BILL NYE VS KEN HAM: TONIGHT AT 7 PM

[Angrboda]

Speaking to Morgan's point, that is one area where Nye simply failed. His points were all couched in terms that adults familiar with the material could understand, but the audience he meant to address would have totally not understood the point he was trying to make. Nye has experience communicating science to child-like minds. Why didn't he use it?

Ham's points were simpler and easier to understand. His slides were professional and appealing. Most every slide of Ham's was a caricature of Ham or Nye, or a professionally drawn illustration. Nye used a bunch of stock photos with hard to read captions, most of which didn't, in and of themselves, make the point he was illustrating. Ham was just more polished. And as noted, Nye tried to cram a lot into a little space, instead of making a little very accessible. And while Nye tried, Ham's opening put him in the position of trying to counter philosophy with science, and he didn't do a good job at that. For his part, it appeared that Nye knew it was coming, and just chose to take the battle elsewhere. Maybe he was right in not assailing Ham's philosophical points, but it left Ham alone on the field to portray creationists as an unfairly oppressed constituency.

Nye's response to the redefinition argument, using forensic science as an example, was a good approach. But he never made it accessible to his audience. He introduced it, and just assumed that his audience understood his point. I understood his point, but I imagine the bulk of his audience — his real audience, those sympathetic to creationism and wanting to defend their religion — would have had no idea as to why he was talking about a television crime show. That's a classic public speaking mistake: Know your audience and speak directly to them. In that sense, Nye's whole performance was flawed.

Probably what surprised me and gladdened me most was Nye's willingness and enthusiasm in embracing the answer, "I don't know." For those who are frightened of not knowing, Ham's message of eternal certainty is always going to win out. But for those religious minds that are open to the possibility that not knowing isn't a bad thing, those minds may some day come to the realization of how majestic Nye's "I don't know" is compared to all the Ham's in the world and their "book of everything you need to know."

ETA: Oh, and Esquilax suggests conceding the distinction between historical and observational science. I think that's a mistake, as that will be reused further down the line without a Nye being there to qualify or counter why it is an irrelevant distinction. It might have helped him prosper in the debate, but it would left a lot of young minds vulnerable to such chicanery.