BILL NYE VS KEN HAM: TONIGHT AT 7 PM

[Clueless Morgan]

I could only watch the first hour so I got 40 minutes of bullshittin' Ham and only 20 minutes of Nye's talk. I came back for the last 20 minutes or so where it seemed that Ham was getting creamed, but I have no idea how Nye did the rest of the time so... I guess I need to rewatch.

From what I did see, though, it seemed like Ham's tactics were to redefine words to suit himself, make distinctions where no distinctions are made (observational versus historical science? WTF?), and to repeat key words and ideas in order to reinforce to his audience what they already think: science is a religion, scientists are trying to indoctrinate children into the religion of science, etc.

Frankly, I think this is a decent tactic for Ham to take, and one Nye used on his show, BNtSG - repeat important information or concepts over and over in order to instill them into the audience's minds and increase the opportunity for the audience to remember the information or concept. This was the tactic I was hoping Nye would employ; yes Nye needs to educate the audience on the science and the evidence, but using the tactic of repeating concepts and arguments, especially his strongest, most persuasive concepts and arguments, would have been a great approach.

In that respect, even though I wasn't able to watch the whole thing, I think Ham had the "winning" approach, even though he was shooting fish in a barrel.

I also felt really bad for Nye; that was a flagrantly hostile audience and even his lamest "this always gets at least a chuckle" type jokes fell flat.

---

So when I hear Creationists go on about 'kind' they are talking about genus, not species? They're never very specific.

I thought that Ham was saying (in his 30-minute opener) that "Kind" was equivalent to "Family" in the kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species lineup. Maybe I misunderstood his meaning, that wouldn't be hard to do.

Ken Ham:
Delusional or Con Artist?

Delusional.

I would have liked to see Nye go after Ham's absurd distinction between science done in the present versus science regarding the past.

It would have been a great move on Nye's part to do 20-minutes for his opener and save 10 minutes for rebutting the stupidity Ham threw out in his opener. This would have been contingent on his skills off-script, though.

Not having seen the end of Nye's opening 30 I don't know if he did this.

Also it would have been nice to challenge whether science based on other religion's creation stories should receive as much time in the science classroom as his own.

Ham would have side-stepped this like he side-stepped the Q&A question about what it would take to change his mind.

Of course these go after the essential unsoundness of his ideas rather than the science itself. But obviously he wanted to keep his points in the area where he feels buttressed by his acknowledged expertise. It does show that science alone isn't enough to rebut bad ideas. If you allow his past/present distinction he gets away with making his lunatic version of science look respectable.

Yes. Nye needed to address this. Apparently he didn't(?).

Off to look the debate up on youtube to fill in the missed parts.