Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You are here: Home / Politics / Religion / Religious Nuts 2 / Bill Nye Debating Some Creationist Wingnut

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    You seriously don’t know who Ken Ham is? You need to get out from under the Subaru in the field, John.

  2. 2.

    C.J.

    The Science Guy is just going to end up frustrated. There is no winning here. I don’t understand why he’s doing it. You’re not gonna get the guy to admit anything.

  5. 5.

    Cermet

    No one who believes in evolution will really care; but many wing-nuts will watch this and maybe a few younger ones will begin to doubt. Besides, the debates ended in the early nineteenth century in most area’s of the world (and only – typical – did it continue into the twentieth century here in dumb-ass land amerika (and thanks to raygun and other brain dead thugs, start up again.).)

  8. 8.

    Ash Can

    I don’t think this is a good idea, for the simple reason that you can’t debate apples and oranges. Science and belief don’t really intersect.

  9. 9.

    hildebrand

    @C.J.: Bingo. The creationist hack has honed and perfected his argument to the point that it is completely impervious to logic or evidence. I admire Nye for giving it a go, and am glad that he is doing it, but unless he can find a way to change the rules of the game (which is a possibility), this is going be a very frustrating evening.

  12. 12.

    Comrade Jake

    Astonishing that some folks believe Noah’s flood literally happened. Why are they so sure? Well the evidence is in The Bible, of course!

  13. 13.

    Tom

    MomSense: The other part of the problem is that creationists know their bilble too well. Time for people to move beyond bronze age fairy tales.
    BTW my iPhone spell check suggested “cartoonist” for “creationist”.

  17. 17.

    hildebrand

    Watching this, Ham is simply defining terms as he wants them to be defined. No winning against that kind of ‘argument’.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @Comrade Jake:

    There’s an interesting theory right now that there really was a flood at some point when humans were first gathering into cities that ended up causing people to scatter into new communities, where they all breathlessly told the story of how they were the only ones to survive! Most of the early civilizations had a flood story — it’s just that the one in the Bible got written down and passed forward into Christianity, unlike the Sumerian and Egyptian versions.

  20. 20.

    Comrade Jake

    Hasn’t Ham gone waaayyy beyond 5 minutes here? WTF. This moderator is a real clown on CNN, unfortunately.

  22. 22.

    PaulW

    I hope this debate proves we can sue God for malpractice due to major design flaws in creating us.

    Why have our food intake and air intake intersect at the same junction in our neck? How many choking deaths are attributed to this major flaw?

    The appendix: He included it but it serves no function, but it can burst and kill us.

    Nipples ON MEN?

    The lack of a strong tail makes us weaker against those animals who can use their tails to one-up us whenever we wrestle.

    We are also woefully vulnerable to mosquitoes. We didn’t ask for that!

  23. 23.

    MikeJ

    @PaulW:

    The appendix: He included it but it serves no function, but it can burst and kill us.

    Reservoir for gut bacteria. When they get wiped out in the colon, a small population often survives in the appendix.

  25. 25.

    The Other Bob

    @Ash Can:

    I don’t think this is a good idea, for the simple reason that you can’t debate apples and oranges. Science and belief don’t really intersect.

    Except in this case science proves their belief is horseshit.

  30. 30.

    Chaoticgnome

    Odd, it’s saying the debate doesn’t start for another few minutes for me while the rest of the internet is commenting already. Am I in a time warp?

  31. 31.

    Chaoticgnome

    I went to a travelling road show version of Ham’s creation museum once in East Texas, and the logic is just galling and backwards. Their work extends to debating star creation and an elaborate theory based on a line from Genesis that pre-flood atmospheric pressure and oxygen % were higher and then after the flood half the atmosphere went away to make room for the extra water.

    Growing up where friends shoved Left Behind into my arms hoping I could save myself I am quite curious how this all goes down.

  32. 32.

    Ash Can

    @The Other Bob: I’d sure as hell like to think so, but belief can counter science with any “explanation” it wants. Science, on the other hand, has to abide by clearly defined ground rules. Although, as Cermet said above, if Nye can get even one young mind (or even old mind) to start questioning the fundamentalist nonsense and start putting it in its proper perspective as creation mythology/allegory, I’ll admit it’s worthwhile.

  33. 33.

    Schlemizel

    @PaulW:

    Our major light source gives us cancer

    Our spine was not built to be upright so it has to curve oddly & our hips have to tilt causing us no end of pain & trouble.

    We have extra teeth that have to be extracted because there is not enough room in our mouths. There wuld be if we had a muzzle like apes do.

    You might want to claim a designer but please don’t pretend it was an intelligent designer.

  34. 34.

    Chaoticgnome

    @Schlemizel:
    My dad is a mechanical engineer and his favorite on that theme is having to poop was a rather curious choice for our designer.

  35. 35.

    Barbara

    There’s a pretty good ice storm right now in the Cincinnati area — everyone at the Creation Museum is going to have a hard time getting home or in Nye’s case, back to his hotel. It’s coming down really fast.

  38. 38.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Barbara: It’s gonna be a clusterfuck down there. We’re still getting snow (so far) but that far south it’s sleet falling fast.

    I’m just happy it wasn’t last night since we used my birthday tickets to see Jason Isbell, with Holly WIlliams opening. It was a great show.

  41. 41.

    Badtux

    I don’t get it. What’s next, Bill Nye debates the president of the Flat Earth Society about that heretical Spherical Earth Theory? How can you debate established facts as if they were just some conjecture? What next, “Gravity: Is it an attractive force, or is it the noodly appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster holding you down”?

  42. 42.

    RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual

    Funny, how do wingnuts explain how God created cancer? Then gave it to little children? Or Alzheimers that erases the memory of the faithful, like my Grandmother, a devoted Catholic?

    Fuck religion and fuck the wingnuts.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!

  44. 44.

    Emerald

    @Badtux:

    What’s next, Bill Nye debates the president of the Flat Earth Society about that heretical Spherical Earth Theory? How can you debate established facts as if they were just some conjecture?

    And that’s why he shouldn’t be doing this. It puts the creationist on an equal platform with real science. It gives them credibility, no matter what the outcome (and btw, you cannot “win” against these people).

    I really wish Bill weren’t doing this.

    I made the same mistake once. I got roped into a debate against a Shakespeare denier (they maintain the Bard did not write his plays–the scholarly opinion on that mirrors the climate debate at about 99% or so, favoring Shakespeare if anyone here needs to know that).

    I wiped the floor with the guy, and later he wanted a rematch because our debate had been a “tie.” Major admission from him. He knew, at least, that he had not won.

    But that’s how I learned my lesson. No opinions were changed. It was nothing more than entertainment, except that merely by doing it I implicitly admitted that there was something concrete to “debate” at all.

  45. 45.

    Pogonip

    @Chaoticgnome: I too have wondered why all God’s critters gotta poop. My theory is the Almighty has a lowbrow sense of humor. Which would also explain burps, farts, hiccups, and how dogs make more dogs.

  46. 46.

    Pogonip

    P. S. jack Hanna has said that you can be sure you are a true animal lover if you don’t mind dealing with the poop. Addendum: a true dog lover will not mind dealing with the aftermath of the dog eating five pounds of Valentine candy, box and all. We were finding puddles of puke for DAYS. My mom never even hinted at selling the dog.

  48. 48.

    kindness

    Please. I want to know what happened but I don’t want to click the debate, even though it’s just Youtube.

    What good soul will give us mooching hippies a Cliff Notes version?

  51. 51.

    Cliff in NH

    @kindness:
    I watched it all (arrrgghhh!!!) and I agree with this line from the liveblog:

    I can’t believe I sat through 2 hours and 45 minutes of that.

    Your welcome.

  52. 52.

    Chaoticgnome

    To sum up the events I leave you with the wisdom of 1 Kings Chapter 7 verse 23:
    “Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference”

    In biblical times pi was exactly 3.

  53. 53.

    rylen

    Hot cup of cider sitting on my desk. I had it in the microwave a few minutes ago, but how did it REALLY happen?

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    @Emerald:

    People at my office got really bored with my tirades against Anonymous when it came out a few years ago, but it REALLY pissed me off. No one who holds that theory ever seems to get how elitist it is.

  56. 56.

    Jean

    I can’t believe I watched that whole thing. I wanted to smack not the creationist as much as the stupid people who are beyond saving, God or no God.

    “But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement” (Yeats, “Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop”).

  57. 57.

    Emerald

    @Mnemosyne: “Elitist” is exactly right. Their premise is that Shakespeare couldn’t have had enough education to have written the plays–a premise that is complete BS. We know a lot about that school, and he certainly did have the education. The evidence for Shakespeare is massive. There is no doubt at all he wrote his plays.

    What they really believe is that no middle class person could be that good. It had to be someone from the nobility. What trash. There are about three aristos who were great artists: Tolstoy, Sir Phillip Sydney and Byron. The rest of the truly greats, all of ’em from painters to musicians to writers, were middle class.

    I refuse to watch Anonymous. I don’t want to sit through such a travesty, no matter how well produced it may be.

  59. 59.

    sw

    I admire the guy for going through the trouble. But I think he misses the point here. He has an impressive array of evidence but I get the sense that these people aren’t really interested in evidence. What needs to be said repeatedly constantly and insistently is that Creation Science is an Oxymoron. There can be no such thing as Creation Science. Period. Why is this? Because science is a method that allows one to search for the truth. And that method puts observation and data above all else. If a scientist ‘worships’ anything it is data. A scientist is one who uses the scientific method in a search for answers to questions about the physical world. Creationists already know the answer! You cannot be engaged in a search for the truth if you already know the answer. A true scientist has to be completely willing to throw away any theory or conjecture no matter how well established it may be if it contradicts the data. Show me a creationist who would be willing to throw away their god or any part of their dogma should the evidence point away from it? If you put the dogma, the teaching before the data, you are not a scientist, you are a theologian. And now we get to the tricky part. Indeed there are and always have been “scientists” who treat science, that is old established theories, as a sort of secular religion. Insisting that they be honored, even when the data contradicts them. They are always there, standing in the way of scientific progress. They are the theologians of science. That does not change the argument. You cannot be a scientist if you are not willing to discard your theories in the face of hard evidence and creationists simply never will.

  60. 60.

    Paul in KY

    @Mnemosyne: If it happened, it is thought it had something to do with either the Medeterranian basin flooding or the Caspian Sea basin flooding when the end of the Ice Age caused huge amounts of ice that were blocking water from flowing into these basins to melt. Probably circa 13,000 – 14,000 years ago.

  61. 61.

    Howlin Wolfe

    @PaulW: One thing I learned in law school was that you CAN sue God for whatever you want, including malpractice. Not sure how you’d collect the judgment, though.
    You cannot sue yourself, however, according to the civil procedure prof.

  62. 62.

    Thursday

    I don’t mind that the debate (and ones like this) happened: people who disagree with evolution or science in general (when it gets too specific) will watch with the thought of “Ooo! Ham’s gonna get this guy!” and be exposed to things they might not have considered.

    But.

    I hate that these debates – the Monty Python vs. C of E is a classic example – have audiences. There should be no audience at all, as there is no need for one if it is an exchange of ideas. When the transcript is out, it’ll be read, and the ‘scoring points with the croud’ sections will show up loud and clear and can safely be ignored.

  63. 63.

    Thursday

    …Plus I had the over/under for the number of times Ham gave his usual response to difficult questions (“Were you there?”) at an even dozen, and I need an accurate count.

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