Bill Nye Incompetent in Debate

Creation vs. Evolution : Bill Nye Incompetent in Debate · somewhere else : Bill Nye on Historic Science · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Bill Nye on Japanese Tradition · somewhere else : Bill Nye on ... Pantheism? Hegelianism? · Creation vs. Evolution : Bill Nye and Space Rocks

Watching

Bill Nye Tours the Ark Encounter with Ken Ham
Answers in Genesis | 14.III.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPLRhVdNp5M

I am @ 18:21.

Bill Nye is making it tedious and awkward for Ken Ham, and for those listening, and in his rudeness he makes lots of assumptions on what Ken Ham's position is, and as I happen to know the positions fairly well, I can say in advance the assumptions are wrong on a few points.

Bill Nye is of course in a sense entitled to make provocative summaries to the one he's summarising, but in a debate that should serve a very precise goal, namely to either provoke a clarification or to show what the other person's basis looks like : either way the goal being a valid one depends on the debater listening to the actual points made.

This Science Guy is in fact not listening, when he has managed to provoke a clarification, he refuses to listen to it. Perhaps I'd be as impatient in oral debates, but that's one reason why I prefer internet ones.

In a debate over a week, sometimes a month, for each answer I give, I can pick apart the parts of the answer I was given, and I make a point of honour in answering each part. I missed out on one occasion lately, and then after the debate when I made a post of it, I told the other guy I was sorry I missed that.

Orally, Bill Nye hasn't the time to do that, and he is also not listening until the point gets actually made.

At climate change he did in fact hear him out sufficiently to hear Ken Ham saying he believes in climate change and that scientists differ on whether it is man made or not. But at historic and observational science, he never got any further in the analysis of Ken Ham's position than "if you come into a room and the window is open, you presume no one opened it because you didn't see it happen" which is not the case. It is more like "I don't presume I know who opened the window unless some other information tells me".

At exhibit of Greenland ice, Bill Nye pretends that the quick glaciation after the Flood is equal to a supernatural one.

To Ken Ham, that is. Hearing Ken Ham out on what he thinks is not his forte. @ 20:32 ... the subject is changed.

Now - I am not saying Bill Nye is incompetent in communication. This kind of refusal to take into account what an opponent is actually thinking and expressing and taking into account instead only his own parodic summary - sure, it makes him look bad in a debate situation, like the stays on the Ark tour with Ken Ham, but it pays off on other times when he's talking about Ken Ham to third party.

The one I am watching is 1 hour 57 minutes 5 seconds, uploaded by Answers in Genesis. There is another that is 1 hour 1 minute 17 seconds, with highlights, uploaded earlier, also by Answers in Genesis.

Now, PBS has one which is 1 minute 23 seconds. The Daily Conversation has one which is 4 minutes 39 seconds.

The top four on the search "bill nye the science guy ark tour youtube" are:

• Answers in Genesis 1 hour 57 minutes 5 seconds
• PBS 1 minute 23 seconds
• Answers in Genesis 1 hour 1 minute 17 seconds
• The Daily Conversation 4 minutes 39 seconds

I think this shows who is confident of coming off as a decent debater and who isn't.

Now, it should be added, on the first non-Answers in Genesis, the 1 minute 23 seconds are in fact just a clip from a film.

But I highly suspect the film is about the same length as either of the two Answers in Genesis releases or perhaps between the two in length, and dedicates only a portion to the Ark Tour.

I haven't seen the film, so I'll need to contact them. But the description is perfectly compatible with that film devoting to the Ark tour about one clip the length 4 minutes 39 seconds - described by The Daily Conversation as "Bill Nye Destroys Noah's Ark".

Sure, if your video team can cherrypick the best minutes of your performance, which Answers in Genesis didn't.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Georges Pompidou
St. Francis of Sales
29.I.2020

At 25:54 Bill Nye has shown incompetence in dendrochronology. Trees older than Ken Ham thinks the earth is? Yes. One can count tree rings? Yes. Both together, as he said them very close phrases to each other, as an explanatory follow up, no.

Old Tjikko in Sweden is dated to "older than creation" - 9000 years old, but by carbon dates, not by tree ring counts.

Tree ring counts can give a tree or two "older than Flood" - placing it at 4400 years ago, but not placing it 5000 years ago, as I do.

It is incorrect to conflate the two. The tree ring count can give an argument for LXX over Masoretic chronology, and the carbon date can be explained on there being lower carbon 14 levels after Babel than now./HGL

PPS, if Ken Ham is promoting more than one tree ring per year, partly it is because of the tree that would otherwise have survived the Flood. On his Masoretic Flood date, and on his assumption the Flood was everywhere uniformly so violent every tree was destroyed. So, the tree in question (one or two of the oldest ones in California) can have had one tree ring per year with a LXX date for the Flood even if all trees alive were destroyed by it./HGL

Infighting? Because Fact First.

You look at the latest five posts prior to this one, four are adressed to CMI as disagreements, and one is adressed in general to Christians disagreeing with our common premise of Biblical inerrancy.

Only once you scroll past this, you get to a non-polemic (within Christendom, though polemic as against Uniformitarians, most of which are non-Christians or very loosely Christian) article, namely Scandinavian Stone Age Within Biblical History with my Table.

Facts are concerned with things, where curious people demand technical solutions to technical problems, if any. And in a world very dominated by Uniformitarians who believe Big Bang, Galaxies, Heliocentrism for each star that has planets, "including ours", Millions and Billions of Years, Abiogenesis by chemical processes, evolution of all things alive (or very few and minute exceptions) from one Last Universal Common Ancestor, common to bees and bananas, and humanisation by degrees involving tool use as being as important or more than language and morals, much of the other story, the one that used to dominate Christendom, will at first glance look problematic.

Or, the few times when we actually have a very non-problematic case, where the Uniformitarian one is admittedly immediately problematic (like origin of life and of language), we are up against a variety of people who claim to have solutions - even if they differ as much as ours.

This means, once we get into details, we get to areas where the Bible cannot be overturned, but needs to be supplemented by other observations, for the curious, and these areas are obviously open for disagreements.

Wishing to make it clear, both CMI and I, both Ken Ham and Kent Hovind, actually do believe Biblical inerrancy is a factual truth.

We are not stating Global Flood merely as an enumerative example of a Biblical inerrance merely adopted as rhetoric exaggeration for accepting Biblical values, which in turn may be a solemn rhetorical way of saying one adopts values current among people who used to believe Bible or OT part of Bible, perhaps also including the Qoran.

We do not value the Flood of Noah as a rhetorical point only (it is one also), we value the story of its happening as factual information. Hence technical solutions on "where in geological column" to put limit between Flood and post-Flood layers.

We do not value Biblical chronology as merely a resumé on "information got passed down from Adam" (though that happened too), but Genesis 4, 5 and 11 give lists of important intermediaries very much overlapping with each other in lifespans (the latter point is less evident in Genesis 4). This means, a chronology where either Adam has to be put as not first man or the intermediaries between him and Abraham are vastly inflated in number, most anonymous and the named ones usually not overlapping, is a complete nono. Hence technical solutions on which Bible text is correct on Chronology and on how Uniformitarian chronologies are to be explained in their inflation of ancient times before us.

We disagree, because on one very important point we agree : "Biblical values" are not enough. The Bible isn't true like Silmarillion is true or Lord of the Rings is true, namely only in morals. The Bible is true like the multiplication table or - better still, since not a priori but empiric - like the periodic table of Mendeleiev is true. As fact, first.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XI
XIII Sunday after Pentecost
and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin
8.IX.2019

Old Policy

Maintaining Creationist Integrity
A response to Kent Hovind
by Carl Wieland, Ken Ham and Jonathan Sarfati
Originally published 11 October 2002
updated 16 December 2002 and 2 August 2006
https://creation.com/maintaining-creationist-integrity-response-to-kent-hovind

Here is the pertinent one:

... Note that we most definitely recommend/support some ministries that are not our own, but do not do so for others. We would not, for instance, be able to recommend people who do all or some of the following:

• 1) Persistently use discredited or false arguments, with an unwillingness to correct when the weaknesses are pointed out, and more disturbingly, often fail to understand the reasoning involved.
• 2) Persistently link (in at least some way) creationism with other matters which are of a dubious or ‘fringe’ nature, which have no direct bearing on creation issues but threaten to damage the creation movement by association. E.g.: Geocentrism, fraudulent archaeological claims of Wyatt/Gray, etc.
• 3) Fail to have acceptable standards of accountability in terms of truly independent boards.
• 4) Fail to submit their claims to the normal peer review processes that have arisen/been set up within creationism, i.e., peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Creation, CRSQ, etc.

Well, as to number 2) I would be "guilty as charged" if it truly were a fault.

Geocentrism links to Creationism as follows:

• 1) With Geocentrism, no guaranteed parallax is involved in the phenomenon so known, meaning no trigonometry gives "distance to nearest stars", meaning we have a very simple answer to Distant Starlight problem. CMI is otherwise very readable, but has convoluted answers to it, one of which would contradict the obvious meaning of the Bible, all stars created after Earth was created, not just their light reaching Earth after then.
• 2) With Geocentrism, no problem as to why Earth was not orbitting anything for three days and started orbitting Sun on day 4 (without Bible mentioning it).
• 3) With Geocentrism, the same argument from design can be made as St. Thomas did (and Calvin repeated, whatever that is worth).
• 4) If Geocentrism takes angelic movers of celestial bodies, including Sun and stars, which I think it does, no problem for such an angel to also obey God in sending Earth more cosmic radiation just after Flood, which involves three results:
  
  
  • i) shortening of lifespans
  • ij) production of the cold of the ice age
  • iij) a more rapid than now production of C14 in the atmosphere (I already counted, if C14 started rising at Flood, from initial near 5 pmC, which is more than I think now for Flood year, and the production was consistently the modern one, as well as the decay, we would now be only at 45 pmC, not 100, which gives mathematical conundra as to more recent dates, and this is presuming the Flood was as far back as 2957 BC, so Ussherists need even more rapid C14 production than I do).
  
  
  
• 5) Like a literal and perfect Eden, Geocentrism ties in with corporality of Resurrection bodies and therefore of the place where blessed souls now and risen bodies henceforth can adore risen and ascended Jesus.
• 6) Like Young Earth Creationism, Geocentrism ties in with literal Biblical facthood of a passage (Joshua 10:12,13)
• 7) Like Young Earth Creationism with real creatio ex nihilo and in instanti and with miraculous abiogenesis (see Satan as witness to creation and his words in Matthew and Luke 4 about turning stones to bread), Geocentrism (for Joshua 10:12) ties in with understanding of miracles, as miracle workers adressing what needs miraculous change of normal behaviour and not something else.
• 8) Like Young Earth Creationism, Geocentrism meets no real obstacle in really operational science, which deals with what can be observed hic et nunc, where Millions and Billions of Years are about the past, not observable in the present, Heliocentrism and Acentrism are about the distant, not observable here (unlike Round Earth which actually can be observed on Earth, piece by piece).
• 9) Like Young Earth Creationism, Geocentrism has Patristic support.

I know too little of Wyatt and Gray to know if their archaeology is fraudulent or not, but I do know that "hard sciences" are attacking CMI for frauds as well, and I suspect Wyatt and Gray can have been picked on because archaeology is not Carl Wieland's field at all, since it is not a natural science.

Or, if the problem is Wyatt points to Mount Chudi instead of Greater Mount Ararat, I would support that. Mount Chudi as the landing place and Göbekli Tepe, nearly due West of it, crossing from Mountains of Ararat to the land of Shinar where there is a plain around Harran, as Babel. Only problem, so far, lack of bricks with bitumen as mortar on that site.

Point one, I do not know from case to case who is failing to understand whose reasoning.

Points three and four, I am an individual writer and as such cannot have an independent board, and as to peer review, I am willing to submit blog links for scrutinity, but they have so far not been accepted. Note, I believe first and foremost in post-publishing peer review.

Would it perhaps be time to re-evalue the policies here alluded to?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XI
St. Nemorius of Troyes
7.IX.2019