RSR Analysis of the Bill Nye-Ken Ham Debate

* Nye Backed Up Claims with Claims; Ham Wrong on Historical Science: Bob Enyart and Fred Williams critique both sides and answer Bill Nye's many wild claims with specifics and show how he repeatedly used claims to back up claims, instead of evidence to back up claims. For example, leading evolutionists including Richard Dawkins have admitted that the origin of sexual reproduction is a paradox and a deep mystery to Darwinists. Yet Bill Nye mentioned the obvious benefits of such reproduction, and pretended that the benefits were self-evident proof that sexual reproduction originated by Darwinian processes. Our Real Science Radio review also shows that Nye used a number of 30-year-old arguments that leading evolutionists themselves have rejected. We are thankful that Ken Ham put the debate in it's proper biblical context and that he shared the gospel with millions of people! When addressing science, Ken Ham tended to use evidence to back up his claims. However, below, we challenge Ken's claims about observational vs. historical science.

* Ten Big Scientific Advances that Went Unused: A criticism of Ken was that regarding science he didn't take the offensive, and left unused powerful evidence like these ten enormously powerful advances in scientific discovery:

  1. dinosaur soft tissue
  2. short-lived carbon-14 everywhere it shouldn't be
  3. the tree of life demolished by both genetic sequencing and out-of-sequence fossils
  4. the fine tuning of the cosmos
  5. red-shift evidence for a center to the universe
  6. major discoveries that contradict the big bang
  7. irreducible complexity
  8. evidence of design everywhere in life
  9. layered strata from Mount St. Helens
10. Grand Canyon nautiloids and a clear statement of its flat gaps!

* On the Claim that Creationism Will Harm America: Regarding the repeated claim that creationism will hurt America technologically, and that it is a lack of education that results in belief in God as Creator, Ken asked Nye to list an example of a technology or invention that required a belief in Darwinism or the big bang to bring about. (See more on this at rsr.org/technologies). Ken also could have pointed out that America leads the world in both the promotion of creation and in scientific progress! And also, none so many fathers of the physical sciences, along with hundreds of thousands of highly educated U.S. PhDs in science and the applied sciences say that the origin of human life requires God's hand.

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* If you enjoyed this program: If you liked this program, you may also enjoy our:
- RSR Debate Analysis Part 2, Part 3
- our article Creationists Should Reevaluate Forensic Science
- our interview of Ken Ham on the day prior to the big debate
- our RSR List of Creation Science Predictions (refuting Nye's claim that creationists haven't made successful predictions about the natural world), and
- RSR callers weigh in about Ken Ham and Bill Nye.

* Observational and Historical Science Not as Different as Claimed: Ken Ham was not only reaching out to Bill Nye, but also to the Christians who have been misled into believing in millions of years. It was a tough job and he did admirably. When Ken did present scientific evidence, his was current and relevant, as compared to Nye's, who used a lot of evidence rejected by leading evolutionists years ago. Ken lost points, however, for wasting ten precious minutes needlessly emphasizing the distinction between observational and historical science. That is not the significant factor that so many creationists make of it. With their argument, creationists are mimicking the materialist claim that you can only know that which your five senses tell you. (Rebuttal: Says which of the five?) On Part 2 of our debate analysis, see our article RSR vs. Creationist Views of Forensic Science.

Please help RSR reach our telethon goal of $25,000 to stay on the air for 2014!
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* Ken Ham's Unanswered Question: The invention of technology does not require a belief in Darwinism or the Big Bang. To make that point Ken asked Bill Nye to name a single technology that required a belief in evolution to invent. Of course, Nye did not, and of course he could not, provide an answer. We provide a convenient list at rsr.org/technologies:

Light bulb, vacuums, pasteurization, railway, typewriter, electric motor, carburetor, loudspeaker, telephone, phonograph, microphone, photographic film, seismograph, solar panels, punch cards, cars, combustion engine, AC transformer, contact lens, tractor, ballpoint pen, cinematography, wind energy, zipper, escalator, X-ray, remote control, tape recorder, air conditioning, fire fighting foam, neon lamp, EKG, airplane, seismometer, sonar, radio, TV, rockets, radar, sliced bread, transfusion (think Harvey here), EEG, steel, radio telescope, jet engine, computer, Velcro, transistor, atomic clock, nuclear reactor, fiber optics, hard drives, satellites, spandex and spam, lasers, digital photography, optical disc, 3D holography, LED, mouse, lunar lander, Venus lander, video games, video cassette, space station, e-mail, karaoke :), LCD, microprocessor, MRI, Ethernet, PC, DNA sequencing, Internet, Plasma TV, GPS, MP3 player, flash drive? (See more inventions and discoveries.)

* Bill Nye's Claims Easily Refuted (if you have the time): To see more details in this show summary, you are invited to come back after our Part 3, which is scheduled to be the conclusion of this analysis to air on Friday, February 14th, which will include a list of the claims that Bill Nye made. It'll be fun! You'll see! :)

* Nye Misrepresentation of Hubble and of Water: First about Hubble, in the 2014 debate, Bill Nye repeated the revisionist claim that Edwin Hubble was the one who discovered that the stars [sic; he meant galaxies] are apparently moving apart. And two years later in Nye's 2016 walk-through with Ken Ham of the life-size Noah's Ark, at 30 minutes in Nye repeated the exact same falsehood. See rsr.org/bbp#expansion for the importance of correcting this error. Secondly, regarding water, at 35 minutes into the walk-through, over the next eight minutes or so, Nye repeated the claim that because water exists in space, like on Mars and Europa, life is likely to have originated in those places. However, as explained at rsr.org/bb#abiogenesis, water is the enemy of abiogenesis. So beware the ubiquitous bait-and-switch. Wherever water is found, NASA claims that would be a good place to search for evidence that life may have originated there. Yes, water is needed to maintain life, But as the universal solvent, outside of the controlled environment of a living organism, water relentlessly dissolves the chemical building blocks of life like amino acids and polymers. Thus NASA, the BBC, ESA, and Nova ubiquitously use this bait-and-switch by manipulating their audiences, exploiting both their gullibility and water's known role in sustaining life to pretend that it is an unquestioned asset for abiogenesis, to form life from the very inanimate chemicals that it would disassemble. Water helps maintain life but it ruthlessly undoes prebiotic molecules.

* Nye Doesn't Know How Radiometric Dating Works: Bill Nye both doesn’t know how radiometric dating works. For two minutes, beginning at about one hour and six minutes into the 2016 Ark tour, Nye makes up bizarre claims in response to Ken Ham’s accurate statement that the radiometric dating of the Mt. Saint Helens dome created in 1980 indicates, wrongly, that it formed hundreds of thousands to millions of years old.

* If you enjoyed today's program: You may also enjoy:
- at rsr.org/forensics: Creationists Wrong on "Historic" Science 
- RSR Debate Analysis Part 1 (this program)
- RSR Debate Analysis Part 2
- RSR Debate Analysis Part 3
- Ken Ham on RSR Prior to Bill Nye Debate
- Our RSR List of Creation Science Predictions (refuting Nye's claim that creationists haven't made successful predictions about the natural world), and
- RSR callers weigh in about Ken Ham and Bill Nye.