The Question: Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern, scientific era?
Here we have a 3 hour lesson in how silly crap can be proved to silly people. In this case there is a difference in the usual argument from “creation science” and the “intelligent design” camps who both try to prove creationism without basing it upon Christian evangelical Biblical fundamentalism. Those camps pretend to avoid religious fundamentalism to get past the separation of church and state clause so they can get creationism taught in science classes in public schools (government).
In this case Australian Ken Ham puts the creationist argument and his creationist museum fully into the realm of Biblical Christian fundamentalism. I was somewhat surprised that Ken Ham kept adding baby murdering and gay marriage to the debate with Bill Nye allowing that to go unanswered.
The basis of Ken Ham’s argument for Biblical Creationism is twofold. First is that there are great scientists who are Biblical creationists. Indeed there are, he mentioned 5. There are about 500 more such “scientists” in the world. There are over 3 million scientists who say it is silly crap.
Ken Ham’s second argument, as is true with all arguments for creationism or magic, begins with a false premise. In this case that there are two kinds of science, observable and historical. There is one kind of science called science. He made that crap up. And even if we accepted it, his argument falls apart as we can indeed observe the history of evolution in how far way stars are, millions of bones and fossils, and in our travels seeing the transitions and layers of soil, rock and ice.
The main argument from Bill Nye is that creationism can make no predictions which is the basis of science and technology. Sadly this goes over the heads of most.
I was surprised on how important Ken Ham gives to Noah and the Flood. He argues that only KINDS of plants and animals were brought aboard the 500 ft long ark. That would be 7000 “kinds” times two, or 14,000 animals and their food tended for a year by 8 people. That is not counting trees, bushes, flowers, grains, grass and so on. To put that in perspective the San Diego Zoo contains 3600 animals, on 100 acres, and a thousand staff to care for them.
Also believe it or not, Ken Ham tells us all animals were vegetarians before the flood. Lions and tigers and monkeys fighting over all those bananas. Enough bananas to feed 14000 animals each day for 365 days is a lot of bananas. This gives us a clear picture of Ken Ham works the logic for he says, lions and tigers were vegetarians because bears eat berries. So there you have it. End of debate.
I think my biologist Stephen Jay Gould who is no longer with us would have gone better than Bill Nye. But both are in the same place as the most serious question here is is not so much the silliness of Biblical creationism, but dumbing down America by having these nitwits pushing this silly crap into our public education system. About twice as many Americans subscribe to young Earth Biblical Creationsim than most of the rest of the world INCLUDING Iran.
The chart below does not include the 29% of Americans who want creationism taught along side evolution in public school science classes or the added 13% who want evolution removed from public school science classes and replaced with creationism, or 42% of Americans.
This same 42% – or from below 46% – of Americans who accept this crap is what gives the Republican Party about a 25 point jump on Democrats in the voting booths. Which is why I dwell on this issue and many other religious issues here on this website. If it were not for our uniquely American religious silliness from the 19th Century we would have joined the rest of the civilized world long ago. As my European friends tell me, we debated and resolved the issues of abortion, creationism, health care and guns 50 years ago, what’s the matter with you people
