Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well, let's take the alien craft, since in 1971 my little gray VW was followed during daytime hours for about 45 seconds by a gray disk at a range of no more than 50 yards, and my passenger, a hard-boiled Chicagoan who believed in NOTHING, saw exactly what I did and was quite rattled.
I would be too if my car was being followed around by an obviously lonely UFO.
He did state several times that if we teach our young people creationism our country is in trouble because of lack of scientific understanding. He clearly displayed an air of superiority--as if he was smarter than Ham.
He was stating his opinion - that a country that opts to deny a whole section of science on religious grounds is going to be in trouble. That's not about smarts, but putting religious Faith ahead of smarts.
That is just what the scientists that Ham produced were doing. Nye might be wrong in his opinion. It is in fact possible for scientists to do perfectly good work despite being creationists.
But only because creationism is not part of the science world. If it were - if creationism succeeded in imposing Creationism in education and science, then we might well find this business of ignoring whole swathes of evidence because it does not fit in with creationist ideas. And then that country's science might well find itself in trouble, despite the people trying to make creation 'science' work generally being as smart as you like.
We saw that this ignoring of unwanted evidence was just what Ken Ham did with his 'orchard' evolution from 'Kinds'.
Your argument that evolution has never been observed is also ignoring whole swathes of evidence. The analogy is a good one of someone in a court of law arguing that forensic evidence showing where the bullet went, what the blood -splashes tell us, what the DNA residue proves and in fact reconstructing a crime scientifically is just 'opinion' because 'Nobody observed it happening'.
We observe evolution all the time. It is accepted by creationism - but only within species. The evidence that one 'kind' of creature (given enough time) turned into such a different one that you couldn't call it the same kind is there, but Creationism denies it because it doesn't fit it in with their bible -based beliefs. This is not science, even if some scientists are doing it.
The funny thing is that Creationists and Bible -literalists insist that because there is no sound evidence for something like the flood or exodus, that does not mean it didn't happen. But use the same argument for evolution -even with the mechanism proven and the evidence that it did happen abundant, and it is dismissed because 'it is not being observed'. It would never be accepted that the Parting of the Waters never happened because we do not see anybody doing it now.
There is a name for this kind of self - serving argument. It is 'Special pleading'
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 02-05-2014 at 06:56 PM..
Well, let's take the alien craft, since in 1971 my little gray VW was followed during daytime hours for about 45 seconds by a gray disk at a range of no more than 50 yards, and my passenger, a hard-boiled Chicagoan who believed in NOTHING, saw exactly what I did and was quite rattled. There were also certain after-effects that are not uncommon in UFO sightings but that I've never heard of in connection with a sighting of a conventional aircraft.
But anyway: Disk-shaped craft have been observed in the skies for literally millennia, although the modern era is often traced to Kenneth Arnold's sighting in 1947. Since 1900, literally tens of thousands of these sightings have been reported in all countries and all cultures. Some have been hoaxes and some of the observers have been crackpots. But many more of the observers have been pilots, military personnel, law enforcement personnel, astronauts, scientists and other highly credible observers. The only psychological studies of which I am aware have shown that UFO observers are basically just average people with no predisposition to see UFOs. In many cases, there have been multiple observers who independently reported the same thing. In many cases, there has been ground and/or air radar confirmation of what was being observed. In many cases, there have been photographs that have withstood all analysis. In many cases, there have been physical traces. In many cases, the disk-shaped craft have been observed and/or tracked performing maneuvers that no conventional aircraft could perform and/or that defy the known laws of physics. I can add that personally I have never raised the UFO topic in any group of five people (and I do it all the time) without at least one person who holds a responsible position and gives every appearance of being sane and intelligent stepping forward and relating a mind-blowing sighting that rivals anything you see in the movies - and I am talking about my fellow lawyers, engineers and other professionals with whom I routinely interact.
That is a body of anecdotal evidence. It fits the criteria of duration, quantity, consistency and credibility. Is it anecdotal evidence that reptilian creatures from Zeta Reticuli are visiting the earth? Hardly. It is anecdotal evidence that disk-shaped craft performing inexplicable maneuvers are appearing in our skies. Does it conclusively establish this fact? Perhaps not, but I am very familiar with the evidence and would say that it comes pretty close. It may tend to support what is called the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis, but there are other possible explanations (some weirder than the ETH). But what would it even mean to say that this is "not evidence" or is "entitled to no weight"? The only person who would say that would be a "fundamentalist" of some ilk who takes it as axiomatic that "There are no such things as aliens, and therefore any evidence that might tend to support visitations by aliens is, a priori, bogus." And some people with excellent credentials do take this position, often blatantly ignoring inconvenient facts in order to fit a case into their pet theory. This is no different in principle from the position of a Young Earth Creationist -- or, ironically, of the True Believers of Scientism who think the Young Earth Creationists are insane!
I pity those who can read a thread such as this and fail to see the Monty Pythonesque humor of the "discussion." If it didn't cause me to ROFLMAO at least five times per day, I wouldn't bother.
It would mean it wouldn't stand up in a court of law alone without solid proof of a space craft. It doesn't mean you or your friend haven't seen something you think is an alien craft in the sky, nor does not believing in creationism mean we aren't people living on planet earth but, it does mean that what you think you saw won't be considered valid without more proof. Just like what people think created us and our universe doesn't hold any weight without more proof.
Not knowing doesn't make guessing proof. Guessing the world was flat didn't make it so. It only prolongs finding out the truth. This is Bills point.
This is why we can't teach creation in school. We've grown past believing in magical excuses for the existence of things around us. Long ago you could have said rain was a punishment or a reward from a God in the sky but you can't really get away with it today in America. We have scientific proof that it is not and the majority of people agree that is more viable than hear say.
And, I'm glad it's entertaining, best not to take things to seriously.
So, what is this proof you speak of? The much more meaningful words that prove the existence of creationism?
Last edited by PoppySead; 02-05-2014 at 11:02 PM..
Bill Nye the Science Guy vs Ken Ham Young Earth Creationist 'debate'
The need for the debate and the seriousness exhibited by Ham is disturbing. The very existence of YEC believers is the single most depressing fact of human existence, IMO. It belies the power of the intellect in human affairs. The number of sincere adherents is quite horrifying since it reveals so many of us hardly differ from our ignorant ancient ancestors . . . even after 2000+ years of the growth of knowledge and understanding. I am at a loss to either understand it or comprehend its cause. Very, very troubling!
That would be, for example, the evidence propounded by the proponents of Intelligent Design, the recent trends in physics, consciousness studies, a large body of anecdotal evidence suggesting the continuation of consciousness after bodily death, and my own personal experiences -- that, and the substantial holes in the Theory of Evolution noted by credible scientists who do not accept the theory as gospel. Surely, everyone is familiar with Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We are in an era where the Theory of Evolution is the ruling paradigm and is accepted as gospel by the priesthood of the Religion of Scientism, and where any maverick who dares to challenge it has zero chance of publication in the mainstream journals, zero chance of receiving any grants, and jeopardizes his entire career unless he recants. That's just the reality. The Theory of Evolution and the structure that surrounds it is a religion, pure and simple. I don't expect anyone who is immersed in this religion to accept the evidence that I find more convincing any more than I expect Ken Ham to accept it.
A final point, and then TVB really must move on to his devotionals: Posters here continue to confuse creationism not only with Young Earth Creationism but with fundamentalist Christianity as well. As the proponents of Intelligent Design have repeatedly pointed out, creationism per se has little or nothing to do with Christianity. Creationism is part and parcel of Christianity, but Christianity is not part and parcel of creationism. I have a good friend who is quite well-known on a national level in New Age circles. His theory is that we live in a carbon-based virtual reality created by what he calls the Source, and that our cosmic software has been corrupted by a silicon-based virus. Although he has no use for Christianity, I point out that his "exotic, high-tech" theory is a perfect match with Christianity. In any event, he is a "creationist" while hardly a Christian fundamentalist.
So basically you have no evidence for creationism and a lot rhetoric. Got it.
The Intelligent Design movement has been proven in a court of law to be Creationism rebadged.
Even the creators of the ID movement admit that in their Wedge Strategy.
"The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the idea of "intelligent design," which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a possibly undirected process such as natural selection."[1][2] Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it.[3][4]
The movement arose out of the previous Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic creation science movement in the United States,[5] and is driven by a small group of proponents.[6][7] The overall goal of the intelligent design movement is to "overthrow materialism" and atheism. Its proponents believe that society has suffered "devastating cultural consequences" from adopting materialism and that science is the cause of the decay into materialism because it seeks only natural explanations, and is therefore atheistic. They believe that the theory of evolution implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no intrinsic meaning. They seek to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".[3]"
You are interrupting my devotionals, but never mind. Someone once asked golfer Ben Hogan for the secrets to his swing. Hogan's response: "Dig them out of the dirt, like I did." TVB is not here to proselytize or convince, merely to point out that those who regard all creationists as wackos are, in the main, simply fundamentalist wackos of a different ilk. Some creationists fit the description, many do not; some anti-creationists fit the description, many do not -- but those who do seem to flock in unusual proportions to Internet forums. If you have a sincere interest in finding and evaluating the evidence that I find convincing, "Go look for it, like I did."
Your statement (1) does not accurately reflect what I said, and (2) is not true, as even a quick Google search would have revealed to you -- see, e.g., More Peer-Reviewed Papers Critical of Evolution | Proslogion (which is nothing more than the first link Google generated for me). If you really believe there is no credible evidence tilting against the theory of macroevolution, you haven't done your homework.
It's you who hasn't "done your homework".
The editor of The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Richard Sternberg, (who later turned out to be a closet ID'er) got the boot.
STATEMENT FROM THE COUNCIL OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON
The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity.
The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS - AAAS News Release), which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity.
Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.
Not sure if I can take seriously someone who holds up the fictional show CSI as his first point of reference to science. lol Weak opening for Bow-tie Nye so far.
Actually it was a great opening as he knew Ham would spin his spam about "Were you there?". It highlighted in a simple and relevant way that much of what we know is not from direct observation of something happening but from observing the evidence of it having happened.
I'm confused by the whole "it has never been observed" and "were you there" arguments coming from christians. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume both of those apply to every single belief they hold.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Bill Nye the Science Guy vs Ken Ham Young Earth Creationist 'debate'
