Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham [live stream] 7pm EST 4pm PST

SmallLady

Link to Live Stream


Who is Ken Ham?
Wikipedia

Kenneth Alfred Ham is an Australian young-Earth creationist who advocates a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. He is the president of Answers in Genesis (AiG) and the Creation Museum.

Education:
Ken Ham earned a Bachelor of Applied Science, with an emphasis in Environmental Biology, at Queensland Institute of Technology and a diploma in Education from the University of Queensland

Who is Bill Nye?
Wikipedia

William Sanford "Bill" Nye , popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, and scientist who began his career as a mechanical engineer at Boeing. He is best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–98) and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.

Education:
He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where one of his professors was Carl Sagan)[and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977.

ncse.com/blog/2014/02/getting-ready-nye-ham-debate-0015367

They’re debating in the auditorium at the AiG-run Creation “Museum,” in front of an audience of 900 people so rabidly enthusiastic that they snapped up every ticket in mere minutes. The Creation “Museum” is dedicated to the propositions that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, that the universe was created in six 24-hour days, that Eve was made from Adam’s rib and all humans descended from those two, that (non-avian) dinosaurs walked next to humans, that every animal on earth descends from pairs of species on Noah’s Ark, etc. It’s a view that tosses out everything we know about biology, geology, physics, archaeology, and astronomy in service of an idiosyncratic, ahistorical, and illiterate reading of the Bible.

inquisitr.com/1120084/watch-bill-nye-ken-ham-debate-streaming-video-live-online/

Ken Ham says the Creation Museum is hosting the debate because Mr. Nye is a “serious advocate for his beliefs” who is considering the creationist position in a non-mocking way. Ham says, “I hope to show Mr. Nye and our debate audience that observational science confirms the scientific accuracy of the Genesis account of origins, not evolution.” Nye, on the other hand, is concerned about creationism being taught in American schools and says he will “highlight the fact that so many young people are dismissing the Bible because of evolution, and even many young people who had grown up in the church decided to leave the church because they saw evolution as showing the Bible could not be trusted.”
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1120084/watch-bill-nye-ken-ham-debate-streaming-video-live-online/#Z1vdAiis2JjJL5ZB.99

electricitylikesme

Urgh.

There is no way to win with these people other then to ignore them.

SmallLady

I don't for see the debate ending well when the other guy is just going to stick his fingers in his ears while singing "la la I can't hear you"

stevemarks44

Im not trying to be antagonistic but it's kind of pointless because, as someone who used to be very Christian, any irrefutable fact he brings up can EASILY be dismissed with two sentences:

"The lord works in mysterious ways"

"You just have to have faith"

*clap clap clap clap clap*

jeffinva

$5 says Ham opens with a gish gallop, and resorts to an ad hominem within the first 10 minutes.

Zomro

I gotta give Bill Nye some major credit, though. The man is walking into the proverbial lion's den. He's got some serious balls.

BillyIdle

If he did dancing with the stars, he can do this too. BILL BILL BILL

SmallLady

The way I see it, if he can convince at least one person in that audience that creationism is not science, it will be time well spent.

Edit: that said, it's still hard to be optimistic.

see317

Zomro wrote: »

I gotta give Bill Nye some major credit, though. The man is walking into the proverbial lion's den. He's got some serious balls.

I have to wonder what the composition of the audience will look like. It's entirely possible that Bill will have more support in the audience then Ham considering the speed with which the tickets went.
It may be a baseless assumption on my part, or just nerd stereotyping, but I don't imagine many bible thumpers to be riding the F5 key quite as hard as Nye fans to grab the tickets up.

SmallLady

Ken Ham Bingo Cards

TetraRay

SmallLady wrote: »

The way I see it, if he can convince at least one person in that audience that creationism is not science, it will be time well spent.

Edit: that said, it's still hard to be optimistic.

I think this is exactly what Bill is going for. He's doing it for that one kid who sees this and has their world opened up

Sterica

It really won't be time well spent if Ken Ham can rake in thousands of dollars in donations to convince scores of other kids that biology is of the devil.

Sterica

It's starting with an ad for his fucking museum.

Seriously, the real reason for this debate could not be any more transparent.

Exriel

And then the stream crashes during the intros, so... mission accomplished for Mr. Ham I guess.

SmallLady

Buffering.................

Dammit.

Exriel

Back up, just me I guess. Do debates usually allow for visual aides?

Sterica

Here is the YouTube stream.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI

SmallLady

Thanks Rorus!!

The Ender

Rorus Raz wrote: »

It really won't be time well spent if Ken Ham can rake in thousands of dollars in donations to convince scores of other kids that biology is of the devil.

I look at it this way:

Ham already has all the money & support he could want. Padding a little extra cash on via streaming revenue isn't going to cause much damage, and I don't think it's a good idea to basically just abandon a bunch of kids to the fiefdom of Ken Ham without even giving them a chance to see / hear someone like Bill Nye.

Sterica

No, he doesn't have all the money he wants. His ark park is severely underfunded, and he had to call on special patrons with deep pockets to bail him out when he couldn't fleece the flock. AIG has also been seeing dips in funding in general, which is why he's doing desperate stunts like letting all kids get in his "museum" for free. These organizations WILL shrivel up and die if you don't shine a light on them.

Corehealer

Christianity most certainly DOES NOT have a monopoly on logic.

The Ender

Oh God.

Ham, are you going to talk about the super old penguins?

Please tell me you're going to talk about the super old penguins.

Sterica

Ham is galloping in memory of dear departed Gish.

143999

Fuck a doodle doo, 20+ more minutes of this?

The Ender

'Can you name a piece of technology that could not have been achieved without a belief in molecules to man evolution?'

lol @ the 'molecules to man' qualifier so he can dodge stuff like vaccines.


1) Science is not exclusively devoted to applications. Even if it had zero applications, natural selection is still the pursuit of knowing how the world really works.

2) It has hundreds if not thousand of fucking applications, some of them in extremely far flung fields of engineering, like aerodynamics.

143999

Sorry, Kenny, you weren't there to observe what Darwin meant when he wrote Origin of Species. You can't theorize.

HallowedFaith

Isn't logic relative anyway?

143999

It's funny, Ken Ham's eyes are the greatest argument for the nonexistence of the human soul that I've seen in a long time.

kime

This isn't as good as I was hoping

Corehealer

It'll get better when Bill starts talking. Right now it's just an old fool spinning his wheel.

143999

You know what's fun? When someone disavows an observation of a change over 30 years in a bacteria's growth patterns without citing a sample of the post-change behavior observed more than 30 years ago.

Sterica

He REALLY wants to split that hair.

Bursar

Wait, did he just breeze through a claim that the Tower of Babel was a gift from God to create different languages, leading to different ethnicities!?

Exriel

I must admit, I never joined a debate team or anything like that, but, at the same time, the Presidential variety is not the only one I know of and I've never seen one where either individual was allowed to speak so long.

143999

It's like 30 minutes of that Scientology commercial.

The Ender

HOW THE FLYING FUCK ARE THOSE TWO DIAGRAMS REMOTELY CLOSE TO IDENTICAL????

143999

I can't imagine that Nye will have a citation more compelling than the president of the Texas Freedom Network.

Quid

I just found out about this train wreck.

Guess I'll watch for Bill.

Corehealer

Bill was a big part of my childhood and got me interested in science. I will endure the cyclical ramblings of a religious fundamentalist for him.

MalReynolds

hahahaha oh my god what is even going on

i mean they're all words but they shouldn't be paired like this, like, ever

Quid

Corehealer wrote: »

Bill was a big part of my childhood and got me interested in science. I will endure the cyclical ramblings of a religious fundamentalist for him.

For me both of these guys were.

It's kind of weird seeing them in the same place.