Bill Nye to debate Creationist tonight at 7 - 2.4 on CNN
- Thread starter DarthTom
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This is an awful idea. Putting a Creationist on the same stage as a legitimate scientist only makes Creationism look more credible. It gives the impression there's a "debate" with "two sides" who have valid points, when in reality it's facts against bullshit.
Creationists should be shunned, ridiculed, and shamed into silence, not engaged in debate.
Creationists should be shunned, ridiculed, and shamed into silence, not engaged in debate.
I don't know Robert Maxwell, while I generally agere with you when you start getting into, "intelligent design," and you throw in people's faith into the mix it becomes less black and white.
As an ex-Catholic myself, I was taught as child that God was the proverbial, "watchmaker," started the big bang and stood back and watched "his," plan unfold. So if we're talking about that type of, "creationism," it becomes IMO less of a debate over science v. religion and biblical pseudo science rather than science v. faith.
However, if we're talking about debating if Adam and Eve literally existed - than I agree 100% with you.
That said, this debate is occuring at the Creationism museum, so I'm guessing it's the latter not the former. I'm going to tune in and see how it unfolds for a few minutes tonight.
It's less black and white and more apples and oranges. Religion and science are different domains.
I don't think science and faith are necessarily incompatible, but there's also no reason they have to overlap. If religion has to creep in and tell science it's wrong, well, religion's overstepping.
Now there's a place I wouldn't mind seeing burn to the ground (with no one inside, of course.) Just one big shrine to anti-intellectualism and ignorance.
For Catholics at least - and since science cannot yet identify what 'force,' caused the big bang - their faith that God did is sufficient. Do you find the explanation objectionable?
Agreed. Even acknowledging these people is a mistake and gives them credibility.
I find it irrelevant. No deity or supernatural force of any kind is a requirement for the Big Bang to "work."
I generally agree. However, and to paraphrase the movie Contact, for people to dismiss more than 1/2 of the earth's population belief in a deity as some sort of delusional behavior is insulting.
I'll give them the fig leaf of the big bang being started by god if they accept the science of evolution and natural selection as a reasonable compromise.
Atheists get it wrong IMO when they because as dogmatic as some conservative religious people do with their beliefs or lack there of.
There is nothing wrong with teaching creationism per se, people are free to believe what they want, not that I believe it in myself. That being said creationism, Intelligent Design etc.. only belong in religious classes. They should not be taught in science class along with evolution.
Children - especially young children - sometimes have trouble differentiating the difference.
The bible should not be taught IMO as a science book under any circumstances. As a Catholic for example I was taught as a child that virtually all of the old testament was apocryphal
All I can say to that is "tough shit." Science is about facts, not feelings.
This is not a tit-for-tat. Science doesn't have to acknowledge unscientific assertions just to placate people. Evolution is true whether people "accept" it or not.
I find your attitude bizarre. Science isn't "dogmatic," it's a process through which we refine our understanding of the universe. It's not perfect. It probably never will be. But it provides testable, provable information about the world around us. Religion is about offering hope and solace (at best) or enforcing social order (at worst.)
Certain religious groups are intent on demeaning and attacking science because they believe it threatens their doctrine. It's been the same old story for centuries, and science always wins out in the end, because science is about finding the truth, not hiding truths we may find uncomfortable or strange.
I wasn't talking about science being dogmatic but rather some atheists when it comes to pushing their anti-god agenda with science.
Science will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of god so - giving people their belief that god started the big bang IMO is a harmless concession. edited to add. And when I use the word, "concession," I mean it in a way that politely acknowledges that you respect their faith and so long as god doesn't break scientific law by starting the big bang you're fine with that even thought that may not be your personal belief system.
I agree with you - science is science and faith is faith but letting some people have both but yet still adhere to proven scientific principles is a reasonable way to compromise on the issue of creationism, "intelligent design," and the big bang and god as the watchmaker.
If science can't prove or disprove the existence of deities--and short of one actually announcing itself, I would agree--why does religion give a damn? Science is never going to say "sure, the Big Bang was caused by God," because it's not a scientific statement. What are you asking for, for that to be put in science books or something?
If one's religion doesn't require a rejection of science, more power to it. Science really has no reason to care, though.
It is ok to believe a god started the Big Bang and science can't disprove the untestable.
Until science finds out what started the Big Bang. Then which gaps fill the theists next with their god?
This has happened over and over throughout history. And always they have said, but scientists will never explain X, only god could have done that. And then science explained X. And theists burned the scientists with fire (maybe sometimes literally)literally) until they had to change their position because the world threatened to move on without them.
It will happen again...
That debate would become an endless loop. Hypothetically science finds out what triggered the big bang and the faithful will simply claim that god created that trigger. And so on ad nausea.
I say give them this so long as their beliefs don't contradict estabished and proven science.
^ Up through part of the 1700's a common thought was that Newton's law of gravitation explains why the planets orbit as they do, but it also says that they couldn't have just started orbiting all by themselves because something had to start the motion, just as Newton's laws predict. So God reached out his hand and started them rolling along in their orbits. But those meddling scientists weren't content with that idea...
Anyway, unless Bill Nye has read up on these debates, he might get trounced because he's not an evolutionary biologist, he's a mechanical engineer. The creationists will spring one of their many arguments like "Evolution claims that bats and whales are more closely related to each other than are almost any two random species of frogs! That's just absurd!" If he's not already encountered and countered the huge variety of such arguments, he might start flailing.
Anyway, unless Bill Nye has read up on these debates, he might get trounced because he's not an evolutionary biologist, he's a mechanical engineer. The creationists will spring one of their many arguments like "Evolution claims that bats and whales are more closely related to each other than are almost any two random species of frogs! That's just absurd!" If he's not already encountered and countered the huge variety of such arguments, he might start flailing.
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Yeah, Bill beat the shit out of Ken. It won't matter among the YE Creationist crowd, of course. Ken could have just said "Bible, Bible, Bible" over and over again (which he essentially did), and they would have been impressed.