Nye vs. Ham

When I first heard Ken Ham would be debating Bill Nye I wasn't very pleased. I feared he would fare poorly and I'm sorry to say I was right. I can't imagine anyone would be overly impressed with his performance.

Besides being a poor debater I was surprised (considering his calibre in Christian circles) that he failed to grasp the fundamental issues. In fact engaging in this debate at all was to misunderstand the nature of the problem.

In all honesty it was a mistake for Ham to attempt this. Creation is a secondary issue, and our understanding of it is rooted in faith (as per Hebrews 11) which is rooted in a self-evident presupposition or assumption that God exists(Romans 1).

It's not secondary in importance. It's secondary in that our understanding of it rests on other assumptions and understandings.

Sin obscures this and man suppresses this knowledge. We can argue all day long, but without the transformative work of the Holy Spirit the person will only see darkness while standing in the light of the noonday sun.

It would have been better to focus on the existence of God. To argue Creation with Nye is to enter the empirical laboratory, to argue on his turf with his terms. You're not going to gain any traction there. Nye has suppressed the ability to see God as the 'cause'...so to try and argue with him now over the 'effect' is going nowhere. He doesn't have the eyes to see.

He could have spent a significant amount of time dealing with the fact that Nye also operates with presuppositions. He cannot account for his beliefs and at some point must also operate on faith.

But even this will prove fruitless. The real issue is the person and work of Christ. It is Christ who ratifies Genesis and tells us it is inspired Scripture. What does Bill Nye do with Christ and his work? Who was this man from Nazareth that claimed Divinity and worked miracles? If he rejects Christ, then he rejects the God of Scripture...and consequently the Creation account.

As 1 Peter says, we give an answer for the hope that is within us. We proclaim Christ. We can argue and wrestle to a point, but faith in Christ is the barrier that must be breached in order to have a meaningful discussion. Once we believe in Christ, the problems of the Bible are solved. Without Christ, the unbeliever will not be able to make sense of the world or the Bible.

We don't have to 'convince' people of the Truth. Romans says it is self-evident and they are guilty before God. We proclaim, answer their questions and essentially leave it up to God. They can reject Christ at their own peril.

Ham could have spent a lot more time discussing the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics. He talked about how we can't know the scientific history of the past but never really explained it. Even when the subject came up near the end of the debate, he didn't pursue it. He spoke of catastrophic plate tectonics, but didn't elaborate on the principles of how that would affect all the age related issues in the universe from the geological and fossil records to stellar light measurements.

A simple illustration would have opened up the debate.... I use the following with my kids all the time. If I take a ball and wing it across the yard, the speed a foot from my body will be very different from the speed it's traveling at when it's a hundred feet away. Can you measure the original speed at which it was traveling when it left my body? You can figure out deceleration if you know the starting point and you know the conditions. But we have no way of answering these questions when it comes to the universe. A million variables could affect it along the way. It could hit something, there could be wind, or the surface of the ball (or object) might change as it flies through the air.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us everything is decaying and breaking down. That's putting it too simply of course. This came up briefly, I think Nye dodged the question, and Ham didn't pursue it. Nye argued that the earth isn't a closed system and so the law is not applicable. Ham didn't pursue it. This is at the heart of the scientific refutation of evolution.

Ham never pushed the issue that empirical observation doesn't equal evidence. Just because you observe some phenomena, and you theorize about what caused it, that doesn't mean that you know have proof or evidence of your theory. Your interpretation is based on assumptions which are based on assumptions.

It 'may' be that you've grasped something, you've made an observation. As we know from our own experience, circumstantial evidence can become pretty compelling, but it's not always telling the full story.

Because the focus was on Creation, perhaps Ham thought it improper to launch into topics such as morality. But I think meaning, ethics, abstract ideas, consciousness... these are all mechanisms and concepts that affect the created order. Nye can't account for any of them. Nye can speak of life having meaning, finding joy in his work, he even marveled at the existence of his being, the fact that 'he' was part of the universe. 'He', the 'being' the 'personhood' of Bill Nye is meaningless in a materialist universe. It assumes consciousness and the immaterial, it's an act of faith.

Joy, Meaning, Good, Civilization....all meaningless in a materialist universe. They will argue otherwise but to do so they have to assume positions their system won't accommodate.

These concepts are metaphysical and thus outside the realm of reality that Nye will acknowledge. Ham could have challenged him on those points. I noticed he seemed to borrow lines from the famous Bahnsen-Stein debate but he didn't seem to know how to use them effectively.

Ultimately what he did was, he walked into the laboratory with Nye and allowed Nye to show him the lab and demand that he 'prove' Creationism. Ham needed to show Nye that if you 'put on the right glasses' so to speak, then suddenly your microscope and all your other instruments see things in a new way.

In many ways this debate was illustrative of the weakness of the empirical-theological system, the attempt to approach the Bible as a science book, to attempt to 'prove' God and Biblical phenomena.

The whole ark discussion was ridiculous. Ham needed to argue that the Ark and the Flood were miraculous events. Arguing about the size of the boat, the spatial capacity and all that was a waste of time.

I don't agree with Ham on a lot of things. I'm a Young Earth Creationist, but I don't accept Ussher's Chronology. I think Ham's exegesis is mired in the hyper-literalism of the Fundamentalist and Dispensationalist schools. These schools of thought often engage in reductionism, and an approach to the text which is unable to appreciate symbolism and metaphor. There are times when the text must be taken in an absolute literal sense but they are very inconsistent in this application and at other times engage in what I would call unwarranted speculation.

A final point...

Repeatedly Ham brought up science related issues that tie in with the Culture War he wishes to fight. When I point out to people that this is an assertion of power, they (in their willing blindness) deny that's what they're trying to do.

Put yourself in Nye's shoes. He's hearing this guy argue for social policy. Ham wants to argue that his views should control legislation regarding the family, the bedroom and the school. Actually Ham would argue for a lot more than that and Nye and anyone else listening knows that.

Nye rightly recognizes that Ham is saying, you 'must' and 'ought' to submit to the authority I'm arguing for. Why? Because I say it's right.

Now the Bible is right and authoritative, but Nye being lost will never understand that. Ultimately are we as Christians supposed to use the power of the state, the courts and the uniformed police to force and compel Nye to follow our moral code?

There's no evidence for that in the New Testament.

We're supposed to make disciples not threaten them with destruction and harm when they won't submit to our civil authority.

Someone might lamely suggest that we're not trying to control him. We're just 'voting our values'....well, your values mean a loss of freedom for Nye.

Someone might say, "So what?" Right is right.

Again, you have to ask, are we told to do this? Does the Bible teach that we're to gain control of society and impose the Kingdom on this world? Can we even do that when the Kingdom itself is spiritual?

I'm not arguing Nye has a right to sin or any rights at all before God. But as humans living on the earth in our various Babylon-states, we would wish for civil freedoms that allow us to serve God. If we take away the freedom of others, you can be sure they will reciprocate when given the chance.

The whole debate was a disappointment and a mistake. Ham failed, should rightly be embarrassed, and probably should be rebuked. His credibility as a leader and teacher needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps that's a bit harsh, but as I lay in bed thinking about it, I wondered if this was a kind of second Scopes Trial. I wonder what the reverberations will be? Many Christian apologists debate with Evolutionists but this was a pretty high profile event. It was on the front page of the CNN website and one of the top stories on Yahoo!.

Some good will come out of it though. People will be forced to revisit these issues.

Don't let the enemies of God set the terms of the debate. You will lose the argument, and unless this is addressed the Church will continue to lose its children to a powerful and very seductive cultural narrative.