Bill Nye and Space Rocks

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

Same video.

39:19

"I have purchased a Martian meteorite. From a guy in Colorado who collects them."

It seems that the trade in relics is not of the past. Indeed, in the Roman Catholic discipline, there were some severe regulations against trading in the actual sense of the word. Though not always fully functioning. Bill said "purchased".

39:26

"When you go to Antarctica, and you find rocks on top of the ice, where did the rocks come from?"

Well, as amateur Flood geologist, I'd say, from rocks crashed miles and miles away by the Flood of Noah ...

39:30

"There are no mountains anywhere around. They came from space."

Well, if Bill is not a Flood geologist, that's probably his option .... reminds me a bit of von Däniken and Hancock : not explaining Homo sapiens genome or human culture by purely natural process, and not believing the Biblical versions, they go to - space. Where Nimrod arguably was trying to go./HGL

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

Hernando de Soto Polar Answered Bill Nye and Richard Dawkins

(As well as the usual spacecraft argument against Geocentrism.) It remains to be seen whether he is a decent economist or not (I tend to suspect he is not quite that), but he has shown one good grasp of scientific principle which is very relevant for the argument "science works":

It is not uncommon for us to know how to use things without understanding why they work. Sailors used magnetic compasses long before there was a satisfactory theory of magnetism. Animal breeders had a working knowledge of genetics long before Gregor Mendel explained genetic principles.

From preview of Kindle edition of his book:

The Mystery Of Capital
http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Hernando-Soto-ebook/dp/B004FV4XTE/ref=la_B001HMNIIG_1_1/188-5970856-2060456?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398502234&sr=1-1

The point answered is of course Bill Nye and Richard Dawkins claiming "since science works, we trust its understanding" (but generally they formulate the point with less distinction between engineering and theoretic understanding).

If a culture of the past could be wrong about why sth works and still right about how it works, the culture of the present can so too./HGL

A Taste of NioC?

No, I don't mean ma-nioc. I mean the acronym NioC for Not in our Classrooms.*

"Dogma doesn't build better medical devices, good science does."

But dogma may have a role to play in distributing the medical devices in a fairer way, one which is fairer to the poor.

And in making the distinction between good science building medical devices (not always that good in fact ... some medical devices go back to days when the medical understanding was by today's standard really faulty - and were and remain still good) - and bad science, attacking dogma.

"Since the 1700's, some supporters of a literal interpretation of the Bible had argued that scientific evidence existed to support their views, but such arguments had diminished considerably after Darwin's Origin of Species. Now, in the middle of the twentieth century ..."

It is of course entirely possible that between 1858 and 1950 such arguments have decreased, as it is certain that they have increased since then.

What makes me doubt Eugenie Scott's (or is it Glenn Branch's?) capacities as a historian is that she (he?) prefaces all this with "since the 1700's".

St Thomas Aquinas was a proponent of the four senses, and so he was a proponent of the literal interpretation as much as (or more than even?) than the other three. And he lived about 500 years before the 1700's.

References will be given on occasion or demand, right now I am off for coffee. Thá mí an hoffi coffi or whatever the Celtic phrase is** ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Emmeram
22.IX.2016

* Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools
Paperback – October 15, 2006
by Eugenie Scott (Author), Glenn Branch (Author), Bill Nye (Foreword)
https://www.amazon.com/Not-Our-Classrooms-Intelligent-Schools/dp/0807032786#reader_0807032786

** A minute inspection might reveal I was mixing two Celtic languages. Rwy'n hoffi coffi or Yr yddwyf i'n hoffi coffi. In Welsh. Ddrwg gennym, esgusodwch fi cymysgu. / Is toigh leam cofaidh. In Scots Gaelic. Duilich , gabh mo leisgeul measgachadh.

Ham - Nye, answering a point from Nye or two

Bill Nye in Nye-Ham debate:

You hear a lot about the Grand Canyon I imagine, which i s a remarkable place, and it has fossils, and the fossils in the Grand Canyon are found in layers. There is not a single place in the Grand Canyon where the fossils of one type of animal cross over into the fossils of another. In other words, when there's a big flood on the Earth, you would expect drowning animals to swim up to a higher level. Not any one of them did, not a single one. If you could find evidence of that my friends, you could change the world.

Comment:

Actually, nearly everything in GC is water living creatures without spines. Only at the very top do you get land creatures.

Water creatures without spine do not exactly feel they are "drowning" because there is a lot of water.

The kind of clams and such that we find in GC survived elsewhere outside the Ark, in precisely water.

They do not climb.

They got buried in mud, they come in layers as mud of different thickness and of differently big or differently shaped content made spontaneous layers, one can presume. At least such experiments have been made for different sizes of sand grains.

Bill Nye, again:

That is unique, and here’s my concern: what keeps the United States ahead, what makes the United States a world leader, is our technology, innovation, our new ideas.

Comment:

US is apparently world leading in Science. It is also world leading in - Creationism.

In France, Creationism is viewed as a US specialty, like "junk food" such as hamburgers, pop corn, potato chips and a few more.

So, US has at least a reputation for being world leading there too.

Bill Nye:

If we continue to eschew science, eschew the process, and try to divide our science into observational science and historical science, we won't move forward and embrace natural laws, we will not make discoveries, we will not invent and innovate and stay ahead.

Comment:

Observational and historic science are different processes. Realising this is far from making the observational or operational one (historic too uses observations, operational reminds us historic is not giving us the means for new technologies) harder to do.

Source:

Transcript available here, I hope:

https://www.cmu.edu/student-org/pcr/media-files/pcr-sessions/rhetoric-transcript.pdf

PS

When I argue against evolutionists, it is very often under youtubes in comboxes and it very often comes directly to another blog:

Assorted retorts from Yahoo Boards and Elsewhere
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com

On this one, I more usually argue about specific points, and it seems other Creationists have more talent than vociferous Evolutionists to raise these in trackable ways.