I'll have to say that I found the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye tonight somewhat depressing. It made me sad on both sides. Nye made me sad because at a certain point I thought he became somewhat demeaning. I know that made his side happy, but it didn't help convince anyone who was unconvinced. Ham made me sad both because he makes non-Christians think he represents what Christians believe and because he potentially polarizes the Christian community itself.
1. I thought one of the questions asked was very revealing on both sides. "What would make you change your mind?" Ham's answer was basically that his understanding of the Bible is a presupposition. Even when asked whether he could believe in God if the earth was older than 10,000 years old, his answer was, "No one could ever prove that."
But Nye's answer was not credible either, IMO. He said he would change his view on evolution with certain kinds of evidence, but I don't believe him. He really is a naturalist. His answer to questions of "What was before the Big Bang?" amounted to "It's a mystery--keep looking and you will find a natural explanation." In short, no amount of evidence would lead him to change his mind in terms of his naturalistic assumptions. For him, naturalism really is an assumption.
There are other positions on both sides of these debates. There are agnostics who are open to God as the answer to the question of ultimate existence. They're just not convinced. And there are Christians who are open to the possibility that God used evolution to create life. In short, there are many individuals on both sides that would change their minds under certain circumstances. Neither of these two are examples of them.
2. I felt sorry for the rabid fans on both sides. Some of the tweets on both sides (#hamonnye, #nyehamdebate, #creationdebate, #answersingenesis) were so wanting their hero to slam the other side. That sort of anger always points to something psychological going on below the surface. It can be insecurity in your own position. It can of course be pain from the past.
Here's the funny thing. People who are that hyped on either side of a debate often end up converting to the other side. There are atheists who will end up believers because they are fighting a deep down insecurity. And of course there are fundamentalists who will lose their faith for the same reason.
3. There is a fundamental (no pun intended) circularity to Ham's position that I find problematic. On the one hand, his position is clearly presuppositional, based on a particular interpretation of the Bible. Yet he seems to want to argue that his argument is also the clear conclusion based on the evidence.
In other words, Ham really seems to be playing a game. Why worry about the evidence of science if it is really a matter of presupposition? Why fall back on presuppositions if it is the clear conclusion of science? It seems like he is trying to play two different epistemological games at the same time in an incoherent way. (I play both games too, but I think in a more coherent way.)
4. Ham made a big deal out of the difference between historical and observational science. I believe this is a distinction without a difference. Let me use an extreme example to clarify what I think is Ham's perspective. Even if the stars are billions of light years away, no one on earth observed the light starting from those stars billions of years ago and making its way to us over billions of years. Perhaps God created the stars with the light from them in mid-photon stream.
Now Nye would find this argument ridiculous but, philosophically, it cannot be disproved. Here is one of the big differences between the two. Ham is, ultimately, a philosopher and theologian, not a scientist really. Nye is no philosopher but a scientist. He ultimately has no time for questions like, "Could the universe have been created five seconds ago with our memories intact?"
But I agree with Nye that our default assumption should be "what you see is what you get" in science. If the Grand Canyon looks like it took millions of years to become what it is, then that is the conclusion geologists should reach until the evidence seems to say something different. Ham would have us filter our scientific thinking through a set of presuppositions based on interpretations of the Bible that most biblical scholars themselves, I believe, find deeply problematic. Although I think it was unhelpful to put down Kentucky, Texas, and Oklahoma, I think Nye is right that we need to train our children to be evidentiary thinkers if we expect to compete with the rest of the world scientifically.
5. It will be interesting to see what comes from the debate, if anything. I will be interested to know if young earth creationists felt like Ham won the debate. I thought Nye won the debate but came across as mean at a few points. I actually felt sorry for Ham at one point. Then again, there were a few places where I felt like Nye hadn't really understood some of the theological coaching someone had tried to give him...
What did you think, if you saw the debate?
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I posted my random post-event ramblings here - http://www.stevansheets.com/2014/02/04/my-post-debate-thoughts/
I would have rather seen a scientific creation perspective shared, such as that of someone like Dr. Jay Wile - http://www.drwile.com/
Great insights on the weaknesses of this debate, and the polarizing effect it could have.
I would have much rather seen either: A) Ham debate a Christian theologian who doesn't share his interpretation of scripture, or B) Nye debate a Christian scientist who shares his scientific views but retains faith in a creator God.
I didn't watch - first of all because both of them annoy the daylights out of me as it is (Ken Ham because we were misled as children as to his qualifications (we were told he had a doctorate in a scientific field, not an honorary doctorate and a masters in "teaching science" and no one seems to address the fact that it doesn't support your position for it to come out that you don't have a real doctorate when Christian school children are being made to watch "Dr. Ham" in Bible class!), and Bill Nye...well mostly because he wasn't Mr. Wizard and was more annoying than my beloved Mr. Wizard, honestly) but secondly because I felt like there needed to be a third side to the debate - either have a three way debate including a theistic evolutionist of some sort, or, like Brannon examples above have the theistic evolutionist debate either Ham or Nye.
Everyone here probably had their mind made up in regards to the debate material long before the debate took place. Comments then follow of how one made bad arguments or the other made xyz impression, but let me say this: As long as Christ was preached I really didn't care much about anything else. Ham clearly stated multiple times the importance of salvation in Christ. Why has that been lost in these comments? I believe the Apostle Paul would be proud of Ken Ham attempting to preach Christ in a foreign environment like the scientific community. ~Matt Hayes
I thought coming from their positions that Ken Ham did better. He certainly knew his side and seemed to have spent a great deal of his first 30 minutes delving into his 'evidence' I felt Bill Nye was weak in his knowledge of his position as well as his opponents. I thought the weird facial expressions by Nye were distracting and unprofessional. I also think that Nye veered off topic quite often and at the end seemed a little too antagonistic, as if he knew he did not do well.
Personally, I was intending to watch the debate thinking that Ham was going to provide strong arguments without resorting to "the Bible tells me so", most individuals already know that a biased view will affect the outcome. No problem there.
Nye doesn't have to provide much evidence because, as he pointed out, it's out there. I would have preferred if Ham didn't reference the Bible so much in his discussion. There should be arguments that can be made for Creationism that are naturalistic, and it was disappointing to me to see the lack of support. If anything outside of Biblical study can't be argued without using the Bible, in most instances, it probably shouldn't be argued. This would be the case for anything... The Quran, the Vedas, the Tresmegistus, Through the Looking Glass, Calvin and Hobbs,... well, you get the idea.
The debate wasn't about Science vs. Religion, or it wasn't supposed to be until Ham started up with his isolating stance. Actually, as Brannon Hancock says, I'm pretty sure any Christian theologian worth their salt would walk circles around Ham.
Matt, the question I have about Ham's salvation presentation is whether it will have more of a negative effect than a positive one. I don't know the answer, but I think fundamentalists of Ham's variety seem to think that simply saying the plan of salvation is evangelism, like the person who goes door to door or witnesses in a plane or grocery store. When I was in college, people used to walk behind us on the sidewalk reading the Bible out loud to the people they walked behind.
It can work but I wonder if more often it actually turns people off to Christianity.
I found the debate to (mostly) be enjoyable, but I also found it to be disappointingly polarizing. Supposedly, Ham stood for Christians, and instead of citing any scientific evidence, used the presup argument of "the Bible tells me so." Ham didn't present scientific evidence to support his view; he only tried to make an argument that evolutionists "weren't there" so they can't know what happened. Yet if an atheist used that same logic when discussing the existence of Jesus, Ham would probably say that's an invalid, illogical argument.
Nye mistakenly tried to argue that Ham is reading some parts of the Bible as literal and others as poetry, as if that is subjective. This showed Nye's ignorance towards the varied types of biblical literature, but I agree with Nye that Ham is misusing Genesis, an ancient Mesopotamian narrative, as a literal science textbook.
Scientific inquiry is a beautiful and powerful tool, given to us by our Creator. Let us not throw it out just because it challenges our understanding of Scripture. I don't think God has given us these minds and all this evidence just to force us deny them and read Genesis at face value.
Thanks Cody, Nye seemed to aim to convince a not so religious target. He aimed at people who more or less saw all religions as equal. He either didn't know or didn't think that a Christian audience would think that God could help Noah, an "unskilled artisan" build the ark. My guess is, though, that he wasn't aiming at a target that believed in miracles. I think he won the debate but he also seemed to lack imagination (e.g., he couldn't imagine a lion that didn't eat meat).
Ken, good way to put that.
Ham is masquerading fake-science as evangelism. He is trying to contort some forced biblical "proof" of scientific observations to bolster the Gospel. I think that says more about what might be his own lack of faith.
The story of Christ and how we should live together stands on it's own. If you won't get on board "Love God." & "Love each other." as the two greatest commandments, twisted science & suspended disbelief isn't going to get you there.
I felt sad reading your opinion of the debate.
To the idea of the US math & science scores decreasing, a liberal approach to education & the evolutionary approach has been the primary means of education in these areas over the past 60 years...the same time period in which the US started to decline..coincidence or the result of poor education(liberal & evolution)? It's something that needs to be addressed.
Dr. Schenck, I haven't finished watching all of the debate yet, but based on what I have seen (plus Mashable's 4 minute recap), I believe both Ham and Nye talk past one another. I am a young earth creationist, but I find Ham’s hybrid (presuppositional/evidential) approach is somewhat bizarre: I can't figure out if in his thinking he is presuppositionalist who uses evidentiary methods at times as supplement, or if he is an evidentialist who uses presuppositional methods at times as supplement. I think this odd tension is evident in Ham’s “historical and observational science.” It seems as though Ham is saying “We can observe and interpret all the bare facts in the present tense just fine, but regarding the bare facts of history we need biblical revelation.” So, we need revelation over There but not Here? Odd, methinks. But at least debates like this are taking place. Even when the speakers talk past one another it stirs up similar conversations in other shared-cultural spaces. And I don’t think we should be overly concerned that Ham doesn’t represent what other Christians believe, or that Ham is potentially polarizing the Christian community – in the final analysis I believe that reasonable people (Christians and non-Christians alike) understand that groups in general are rarely monolithic.
@Christopher:
You seem to assume that those who practice a presuppositional approach either don't or shouldn't use evidence to support their arguments. But, as I understand this methodology, those who favor presupposional apologetics don't discount evidence, they merely contextualize it. If you read the works of Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, or John Frame, I think you'll see that presuppositionalists do in fact use evidence in their arguments.
What I find ironic about such criticisms of Ham is that the "scientific" approach to the subject of the debate is itself presuppositional in character. Science rules out inference to supernatural causation as something that is out of bounds for science, and then scientists assume that inference to intelligent causation is ipso facto inference to supernatural causation, and so they rule it out as well.
There are two layers of presupposition that scientists employ when considering the relevant data:
(1) Intelligent causation in biology is equivalent to supernatural causation, and therefore must be ruled out, and
(2) the theory of evolution is the context within which the relevant data is interpreted, because it's the only "scientific" (= no intelligence allowed) theory they have that people believe can account for the diversity of life we see around us.
So both sides employ reasoning that is presuppositional in character. The presuppotionalist theologian attempts to prove the existence of God by demonstrating the impossibility of contrary, while the presuppositionalist scientist simply rules out the contrary (in this case, intelligent causation) as a governing principle.
What I don't understand is why anyone who claims to be a Christian would embrace a methodology that seeks to exclude God as a matter of "principle".
@Alethinon61:
That is not my assumption. Sorry if it came across that way. I agree: their appeal to evidence and proof is contextualized. I was just musing on trying to figure out Ham's fundamental approach.
Thanks. You nailed it with #3 (Ham's presuppositional/evidential yo-yoing) and it is perhaps what bugs me about his approach. I can tell you that when pastors with unyielding presuppositional tendencies (most of them, in the press at least) try to interpret science and scientific headlines, it is ugly. Most of the articles are written to the (fellow) scientific community. Extracting graphs and quotes is almost always a misrepresentation of the argument.
One more complaint: you will find lots of YECs suggesting that the tentative language and ever-changing nature of science/science writing is proof of its brokenness. "It's all just theories... my Bible has never changed." Instead, I see God's created beings coming ever closer to the truth about Creation. Wouldn't we be expected to get more than a few things wrong along the way? (e.g. geocentrism).
Also, Ham's distinction between historical and observational science is puzzling. I've spent 6 years in higher ed (science) and have never heard of it.
Most human brains do not process information to inform belief... Most take information and fit it into their belief system... Science does not claim the magic of knowing what there is no proof of... In this idea the debate was a great success... Anyone who is disappointed needs to listen to the debate again...
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