BILL NYE VS. KEN HAMTHE GRAND DEBATE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY V.S. CREATIONISM

HERE’S WHAT WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND• Why are they conflicting?

• The backgrounds of the two scientists

• The timeline of the conflict

• What is bringing this rivalry together?

• The debate itself the reaction to it and it’s impact

CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTIONARY THEORY: NOT A NEW CONFLICT

• The conflict between evolutionary theory and creationism is a conflict as old as when Darwin published “On the Origin of the Species”, a text referenced in evolutionary biology to this day. In fact Darwin himself was aiming to become a clergyman when he explored the Galapagos. Since them, evolution has been in a constant dichotomy against creationism for decades, even to this day.

• In the US there is a major conflict with creationism vs evolutionary theory, while close to 95% of scientists agree on evolutionary theory, a 2014 Gallup poll revealed that:

"More than four in 10 Americans continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process. However, the percentage who say God was not involved is rising."

COURT CASES INVOLVING TEACHING CREATIONISM/INTELLIGENT DESIGN• The topic of creationism v.s. evolutionary theory has been so controversial that multiple court cases have been

presented because of it, mainly either a student, parent, or teacher vs a school or school district.

• The main argument that flows throughout most of these cases is the thought that student should be taught both theories of the origin of life, someone not teaching Creationism even though it is of their beliefs is against freedom of speech and religious freedom, or students should not be taught evolutionary theory because it is only theory v.s. that creationism should not be taught in schools at all because it is a piece of Christianity and therefore violates the Separation of Church and State(as applied to public schools), and that evolutionary theory should be taught because it is a major tenet of science and biology and is a theory that has major evidence and is adhered to by close to 95% of scienctists in the field.

Examples include:Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover

Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of EducationEdwards v. Aguillard

BACKGROUNDS OF THE SCIENCTISTS

BILL NYE

• Bill Nye (William Sanford Nye) is a premiere American Science Educator, Comedian, and former Mechanical Engineer, and the current executive director of The Planetary Society. He graduated from Cornell with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, and was a student, then peer of Carl Sagan. He started his career at Boeing. Fun Fact: He applied to be an astronaut every few years, but was rejected consistently.

• Nye had a small stint on a local public access comedy sketch show called “Almost Live!” in Seattle, where he did comedic science demonstrations. This is when he took on the pseudonym of “The Science Guy” or “Bill Nye The Science Guy”

• He began to appear in Live Action Segments during the show Back to the Future: The Animated Series, based on the movie which became very popular. After that, his show “Bill Nye The Science Guy” was picked up by PBS Kids.

BILL NYE : THE PUBLIC FIGURE

• Now that we know the man, let’s understand the public figure.

• Bill Nye The Science Guy was a show created and pitched by Bill Nye because of his major interest in Science Education and entertainment. It aired from 1993 to 1998, and was in major syndication long after that on other public stations. It is still used as a teaching tool in many classrooms to this day as well, throughout the 100 episodes he discussed core concepts of science and the scientific method. He has influenced a whole generation of kids to love science and exploration

BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY

Click image above to play a clip from Bill Nye The Science Guy

KEN HAM

• Ken Ham(Kenneth Alfred Ham) is one of the co-founders of The Creation Science Foundation, along with John Makay and is president of Answers in Genesis, a Young Earth creationists organization which operates the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. He has been featured in films to portray his views, such as Religulous (2008).

• He was born in Cairns, Australia, and received a Bachelor of Applied Science, with an emphasis in Environmental Biology at the Queensland Institute of Technology, and a education diploma from the University of Queensland.

THE CREATION MUSEUM

• The Creation Museum, located in Petersberg, Kentucky, is a 60, 000 sqft. museum/educational institution that portrays a Young Earth Creationists view of the theory of Creationism, based on the Genesis creation narrative.

• The museum exhibits humans co-existing with dinosaurs, the world only being 6,000 years old and disputes the idea of life evolving into current forms and evolutionary biology in general.

• Other religious organization theories and proponents such as Old Earth creationism, theistic evolution, and intelligent design dispute the museum, saying that its rejection of scientific consensus damages credibility of Christian science.

TIMELINE OF THE CONFLICT

WHAT SPARKED THE CONFLICT/RIVALRY

• On August 23rd, 2012, the internet forum Big Think posted a video entitiled “Creationism is not Appropriate for Children”. It featured Bill Nye, still very famous in the US due to his TV show. In this video, he describes his disappointment in the fact that a significant portion of the US does not believe in evolutionary theory, which has a detrimental impact on science education. He also tried to encourage parents that have doubts about the controversial theory to hold off on teaching their children because they are the future of our global population. The video became extremely viral, gaining over 1.3 million views over a few days

• In a follow up interview with the Associated Press he states: "If we raise a generation of students who don't believe in the process of science, who think everything that we've come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, you're not going to continue to innovate."

RESPONSE FROM THE AIG CAMP

• A few days after the Nye video gained major popularity, Answers in Genesis posted a response featuring two YEC scientists David Menton and Georgia Purdom. Ken Ham also responded with disagreement on his blog Answers with Ken Ham. Soon after, Ken Ham began to try to invite Bill Nye to come and visit the Creation Museum to show him his side of the story.

• On January 2, 2014, Ham announced on his and the AIG’s Facebook page that he had invited Bill Nye to the Creation Museum and to participate in a debate with him, and that he had accepted. AIG agreed to pay for his travel expenses, and the date was set for February 4th, 2014- close to a prior engagement that Nye had with Murray State University in Kentucky.

BILL NYE’S RESPONSE TO BEING INVITED

• When asked about Ken Ham and AIG by the Associated Press:

“This guy and his beliefs are in their midst, and we can't have this way of thinking for our science students. ... To have people like this organization try to insinuate themselves in our schools is not

appropriate and a formula for a darker future.“

When asked about how he felt about the debate being held at the Creation Museum:

"It either makes me anxious, or it's an opportunity to influence that many more people and, frankly, have that much more fun."

REACTION TO THE DEBATE, THE DEBATE ITSELF, AND IT’S IMPACT

REACTION FROM THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

• Many in the scientific community were critical of Nye participating in the debate, saying that it gave undue credibility to YECreationists and Creationism in general that it never deserved to begin with.

• Others expressed concern with Nye’s lack of knowledge in evolution, citing that his background is mechanical engineering, not evolutionary biology. Nye acknowledged this, stating:

"I am by no means an expert on most of this… in this situation, our skeptical arguments are not the stuff of Ph.Ds. It's elementary science and common sense.“

• In preparation for the debate, Nye had lunch with scientists specializing in evolutionary theory and traveled to Oakland, California to speak with the National Center for Science Education, an evolution theory advocacy group.

REACTION FROM THE HUMANIST COMMUNITY

• The American Humanist Association and the Center for Inquiry, both humanist based organizations, praised Bill Nye for participating in the controversial debate. Maggie Ardiente, the AHA communications officer stated:

"I am looking at statistics and they tell me people like Ken Ham and other creationists are being very effective and that is a serious problem. We can’t just ignore that. We have to challenge people like Ken Ham

so I support the debate 100 percent."

REACTION FROM THE CREATIONIST/CHRISTIAN SCIENCE COMMUNITY• The Biologos Foundation, a organization that promotes the compatibility of Science and

Religion/Christianity, released a statement advocating Evolutionary Creation, stating that:

“…you don’t have to choose. You don’t have to give up Christian faith in order to accept the best, most compelling science. We expect that we’ll agree with most of what Bill Nye will say about the science of

evolution. Fossils, genetics, and other disciplines give compelling evidence that all life on earth is related and developed over a very long time through natural processes. But we’re also brothers and sisters in Christ

with Ken Ham. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins and rose from the dead, and that the Bible is the authoritative word of God.“

Beyond that, during the debate, an article created by Buzzfeed swirled around online called “22 Messages From Creationists To People Who Believe In Evolution” where people who are creationists are writing messages on notebooks reacting to the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate.

THE DEBATE

• Tickets to the debate “Is Creation A Viable Model of Origins?” sold for 25$ each and sold out within minutes. The debate was also streamed through multiple media and new websites. Nye apparently was very surprised of the large audience that the debate attracted, not expecting more than what he would see at a typical university visit. The Christian PR firm A. Larry Ross Communications estimated that over 3 million people viewed the debate in some shape or form.

• It was also widely discussed through social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, particularly the hashtag “#HamonNye” implying that Ken Ham was going to verbally beat Bill Nye.

DEBATE FILM

Film of the official debate

DEBATE AFTERMATH AND IMPACT

• Along with being widely discussed on social media, many were at battle as to who “won” the debate, with a good portion of people saying that Ham won the moment that Bill Nye accepted the invitation to come and debate with him to begin with, this debate giving undue publicity to Ham’s view

• Both sides of the camp opine that their camp won the debate, many scientists believe that Bill Nye won, while many creation/Christian scientists believe that Ken Ham had won.

• Intelligent Design advocates said that both Ham and Nye lost the debate because neither spoke on the intricacies and elegance of life.

• Nye faced lots of backlash from the Christian community because of his face off against Ken Ham’s YEC Science.

• After the debate, Ken Ham announced that his stalled project, the “Ark Encounter” project had a spur in funding and would be able to being the first phase of construction.

CONCLUSION

• In the end, the debate and rivalry is a notch against the evolution vs. creation science debate. But Ham and Nye ended up helping each other instead of hurting each other. For the scientific community, it was another affirmation of what they felt that this country needs: more science education. For Ham, his museum and Answers in Genesis, the debate gave them a platform for their views and spurred funding for a big project. So what may come of as attacking each other with worlds honestly was a civil discussion, where two people, who have two completely methodologies on how to approach science, agreed to disagree and ended up showcasing what they needed to. They worked for one another, albeit acceidentaly.

LINKS TO SOURCES

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye_the_Science_Guy

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye%E2%80%93Ken_Ham_debate

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation%E2%80%93evolution_controversy

• http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Museum

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darwin

• http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/04/why-im-debating-creationist-ken-ham/

• http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-35539086.html

• http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0104/Bill-Nye-will-debate-founder-of-Creation-Museum

• http://ncse.com/taking-action/ten-major-court-cases-evolution-creationism

• httphttp://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio#3uqwgp1://biologos.org/blog/ken-ham-vs-bill-nye

• http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/05/the-bill-nye-ken-ham-debate-was-a-nightmare-for-science.html

• http://www.christianpost.com/news/bill-nye-reveals-backlash-after-creationism-debate-with-ken-ham-114381/