On February 5, 2014, Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") debated Ken Ham (President of Answers in Genesis and The Creation Museum) on whether the Genesis account of creation is a viable model of origins given what science has taught us so far. Both of these guys are characters and they were very well behaved, so it's actually a reasonably entertaining debate as far as these sorts of events go. I thought that Nye could have done a better job, but he clearly did a good enough job. A poll at Christian Today - a Christian Website - had Nye winning by a land-slide. Ham was very clear and polite and he actually garnered a few laughs along the way. You've got to hand it to him for doing a great job of exposing the Christian fundamentalist/literalist mindset.
Ham repeatedly made a distinction in the debate between “observational
science” and “origins or historical science”. This distinction is based upon
what one can observe in the present and conclude about the present (what he
calls “observational science”) and what one can observe in the present and
infer about the past (what he calls “origins or historical science”). There is
a difference here, to be sure, but it’s not the difference Ham needs for
Creationism to be considered as science. Here’s what he says in his
introductory statements explaining what is different about what he calls
“origins or historical science”:
“At the Creation Museum, we make no apology about the fact
that our origins or historical science actually is based upon the Biblical account
of origins.”
Well, Ken, your science isn't science. Science doesn’t proceed from the bible. It proceeds from
efforts to assess evidence as objectively as possible and it leads to whatever
conclusions that assessment produces. If the best explanation for the evidence
we find around us is that Yawheh exists and that He created the universe 4-6,000
years ago with all of the “kinds” in their present form, then that would be a
scientific conclusion. But Ham starts and ends there, without providing any evidence or justification
for doing so. This is textbook circular reasoning and
it’s just one of the many fallacies and biases that science tries its best to
avoid.
As he demonstrates in the debate, Ham is both woefully
ignorant of the evidence and guilty of the most wishful of thinking in trying
to conclude that the evidence around us is best explained by the creation
account in Genesis. In this regard, the debate exposed the reality of the
situation quite well: there is no debate. There is no controversy. The matter
has been settled, and there is only ignorance and wishful thinking on the literalist creationist side.
Since Ham’s “origins or historical science” begins with the
conclusion it "proves"(according to Ham, at least), it can’t possibly represent anything anybody would
rightly call science. Moreover, the evidence doesn’t support that
presupposition. A real scientist - any reasonable person, actually - should reject it. Accordingly,
creationism, at least Ham’s version of arriving at it, while appropriate for
religion classes, has no place in science class. If that is one of Ham’s goals
(and surely it is), I’m afraid he has handily defeated it all by himself.
