Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham

[HomerLovesKoolAid]

I believe the universe is exactly the same age as me.

Really? That old?

 

[Denny Crane]

http://theweek.com/article/index/256163/in-defense-of-creationists

 

[crowTrobot]

http://theweek.com/article/index/256163/in-defense-of-creationists

that was rather fluffy and naïve

 

[Denny Crane]

that was rather fluffy and naïve

The bit about seeing light older than 6000 years of age?

 

[MARIS61]

Creationists are personally incapable of evolving, therefore they do not believe in evolution.

For a cognizant, reasoning being to think he can change the stagnant minds of intentionally irrational beings is folly.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

 

[Denny Crane]

Creationists are personally incapable of evolving, therefore they do not believe in evolution.

For a cognizant, reasoning being to think he can change the stagnant minds of intentionally irrational beings is folly.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

Who was Gregor Mendel?

Prepare for a slow and agonizing death!

 

[MARIS61]

Who was Gregor Mendel?

Prepare for a slow and agonizing death!

Mendel, as you know, was a scientist who made some phenomenal discoveries about genetics. He was scoffed at and ignored both by the general public and by most scientists of his time. Nearly every important smart person in history has faced the same fate, because stupid people just can't be taught. They can only be programmed.

I'll take the compliment that you compare him to me.

 

[MARIS61]

As for your Pew link, Pew is an ultra-Christian propaganda thinkless tank run by far-right 1%ers. It is useless as a source of credible facts.

 

[Denny Crane]

Mendel, as you know, was a scientist who made some phenomenal discoveries about genetics. He was scoffed at and ignored both by the general public and by most scientists of his time. Nearly every important smart person in history has faced the same fate, because stupid people just can't be taught. They can only be programmed.

I'll take the compliment that you compare him to me.

Mendel was a monk. So much for your statement about a religious person's scientific abilities.

 

[thedude9990]

^ wasnt the guy who came up with the big bang theory really religious as well?

also am I the only one who believes that there could be a God and evolution?

 

[Denny Crane]

^ wasnt the guy who came up with the big bang theory really religious as well?

also am I the only one who believes that there could be a God and evolution?

It takes guts to admit the truth when it flies in the face of religious dogma.

 

[MARIS61]

Mendel was a monk. So much for your statement about a religious person's scientific abilities.

In those days they didn't have publicly funded schools. Like most commoners wishing to learn, he became a friar because it enabled him to obtain an education he could not otherwise afford. There is no evidence that he actually believed in a super-being, and as the father of genetics it was clear he did not believe in Creationism.

 

[Denny Crane]

In those days they didn't have publicly funded schools. Like most commoners wishing to learn, he became a friar because it enabled him to obtain an education he could not otherwise afford. There is no evidence that he actually believed in a super-being, and as the father of genetics it was clear he did not believe in Creationism.

You're nuts. He went to non religious schools until he was in his 20s then studied to become a monk against his father's wishes.

http://www.biography.com/people/gregor-mendel-39282

 

[Denny Crane]

And Darwin was a creationist.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16085993

Darwin rested his account of life's origins on the notion that God created one or a few life forms upon which natural selection could act. Owen argued that Darwin's reliance on God to explain the origins of life makes his version of evolution no less supernatural than the special creationist that Darwin criticizes: although Darwin limits God to one or a few acts of creation, he still relies upon God to explain life's existence.

 

[crowTrobot]

The bit about seeing light older than 6000 years of age?

the bit about Ken Ham being sincere

 

[MarAzul]

Oh my! Mr. Nye can tie a beautiful tie!

As a physicist, engineer, Naval Architect, Oceanographer, I find him a little shallow.
He needs to expand his study to include why men need religion. Until then he will be
a few blocks short of complete.

Then on the other side, to be a Christian, and I wish I could be, a man does not have to accept the accounts of the Old Testament as hardcore fact to be a Christian. That is nothing more than some writings and tales complied by someone unknown to me, probably written by ancient Hebrew Rabbis. The cannon includes these to introduces the Christian to the origins of Christianity and the same god of the Hebrews. The new testament teaches Christian philosophy and include nothing to prohibit a man from accepting science when science makes sense.

The conflict between creation and evolution is indeed manufacture, as Mr. Ham said, probably by secularist. The evidence of evolution is all around us as is the evidence of creation to kick of the evolution.

 

[Denny Crane]

the bit about Ken Ham being sincere

I'm not religious as you know, but I also don't have a problem with people who are. As long as the truth wins out.

This sort of debate is so lopsided in favor of science, it ain't funny.

 

[MARIS61]

You're nuts. He went to non religious schools until he was in his 20s then studied to become a monk against his father's wishes.

http://www.biography.com/people/gregor-mendel-39282

As it is today, most people who claim to believe in God only do so because they fear their career would suffer if they were to come out as an Atheist. Atheists are the single most discriminated against group in America.

200 years ago, people were shunned, imprisoned, or killed for it.

He attended a couple years at a University, went deeply into debt, and joined the church as it was the only way for him to study and eventually have a teaching career.

During his childhood, Mendel worked as a gardener and studied beekeeping. Later, as a young man, he attended gymnasium in Opava. He had to take four months off during his gymnasium studies due to illness. From 1840 to 1843, he studied practical and theoretical philosophy and physics at the University of Olomouc Faculty of Philosophy, taking another year off because of illness. He also struggled financially to pay for his studies and Theresia gave him her dowry. Later he helped support her three sons, two of whom became doctors. He became a friar because it enabled him to obtain an education without having to pay for it himself.

 

[Denny Crane]

As it is today, most people who claim to believe in God only do so because they fear their career would suffer if they were to come out as an Atheist. Atheists are the single most discriminated against group in America.

200 years ago, people were shunned, imprisoned, or killed for it.

He attended a couple years at a University, went deeply into debt, and joined the church as it was the only way for him to study and eventually have a teaching career.

During his childhood, Mendel worked as a gardener and studied beekeeping. Later, as a young man, he attended gymnasium in Opava. He had to take four months off during his gymnasium studies due to illness. From 1840 to 1843, he studied practical and theoretical philosophy and physics at the University of Olomouc Faculty of Philosophy, taking another year off because of illness. He also struggled financially to pay for his studies and Theresia gave him her dowry. Later he helped support her three sons, two of whom became doctors. He became a friar because it enabled him to obtain an education without having to pay for it himself.

http://www.adherents.com/people/pm/Gregor_Mendel.html

Mendel was elected Abbot of his Monastery in 1868. (They elect secular types to that position? )

[page 143] Although he read Darwin, he [Mendel] did not accept many of his [Darwin's] theories, believing that God had created the world and blind chance could not be responsible for the outcome...

...

Mendel's last battle was with the government. IN 1875 a tax law that singled out religious establishments was passed. Mendel stubbornly resisted this encroachment on religious freedom. Those who joined in the fight soon lost heart, and they fell away when the Moravian government confiscated monastic lands. The government offered compromises, but Mendel remained firm.

...

But he sure fooled those actually religious people around him.

 

[MARIS61]

And Darwin was a creationist.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16085993

Darwin rested his account of life's origins on the notion that God created one or a few life forms upon which natural selection could act. Owen argued that Darwin's reliance on God to explain the origins of life makes his version of evolution no less supernatural than the special creationist that Darwin criticizes: although Darwin limits God to one or a few acts of creation, he still relies upon God to explain life's existence.

Wrong again.

A perfect example of the lengths scientists had to sell their soul to protect themselves.

It would make sense to start with Darwin's most plain writing on the subject -- an entire section of his autobiography on "Religious Belief." In that section he plainly stated that in the late 1830s -- at the same time he was formulating his evolutionary theory -- he gave up belief in the Bible and miracles.

He stated further, "I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine"[3]. Not only did he remonstrate against Christianity, but Darwin also explained that the "argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one"[4]. No wonder his relatives withheld publication of this section on religion from the first edition of his autobiography. Darwin's anti-religious remarks were deemed too explosive. Unfortunately, some still want to edit out this part of Darwin's life.

Some will argue, however, and rightly so, that Darwin did still believe in God when he wrote Origin of Species in 1859. Though denying that God had a direct hand in creating species, he did nonetheless indicate that God created the natural laws of the cosmos, including the laws of evolutionary development. He also interpolated a statement about a Creator breathing life into one or a few (primitive) organisms into the 1860 edition of Origin.

But what kind of God did Darwin believe in at that time? It certainly was not the God of Christianity. In their scholarly biography, Adrian Desmond and James Moore claim that Darwin decisively rejected Christianity by 1851, eight years before completing the Origin of Species [5]. Nor was Darwin's God a God who did miracles or intervened in nature or history. In 1859 Darwin was most likely a deist, a person who believes that God created the world, but then let it run without any divine involvement. The Creator in Origin of Species was not the personal God of Christianity, nor was it a God who influenced evolutionary development in any way.

Nowhere was this more evident than in discussions Darwin had with his contemporaries over the question of whether there is a purpose or goal to the evolutionary process. In a now-famous letter of July 1860 to Harvard biologist Asa Gray, Darwin decisively rejected the idea that there is a plan or purpose behind the evolutionary process. He insisted that there was no divine influence on the formation of species, and, as he explained fully later, this included humans.

We should also note that Darwin's statement about a Creator breathing life into one or a few organisms did not really reflect his private views. We know this, because later in his correspondence he expressed regret about including this statement, explaining that he had added it to deflect criticism of his theory. Darwin also speculated in his private correspondence that life had arisen without divine intervention by purely material processes.

As Darwin explained in his autobiography, after writing Origin, his residual belief in a deistic God faded. He soon became an agnostic, which is the term he often used to describe his religious position. In his autobiography, he stated: "I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic"[6].

By the time Darwin wrote Descent of Man in 1871, he had clearly abandoned belief in God. He even provided a completely naturalistic explanation for the origin of religion. He claimed that religion arose because people feared unknown natural forces and wrongly ascribed life to them. Darwin thought religion was a psychological mistake [7].

Darwin's religious contemporaries were also deeply concerned about his theory, because Darwin thought he could explain morality as an evolved trait (as I explain more fully in my book, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany). In Descent Darwin explained that morality had arisen through natural evolutionary processes and thus was not created by God. According to his view, morality was neither universal nor unchanging. This effectively undermined the Judeo-Christian conception of morality.

So, what lessons can we draw about the relationship between religion and evolutionary theory from Darwin's own trajectory? First, as he developed his evolutionary theory, he moved from Christian belief in a personal God to a deistic position to agnosticism. It is not clear to what extent his religious views shaped his evolutionary theory, or vice-versa. It seems reasonable to think they developed in tandem. Second, he rejected any divine intervention or even divine purpose in his evolutionary scheme. Third, he rejected the religious basis for morality. None of these points is good news for those trying to refashion Darwin into a religious believer whose evolutionary theory is no threat to religion, especially to traditional forms of Christianity.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/did_darwin_believe_in_god.html

 

[Denny Crane]

Dude, stop. You're failing.

This is the last paragraph in the book, The Origin of the Species, by Darwin.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us ... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

 

[Denny Crane]

Creationists are personally incapable of evolving, therefore they do not believe in evolution.

For a cognizant, reasoning being to think he can change the stagnant minds of intentionally irrational beings is folly.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

My beef is with this, MARIS.

Darwin studied to join the clergy, called himself a theist at the time he wrote Origins, and gradually became an agnostic. So he was a creationist personally capable of evolving and who believed in evolution. His stagnant mind was changed. He was led to water and he thought.

Get it?

 

[crowTrobot]

The conflict between creation and evolution is indeed manufacture, as Mr. Ham said, probably by secularist. The evidence of evolution is all around us as is the evidence of creation to kick of the evolution.

Hu? Mr. Ham isn't saying there's no real conflict between creation and evolution. He's saying evolution didn't happen.

 

[crowTrobot]

Also, not that it's something Ham would care about, but there certainly IS conflict between Christianity and evolution. The clear implication of evolution is that human cognitive function including everything that makes us who we are individually emerges from and is strictly dependent on purely physical processes. In other words evolution is very strong evidence against the Christian concept of a soul, continuation of life after death etc., and just saying a soul is something that attaches to humans and not animals doesn't do a thing to resolve that.

 

[MarAzul]

Also, not that it's something Ham would care about, but there certainly IS conflict between Christianity and evolution. The clear implication of evolution is that human cognitive function including everything that makes us who we are individually emerges from and is strictly dependent on purely physical processes. In other words evolution is very strong evidence against the Christian concept of a soul, continuation of life after death etc., and just saying a soul is something that attaches to humans and not animals doesn't do a thing to resolve that.

Do you have a soul crow?

 

[crowTrobot]

Do you have a soul crow?

define soul

 

[MARIS61]

Dude, stop. You're failing.

This is the last paragraph in the book, The Origin of the Species, by Darwin.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us ... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Read my post. I even bolded it for you. Darwin completely disavowed those comments, which were not even in the book until years later when he felt pressured to appease THE CHURCH.

Stop embarrassing yourself by posing a silly claim that has been proven to be nonsense.

 

[Denny Crane]

He made the comments, proving your rant was silly.

 

[MARIS61]

My beef is with this, MARIS.

Darwin studied to join the clergy, called himself a theist at the time he wrote Origins, and gradually became an agnostic. So he was a creationist personally capable of evolving and who believed in evolution. His stagnant mind was changed. He was led to water and he thought.

Get it?

Except he was never a creationist. He allowed in his youth that it might be possible that a higher power existed, but never believed in a creator. He was never "religious". Just curious in a time of worldwide ignorance. Kind of like me in my early youth.

 

[Denny Crane]

Except he was never a creationist. He allowed in his youth that it might be possible that a higher power existed, but never believed in a creator. He was never "religious". Just curious in a time of worldwide ignorance. Kind of like me in my early youth.

Except he was. People bother to count the times he uses the word "Creator" in his works and letters.

In any case, he studied to be a priest and wasn't somehow brainwashed or resistant to the truth as you ranted about.