Will the Nill Nye-Ken Ham debate affect the Creation-Evolution conversation?

Someone you don't even know tells you that your great, great, great,...

...great grandpappy was a lightning-struck puddle of goo, and you accept it without question? Someone tells you that you are just a chemical accident, and you are fine with that?

Sorry. I have known super smart people who get things wrong on stuff that is here and now. So, I definitely do not swallow, without question, conclusions about the unobserved non-verifiable past from someone who was not there. What has happened to critical thinking and questioning authority? Were the folks from the hippy generation really braver than the new crop of lemmings? I hope not.

Unfortunately, the clear winner was the Creation Museum and the Hamsters because they are getting all this free publicity and all Ham had to do was say they have all the answers they need. I guess Bill Nye never heard about "the pigeon on the chessboard".

Well, cupcake, I'm not being snarky, but with your screen name as evidence, I doubt you were ever going to think that Bill Nye won the debate, so the fact that even with your massive confirmation bias, you thought it was close should indicate to you just how handily Bill Nye won when viewed even-handedly.

People who believe in creationism aren't going to be swayed by facts or logic or anything else because they are afraid that NOT to believe will offend their god, so in that sense, it won't alter the conversation. However, if just a few of the people listening were able to hear something other than the Kool-Aid Ham makes his living peddling, that's a good thing.

Added: I must admit that, going by your screen name, I figured you'd be fully in Ham's camp...and with that consideration in mind, I figured you'd be unswayed by anything Nye would say.

I'm pleasantly surprised. Thanks!

Yes it shall further cast this question into the dark and with that many more will now just be in darkness. Both of those men up their spewing lies mixing them with TRUTH. and satan laughs.What I felt very bad about was Mr. Ham saying everything was created in 6 24hr days only thousands of years ago. What he did was to teach subliminally that GOD is an deceiver making it appear HIS creation to be many billions of years old then GOD writes and says it is only thousands of years old and writes that in HIS WORD.Yet be advised everyone the age of the universe and the earth is not given in THE BIBLE. Only lies about THE WORD OF GOD GIVES YOU THAT. and satan laughs Well now Mr. Nye and Mr. Ham can hold hands in hell for this is where liars end up. Now what can be learned about Spiritual warfare from this. satan uses both of those men to further his agenda.

JESUS BLESS YOU

david stotler

One salient issue that might come out of it is Ham correctly pointed out the distinction between observational/experimental science and 'historical' science. The best response Nye could come up with is the tired CSI nonsense that really does not apply.. That is were Ham, in my opinion, made his biggest blunder. He failed to show why the analogy is invalid. Was it because he did not know how, or he assumed it was such a bad analogy it did not need a response. I don't know but I think he should have responded.

Why pick between either side when they are both wrong?

The truth is between the two extremes. It has been proven to me that when there are two opposing sides that are diametrically opposed to each other both are wrong!

Bill Nye won handedly. Ken Ham used nothing but logical fallacies and claims that "you weren't there" to debate his points.

http://i.imgur.com/CmjqJbx.jpg

No. There is literally no reason to believe in Creationism and all this did was provide a platform for Ham.

No. Creationists will still be misinformed about the facts. It is willful rejection of reality. They will still not understand how science works. They will still think their creation myth is literal.

Outwith the US there is no debate because no one is interested in creationism - hopefully that'll be the case in the US in the near future.