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