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Friday, August 31, 2012

Creationist "Science Guys" Respond to Bill Nye

The short video by Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") attracted a lot of attention [Bill Nye: Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children ].

Not to be outdone, Ken Ham and the Creation Museum have taped a response ...
We are [responding to Nye] today with a video rebuttal featuring our “science guys” — Dr. David Menton and Dr. Georgia Purdom of our AiG and Creation Museum staff. These two PhD scientists were asked to reply to Mr. Nye, whose academic credentials do not come close to Drs. Menton and Purdom.
I present this for your amusement. I feel a bit sorry for Georgia Purdom since there's a high probability that some of her grandchildren are going to reject creationism. I wonder how she'll deal with that?



40 comments :

Mark said...

If evolution is a highly "superfluous" idea... then creationism?

Anonymous said...


Hmm...do you know know Purdoms grandkids will reject creationism? I know one of Behe's sons has rejected religion but 'predicting grandkids'?

Timothy said...

I just can't facepalm hard enough.

Larry Moran said...

Nope, I don't know that for sure.

Do you have a point you'd like to make?

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Obviosly, Larry, the point is that you're not in possession of absolute knowledge, like you'd get if you just sat down and concentrated hard enough on believing what it says in the bible.

Michael Fisher said...

I managed 15 seconds. YouTube comments & "likes" are disabled ~ SOP for Christians

Jordan said...

Rumraket, are you being facetious or do you truly believe that the bible offers absolute knowledge?

Arek Wittbrodt said...

Don't even try.
Unless you want to be science guy at the Creation Museum...

Wavefunction said...

If you change the title of that video to "The Onion", Georgia Purdom's deadpan face would fit right in and the whole thing would sound like marvelous satire.

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Let me answer your question like this: I'm honored my statement was indistinguishable from a genuine statement of belief. An effective poe I made :P

The Thought Criminal said...

Don't care what Ken Ham has to say, don't know much about Bill Nye.

If you change the title of that video to "The Onion"

I do know about the Bill Nye "crack" headline at The Onion. It was moderately almost amusing.

Unknown said...

Are these people completely deaf to cognitive dissonance? Georgia Purdom talks about billions of years of history that were unobserved by any human and then contrasts it with all the eyewitness accounts in the Bible. I don't remember any published eyewitness accounts of the six-day creation. Are there missing manuscripts of Adam and Eve's personal diaries?

If she really regards the Bible as having greater evidentiary value than the findings of so-called historical sciences like archeology or paleontology, what does that say about her science?

steve oberski said...

Given that almost every post you have written could have come out of the Onion, I find that very amusing.

steve oberski said...

whose academic credentials do not come close to Drs. Menton and Purdom

Academic penis envy seems to be a big bug up the butts of creotards.

I guess that when your entire world view is based on dogma and authority, the more credentials the better.

andyboerger said...

truly. Cognitive, meet Dissonance. Where do they get this stuff?

andyboerger said...

steve, you can't possibly mean this, right? Scientists NEVER play that card, is that what you're saying? Nobody, for example on this very site, ever argues that they have the greater expertise in a particular field of study, and that therefore their ideas have more weight? For example, in casting doubts on the credibility of those they refer to as 'IDiots'?

This has nothing to do with the content of the video itself. I find it as silly as anyone else here. But for you to trot out THAT as a point of contention? It doesn't surprise me that nobody before me has responded. I would guess they would find agreeing with you to be a little, er, uncomfortable.

It amazes me how little consistency there is in your type of polemic. It is pretty much of the variety that any club fits, so long as it can be used in this particular instance to club somebody over the head.

Shawn said...

Not to mention the preponderance of fake PhD degrees held by the likes of Dr. Jack Van Impe and his preternatural wife Rexella, Dr. Kent Hovind, etc., etc., ...etc.

steve oberski said...

andyboerger

Show me an example of Laurence A. Moran or Jerry Coyne using their academic credentials as a club to espouse their stances in evolutionary biology.

And tell me that the Ken Ham and the Creation Museum did not use the academic credentials of their pet "scientists" as a rebuttal to the Bill Nye video.

And then let's talk about polemic a bit more, assuming that you actually understand the meanings of the words you bandy about, which as demonstrated in previous posts tend to mean whatever you want them to mean at the moment.

andyboerger said...

really and seriously, this is almost comical. I'll have to do a little research which means this will take a bit of time, perhaps, so just to be clear:

Are you maintaining that when regarding people such as ID people, and Jerry Shapiro, Larry Moran has never used phrases such as, "who isn't a scientist", "who is an engineer (as code language for saying - not a biologist)", "is not a microbiologist", etc?

Just so I know, and don't end up putting too much time into this, can I stop at ten?

Meanwhile, please explain to me why it is not okay for the people who made this video to make that claim, seeing as Mr. Nye is listed in wikipedia as being " American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, mechanical engineer and scientist", with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell, as well as two HONORARY post-graduate degrees, whereas they have PhDs, IN BIOLOGY, from Brown and Ohio State (hardly 'fake' universities, Shawn....).

andyboerger said...

Steve, just from one article alone, so taking less time than I thought.
Here's what I have so far:

"Isn't it precious that an engineer could write such a silly post on evolution, a post were he is "correcting" a knowledgeable scientist, and then say, "... you have to study the mechanism that you're purporting to explain ..."? LM

"Let me get this straight, a creationist mechanical engineer is telling tenured professional evolutionary biologists to study evolution harder?

Be right back, need to try and stop laughing my self to death." Rumracket

andyboerger said...

two more, and I hope I don't have to point out the tongue in cheek intent of the first,

"Casey Luskin, a lawyer and a creationist, explains evolution to a group of scientists." LM



"Here's the latest contribution from lawyer/non-scientist David Klinghoffer" LM

I also recall an exchange I had with him on a post about Jerry Shapiro from last year where he dismisses the credentials of Shapiro, but in my search I realize that he writes about Shapiro a lot, so I am having difficulty locating it.
Nevertheless, I have made my point, and await your concession with the same level of trust I place in the arrival of the tooth fairy.

steve oberski said...

“It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Ph.D. in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of tbe Bible. A handful of Christians appear to have done this; some have even obtained their degrees from reputable universities. No doubt, others will follow in their footsteps. While such people are technically "scientists," they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe. And their proclamations about God and the failures of Darwinism do not in the least signify that there is a legitimate scientific controversy about evolution.”

― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

BilBy said...

Creationism is NOT taught in South Africa. David Menton is misinformed or a liar.

andyboerger said...

a nice quote, albeit from a hardly impartial source, but one that has no bearing on your your earlier dismissal of the video, posted above.

As for your charge that I misunderstand and misuse words, you made that charge on an earlier post, and I countered it by citing two definitions from The Online Dictionary which were entirely consistent with my usage, as well as a adding a quotation from another visitor to this site, who used one of the words in question in precisely the way I did.
Not surprisingly, you didn't respond. So I am writing this not because I expect you to admit you are blowing smoke with that charge, but so that others might question whether or not you have any credibility in making it. Shall I post that exchange as well, so that anyone wishing to can make their own judgments?

Once again, from the Online Dictionary:
Polemic; . A controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine.

andyboerger said...

just to be clear, I have no real issue with quotes such as I cite here, by Larry, et al. I see no problem whatsoever in someone pointing to their own credentials, and the lack thereof of those they disagree with, so long as that is not the end of their argument, or its main point.
I just find it arch, and worthy of comment, that steve somehow sees it as a form of 'penis envy' when it comes from the other side.

steve oberski said...

So, what would happen if I showed up at a physics conference and said,"String theory is bogus. It doesn't resonate with me. It's not how I chose to view the universe at a small scale. I'm not a fan." Well, nothing would happen because I'm not a physicist, I don't understand string theory. I'm the Ted Bundy of string theory. I wouldn't want to belong to any string theory club that would have me as a member.

But this is just the point. Whenever we are talking about facts certain opinions must be excluded. That is what it is to have a domain of expertise. That is what it is for knowledge to count.


Sam Harris from TED talk: Science can answer moral questions

There is a difference between excluding an opinion based on ones expertise in a field, for example Laurence A. Moran in the field of biochemistry or Jerry Coyne in the field of evolutionary biology versus saying that ones opinion trumps another because I have a PhD and you don't.

So when Laurence A. Moran describes Casey Luskin as a lawyer and a creationist, he is pointing out that Luskin has no training in evolution, has never published in a peer reviewed journal, has never presented at a conference on evolution, has done no original research in the field of evolution.

In short, Casey Luskin is the Ted Bundy of evolutionary biology and it is not credential one upmanship to point this out.

However in the Creation Museum response to the Bill Nye video, that is exactly what happened, our creotard/day care pseudo scientists have PhDs, Bill Nye doesn't, checkmate darwinists.

Shawn said...

@Andy
For what its worth, was not referring to people in video who do indeed have real degrees, but to those charlatans who use title of Dr. to project false sense of academic authority (but should have said fake doctorates, not PhDs, BTW).

andyboerger said...

my only response, steve, is that, if the above attempt to cover your behind works for you and protects your ego, fine, have it that way. I am doubtful that it convinces anyone other than you, but hey, I could be wrong.

andyboerger said...

Shawn, understood. No argument with your overall point.

The Thought Criminal said...

steve oberski, I'm so glad to hear that coming from you. If you'd understood something I wrote I'd know it was superficial and probably wrong.

Mike Haubrich said...

Ian, for the Bible, she means that God was the eyewitness to his own creation and that it was written as a revelation. That's the core of Ham's arguments; that God was there to witness it all when no one else was so we have to take His word for it.

No matter what science learns, they say, when it contradicts the Bible it just means that we don't properly understand what science is finding.

andyboerger said...

it's silly, but that's what she's saying. God WAS the eyewitness, and so his account trumps the theories of scientists. He was there, witnessing the whole thing, and then using the Bible to journal about it. Needless to say, his account was not peer reviewed, because of the impossibility of God having a peer. Not sure why he referred to himself in the 3rd person. Hope that clears things up.

Larry Moran said...

@andyboerger,

Just to be clear, I don''t usually have a problem with people who want to debate a specific scientific issue. It doesn't matter to me whether they have a degree in science or not.

What really annoys me is when non-scientists lecture scientists about how they are completely wrong concerning the fundamental concepts in their field (e.g. evolution).

Shawn said...

@Andy
Thanks. Commentaries that seem concise and precise enough by night are often attended by a desire to refine them in the morn...too late. At least it is a circumstance recognized by all commenters here, I imagine.

petew said...

Not to me, suitably snarky :-)

Anonymous said...

Don;t worry TTC, we know that everything you write is superficial and plainly wrong.

Anonymous said...

I know you did not ask me, but:

Perhaps because when it comes "from the other side" it is an attempt at inflating the "respectability" of their "arguments", only to have such arguments consisting of mere crap.

I rather not talk about degrees. But I see no contradiction in steve's use of them. I think you have been oversold about some kind of misconceived impartiality. When one side consists on snake-oil salesmanship, while the other is legitimate (even of sometimes exaggerated or self-mispresented), there is no balance to make. Mentioning degrees will have a different meaning when coming from one side than from the other.

Hopefully clear enough.

nmanning said...

Kind of surprised that Menton did not claim that Tiktaalik could not have walked because it lacks a clavicle....

The Thought Criminal said...

Stop it, Negative Entropy, you keep saying bad stuff about me you'll make me over confident.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I'm a SciFi fan (and Scientist) and it is so much fun living long enough to see so much SciFi Tech being realized.

Also, in SciFi, we have little difficulty imagining all sorts of "beings" (aliens) who are so vastly beyond us in every way that they seem nearly Godlike.

And, what is even more fun & inspiring is that sometimes these advanced "Aliens" are aware of beings even more advanced than they!

Imagining with the imagination fueled with the true spirit of SciFi means that imagining the existent of God is not much of a stretch of the imagination.