The Editors Say: Trying to make reactionaries, ignoramuses and creationists (often interchangeable types) accept that creationism is bunk is as hard as convincing Obamabots that their idol is an evil, warmongering corporatist. In both cases facts, and clear reasoning, count for little or nothing.
Update: Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham “Answers in Genesis” squared off Tuesday night (Feb. 4) at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. The debate between the two men on the origins of the universe had been highly-anticipated.
Bill Nye, The Science Guy, will debate Ken Ham, The Creationist Guy, tonight at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. They will debate a question from the 1920’s: “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” Yes or no? This is a bad idea for everyone but the creationists.
Whatever his intention, Nye is sitting down as a representative of “evolution” against Ham, implying that there are two equal sides to a debate that has already been settled scientifically. By simply agreeing to participate, Nye is simultaneously elevating the proponents of Biblical creationism, while marginalizing his own position.
Ham is a young-Earth creationist. That means he believes the world is only seven thousand years old or so, because if you look at the Bible in the most literal way possible, that’s the timeline. God literally created the world in seven, 24-hour days, and so on from there. In a post on CNN promoting the debate(CNN will moderate the event), Ham lamented that “Several hundred well-attended debates [on creationism vs. evolution] were held in the 1970s and 1980s, but they have largely dried up in recent decades.” There is a reason those debates have dried up: Ham and his ilk have no factual ground to stand on.
