill Nye's many wild claims with specifics and show how he repeatedly used claims to back up claims, instead of evidence to back up claims. Our Real Science Radio review also shows that Nye used a number of 30-year-old arguments that leading evolutionists themselves have rejected. We are thankful that Ken Ham put the debate in it's proper biblical context and that he shared the gospel with millions of people! When addressing science, Ken Ham tended to use evidence to back up his claims. However, below, we challenge Ken's claims about observational vs. historical science.
* Ken Ham's Unused Evidence: A criticism of Ken was that regarding science he didn't take the offensive, and left unused powerful evidence like:
dinosaur soft tissue * short-lived carbon-14 everywhere it shouldn't be * the tree of life demolished by both genetic sequencing and out-of-sequence fossils * the fine tuning of the cosmos and red-shift evidence for a center to the universe * major discoveries that undermine the big bang * irreducible complexity and everywhere evidence of design * layered strata from Mount St. Helens * Grand Canyon nautiloids and a clearer statement of its flat gaps!
* On the Claim that Creationism Will Harm America: Regarding the repeated claim that creationism will hurt America technologically, and that it is a lack of education that results in belief in God as Creator, Ken could have pointed out that America leads the world in both the promotion of creation and in scientific progress! And also, so many fathers of the physical sciences, along with hundreds of thousands of highly educated U.S. PhDs in science and the applied sciences say that the origin of human life requires God's hand.
Please help RSR reach our telethon goal of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
Funds here go a l-o-o-n-g way toward reaching many people!
Please help. We need you! Just browse our Science Department at the KGOV store,
or make a one-time or automatic monthly donation to Bob Enyart Live!
* Observational and Historical Science Not as Different as Claimed: Ken Ham was not only reaching out to Bill Nye, but also to the Christians who have been misled into believing in millions of years. It was a tough job and he did admirably. When Ken did present scientific evidence, his was current and relevant. He lost points, however, for wasting ten precious minutes needlessly emphasizing the distinction between observational and historical science. That is not the significant factor that so many creationists make of it. With their argument, creationists are unwittingly conceding to the materialist claim that you can only know that which your five senses tell you. (Rebuttal: Says which of the five?) No one has to see the builder to know, even in a scientifically certain way, that their home had a builder. What's worse for Ken's point: meeting the builder and even watching him build a house does not give you any more certainty that the house had a builder than those who had never seen him. Just as Nye used out-of-date claims of evidence, the claim that scientific knowledge is only really obtainable through observation is likewise out of date with important work being done by philosophers of science. There are various ways to acquire careful scientific knowledge. Visual observation does not trump reason, math, logic, and the mind the way that Ken Ham's emphasis implies. Ken presented the origin of the term science, from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge, which by our usage refers to carefully acquired knowledge of the cosmos and everything in it. Yes, there is a difference between observational and historical science, but that difference is not a qualitative difference that somehow prevents one from obtaining certainty about the past in the careful and scientific sense. We also presume that Ken's diminishing of the value of historical science was not a winning argument when Bill Nye so easily pointed out that forensic science is as powerful as other branches of science, and that all of astronomy (including then that at AiG), is historical science since we are observing only the affects of past events.
Please help RSR reach our telethon goal of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
Either browse our Science Department or make a one-time or automatic monthly donation!
* Stronger (and briefer) Rebuttal to Airplanes and Cell Phones Claim: Atheists like Nye say that creationists are confused because we use the benefits of modern science, like phones and planes, but we deny science itself. Rather than lecturing on the different kinds of scientific inquiry, we just expose the logical fallacy directly. We ask:
Do cellular network engineers at T-mobile know where electrons came from? Are Boeing's engineers able to show how gravity originated? Of course not. Bill, you are commiting the logical fallacy of argument from authority. Being an authority in the use of energy and materials does not make someone an authority on how those things originated.
That reply is strong, concedes nothing to materialists, and saves fifteen minutes!
* Ken Ham's Unanswered Question: The invention of technology does not require a belief in Darwinism or the Big Bang. To make that point Ken asked Bill Nye to name a single technolgy that required a belief in evolution to invent. Of course, Nye did not, and of course he could not, provide an answer. We provide a convenient list at rsr.org/technologies:
Light bulb, vacuums, pasteurization, railway, typewriter, electric motor, carburetor, loudspeaker, telephone, phonograph, microphone, photographic film, seismograph, solar panels, punch cards, cars, combustion engine, AC transformer, contact lens, tractor, ballpoint pen, cinematography, wind energy, zipper, escalator, X-ray, remote control, tape recorder, air conditioning, fire fighting foam, neon lamp, EKG, airplane, seismometer, sonar, radio, TV, rockets, radar, sliced bread, transfusion (think Harvey here), EEG, steel, radio telescope, jet engine, computer, Velcro, transistor, atomic clock, nuclear reactor, fiber optics, hard drives, satellites, spandex and spam, lasers, digital photography, optical disc, 3D holography, LED, mouse, lunar lander, Venus lander, video games, video cassette, space station, e-mail, karaoke
, LCD, microprocessor, MRI, Ethernet, PC, DNA sequencing, Internet, Plasma TV, GPS, MP3 player, flash drive? (See more inventions and discoveries.)* Bill Nye's Claims Easily Refuted (if you have the time): You are invited to come back later for more details in this show summary, include a list (that looks like the paragraph just above) of the claims that Bill Nye made. It'll be fun! You'll see!
