From Nicole Keenan: I think that Bill Nye didn't have much proof to support his case, so, he was just wasting time. On the other hand, Ken Ham has the whole Bible (which is true, by the way) to back him up. I do agree that people think that the person they supported won. I hope that Bill Nye will open his eyes to the truth and start walking with God.
From Shelly Crain: The debate was definitely interesting. The problem was that Bill Nye could not answer Ken's questions about evolution such as, "how can you explain the development of reasoning and communication?"
From Ron Knipfer: Mr. Nye at several points asserted that the creationist belief could not be correct. He used evidence to support his assertion. But Mr. Ham's position was built on belief, not evidence, and that made it invulnerable to evidence. Mr. Nye should have concentrated more on explaining the layering of sedimentary rock, the remains of life captured in these layers, and how carbon and other dating processes work. Mr. Ham resorted to the "intelligent Design" concept to explain his position, but frustrated that concept by insisting that the fundamentalist 4,000-year creation period is correct. He would have served us better had he explained that those years were carefully counted in the progression of the Old Testament of the Bible (Adam begat Caine, etc.). Both men are to be congratulated on publicly taking on a debate about such a contentious subject.
From Al Schneider: Bill Nye tried to make points based on trees with annual rings counting thousands of years farther back than the purported date of the worldwide flood about 4,000 years ago. He also brought up the annual layers in ice cores dating back hundreds of thousands of years. Ken Ham ignored these points and proceeded with his own talking points. One point that wasn't brought up is that four days before the debate was the Chinese New Year celebrating the year 4712 in the Chinese calendar. I've not heard that there were any Chinese people stowed away on Noah's ark, so how did these people survive the flood? People like Ken Ham are impervious to evidence and go through unbelievable contortions to make evidence fit their preconceived notions about the literal inerrancy of book that is mostly a collection of myths and legends.
From Dennis Singleton: I did not see the debate; but years ago while in the area we stopped in to see this museum. They had a model of Noah's Ark. Among the animals they had ascending into the ark was a pair of dinosaurs. I am a Christian; but that's where they lost me.
From Steve Jenkins: I think the evolution side lost the debate when the topic was selected as "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era?" The fact that millions of Christians believe in creationism demonstrates that it is a powerful view of origins for them. However, I think that creationism has no place being taught as a viable model of origins in science classrooms. Creationism as a theory of origins has no scientific evidence to support it, versus the mountains of scientific evidence supporting evolution. Unfortunately, public education dollars are being spent on school vouchers to support private schools, in Ohio and elsewhere, where creationism is being taught as science.
From Grace Swisher: As a Christian, I believe that Ken Ham won. He had more factual things, like the Bible, and Bill Nye had a fake theory that was not written by a Godly leader that knows God. I think that Bill Nye was comical about the whole thing. He was not prepared. I'm not bashing Bill Nye, I'm just standing up for what I believe in. I know that God was glorified and that's all that matters. The Lord will always prevail, and He is in every situation. Hopefully, Bill Nye learned something from Ken Ham.
From David Hurwitz: Hamm divides science into the observable (what we can experiment about here and now) and the historical (our explanations of our origins and anything else that occurred before we could observe and write about it) According to Hamm, "We cannot know the past for sure because we were not there to see it." He accepts as the historical account of our origins a certain book — Genesis (from the King James version of the bible, a retranslation of earlier translations of the Greek and Aramaic). Thus his position has been labeled as a "religious" position.
Hamm counters that the scientific, evolutionary position is also just a “belief,” and thus is religion of sorts. He argues it is no more or less valid than his position. Therefore, he argues, his views should be taught with the same weight as evolution.
I would suggest that there are other historical accounts of our origins, which I hope Mr. Hamm will also see as valid creation myths. They are all fiction because as Mr. Hamm says, “we weren’t there to see.”
But evolution is not fiction; there is no “historical” science separate from “observable” science because we can know the past, and Mr. Hamm shows that in his own museum where he displays a model of a dinosaur (albeit incorrectly). Even before a complete dinosaur skeleton was ever found, scientists were able to assemble a full recreation of a dinosaur from only a few bones. Why? Because they knew how animals are constructed looking at modern animals.
Nye stated that evolution is bottom up; species become more and more complex. In our complexity is our ability to think, to extrapolate. No, we do not know 100 percent for sure how we got here, but to grant mythology the same validity as evolution is to deny the specialness of humanity. And, nothing in this whole discussion detracts or denies a deity or spirituality in the universe.
To quote Dr. Dan Krane, a biologist from Wright State: “Science tells us how we got here, Religion tells us why we are here.”
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