By request: Special Tuesday Movie Night in Winchester

[Russell Kanning]

We didn't make it all the way to the end. Need sleep

[dalebert]

That was a great movie!

[Jim Johnson]

Large turnout in Winchestershire... all except Dale, we've decided to stone Dale. 

The word Nazi waited until after the debate... we watched Iron Sky, Nazis on the moon. 

I was just so disappointed that one didn't compared the other to a Nazi.  All good debates come to that point... it's the only real way to tell who lost.

[dalebert]

I think they probably had a long discussion ahead of time about civility and for the most part they both stuck to it. It bugged me when Nye kept saying something was "unsettling". I think that was what he decided to say any time he might have otherwise said something stronger but was trying to be civil. It was an honest statement, but didn't add anything.

On the other hand, I got tired of Ham saying "We have a book with the answer to that" along with that shit-eating grin. He was using it like a zinger and the audience always laughed. It was the least civil thing he did which ain't that bad. But from a scientific method approach, it was unsettling for me.

It reminded me of the expression "god of the gaps". The idea being that people create gods to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Don't know how something came to be? God made it that way. Gaps in our knowledge make us uncomfortable. Nye was trying to say that those gaps are what drive us to want to learn more. He wants to seek the answers instead of just being comfortable with a made-up answer. We had much bigger gaps in our knowledge a hundred years ago and we assuredly have much bigger gaps in our knowledge now than we'll have a hundred years from now, IF we are honest with ourselves about not knowing everything. Not knowing something that annoying itch that we have to scratch. It drives knowledge forward. Scientists change their mind all the time upon new evidence. Nye himself admitted to it. In that sense, he has a certain humility that Ham openly rejects.

Of course, it bugs the crap out of me, this oft-repeated notion that God making everything answers all the questions. If our universe is too complex to "just exist", well a god who can create that complexity must be yet more complex, and yet they have no problem accepting that something so complex "just exists". For Ham to express so much confidence in this answer as if it somehow resolves anything is completely beyond me. I understand why Nye finds it unsettling. But I digress.

Nye acknowledged that there are religious people who reject young Earth creationism in the face of evidence but still believe in some version of old Earth creationism, e.g. "Yes, life evolved over millions of years but I believe God had some hand in that. I don't know exactly what." It seems like those are people who are relatively more open-minded toward learning new things to fill in the gaps. When that happens and they understand something better from a scientific perspective, their gaps shrink, and their god continues to fill in those smaller gaps.

It's leaps and bounds more rational than Ham, who outright says his mind will remain forever fixed on his comfortable answers from an ancient book. I'm still a much bigger fan of Nye's approach of embracing the gaps and seeking to fill them with truth rather than wishes.

[Kat Kanning]

Large turnout in Winchestershire... all except Dale, we've decided to stone Dale. 

The word Nazi waited until after the debate... we watched Iron Sky, Nazis on the moon. 

I was just so disappointed that one didn't compared the other to a Nazi.  All good debates come to that point... it's the only real way to tell who lost.

Yer a nazi for just bringing it up.

[Kat Kanning]

Judging by the applause, it seemed to me the audience was evenly split between creationists and evolutionists.

[Kat Kanning]

Thoughts on the Bill Nye/Ken Ham Evolution/Creation Debate

I was glad to see that the debate remained civil.  I was happy that Ken Ham included the gospel message.  The only thing that could change someone's mind on this subject would be the Holy Ghost Himself.

I didn't understand Bill Nye's point about animals swimming up through the layers?  All along he seemed to be misrepresenting us as believing all those geological layers occurred during the Flood.  There were 2000 years of history of this world before the flood.  There's been 4000 since the flood.  If he was trying to say that mammals and sea creatures should be mixed in the fossil later, my question is why?  An area that was an ocean at the time of the flood wouldn't suddenly have millions of mammals dying nearby.  Yet you can go all over America and find fossils of sea creatures.  If you look at Google earth off the east coast, you see old riverbeds and shorelines way out into the ocean.  Maybe someone could explain Bill Nye's point about swimming up through layers better, because I admit it didn't make any sense to me.

Regarding light travelling from distant stars proving the universe is much older than 6000, years, it is good to keep in mind that time is not a constant.  The Answers in Genesis people have a good explanation:  http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-starlight-prove

Regarding predicting based on biblical or evolutionary models, there were over 300 predictions of Christ's first coming in the Old Testament, which were fulfilled exactly as stated they would be.   Here's one article describing some of the prophecies:  http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/biblestudyandtheology/jesus_prophecy_fulfilled.aspx

I'm glad Bill Nye didn't heed Richard Dawkins admonition to not debate creationists.  It makes for good discussion material!

[Jim Johnson]

Large turnout in Winchestershire... all except Dale, we've decided to stone Dale. 

The word Nazi waited until after the debate... we watched Iron Sky, Nazis on the moon. 

I was just so disappointed that one didn't compared the other to a Nazi.  All good debates come to that point... it's the only real way to tell who lost.

Yer a nazi for just bringing it up.

That just makes you a meany.

[dalebert]

I didn't understand Bill Nye's point about animals swimming up through the layers?  All along he seemed to be misrepresenting us as believing all those geological layers occurred during the Flood.  There were 2000 years of history of this world before the flood.  There's been 4000 since the flood.  If he was trying to say that mammals and sea creatures should be mixed in the fossil later, my question is why?

Regarding light travelling from distant stars proving the universe is much older than 6000, years, it is good to keep in mind that time is not a constant.  The Answers in Genesis people have a good explanation:  http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-starlight-prove

These are both cases that Nye was talking about when he says that the old-universe model is completely consistent and makes perfect sense. The young-universe model requires that we bend over backwards, contrive a bunch of complicated jigsaw puzzle pieces, to find a way to put them all together and make sense without contradicting an ancient text written at a time when no one had the foggiest what the speed of light was or that the stars in the sky were actually suns like ours. Instead of just saying "We were wrong about that. Let's make a correction and move on." their models of the universe get increasingly complex to make everything fit their rigid views.

Nye's point about the animals was this. If there were only about 2000 "kinds" of animals ("kind" is not a scientific term. It appears to be completely arbitrary. I have no idea what it means.), then in the span of 4000 years, those animals have now branched out into 14 MILLION (a conservative estimate) species, a term with a specific meaning. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. That means there are at least that many creatures SO different genetically that they can't interbreed anymore. All of that from 2000 "kinds" in the span of just 4000 years? This is what Nye meant when he said we should be witnessing new species every day at that rate. Yet it's unheard of. Our pet cats should be giving birth to creatures that are dramatically different and can't even breed with cats anymore. If the layers didn't form over millions of years, there should be a lot more variation all mixed in together.

Just look at animals that we've purposefully bred to create variation like dogs. It's taken a couple hundred years to get the variation we have and yet as different as they look, they can almost all still interbreed! BTW, this is why Ham bringing up dogs to demonstrate how fast change can happen really bothered me and I thought Nye would point this out--human-bred animals are the closest thing to intelligent design that I know of because humans actively bred them. Change doesn't happen that quickly in natural environments. We've never witnessed it, and we should be witnessing it all the time if young-Earth models were true.

The same logic can be applied to the ridiculous contrivances about the speed of light changing. Well, first, I'm wondering why anyone (or anything for that matter) was able to survive that many photons hitting them without being burned to a crisp in a fraction of a second but I'm sure some creationist is already contriving some explanation for that as well. Such a speed change would be spectacularly dramatic. We'd be noticing a change in the speed of light just in the last few decades but it's remained constant ever since we could measure its speed.

So yes, you can make the observable universe fit into a preconceived ancient view of it, back before they had scientific instruments to measure things like the speed of light, or sound, or before they had explored the Earth enough to realize just how many species of creature there were, back when most people thought the Earth was flat and the sun was smaller than the Earth, etc., but it requires contrivance upon contrivance upon contrivance, and the layers of contrivances appears to grow increasingly complex as science advances and continues to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

[dalebert]

Regarding predicting based on biblical or evolutionary models, there were over 300 predictions of Christ's first coming in the Old Testament, which were fulfilled exactly as stated they would be.   Here's one article describing some of the prophecies:  http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/biblestudyandtheology/jesus_prophecy_fulfilled.aspx

I think you misunderstood Nye's point. The reason why science needs to be testable and repeatable is because it needs to be reliable so we can make accurate predictions based on how we have learned about how the world works. Someone was able to invent the internal combustion engine because they knew how fuel burned and released heat, heated gas, the gas expands, all in a predictable manner, and that reliable behavior allows you to make pistons move and drive an engine. (Or something like that. Engines aren't my forte.) Since we understand genetics, we can now look at a person's DNA and predict the likelihood of them developing certain illnesses like heart problems or high blood pressure or diabetes. So Nye's was trying to get an answer about how the new-Earth creationist version of science could prove of any practical value scientifically.

That said, the story of Jesus' life is not observable science (the only reliable kind per Ham). None of the new testament books are first accounts. They were all written generations later. Apparently no one was particularly moved enough at the time by a guy travelling around and performing miracles to actually make a first-person account of the events. It seems far more likely that they were just putting the finishing touches on a script that had already been written. But they weren't even the first to plagiarize that particular messiah story. The people "predicting" it in the old testament were just rehashing the same old messiah story that had already been written in older religions many times. The God that Wasn't There gives a good summary of these in a relatively short documentary format. The full version is on Netflix streaming. It's about an hour long.

[Russell Kanning]

what makes you think that any of the Bible was not a first account? The only part I can think of is Genesis.

Well Ham put Darwin in the same camp as the Nazis for believing in different races and that some are lower.

[Jim Johnson]

what makes you think that any of the Bible was not a first account? The only part I can think of is Genesis.

The fact that most of what is in the modern bible can be traced to other earlier non-christian cultures, coupled with the fact that none of the modern bible was written until at least 200 years after the time of Christ, rules out any first hand accounts... which also negates Ham's 'Observational Science' because no one who wrote it was around at the time the events happened.

[MaineShark]

Biggest problem with "young-Earth" creationism?

It violates the Bible.

The Bible does not, anywhere, say that the planet is 6000 years old.  That's flat-out not present in the text.

Genesis, in the actual Hebrew, says that God created the universe in six epochs or eras.  "Days" is a modern mistranslation.  Jesus would have laughed if someone told him that his Father had created the universe in six days.

It's sort of like folks who say that Columbus proved the Earth was round.  No, no one with any sense at that time thought the Earth was flat; there was a disagreement over the diameter of the planet (and Columbus was dead wrong on that - he only survived because he bumped into America).  But the story has been changed over the years, until "everyone knows" that Columbus was the sole believer that the Earth was round, and everyone else thought it was flat.

No one with any sense at the time of Jesus thought the planet was 4000 years old.

Genesis describes Creation as a process which occurred in some general phases, which fairly well match what science has determined.  Genesis describes evolution, as well.  Genesis asserts that God caused these things, but that's fine; as long as God behaves in a consistent manner, then God and science can get along just fine, because science only cares about consistent rules upon which predictions can be made, not about what created those consistent rules.

What makes a better case for religion?  "I'm going to assert illogical things which aren't even in the Bible!"  Or, "yeah, you scientists just learned that? Our Bible describes what happened, and it's thousands of years old. How could those ancients have known what happened, if they were not Divinely inspired?"

The latter might actually convince some folks to move towards spirituality.

[Tom Sawyer]

Interesting stuff Joe. Our minister when I was a teenager (and still went to church) would often translate the Hebrew and Greek oldest available texts and show that many times the english version was flawed.

I knew some born agains that thought that Jesus spoke King James english. 

[dalebert]

The part of the movie that addresses the plagiarism of the Jesus story is at 18 minutes in for those who don't want to watch the entire hour-long movie. Jesus' life fits a frequent and long-standing hero myth that's been retold many times about mythical figures before biblical times. The myth contains 22 points including things like: virgin birth, died and was resurrected, three days later (a separate point from the resurrection part that's also very common), and many others. It's pretty blatantly unoriginal. It also address how all the gospels were written long after Jesus' lifetime and some other information that your church probably didn't bother to teach.