Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Debating Creation and Evolution - The Good and the Possibly Bad

Lately, much has been made of the coming debate between Dr. Ken Ham and Bill Nye "The Science Guy" over creationism and evolution.  In my opinion, if you are interested in such debates you would do better to watch something like the video below of William Lane Craig and Sam Harris at Notre Dame.  I would also encourage you to follow this link to the Reasonable Faith website to peruse more debates of a higher caliber.

Though Dr. Ham is a bright and well-spoken individual, I disagree with his take on Genesis and creation, and I would take the label, "The Science Guy," with a large grain of salt.  Bill Nye is a current favorite of ardent atheists in large part because he is unafraid of publicly proclaiming his evolutionary views and he is fond of repeating current atheist bumper-stickers like, "evolution is a fact, not a theory."  But his fundamentalism about science makes him, well, unscientific in significant ways.

The reason, I think, this debate receives more press from atheists is that they are more confident of Nye's ability verses Dr. Ham than they are of the actual performances of some of the world's leading atheists against Dr. Craig in debate.  In fact, Richard Dawkins famously refused to show up for a debate with Dr. Craig claiming it was beneath him, then he talks ad nauseam about the Westboro Baptist leaders.

I really do hope the debate between Ham and Nye goes well, is civil, and helps to raise the level of public conversation on these issues, but I am more confident that debates like the one below have actually done that.