Ham-Nye Debate: Another False Choice

"There are two fundamentally different battles raging in the current debates about evolution. The first pits nearly the entire scientific community against creationists, who believe that they are upholding the veracity of Scripture by denying that evolution happened at all. The second battle concerns not the fact of evolution but the standard neo-Darwinian explanation of it, and the issues at stake are primarily philosophical and scientific."--American physicist Stephen M. Barr


Alice C. Linsley

I did not watch the Ken Ham-Bill Nye debate because it was bound to get my blood pressure up. My students wanted to talk about it on Wednesday and gave me the details and their opinions. Listening to their descriptions, I was reminded of the story of the elephant and the blind men. At least Nye touched the beast.

Both men failed to address the deeper questions surrounding evolution. Ham is ignorant of the science. He only knows to respond with the YEC talking points. Nye did not distinguish between the aspects of evolution that are absolutely factual with substantial physical and genetic evidence and the aspects that are theoretical still lacking substantial physical evidence. In other words, the public is no more enlightened on mutation, adaptation, common ancestry and natural selection than before the debate. Again, we were faced with a false choice between biblical illiteracy and biblical literalism.

That's all I have to say on the subject. For those who wish to read more I recommend (but do not necessarily agree with) these responses:

A Ken Ham Nightmare: Human Foot Prints Found Below Ice Age Deposits

Ken Ham Does Not Speak For Me
Faith and Science: A dialogue, not a debate (Conversation with Ian Barbour)
The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity
BioLogos Conversation: Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye
#HamOnNye Post-Debate Round-Up
On Gaps and Overlaps


Related reading: Smoking Gun Evidence of an Ancient Earth; Is Scientific Dating of Fossils Reliable?; YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis 1-5; Biblical Anthropology is Science; The Battle Over Genesis; The "Science Guy" Reveals His Ignorance; Millions of Years a Stumbling Block; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; Science Journalists One Cause of Americans' Ambivalence?; Bishop Ussher Goofed