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  • Oh, hi kids! I have an incredible message for you.

  • Hey, can someone take Germa back to the petting zoo?

  • Wow! That looks like fun.

  • Now, where was I? Oh, yes.

  • In 2014, kids 12 and under come free.

  • Hey! Shouldn't the comets be in the Planetarium?

  • For the entire year, kids 12 and under come free.

  • Hey, T-Rex! You'd better get back to the dinosaur den.

  • As you can see, it's a very exciting place.

  • Now tell your parents!

  • Kids 12 and under free in 2014 when accompanied by a paying adult.

  • We hope to see you soon!

  • Good evening. I'm pleased to welcome you to Legacy Hall

  • of the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky

  • in the metropolitan area of Cincinnati.

  • I'm Tom Foreman from CNN and I'm pleased to be tonight's

  • moderator for this Evolution versus Creation debate.

  • This is a very old question! Where did we come from?

  • My answer is from Washington this morning by airplane.

  • But there is a much more profound, longer answer

  • that people have sought after for a long time.

  • So tonight's question to be debated is the following:

  • Is Creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era?

  • Our welcome extends to hundreds of thousands of people

  • who are watching on the internet at debatelive.org.

  • We're glad you have joined us.

  • Of course, your auditorium here,

  • all of the folks who've joined us as well.

  • We're joined by 70 media representatives from many

  • of the world's great news organizations.

  • We're glad to have them here as well.

  • And now let's welcome our debaters: Mr. Bill Nye and Mr. Ken Ham.

  • We had a coin toss earlier to determine

  • who would go first of these two men.

  • The only thing missing was Joe Namath in a fur coat.

  • But it went very well. Mr. Ham won the coin toss

  • and he opted to speak first. But first, let me tell you

  • a little bit about both of these gentlemen.

  • Mr. Nye's website describes him as a scientist,

  • engineer, comedian, author, and inventor.

  • Mr Nye, as you may know, produced a number of award-winning TV shows,

  • including a program he became so well-known for:

  • Bill Nye the Science Guy.

  • While working on the Science Guy show, Mr. Nye won

  • seven national Emmy awards for writing, performing,

  • and producing the show. Won 18 Emmys in five years!

  • In between creating the shows, he wrote five kids books about science,

  • including his latest title, Bill Nye's Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.

  • Billy Nye is the host of three television series:

  • his program, "The 100 Greatest Discoveries"--

  • it airs on the Science Channel. "The Eyes of Nye"--

  • airs on PBS stations across the country. He frequenly appears

  • on interview programs to discuss a variety of science topics.

  • Mr. Nye serves as Executive Director of the Planetary Society,

  • the world's largest space interest group.

  • He is a graduate of Cornell, with a Bachelors

  • of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering.

  • Mr. Ken Ham is the president and co-founder of Answers in Genesis,

  • a bible-defending organization that upholds the authority

  • of the scriptures from the very first verse.

  • Mr. Ham is the man behind the popular, high-tech

  • Creation Museum, where we're holding this debate.

  • The museum has had 2 million visitors in six years

  • and has attracted much of the world's media.

  • The Answers in Genesis website, as well, trafficked

  • with 2 million visitors alone last month. Mr. Ham is also

  • a best-selling author, a much in-demand speaker,

  • and the host of a daily radio feature carried on 700 plus stations.

  • This is his second public debate on Evolution and Creation.

  • The first was at Harvard, in the 1990s.

  • Mr. Ham is a native of Australia. He earned

  • a Bachelors degree in Applied Science, with an emphasis in

  • Environmental Biology, from the Queensland's Institute of Technology,

  • as well as a Diploma of Education at the University

  • of Queensland in Brisbon, Australia.

  • And now...Mr. Ham, you opted to go first, so you will

  • be first with your five minute opening statement.

  • Well, good evening. I know that not everyone watching

  • this debate will necessarily agree with what I have to say,

  • but I'm an Aussie and live over here in America

  • and they tell me I have an accent and so it doesn't matter

  • what I say, some people tell me. We just like to hear you saying it.

  • So...um...I hope you enjoy me saying it anyway.

  • Well, the debate topic is this: Is Creation

  • a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?

  • You know, when this was first announced on the internet,

  • there were lots of statements-- like this one

  • from the Richard Dawkins Foundation.

  • "Scientists should not debate Creationists. Period."

  • And this one from one of the Discovery.com websites.

  • "Should Scientists Debate Creationists?"

  • You know, right here I believe there's a gross misrepresentation

  • in our culture. We're seeing people being indoctrinated

  • to believe that Creationists can't be Scientists.

  • I believe it's all a part of secularists hi-jacking the word "Science".

  • I want you to meet a modern-day scientist who's a Biblical Creationist.

  • My name is Stuart Burgess.

  • I'm a professor of Engineering Design at Bristol University in the U.K.

  • I have published over 130 scientific papers on

  • the science of design in Engineering and Biological systems.

  • From my research work, I have found that the scientific evidence

  • fully supports Creationism as the best explanation to origins.

  • I've also designed major parts of spacecrafts,

  • launched by ESA and NASA.

  • So here's a biblical Creationist,

  • who's a scientist, who's also an inventor.

  • And I want young people to understand that.

  • You know, the problem, I believe, is this: we need to define terms correctly.

  • We need to define Creation/Evolution in regard to origins

  • and we need to define science. And in this opening statement,

  • I want to concentrate on dealing with the word "science".

  • I believe the word "science" has been hijacked by secularists.

  • Now, what is science?

  • Well, the origin of the word comes from the Classical Latin "scientia",

  • which means "to know". And if you look up a dictionary,

  • it'll say science means "the state of knowing, knowledge".

  • But there's different types of knowledge and I believe

  • this is where the confusion lies.

  • There's experimental or observational sciences, as we call it.

  • That's using the scientific method, observation,

  • measurement, experiment, testing. That's what produces

  • our technology, computers, spacecraft, jet planes,

  • smoke detectors, looking at DNA, antibiotics, medicines and vaccines.

  • You see, all scientists, whether Creationists or Evolutionists,

  • actually have the same observational or experimental science.

  • And it doesn't matter whether you're a Creationist or an Evolutionist,

  • you can be a great scientist.

  • For instance, here's an atheist, who is a great scientist--

  • Craig Venter, one of the first researchers to sequence the human genome.

  • Or Dr. Raymond Damadian. He is a man who invented

  • the MRI scan and revolutionized medicine. He's a biblical Creationist.

  • But I want us to also understand molecules-to-man

  • evolution belief has nothing to do with developing technology.

  • You see, when we're talking about origins, we're talking about the past.

  • We're talking about our origins. We weren't there.

  • You can't observe that, whether it's molecules-to-man evolution,

  • or whether it's a creation account.

  • I mean, you're talking about the past.

  • We'd like to call that Origins or Historical Science,

  • knowledge concerning the past. Here at the Creation Museum,

  • we make no apology about the fact that our Origins or Historical science

  • actually is based upon the biblical account of origins.

  • Now, when you research science textbooks being used

  • in public schools, what we found is this:

  • by and large, the Origins or Historical Science

  • is based upon man's ideas about the past--for instance, the ideas of Darwin.

  • And our research has found that public school textbooks

  • are using the same word "science" for Observational Science

  • and Historical Science. They arbitrarily define science

  • as naturalism and outlaw the supernatural.

  • They present molecules-to-man evolution as fact.

  • They are imposing, I believe, the religion

  • of naturalism or atheism on generations of students.

  • You see, I assert that the word "science" has been hijacked

  • by secularists in teaching evolution to force the religion

  • of naturalism on generations of kids.

  • Secular evolutionists teach that all life developed

  • by natural processes from some primordial form.

  • That man is just an evolved animal, which has great bearing

  • on how we view life and death.

  • For instance, as Bill states, "It's very hard to accept,

  • for many of us, that when you die, it's over."

  • But, you see, the Bible gives a totally different account of origins,

  • of who we are, where we came from, the meaning of life, and our future.

  • That through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin.

  • But that God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son.

  • Whoever believes in Him should not perish and have everlasting life.

  • So is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?

  • I say the creation/evolution debate is a conflict

  • between two philosophical worldviews based on two different accounts

  • of origins or science beliefs and creation

  • is the only viable model of historical science confirmed

  • by observational science in today's modern scientific era.

  • And that is time. I had the unenviable job of being the time-keeper here.

  • So I'm like the referee in football that you don't like,

  • but I will periodically, if either one of our debaters

  • runs over on anything, I will stop them in the name of keeping it fair for all.

  • Uh, Mr. Ham, thank you for your comments. Now it's Mr. Nye's

  • turn for a five minute opening statement. Mr. Nye.

  • Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

  • I very much appreciate you including me in your, uh, facility here.

  • Now, looking around the room I think I see just one bow tie.

  • Is that right? Just one. And I'm telling you, once you try it--

  • oh, there's yes, two! That's great. I started wearing bow ties

  • when I was young, in high school.

  • My father showed me how. His father showed him.

  • And there's a story associated with this, which I find remarkable.

  • My grandfather was in the rotary, and he attended

  • a convention in Philadelphia, and even in those days,

  • at the turn of the last century, people rented tuxedos.

  • And the tuxedo came with a bow tie--untied bow tie.

  • So he didn't know how to tie it.

  • So...wasn't sure what to do, but he just took a chance.

  • He went to the hotel room next door, knocked on the door,

  • "Excuse me? Can you help me tie my tie?"

  • And the guy said, "Sure. Lie down on the bed."

  • So...my grandfather wanted to have the tie on,

  • wasn't sure what he was getting into, so he's said

  • to have lain on the bed and the guy tied a perfect bow tie knot and,

  • quite reasonably, my grandfather said,

  • "Thank you. Why'd I have to lie down on the bed?"

  • The guy said, "I'm an undertaker."

  • "It's the only way I know how to do it."

  • Now that story was presented to me as a true story.

  • It may or may not be. But it gives you something to think about.

  • And it's certainly something to remember.

  • So, here tonight, we're gonna have two stories

  • and we can compare Mr. Ham's story to the story

  • from what I will call the outside, from mainstream science.

  • The question tonight is: Does Ken Ham's Creation Model hold up?

  • Is it "viable"?

  • So let me ask you all: what would you be doing if you weren't here tonight?

  • That's right, you'd be home watching CSI.

  • CSI Petersburg. Is that coming--I think it's coming.

  • And on CSI, there is no distinction made between

  • historical science and observational science.

  • These are constructs unique to Mr. Ham.

  • We don't normally have these anywhere in the world except here.

  • Natural laws that applied in the past apply now.

  • That's why they're natural laws. That's why we embrace them.

  • That's how we made all these discoveries

  • that enabled all this remarkable technology.

  • So CSI is a fictional show, but it's based absolutely

  • on real people doing real work.

  • When you go to a crime scene and find evidence,

  • you have clues about the past. And you trust those clues

  • and you embrace them and you move forward to convict somebody.

  • Mr. Ham and his followers have this remarkable view

  • of a worldwide flood that somehow influenced everything that we observe in nature.

  • A 500 foot wooden boat, eight zookeepers for 14,000 individual animals,

  • every land plant in the world underwater for a full year?

  • I ask us all: is that really reasonable?

  • You'll hear a lot about the Grand Canyon, I imagine, also,

  • which is a remarkable place and it has fossils.

  • And the fossils in the Grand Canyon are found in layers.

  • There's not a single place in the Grand Canyon

  • where the fossils of one type of animal cross over

  • into the fossils of another. In other words,

  • when there was a big flood on the earth, you would expect

  • drowning animals to swim up to a higher level.

  • Not any one of them did. Not a single one.

  • If you could find evidence of that, my friends, you could change the world.

  • Now, I just wanna remind us all:

  • there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious,

  • who get enriched, who have a wonderful sense of community from their religion.

  • They worship together, they eat together, they live

  • in their communities and enjoy each others company. Billions of people.

  • But these same people do not embrace the extraordinary view

  • that the earth is somehow only 6,000 years old. That is unique.

  • And here's my concern: what keeps the United States ahead,

  • what makes the United States a world leader, is our technology,

  • our new ideas, our innovations. If we continue to eschew science,

  • eschew the process and try to divide science

  • into observational science and historic science,

  • we are not gonna move forward. We will not embrace natural laws.

  • We will not make discoveries. We will not invent and innovate and stay ahead.

  • So if you ask me if Ken Ham's Creation model is viable, I say no.

  • It is absolutely not viable. So stay with us over the next period

  • and you can compare my evidence to his. Thank you all very much.

  • (moderator) All right.

  • Very nice start by both of our debaters here.

  • And now each of one will offer a thirty minute,

  • illustrated presentation to fully offer their case for us to consider.

  • Mr. Ham, you're up.

  • Well, the debate topic was "Is creation a viable model

  • of origins in today's modern scientific era?"

  • And I made the statement at the end of my opening statement:

  • creation is the only viable model of historical science

  • confirmed by observational science in today's modern scientific era.

  • And I said what we need to be doing is actually defining

  • our terms and, particularly three terms: science, creation, and evolution.

  • Now, I discussed the meaning of the word "science"

  • and what is meant by experimental and observational science briefly.

  • And that both Creationists and Evolutionists

  • can be great scientists, for instance. I mentioned Craig Venter, a biologist.

  • He's an atheist and he's a great scientist.

  • He was one of the first researchers to sequence the human genome.

  • I also mentioned Dr. Raymond Damadian, who actually invented the MRI scanner.

  • I want you to meet a biblical creationist who is a scientist and an inventor.

  • Hi, my name is Dr. Raymond Damadian.

  • I am a Young Earth Creation Scientist and believe that God

  • created the world in six 24 hour days,

  • just as recorded in the book of Genesis.

  • By God's grace and the devoted prayers of my Godly mother-in-law,

  • I invented the MRI scanner in 1969.

  • The idea that scientists who believe the earth

  • is 6,000 years old cannot do real science is simply wrong.

  • Well, he's most adamant about that.

  • And, actually, he revolutionized medicine! He's a biblical Creationist.

  • And I encourage children to follow people like that, make them their heroes.

  • Let me introduce you to another biblical Creation Scientist.

  • My name is Danny Faulkner.

  • I received my PhD in astronomy from Indiana University.

  • For 26 and a half years, I was a professor

  • at the University of South Carolina, Lancaster,

  • where I hold the rank of distinguished professor emeritus.

  • Upon my retirement from the university in January of 2013,

  • I joined the research staff at Answers in Genesis. I'm a stellar astronomer.

  • That means my primary interests is stars, but I'm particularly

  • interested in the study of eclipsing binary stars.

  • And I've published many articles in the astronomy literature,

  • places such as the the Astrophysical Journal,

  • the Astronomical Journal, and the Observatory.

  • There is nothing in observational astronomy that contradicts a recent creation.

  • I also mentioned Dr. Stuart Burgess,

  • professor of Engineering Design at Bristol University in England.

  • Now he invented and designed a double-action worm gear set

  • for the three hinges of the robotic arm on a very expensive satellite.

  • And if that had not worked, if that gear set had not worked,

  • that whole satellite would've been useless.

  • Yet, Dr. Burgess is a biblical Creationist. He believes, just as I believe.

  • Now, think about this for a moment.

  • A scientist like Dr. Burgess,

  • who believe in Creation, just as I do,

  • a small minority in this scientific world.

  • But let's see what he says about scientists believing in Creation.

  • I find that many of my colleagues in academia are sympathetic

  • to the creationist viewpoint, including biologists.

  • However, there are often afraid to speak out because of the criticisms

  • they would get from the media and atheists lobby.

  • Now, I agree. That's a real problem today.

  • We need to have freedom to be able to speak on these topics.

  • You know, I just want to say, by the way, that Creationists,

  • non-Christian scientists, I should say,

  • non-Christian scientists are really borrowing

  • from the Christian worldview anyway to carry out their experimental,

  • observational science. Think about it. When they're doing

  • observational science, using the scientific method,

  • they have to assume the laws of logic,

  • they have to assume the laws of nature,

  • they have to assume the uniformity of nature.

  • I mean, think about it. If the universe came about by natural processes,

  • where'd the laws of logic come from? Did they just pop into existence?

  • Are we in a stage now where we only have half-logic?

  • So, you see, I have a question for Bill Nye.

  • How do you account for the laws of logic and the laws of nature

  • from a naturalistic worldview that excludes the existence of God?

  • Now, in my opening statement I also discussed

  • a different type of science or knowledge, origins or historical science.

  • See again, there's a confusion here. There's a misunderstanding here.

  • People, by and large, have not been taught to look at

  • what you believe about the past as different to what you're observing in the present.

  • You don't observe the past directly.

  • Even when you think about the creation account.

  • I mean, we can't observe God creating.

  • We can't observe the creation of Adam and Eve. We admit that.

  • We're willing to admit our beliefs about the past.

  • But, see, what you see in the present is very different.

  • Even some public school textbooks actually sort of acknowledge

  • the difference between historical and observational science.

  • Here is an Earth Science textbook that's used in public schools.

  • And we read this. In contrast to physical geology,

  • the aim of historical geology is to understand Earth's long history.

  • Then they make this statement.

  • Historical geology--so we're talking historical science--

  • tries to establish a timeline of the vast number of physical

  • and biological changes that have occurred in the past.

  • We study physical geology before historical geology

  • because we first must understand how Earth works before we try to unravel its past.

  • In other words, we observe things in the present and then,

  • okay, we're assuming that that's always happened in the past

  • and we're gonna try and figure out how this happened.

  • See, there is a difference between what you observe

  • and what happened in the past. Let me illustrate it this way:

  • If Bill Nye and I went to the Grand Canyon,

  • we could agree that that's a Coconino sandstone in the Hermit shale.

  • There's the boundary. They're sitting one on top of the other.

  • We could agree on that. But you know what we would disagree on?

  • I mean, we could even analyse the minerals and agree on that.

  • But we would disagree on how long it took to get there.

  • But see, none of us saw the sandstone or the shale being laid down.

  • There's a supposed 10 million year gap there.

  • But I don't see a gap.

  • But that might be different to what Bill Nye would see.

  • But there's a difference between what you actually observe

  • directly and then your interpretation regarding the past.

  • When I was at the Goddard Space Center a number of years ago

  • I met Creationists and Evolutionists who were

  • both working on the Hubble telescope.

  • They agreed on how to build the Hubble telescope.

  • You know what they disagreed on? Well, they disagreed on

  • how to interpret the data the telescope obtained

  • in regard to the age of the universe.

  • And, you know, we could on and talk about lots

  • of other similar sorts of things. For instance,

  • I've heard Bill Nye talk about how a smoke detector works,

  • using the radioactive element Americium. And, you know what?

  • I totally agree with him on that. We agree how it works.

  • We agree how radioactivity enables that to work.

  • But if you're then gonna use radioactive elements

  • and talk about the age of the Earth,

  • you've got a problem cause you weren't there.

  • We gotta understand parent elements, daughter elements and so on.

  • We could agree whether you're Creationist or Evolutionist

  • on the technology to put the rover on Mars, but we're gonna

  • disagree on how to interpret the origin of Mars.

  • I mean, there are some people that believed it

  • was even a global flood on Mars, and there's no liquid water on Mars.

  • We're gonna disagree maybe on our interpretation of origins

  • and you can't prove either way because, not from

  • an observational science perspective, because we've only got the present.

  • Creationists and Evolutionists both work on medicines and vaccines.

  • You see? It doesn't matter whether you're a Creationist or an Evolutionist,

  • all scientists have the same experimental observational science.

  • So I have a question for Bill Nye: Can you name one piece

  • of technology that could only have been developed

  • starting with the belief in molecules-to-man evolution?

  • Now, here's another important fact.

  • Creationists and Evolutionists all have the same evidence.

  • Bill Nye and I have the same Grand Canyon. We don't disagree on that.

  • We all have the same fish fossils. This is one from the Creation Museum.

  • The same dinosaur skeleton, the same animals, the same humans,

  • the same DNA, the same radioactive decay elements that we see.

  • We have the same universe...actually, we all have the same evidences.

  • It's not the evidences that are different.

  • It's a battle over the same evidence in regard to how we interpret the past.

  • And you know why that is?

  • Cause it's really a battle over worldviews and starting points.

  • It's a battle over philosophical worldviews

  • and starting points, but the same evidence. Now, I admit,

  • my starting point is that God is the ultimate authority.

  • But if someone doesn't accept that, then man has to be the ultimate authority.

  • And that's really the difference when it comes down to it.

  • You see, I've been emphasizing the difference

  • between historical origin science, knowledge about

  • the past when you weren't there,

  • and we need to understand that we weren't there.

  • Or experimental observational science, using

  • your five senses in the present, the scientific method,

  • what you can directly observe, test, repeat.

  • There's a big difference between those two.

  • And that's not what's being taught in our public schools

  • and that's why kids aren't being taught to think

  • critically and correctly about the origins issue.

  • But you know, it's also important to understand,

  • when talking about Creation and Evolution, both involve

  • historical science and observational science.

  • You see, the role of observational science is this:

  • it can be used to confirm or otherwise

  • one's historical science based on one's starting point.

  • Now, when you think about the debate topic and what I have

  • learned concerning creation, if our origins

  • or historical science based on the bible, the bible's account

  • of origins is true, then there should be predictions

  • from this that we can test, using observational science.

  • And there are. For instance, based on the bible,

  • we'd expect to find evidence concerning an intelligence,

  • confirming an intelligence produced life.

  • We'd expect to find evidence confirming after their kind.

  • The bible says God made kinds of animals and plants

  • after their kind, implying each kind produces it's own,

  • not that one kind changes into another.

  • You'd expect to find evidence confirming a global flood of Noah's day.

  • Evidence confirming one race of humans because we

  • all go back to Adam and Eve, biologically, that would mean there's one race.

  • Evidence confirming the Tower of Babel, that God gave different languages.

  • Evidence confirming a young universe.

  • Now, I can't go through all of those, but a couple of them we'll look at briefly.

  • After their kind, evidence confirming that--

  • in the Creation Museum, we have a display featuring replicas,

  • actually, of Darwin's finches. They're called Darwin's finches.

  • Darwin collected finches from the Galapagos

  • and took them back to England and we see the different species,

  • the different beak sizes here. And, you know,

  • from the specimens Darwin obtained in the Galapagos,

  • he actually pondered these things and how do you explain this.

  • And in his notes, actually, he came up with this diagram here, a tree.

  • And he actually said, "I think." So he was talking about

  • different species and maybe those species came from some common ancestor,

  • but, actually, when it comes to finches, we actually would agree,

  • as Creationists, that different finch species came from a common ancestor, but a finch.

  • That's what they would have to come from.

  • And see, Darwin wasn't just thinking about species.

  • Darwin had a much bigger picture in mind.

  • When you look at the Origins of Species and read that book,

  • you'll find he made this statement: from such low and intermediate form,

  • both animals and plants may have been developed;

  • and, if we admit this, we must likewise admit that

  • all organic beings which have ever lived on this Earth

  • may be descended from some one primordial form.

  • So he had in mind what we today know as an evolutionary tree of life,

  • that all life has arisen from some primordial form.

  • Now, when you consider the classifications system,

  • kingdom phylum class or the family genus species,

  • we would say, as Creationists, we have many creation scientists

  • that research this and, for lots of reasons,

  • I would say, the kind in Genesis 1 is really more at

  • the family level of classification. For instance, there's one dog kind.

  • There's one cat kind. Even though you have different

  • generative species, that would mean, by the way,

  • you didn't need anywhere near the number of animals

  • on the ark as people think.

  • You wouldn't need all the species of dogs, just two.

  • Not all the species of cats--just two.

  • And, you see, based on the biblical account there in Genesis One,

  • Creationists have drawn up what they believe is a creation origin.

  • In other words, they're saying, "Look. There's great variation

  • in the genetics of dogs and finches and so on."

  • And so, over time, particularly after Noah's flood,

  • you'd expect if there were two dogs, for instance,

  • you could end up with different species of dogs because

  • there's an incredible amount of variability in the genes of any creature.

  • And so you'd expect these different species up here, but there's limits.

  • Dogs will always be dogs, finches will always be finches.

  • Now, as a Creationist, I maintain that observational science

  • actually confirms this model, based on the bible.

  • For instance, take dogs. Okay?

  • In a scientific paper dated January 2014--that's this year--

  • scientists working at the University of California stated this:

  • We provide several lines of evidence supporting

  • a single origin for dogs, and disfavoring alternative models

  • in which dog lineages arise separately

  • from geographically distinct wolf populations.

  • And they put this diagram in the paper.

  • By the way, that diagram is very, very similar

  • to this diagram that Creationists proposed based upon

  • the creation account in Genesis. In other words,

  • you have a common dog ancestor that gives rise

  • to the different species of dogs, and that's exactly

  • what we're saying here. Now, in the Creation Museum,

  • we actually show the finches here and you see the finches

  • with their different beaks, beside dogs skulls, different species of dogs.

  • By the way, there's more variation in the dog skeleton

  • here than there are in these finches. Yet, the dogs,

  • wow, that's never used as an example of evolution,

  • but the finches are, particularly in the public school textbooks.

  • Students are taught, "Ah! See the changes that are occurring here?"

  • And here's another problem that we've got.

  • Not only has the word "science" been hijacked by secularists,

  • I believe the word "evolution" has been hijacked by secularists.

  • The word "evolution" has been hijacked using what I call a bait and switch.

  • Let me explain to you.

  • The word "evolution" is being used in public school textbooks,

  • and we often see it in documentaries and so on,

  • is used for observable changes that we would agree with,

  • and then used for unobservable changes, such as molecules-to-man.

  • Let me explain to you what's really going on because

  • I was a science teacher in the public schools

  • and I know what the students were taught and I checked

  • the public school textbooks anyway to know what they're taught.

  • See, students are taught today, look, there's all

  • these different animals, plants, but they're all part

  • of this great, big tree of life that goes back to some primordial form.

  • And, look, we see changes. Changes in finches,

  • changes in dogs and so on. Now, we don't deny the changes.

  • You see that. You see different species of finches, different species of dogs.

  • But then they put it all together in this evolutionary tree--

  • but that's what you don't observe. You don't observe that.

  • That's belief there. That's the historical science

  • that I would say is wrong. But, you know, what you do observe,

  • you do observe different species of dogs, different species of finches,

  • but then there are limits. You don't see one kind changing into another.

  • Actually, we're told that if you teach creation

  • in the public schools as teaching religion,

  • if you teach evolution as science, I'm gonna say, "Wait a minute!"

  • Actually, the creation model here, based upon the Bible,

  • observational science confirms this. This is what you're observe!

  • You don't observe this tree.

  • Actually, it's the public school textbooks that are teaching a belief,

  • imposing it on students, and they need to be teaching them

  • observational science to understand the reality of what's happening.

  • Now, what we found is that public school textbooks present

  • the evolutionary "tree" as science, but reject the creation "orchard" as religion.

  • But observational science confirms the creation orchard--

  • so public school textbooks are rejecting observational science

  • and imposing a naturalistic religion on students.

  • The word "evolution" has been hijacked using a bait and switch

  • to indoctrinate students to accept evolutionary belief

  • as observational science.

  • Let me introduce you to another scientist, Richard Lenski,

  • from Michigan State University. He's a great scientist,

  • he's known for culturing e-coli in the lab...

  • and he found there was some e-coli that actually seemed

  • to develop the ability to grow on cistrate on substrate.

  • But Richard Lenski is here, mentioned in this book,

  • and it's called "Evolution in the Lab".

  • So the ability to grow on citrate is said to be evolution.

  • And there are those that say, "Hey! This is against the Creationist."

  • For instance, Jerry Coin from University of Chicago says,

  • "Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye

  • for anti-evolutionists."

  • He says, "The thing I like most is it says you can get

  • these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events."

  • But is it a poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists?

  • Is it really seeing complex traits evolving?

  • What does it mean that some of these bacteria are able to grow on citrate?

  • Let me introduce you to another biblical Creationist, who is a scientist.

  • Hi, my name's Dr. Andrew Fabich.

  • I got my PhD from University of Oklahoma in Microbiology.

  • I teach at Liberty University and I do research on e-coli in the intestine.

  • I've published it in secular journals from the American Society for Microbiology,

  • including infection immunity and applied environmental microbiology

  • as well as several others.

  • My work has been cited even in the past year in the journals Nature,

  • Science Translational Medicine, Public Library of Science,

  • Public Library of Science Genetics. It's cited regularly

  • in those journals and while I was taught nothing but evolution,

  • I don't accept that position.

  • I do my research from a creation perspective.

  • When I look at the evidence that people cite as e-coli,

  • supposedly, evolving over 30 years, over 30,000 generations in the lab,

  • and people say that it is now able to grow on citrate,

  • I don't deny that it grows on citrate,

  • but it's not any kind of new information.

  • The information's already there and it's just a switch

  • that gets turned on and off and that's what they reported in there.

  • There's nothing new.

  • See, students need to be told what's really going on here.

  • Certainly there's change, but it's not change necessary for molecules-to-man.

  • Now, we could look at other predictions.

  • What about evidence confirming one race?

  • Well, when we look at the human population we see lots of differences.

  • But based on Darwin's ideas of human evolution,

  • as presented in The Descent of Man, I mean,

  • Darwin did teach in The Descent of Man there were

  • lower races and higher races.

  • Would you believe, that back in the 1900s, one of the most

  • popular biology textbooks used in the public schools in America taught this:

  • At the present time there exists upon Earth

  • five races or varieties of man...and finally,

  • the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented

  • by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

  • Can you imagine if that was in the public schools today?

  • And, yet, that's what was taught, but it was based on

  • Darwin's ideas that are wrong. You have a wrong foundation.

  • You're gonna have a wrong worldview.

  • Now, had they started from the Bible, and from

  • the creation account in the Bible, what does it teach?

  • Well, we're all descendants of Adam and Eve.

  • We go through the Tower of Babel, different languages,

  • so different people groups formed distinct characteristics.

  • But we'd expect, we'd say, you know what,

  • that means there's biologically only one race of humans.

  • Well, I mentioned Dr. Venter before.

  • And he was a researcher with the human genome project.

  • And you'll remember, in the year 2000, this was headline news,

  • and what we read was this: they had put together

  • a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome

  • and unanimously declared, there is only one race - the human race.

  • Wow! Who would have guessed?

  • But you see there we have observational science

  • confirming the Creation account,

  • not confirming at all Darwin's ideas.

  • Now, there's much more that can be said

  • on each of these topics.

  • Obviously, you can't do that in a short time like this.

  • And you could do a lot more research.

  • I suggest you visit our website at Answers in Genesis

  • for a lot more information.

  • So, the debate topic: Is creation a viable model

  • of origins in today's scientific era?

  • I said, we need to define the terms,

  • and particularly, the term science

  • and the term evolution. And I believe we need

  • to understand how they are being used to impose

  • an anti-God religion on generations of unsuspecting students.

  • You see, I keep emphasizing we do need to

  • understand the difference between experimental or

  • observational science and historical science.

  • And you know what?

  • The secularists don't like me doing this

  • because they don't want to admit

  • that there's a belief aspect to what they're saying.

  • And there is. And they can't get away from it.

  • Let me illustrate this with a statement from Bill Nye.

  • "You can show the Earth is not flat.

  • You can show the Earth is not 10,000 years old."

  • By the way, I agree. You can show the Earth is not flat.

  • There's a video from the Galileo spacecraft showing

  • the Earth, and speeded up of course, but spinning.

  • You can see it's a sphere. You can observe that.

  • You can't observe the age of the Earth.

  • You don't see that. You see again, I emphasize,

  • there's a big difference between historical science,

  • talking about the past, and observational science,

  • talking about the present.

  • And I believe what's happening is this, that students are being

  • indoctrinated by the confusion of terms:

  • the hijacking of the word science and the hijacking

  • of the word evolution in a bait-and-switch.

  • Let me illustrate further with this video clip.

  • Because here I assert that Bill Nye is equating

  • observational science with historical science.

  • And I also say it's not a mystery when you understand the difference.

  • Howie, people with these deeply held religious beliefs,

  • they embrace that whole literal interpretation

  • of the Bible as written in English, as a worldview.

  • And, at the same time, they accept aspirin,

  • antibiotic drugs, airplanes, but they're able

  • to hold these two worldviews. And this is a mystery.

  • Actually, I suggest to you it's not a mystery.

  • You see, when I'm talking about antibiotics,

  • aspirin, smoke detectors, jet planes,

  • that's Ken Ham the Observational Science Bloke.

  • I'm an Australian. We call guy's "blokes", okay?

  • But when you're talking about creation and thousands of years

  • of the age of the Earth,

  • that's Ken Ham the Historical Science Bloke.

  • I'm willing to admit that.

  • Now, when Bill Nye's talking about aspirin,

  • antibiotics, jet planes, smoke detectors,

  • he does a great job at that.

  • I used to enjoy watching him on TV too.

  • That's Bill Nye the Observational Science Guy.

  • But when he's talking about evolution and millions of years,

  • I'm challenging him that that's Bill Nye the Historical Science Guy.

  • And I challenge the evolutionist to admit the belief

  • aspects of their particular worldview.

  • Now, at the Creation Museum, we're only too willing

  • to admit our beliefs based upon the Bible,

  • but we also teach people the difference between

  • beliefs and what one can actually observe

  • and experiment with in the present.

  • I believe we're teaching people to think critically

  • and to think in the right terms about science.

  • I believe it's the creationists that should be

  • educating the kids out there because we're teaching

  • them the right way to think. You know, we admit it.

  • Our origins of historical science is based upon the Bible,

  • but I'm just challenging evolutionists to admit

  • the belief aspects of evolution

  • and be upfront about the difference here.

  • As I said, I'm only too willing to admit

  • my historical science based on the Bible.

  • And let me further go on to define the term "creation" as we use it.

  • By creation, we mean, here at Answers in Genesis

  • and the Creation Museum, we mean the account based on the Bible.

  • Yes, I take Genesis as literal history, as Jesus did.

  • And, here at the Creation Museum, we walk people through that history.

  • We walk them through creation, the perfect creation.

  • That God made Adam and Eve, land animal kinds, sea-creatures and so on.

  • And then sin and death entered the world.

  • There was no death before sin.

  • That means how can you have billions of dead things before man sinned?

  • And then, the catastrophe of Noah's flood. If there was a global flood,

  • you'd expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.

  • Had to say that because a lot of our supporters would want me to.

  • And what do you find?--Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.

  • Confusion, the tower of Babel. God gave different languages so you get different people groups.

  • So this is the geological, astronomical, anthropological, biological history as recorded in the Bible.

  • So this is concerning what happened in the past that explains the present.

  • And then, of course, that God's Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the God-Man

  • to die on the cross, be raised from the dead. And one day there's going to be

  • a new heavens and a new earth to come. And, you know, not only

  • is this an understanding of history to explain the

  • geology, biology, astronomy, and so on to connect the present to the past.

  • But it's also a foundation for our whole world view.

  • For instance, in Matthew 19, when Jesus was asked about marriage, he said,

  • "Have you not read He who made them at the beginning made them male and female?"

  • And said, "For this cause shall a man leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife. And they'll be one flesh."

  • He quoted from Genesis as literal history--Genesis 1 and 2. God invented marriage, by the way.

  • That's where marriage comes from. And it's to be a man and a woman.

  • And not only marriage. Ultimately, every single Biblical doctrine of theology

  • directly or indirectly, is founded in Genesis.

  • Why is there sin in the world? Genesis.

  • Why is there death? Genesis.

  • Why do we wear clothes? Genesis.

  • Why did Jesus die on the cross? Genesis.

  • It's a very important book. It's foundational to all Christian doctrine.

  • And you see, when we look at that, what I call the seven C's of History

  • that we walk people through here at the museum,

  • think about how it all connects together--a perfect creation.

  • It'll be perfect again in the future.

  • Sin and death--end of the world. That's why God's son died on the cross

  • to conquer death and offer a free gift of salvation.

  • The flood of Noah's day, a reminder that the flood was a

  • judgement because of man's wickedness but at the same time

  • a message of God's grace and salvation.

  • As Noah and his family had to go through a door to be saved,

  • so we need to go through a door to be saved.

  • Jesus Christ said, "I am the door. By me, if any man

  • enter in, he'll be saved. And we make no apology

  • about the fact that what we're on about is this:

  • "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and

  • believe in your heart God has raised him from the dead,

  • you'll be saved. Now, as soon as I said that,

  • see if people say, "See, if you allow creation in schools,

  • for instance, if you'll ask students to even hear about it,

  • ah, this is religion."

  • You know, let me illustrate this,

  • talking about a recent battle in Texas over textbooks

  • in the public school. A newspaper report said this:

  • "Textbook and classroom curriculum battles have long

  • raged in Texas pitting creationists - those who see

  • God's hand in the creation of the universe-

  • against academics..."

  • Stop right there. Notice creationists... academics.

  • Creationists can't be academics. Creationists can't be scientists.

  • See, it's the way things are worded out there.

  • It's an indoctrination that's going on.

  • We worry about religious and political ideology

  • trumping scientific fact. Wait a minute.

  • What do I mean by science? You're talking about

  • what you observe, or are you talking about your beliefs about the past?

  • Now, Kathy Miller is the president of the Texas Freedom Network and

  • she has vocally spoken out. She's spoken out about this textbook battle there in Texas.

  • And the mission statement of the organization she's president of says, "The Texas Freedom Network

  • advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties

  • to counter the religious right." Religious freedom... individual liberties. Hmm.

  • And then she makes this statement: "Science education..." What does she mean by science?

  • "should be based on mainstream science education, not on personal idealogical beliefs

  • of unqualified reviewers." Wait a minute. They want religious liberty and not personal

  • ideological beliefs? I assert this: public school textbooks are using the same word "science"

  • for observational and historical science. They arbitrarily define science as naturalism

  • and outlaw the supernatural. They present molecules-to-man evolution as as fact.

  • And they are imposing the religion of naturalism on generations of students.

  • They're imposing their ideology on the students

  • and everything's explained by natural processes.

  • That is a religion. What do you mean by religious liberty?

  • They tolerate their religion.

  • See, the battle is really about authority.

  • It's more than just science or evolution or creation.

  • It's about who is the authority in this world, man or God?

  • If you start with naturalism, then what about morals?

  • Who decides right and wrong? Well, it's subjective.

  • Marriage? Well, whatever you want it to be.

  • Get rid of old people. I mean, why not?

  • They're just animals, they're costing us a lot of money.

  • Abortion. Get rid of spare cats, get rid of spare kids. We're all animals.

  • But if you start from God's word, there are moral absolutes.

  • God decides right and wrong. Marriage--one man and one woman.

  • Sanctity of life--we care for old people. They're made in the image of God.

  • Life begins at fertilization, so abortion is killing a human being.

  • We do see the collapse of Christian morality

  • in our culture and increasing moral relativism

  • because generations of kids are being taught the religion

  • of naturalism and that the Bible can't be trusted.

  • And so, again, I say creation is the only viable model

  • of historical science confirmed by observational science

  • in today's modern scientific era. You know what?

  • I'm a science teacher. I want to see kids taught science.

  • I love science. I want to see more (inaudible) in the world.

  • You know, if we teach them the whole universe

  • is a result of natural processes and not designed

  • by a creative God, they might be looking in the wrong places

  • or have the wrong idea when they're looking

  • at the creation in regard to how you develop technology

  • because if they look at it as just random processes,

  • that could totally influence the way they think.

  • If they understand it was a perfect world marred by sin,

  • that could have a great affect on how they then look

  • for overcoming diseases and problems in the world.

  • I want children to be taught the right foundation,

  • that there's a God who created them, who loves them,

  • who died on the cross for them and that they're special.

  • They're made in the image of God.

  • (moderator) There you go. Thank you, Mr. Ham.

  • -We can applaud Mr. Ham's presentation. -

  • And, you know, it did occur to me when you had

  • my old friend Larry King up there, you could've just asked him.

  • He's been around a long time. And he's a smart guy!

  • He could probably answer for all of us. Now, let's all be

  • attentive to Mr. Nye as he gives us his 30 minute presentation.

  • Thank you very much and, Mr. Ham, I learned something.

  • Thank you. But let's take it back around to question at hand:

  • does Ken Ham's creation model hold up? Is it viable?

  • So, for me, of course...well...take a look.

  • We're here in Kentucky on layer upon layer upon layer of limestone.

  • I stopped at the side of the road today and picked up

  • just a piece of limestone. It has a fossil right there.

  • Now, in these many, many layers, in this vicinity of Kentucky,

  • there are coral animal--fossils, Zooxanthella--

  • and when you look at it closely,

  • you can see that they lived their entire lives.

  • They lived typically 20 years, sometimes more than that

  • when the water conditions are correct.

  • And so we are standing on millions of layers of ancient life.

  • How could those animals have lived their entire life,

  • and formed these layers, in just 4,000 years?

  • There isn't enough time since Mr. Ham's flood

  • for this limestone that we're standing on to come into existence.

  • My scientific colleagues go to places like Greenland,

  • the Arctic, they go to Antarctica, and they drill

  • into the ice with hollow drill bits. It's not that extraordinary.

  • Many of you have probably done it yourselves, drilling other things.

  • Hole saws to put locks in doors, for example.

  • And we pull out long cylinders of ice, long ice rods.

  • And these are made of snow and it's called "snow ice".

  • And snow ice forms over the winter as snowflakes fall

  • and are crushed down by subsequent layers. They're crushed together,

  • entrapping the little bubbles and the little bubbles must

  • needs be ancient atmosphere. There's nobody running around

  • with a hypodermic needle, squirting ancient atmosphere into the bubbles.

  • And we find certain of these cylinders to have 680,000 layers.

  • 680,000 snow/winter/summer cycles.

  • How could it be that just 4,000 years ago all of this ice formed?

  • Let's just run some numbers.

  • This is some scenes from the lovely Antarctic.

  • Let's say we have 680,000 layers of snow ice

  • and 4,000 years since the Great Flood.

  • That would mean we'd need 170 winter-summer cycles

  • every year, for the last 4,000 years.

  • I mean, wouldn't someone have noticed that? Wow!

  • Wouldn't someone have noticed that there's been

  • winter-summer-winter-summer 170 times one year?

  • If we go to California, we find enormous stands of bristlecone pines.

  • Some of them are over 6,000 years old. 6,800 years old.

  • There's a famous tree in Sweden, Old Tjikko, is 9,550 years old.

  • How could these trees be there if there was an enormous flood just 4,000 years ago?

  • You can try this yourself, everybody.

  • Get, I mean, I don't mean to be mean to trees,

  • but get a sapling and put it under water for a year.

  • It will not survive in general. Nor will its seeds.

  • They just won't make it. So how could these trees

  • be that old if the Earth is only 4,000 years old?

  • Now, when we go to the Grand Canyon--which is an astonishing place

  • and I recommend to everybody in the world to someday visit the Grand Canyon--

  • you find layer upon layer of ancient rocks.

  • And if there was this enormous flood that you speak of,

  • wouldn't there have been churning and bubbling and roiling?

  • How would these things have settled out?

  • Your claim that they settled out in an extraordinary short amount of time

  • is for me, not satisfactory. You can look at these rocks. You can look at rocks that are younger.

  • You can go to seashores where there's sand. This is what geologists on the outside do,

  • study the rate at which soil is deposited at the end of rivers and deltas.

  • And we can see that it takes a long, long time for sediments to turn to stone.

  • Also, in this picture you can see where one type of sediment has intruded on another type.

  • Now, if that was uniform, wouldn't we expect it all to be even, without intrusion?

  • Furthermore, you can find places in the Grand Canyon where you see an ancient riverbed on that side

  • going to an ancient riverbed on that side and the Colorado River has cut through it.

  • And by the way, if this great flood drained through the Grand Canyon,

  • wouldn't there have been a Grand Canyon on every continent?

  • How could we not have Grand Canyons everywhere if this water drained away in this extraordinary

  • short amount of time? Four thousand years? Now when you look at these layers carefully,

  • you find these beautiful fossils. And when I say beautiful, I am inspired by them. They are remarkable

  • because we are looking at the past. You find down low. You'll find what you might consider

  • is, uh, rudimentary sea animals. Up above you'll find the famous trilobytes.

  • Above that you might find some clams, some oysters. And above that you find some mammals.

  • You never, ever find a higher animal mixed in with a lower one. You never find a lower one

  • trying to swim its way to a higher one. If it all happened in such an extraordinary short amount of time,

  • if this water drained away just like that, wouldn't we expect to see some turbulence?

  • And by the way, anyone here, really, if you can find one example of that, one example of that

  • anywhere in the world, the scientists of the world challenge you. They would embrace you. You would be a hero.

  • You would change the world if you could find one example of that anywhere.

  • People have looked, and looked and looked. They have not found a single one.

  • Now here's an interesting thing. These are fossil skulls that people have found all around the world.

  • It's by no means representative of all the fossil skulls that have been found, but these are all over the place.

  • Now, if you were to look at these, I can assure you, not any of them is a gorilla. Right?

  • If as Mr. Ham and his associates claim, there was just man and then everybody else, there were just

  • humans and all other species, where would you put modern humans among these skulls?

  • How did all these skulls get all over the earth in these extraordinary fashion? Where would you put us?

  • I can tell you we are on there and I encourage you, when you go home, to look it up.

  • Now, one of the extraordinary claims associated with Mr. Ham's worldview is that this giant boat

  • a very large wooden ship, went aground safely on a mountain in the Middle, what we now call the Middle East.

  • And so places like Australia are populated then by animals who somehow managed to get

  • from the Middle East all the way to Australia in the last 4,000 years.

  • Now that, to me, is an extraordinary claim. We would expect then, somewhere between the Middle East

  • and Australia, we would expect to find evidence of kangaroos. We would expect to find

  • some fossils, some bones in the last 4,000 years. Somebody would have been hopping along there

  • and died along the way, and we'd find them. And furthermore, there's a claim

  • that there was a land bridge that allowed these animals to get from Asia all the way

  • to the continent of Australia. And that land bridge has disappeared, has disappeared in the last

  • 4,000 years. No navigator, no diver, no U.S. Navy submarine, no one has ever detected any evidence

  • of this, let alone any evidence of fossils of kangaroos. So, your expectation is not met.

  • It doesn't seem to hold up. So, let's see. If there are 4,000 years since Ken Ham's flood

  • and let's say, as he said many times, there are 7,000 "kinds",

  • today the very, very lowest estimate is that there are about 8.7 million species.

  • But a much more reasonable estimate is it's 50 million, or even 100 million,

  • when you start counting the viruses and the bacteria and all the beetles that must be extant

  • in the tropical rain forests that we haven't found. So we'll take a number which I think is pretty reasonable,

  • 16 million species today. If these came from 7,000 kinds,

  • let's say we have 7,000 subtracted from 15 million,

  • that's 15,993. If 4,000 years, we have 365.25 days a year,

  • we would expect to find 11 new species every day.

  • So you'd go out into your yard, you wouldn't just find a different bird, a new bird

  • you'd find a different kind of bird, a whole new species, a bird!

  • Every day, a new species of fish, a new species of organisms you can't see, and so on.

  • I mean, this would be enormous news. The last 4,000 years people would have seen these changes among us.

  • So the Cincinnati Enquirer, I imagine, would carry a column right next to the weather report:

  • Today's New Species, and it would list these 11 every day, but we see no evidence of that.

  • There's no evidence of these species. There simply isn't enough time.

  • Now as you may know, I was graduated from engineering school and I was,

  • I got a job at Boeing. I worked on 747s. I, okay everybody relax, I was very well supervised.

  • Everything's fine. There's a tube in the 747 I kind of think of that's my tube.

  • But that aside, I travelled the highways of Washington state quite a bit.

  • I was a young guy. I had a motorcycle. I used to go mountain climbing in Washington state, Oregon.

  • And you can drive along and find these enormous boulders on top of the ground, enormous rocks,

  • huge, sitting on top of the ground. Now, out there, in regular academic pursuits, regular geology,

  • people have discovered that there was, used to be a lake in what is now Montana

  • which we charmingly refer to as Lake Missoula.

  • It's not there now but the evidence for it, of course, if I may, overwhelming.

  • And so, an ice dam would form at Lake Missoula and once in a while it would break.

  • It would build up and break. And there were multiple floods in my old state of Washington state.

  • And, just, before we go on, let me just say, go Seahawks! That was very gratifying, very gratifying for me.

  • Anyway you drive along the road and there are these rocks. So, if as is asserted here at this facility,

  • that the heavier rocks would sink to the bottom during a flood event,

  • the big rocks, and especially their shape, instead of aerodynamic,

  • the hydrodynamic, the water changing shape, as water flows past,

  • you'd expect them to sink to the bottom. But here are these enormous rocks right on the surface.

  • And there's no shortage of them. If you go driving in Washington state or Oregon

  • they are readily available. So how could those be there if the Earth is just 4,000 years old.

  • How could they be there if this one flood caused that?

  • Another remarkable thing I'd like everybody to consider, alone inherent in this worldview,

  • is that somehow Noah and his family were able to build a wooden ship that would house

  • 14,000 individuals. There were 7,000 kinds and then, there's a boy and a girl for each one of those,

  • so there's about 14,000... 8 people. And these people were unskilled.

  • As far as anybody knows they had never built a wooden ship before.

  • Furthermore, they had to get all these animals on there. And they had to feed them.

  • And I understand that Mr. Ham has some explanations for that, which I frankly find extraordinary but

  • this is the premise of the bit. And we can then run a test, a scientific test.

  • People in the early 1900s built an extraordinary, large wooden ship, the Wyoming.

  • It was a six-masted schooner, the largest one ever built. It had a motor on it for winching cables and stuff.

  • But this boat had a great difficulty. It was not as big as the Titanic, but it was a very long ship.

  • It would twist in the sea. It would twist this way, this way, and this way.

  • And in all that twisting, it leaked. It leaked like crazy. The crew could not keep the ship dry.

  • And indeed, it eventually foundered and sank, a loss of all 14 hands. So there were 14 crewmen

  • aboard a ship built by very, very skilled shipwrights in New England.

  • These guys were the best in the world at wooden shipbuilding. And they couldn't build

  • a boat as big as the Ark is claimed to have been.

  • Is that reasonable? Is that possible that the best shipbuilders in the world couldn't do

  • what eight unskilled people, men and their wives, were able to do?

  • If you visit the National Zoo, in Washington D.C., it's 163 acres. And they have 400 species.

  • By the way, this picture that you're seeing was taken by spacecraft in space, orbiting the Earth.

  • If you told my grandfather, let alone my father, that we had that capability,

  • they would have been amazed. That capability comes from our fundamental understanding

  • of gravity, of material science, of physics, and life science, where you go looking.

  • This place is often, as any zoo, is often deeply concerned and criticized for how it treats its animals.

  • They have 400 species on 163 acres, 66 hectares. Is it reasonable that Noah and his colleagues,

  • his family, were able to maintain 14,000 animals and themselves, and feed them, aboard a ship

  • that was bigger than anyone's ever been able to build?

  • Now, here's the thing, what we want in science, science as practiced on the outside,

  • is an ability to predict. We want to have a natural law that is so obvious and clear,

  • so well understood that we can make predictions about what will happen.

  • We can predict that we can put a spacecraft in orbit and take a picture of Washington D.C.

  • We can predict that if we provide this much room for an elephant, it will live healthily

  • for a certain amount of time. I'll give you an example.

  • In the explanation provided by traditional science, of how we came to be,

  • we find as Mr. Ham alluded to many times in his recent remarks,

  • we find a sequence of animals in what, generally, is called "the fossil record."

  • This would be to say when we look at the layers, that you would find in Kentucky,

  • you look at them carefully, you find a sequence of animals, a succession.

  • And as one might expect, when you are looking at old records

  • there's some pieces seem to be missing, a gap.

  • So scientists got to thinking about this.

  • There are lungfish that jump from pond to pond in Florida

  • and end up in people's swimming pools.

  • And there are amphibians, frogs and toads, croaking and carrying on.

  • And so people wondered if there wasn't a fossil or an organism,

  • an animal, that had lived, that had characteristics of both.

  • People over the years had found that in Canada,

  • there was clearly a fossil marsh--

  • a place that used to be a swamp that had dried out.

  • And they found all kinds of happy swamp fossils there:

  • ferns, organisms, animals, fish that were recognized.

  • And people realized that if this, with the age of the rocks there,

  • as computed by traditional scientists, with the age of the rocks there,

  • this would be a reasonable place to look for an animal,

  • a fossil of an animal that lived there. And, indeed, scientists found it.

  • Tiktaalik, this fish-lizard guy.

  • And they found several specimens, it wasn't one individual.

  • In other words, they made a prediction, that this animal

  • would be found and it was found. So far, Mr. Ham and his worldview,

  • the Ken Ham creation model, does not have this capability.

  • It cannot make predictions and show results.

  • Here's an extraordinary one that I find remarkable.

  • There are certain fish, the Topminnows, that have

  • the remarkable ability to have sex with other fish,

  • traditional fish sex, and they can have sex with themselves.

  • Now, one of the old questions in life science, everybody,

  • one of the old chin strokers is why does any organism,

  • whether you're an ash tree, a sea jelly, a squid, a marmot,

  • why does anybody have sex? I mean, there are more bacteria

  • in your tummy right now then there are humans on Earth.

  • And bacteria, they don't bother with that, man.

  • They split themselves in half, they get new bacteria!

  • Like, let's get her done! Let's go. But why does any--

  • think of all the trouble a rose bush goes to make a flower and the thorns

  • and the bees flying around, interacting--why does anybody bother with all that?

  • And the answer seems to be...your enemies.

  • And your enemies are not lions and tigers and bears...oh my!

  • No, your enemies are germs and parasites.

  • That's what's gonna get you. Germs and parasites.

  • My first cousin's son died tragically from essentially the flu.

  • This is not some story I heard about. This is my first cousin, once removed.

  • Because, apparently, the virus had the right genes to attack his genes.

  • So when you have sex you have a new set of genes.

  • You have a new mixture. So people studied these Topminnows.

  • And they found that the ones who reproduced sexually

  • had fewer parasites that the ones who reproduced on their own.

  • This Black Spot disease--wait, wait, there's more.

  • In these populations, with flooding and so on, when river ponds get isolated,

  • then they dry up, then the river flows again.

  • In between, some of the fish will have sex with other fish,

  • sometimes, and they'll have sex on their own, what's called asexually.

  • And those fish, the ones that are in between, sometimes this,

  • sometimes that, they have an intermediate number of infections.

  • In other words, the explanation provided by evolution made a prediction.

  • And the prediction's extraordinary and subtle, but there it is.

  • How else would you explain it?

  • And to Mr. Ham and his followers I say this is something we in science want.

  • We want the ability to predict. And your assertion

  • that there's some difference between the natural laws

  • that I use to observe the world today and the natural laws

  • that existed 4,000 years ago is extraordinary and unsettling.

  • I travel around. I have a great many family members

  • in Danville, Virginia, one of the U.S's most livable cities.

  • It's lovely. And I was driving along and there was a sign in front of a church:

  • "Big Bang theory? You got to be kidding me. God."

  • Now, everybody, why would someone at the church, a pastor for example,

  • put that sign up unless he or she didn't believe

  • that the big bang was a real thing? I just want to review,

  • briefly, with everybody why we accept,

  • in the outside world, why we accept the Big Bang.

  • Edwin Hubble, sorry, there you go,you gotta be kidding me God.

  • Edwin Hubble was sitting at Mount Wilson, which is up from Pasadena, California.

  • On a clear day you can look down and see where the Rose Parade goes.

  • It's that close to civilization.

  • But even in the early 1900's, the people who selected this site for astronomy

  • picked an excellent site. The clouds and smog are below you.

  • And Edwin Hubble sat there at this very big telescope night after night studying the heavens.

  • And he found that the stars are moving apart. The stars are moving apart.

  • And he wasn't sure why. But it was clear that the stars are moving farther and farther apart all the time.

  • So people talked about it for a couple decades.

  • And then eventually another astronomer, almost a couple decades, another astronomer

  • Fred Hoyle just remarked, "Well, it was like there was a big bang.

  • There was an explosion. This is to say; since everything's moving apart,

  • it's very reasonable that at one time they were all together.

  • And there's a place from whence, or rather whence, these things expanded."

  • And it was a remarkable insight.

  • But people went still questioning it for decades.

  • Scientists, conventional scientists, questioning it for decades.

  • These two researchers wanted to listen for radio signals from space--radio astronomy.

  • And this is while we have visible light for our eyes, there is a whole other bunch of waves of light

  • that are much longer. The microwaves in your oven are about that long.

  • The radar at the airport is about that long. Your FM radio signals about like this.

  • AM radio signals are a kilometer--they're a couple, several soccer fields.

  • They went out listening. And there was this hiss, this hisssssss, all the time

  • that wouldn't go away. And they thought "Oh! Doggone it. There's some loose

  • connector." They plugged in the connector. They rescrewed it. They made it tight.

  • They turned it this way. The hiss was still there.

  • They turned it that way. It was still there.

  • They thought it was pigeon droppings that had affected the reception of this "horn" it's called.

  • This thing is still there. It's in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

  • It's a national historic site. And Arno Pinzius and Robert Wilson had found

  • this cosmic background sound that was predicted by astronomers.

  • Astronomers running the numbers, doing math, predicted

  • that in the cosmos would be left over this echo,

  • this energy, from the Big Bang that would be detectable.

  • And they detected it. We built the Cosmic Observatory for Background Emissions, the COBE spacecraft,

  • and it matched exactly, exactly the astronomers predictions.

  • You gotta respect that. It's a wonderful thing.

  • Now, along that line is some interest in the age of the earth.

  • Right now, it's generally agreed that the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago.

  • What we can do on earth. These elements that we all know on the Periodic Table of Chemicals,

  • even ones we don't know, were created when stars explode.

  • And I look like nobody. But I attended a lecture by Hans Betta who won a Nobel

  • Prize for discovering the process by which stars create all these elements.

  • The one that interests me especially is our good friends Rubidium and Strontium.

  • Rubidium becomes Strontium spontaneously. It's an interesting thing to me.

  • A neutron becomes a proton. And it goes up the Periodic Table.

  • When lava comes out of the ground, molten lava,

  • and it freezes, turns to rock, when the melt solidifies,

  • or crystalizes, it locks the Rubidium and Strontium in place.

  • And so by careful assay, by careful, by being diligent, you can tell when the rock froze.

  • You can tell how old the Rubidium and Strontium are. And you can get an age for the earth.

  • When that stuff falls on fossils, you can get a very good idea of how old the fossils are.

  • I encourage you all to go to Nebraska, go to Ashfall State Park

  • and see the astonishing fossils. It looks like a Hollywood movie.

  • There are rhinoceroses. There are three-toed horses in Nebraska.

  • None of those animals are extant today. And they are buried, catastrophically, by a

  • volcano in what is now Idaho. Is now Yellowstone National Park.

  • What is called the hot spot. People call it the super-volcano.

  • And it's the remarkable thing. Apparently, as I can tell you, as a Northwesterner around

  • for Mount St. Helen's. For full disclosure I'm on the Mount St. Helen's Board.

  • When it (explosive sound), when it goes off it gives out a great deal of gas

  • that's toxic and knock these animals out. Looking for relief, they go to a watering

  • hole. And then when the ash comes they were all buried. It's an extraordinary place.

  • Now if in the bad old days, you had heart problems, they would right away cut you open.

  • Now, we use a drug based on Rubidium to look at the inside of your heart without cutting you open.

  • Now, my Kentucky friends, I want you to consider this. Right now, there is no place

  • in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to get a degree in this kind of nuclear medicine--

  • this kind of drugs associated with that.

  • I hope you find that troubling. I hope you're concerned about that.

  • You want scientifically literate students in your commonwealth for a better tomorrow for everybody.

  • You can, you can't get this here. You have to go out of state.

  • Now as far as the distance to stars. Understand this is very well understood.

  • We, it's February. We look at a star in February. We measure an angle to it.

  • We wait six months. We look at that same star again and we measure that angle.

  • It's the same way carpenters built this building. It's the same way surveyors surveyed the land that we're standing on.

  • And so by measuring the distance to a star, you can figure out how far away it is, that star,

  • and the stars beyond it, and the stars beyond that. There are billions of stars.

  • Billions of stars more than six thousand light years from here.

  • A light year is a unit of distance, not a unit of time.

  • There are billions of stars. Mr. Hamm, how could there be billions of stars more distant

  • than six thousand years, if the world's only six thousand years old?

  • It's an extraordinary claim. There's another astronomer, Adolphe Quetele, who remarked first

  • about the reasonable man. Is it reasonable that we have ice older by a factor of a hundred than you claim the earth is?

  • We have trees that have more tree rings than the earth is old.

  • We have rocks with Rubidium and Strontium, and Uranium-Uranium, and Potassium-Argon dating

  • that are far, far, far older than you claim the earth is.

  • Could anybody have built an ark that would sustain the better than any ark anybody was able to build on the earth?

  • So, if you're asking me, and I got the impression you were,

  • is Ken Hamm's creation model viable? I say "No! Absolutely not!"

  • Now, one last thing. You may not know that in the US Constitution, from the founding fathers,

  • is the sentence "to promote the progress of science and useful arts..."

  • Kentucky voters, voters who might be watching online,

  • in places like Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, please

  • you don't want to raise a generation of science students

  • who don't understand how we know our place in the cosmos,

  • our place in space, who don't understand natural law.

  • We need to innovate to keep the United States where it is in the world.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Moderator: That's a lot to take in. I hope everybody's holding up well.

  • That's a lot of information. What we're going to have now is a five minute

  • rebuttal time for each gentleman to address the other one's comments.

  • And then there will be a five minute counter rebuttal after that.

  • Things are going to start moving a little more quickly now.

  • So at this point in particular, I want to make sure we don't have applauding or anything else going on that slows it down.

  • So, Mr. Hamm, if you'd like to begin with your five minute rebuttal first.

  • Mr. Hamm: First of all, Bill, if I was to answer all the points that you brought up,

  • the moderator would think that I was going on for millions of years.

  • So I can only deal with some of them.

  • And you mentioned the age of the earth a couple of times, so let me deal with that.

  • As I said in my presentation, you can't observe the age of the earth. I would say that comes under what we call historical origin science.

  • Now, just so you understand where I'm coming from.

  • Yes, we admit we build our origins from historical science on the Bible.

  • The Bible says God created in six days. A Hebrew word "yon" as it's used in Genesis 1

  • with evening/morning number means an ordinary day. Adam was made on day six.

  • And so, when you add up all those geneologies specifically given in the Bible

  • from Adam to Abraham you've got 2,000 years; from Abraham to Christ 2,000 years; from Christ to the present 2,000 years.

  • That's how we get 6,000 years. So that's where it comes from. Just so you know.

  • Now a lot of people say. Now, by the way, the earth's age is 4.5 billion years old.

  • And we have radioactive decay dating methods that found that.

  • But you see, we certainly observe radioactive decay

  • whether it's rubidium-strontium, whether it's uranium-lead, potassium-argon

  • But when you're talking about the past, we have a problem.

  • I'll give you a practical example. In Australia, there were engineers

  • that were trying to search out about a coal mine.

  • And so they drilled down and they found a basalt layer, a lava flow that had woody material in it--

  • branches and twigs and so on. And when Dr. Andrew Snelling, our PhD geologist,

  • sent that to a lab in Massachusetts in 1994, they used potassium-argon

  • dating and dated it at 45 million years old.

  • Well, he also sent the wood to the radio-carbon section of the same lab

  • and that dated at 45,000 years old. 45,000 year old wood in 45 million year old rock.

  • The point is there's a problem.

  • Let me give you another example of a problem.

  • There was a lava dome that started to form in the 80's after Mt. St. Helen's erupted.

  • And in 1994 Dr. Steve Austin, another PhD geologist, actually sampled the rock there.

  • He took whole rock, crushed it, sent it to the same lab actually, I believe, and got a date of .35 million years.

  • When he separated out the minerals amphibole and pyroxene and used potassium-argon dating,

  • he got .9 million and 2.8 million. My point is all these dating methods actually give all sorts of different dates.

  • In fact, different dating methods on the same rock, we can show, give all sorts of different dates.

  • See there's lots of assumptions in regard to radioactive dating.

  • Number one, for instance, the amounts of the parent and daughter isotopes at the beginning when the rock formed.

  • We have to know them. But you weren't there. See that's historical science.

  • Assumption 2: that all daughter atoms measured today must have only been derived in situ radioactive decay of parent atoms.

  • In other words it's a closed system.

  • But you don't know that. And there's a lot of evidence that that's not so.

  • Assumption Number 3: that the decay rates have remained a constant.

  • Now they're just some of them. There's others as well.

  • The point is there's lots of assumptions in regard to the dating methods.

  • So there's no dating method you can use that you can absolutely age date a rock.

  • There's all sorts of differences out there.

  • And I do want to address the bit you brought up about Christians believing in millions of years.

  • Yeah, there's a lot of Christians out there that believe in millions of years,

  • but I'd say they have a problem. I'm not saying they're not Christians, but

  • because salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ, not the age of the earth.

  • But there's an inconsistency with what the Bible teaches.

  • If you believe in millions of years, you've got death and bloodshed, suffering, and disease

  • over millions of years leading to man, because that's what you see in the fossil record.

  • The Bible makes it very clear death is a result of man's sin.

  • In fact, the first death was in the garden when God killed an animal, clothed Adam and Eve,

  • first blood sacrifice pointing towards what would happen with Jesus Christ.

  • He would be the one who would die once and for all.

  • Now if you believe in millions of years as a Christian, in the fossil record

  • there's evidence of animals eating each other, Bible says originally all the animals

  • and man were vegetarian. We weren't told we could eat meat until after the flood.

  • There's diseases represented in the fossil record like brain tumors, but the Bible

  • says when God made everything it was very good.

  • God doesn't call brain tumors very good.

  • There's fossilized thorns in the fossil record said to be hundreds of millions of years old,

  • the Bible says thorns came after the curse.

  • So these two things can't be true at the same time.

  • You know what? There's hundreds of dating methods out there, hundreds of them.

  • Actually, 90% of them contradict billions of years. And the point is, all such dating methods are fallible.

  • And I claim, there's only one infallible dating method, it's a witness who was there,

  • who knows everything, who told us. And that's from the word of God.

  • And that's why I would say that the earth is only 6,000 years. And, as Dr. Faulkner said,

  • there's nothing in astronomy, and certainly Dr. Snelling would say, there's nothing in geology

  • to contradict a belief in a young age for the earth and the universe.

  • Moderator: Thank you Mr. Ham. Mr. Nye, your five-minute rebuttal please.

  • Mr. Nye: Thank you very much. Let me start with the beginning.

  • If you find 45 million year old rock on top of 45 thousand year old trees,

  • maybe the rock slid on top. Maybe that's it. That seems much more reasonable explanation

  • than, "It's impossible." Then as far as dating goes, actually the methods are

  • very reliable. One of the mysteries, or interesting things that people in my business,

  • especially at the Planetary Society, are interested in is why all the asteroids seem to be

  • so close to the same date in age. It's 4.5, 4.6 billion years.

  • It's a remarkable thing. People at first expected a little more of a spread.

  • So, I understand that you take the Bible as written in English, translated countless,

  • not countless, but many, many times over the last three millenia as to be a more accurate,

  • more reasonable assessment of the natural laws we see around us

  • than what I and everybody in here can observe. That to me is unsettling, troubling.

  • And then about the disease thing, are the fish sinners? Have they done something wrong to get diseases?

  • That's sort of an extraordinary claim that takes me just a little past what I'm comfortable with.

  • And then, as far as you can't observe the past, I have to stop you right there.

  • That's what we do in astronomy.

  • All we can do in astronomy is look at the past.

  • By the way, you're looking at the past right now. Because the speed of light bounces off of me

  • and then gets to your eyes. And I'm delighted to see that the people in the back of the room

  • appear just that much younger than the people in the front.

  • So this idea that you can separate the natural laws of the past from the natural laws that we have now,

  • I think is at the heart of our disagreement. I don't see how we're ever going to agree with that

  • if you insist that natural laws have changed. It's, for lack of a better word, it's magical.

  • And I have appreciated magic since I was a kid, but it's not really what we want

  • in conventional, mainstream science. So, your assertion that all the animals were vegetarians

  • before they got on the ark. That's really remarkable. I have not spent a lot of time with lions,

  • but I can tell they've got teeth that really aren't set up for broccoli.

  • That these animals were vegetarians til this flood is something that I would ask you

  • to provide a little more proof for. I give you the lion's teeth, you give me verses

  • as translated into English over, what, 30 centuries?

  • So, that's not enough evidence for me. If you've ever played telephone, I did, I remember very well

  • in kindergarten where you have a secret and you whisper it to the next person, to the next person,

  • to the next person. Things often go wrong. So it's very reasonable to me that instead of lions being vegetarians on the ark,

  • lions are lions, and the information that you used to create your world view is not consistent with

  • what I, as a reasonable man, would expect. So, I want everybody to consider the implications of this.

  • If we accept Mr. Ham's point of view, that the Bible as translated into American English,

  • serves as a science text, and that he and his followers will interpret that for you,

  • Just, I want you to consider what that means. It means that Mr. Ham's word or his interpretation

  • of these other words, is somehow to be more respected than what you can observe in nature.

  • Than what you can find literally in your backyard, in Kentucky.

  • It's a troubling and unsettling point of view, and it's one I very much like you to address when you come back.

  • As far as the five races that you mentioned, it's kind of the same thing.

  • The five races were claimed by people who were of European descent,

  • and said, "Hey, we're the best! Check us out!" And that turns out to be,

  • if you've ever traveled anywhere or done anything, not to be that way.

  • People are much more alike than they are different.

  • So, are we supposed to take your word for English words translated over the last 30 centuries,

  • instead of what we can observe in the universe around us?

  • Moderator: Very good. And Mr. Ham, would you like to offer your five minute counter rebuttal?

  • Ken Ham: Uh, first of all, Bill, just so, I just don't want a misunderstanding here,

  • and that is, the 45,000-year-old wood, or supposedly 45,000 was inside the basalt.

  • Um, so, it was encased in the basalt. Uh, and that's why I was making that particular point.

  • And I would also say that natural law hasn't changed. As I talked about, you know,

  • I said we had the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature. And that only makes sense

  • within a biblical worldview anyway, of a creator God, who set up those laws,

  • and that's why we can do good experimental science, because we assume those laws are true,

  • and they'll be true tomorrow. I do want to say this. that you said a few times, you know,

  • Ken Ham's view or model. It's not just Ken Ham's model. We have a number of PhD scientists

  • on our own staff. I quoted, had video quotes, from some scientists.

  • It's Dr. Damadian's model. It's Dr. Fabich's model. It's Dr. Faulkner's model. It's Dr. Snelling's model.

  • It's Dr. Purdom's model. And so it goes on, in other words. And you go on our website,

  • and there are lots of creation scientists who agree with exactly what we're saying concerning

  • the Bible's account of creation. So it's not just "my model" in that sense.

  • There is so much that I can say, but, as I listen to you, I believe you're confusing terms

  • in regard to species and kinds. Because we're not saying that God created all those species.

  • We're saying God created kinds. And we're not saying species got on the ark, we're saying kinds.

  • In fact, we've had researchers working on what is a kind. For instance, there's a number of papers,

  • published on our website, where, for instance, they look at dogs. And they say, well, this one

  • breeds with this one, with this one, with this one. And you can look at all the papers around the world

  • and you can connect them all together and say that obviously represents one kind.

  • In fact, as they have been doing that research, they have predicted probably less than actually a thousand

  • kinds were on Noah's ark, which means just over 2,000 animals. And the average size of a land animal

  • is not that big so, you know, there was plenty of room on the ark. I also believe that

  • a lot of what you were saying was really illustrating my point. Uh, you were talking about tree rings

  • and ice layers and, just talking about kangaroos getting to Australia, and all sorts of things like that.

  • But see, we're talking about the past, when we weren't there. We didn't see those tree rings actually forming.

  • We didn't see those layers being laid down. You know, in 1942, for instance, there were some planes

  • that landed on the ice in Greenland. They found them, what, 46 years later, I think it was,

  • three miles away from the original location with 250 feet of ice buried on top of them.

  • So, ice can build up catastrophically. If you assume one layer a year, or something like that,

  • it's like the dating methods. You are assuming things in regard to the past that aren't necessarily true.

  • In regard to lions and teeth, bears, most bears have teeth very much like a lion or tiger, and yet, most bears

  • are primarily vegetarian. The panda, if you look at its teeth, you'd say, maybe it should be a

  • savage carnivore. It eats mainly bamboo. The little fruit bat in Australia has really sharp teeth,

  • looks like a savage little creature, and it rips into fruit.

  • Uh, so, just cause an animal has sharp teeth doesn't mean it's a meat eater. It means it has sharp teeth.

  • Uh, so again, it really comes down to our interpretation of these things.

  • I think too, in regard to the Missoula, uh, example that you gave, you know,

  • creationists do believe there's been post-flood catastrophism.

  • Noah's flood, certainly, was a catastrophic event. But then there's been post-flood catastrophism since that time as well.

  • And again, in regard to historical science, why would you say Noah was unskilled?

  • I mean, I didn't meet Noah, and neither did you. And you know, really, it's an evolutionary view of origins I believe

  • cause you're thinking in terms people before us aren't as good as us.

  • Hey, there are civilizations that existed in the past, and we look at their technology,

  • and we can't even understand today how they did some of the things that they did.

  • Who says Noah couldn't build a big boat? By the way, the Chinese and the Egyptians built boats.

  • In fact, some of our research indicates that some of the wooden boats that were built

  • had three layers interlocking so they wouldn't twist like that and leak, which is why,

  • here at the Creation Museum, we have an exhibit on the ark, where we've rebuilt 1% of the ark to scale

  • and shown three interlocking layers like that. And one last thing, concerning the speed of light,

  • and that is, I'm sure you're aware of the horizon problem. And that is, from a Big Bang perspective,

  • even the secularists have a problem of getting light and radiation out to the universe

  • to be able to exchange with the rest of the universe, to get that even microwave background radiation.

  • On their model, 15 billion years or so, they can only get it about halfway.

  • And that's why they have inflation theories, which means, everyone has a problem concerning the light issue.

  • There's things people don't understand. And we have some models on our website

  • by some of our scientists to help explain those sorts of things.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye, your counter rebuttal.

  • Bill Nye: Thank you Mr. Ham, but I'm completely unsatisfied.

  • You did not, in my view, address this fundamental question. 680,000 years of snow ice layers

  • which require winter summer cycle. Let's say you have 2,000 kinds instead of seven.

  • That makes the problem even more extraordinary, multiplying eleven by what's, three and a half?

  • We get to 35... 40 species every day that we don't see, they're not extant.

  • In fact, you probably know we're losing species due to mostly human activity and the loss of habitat.

  • Then, as far as Noah being an extraordinary shipwright, I'm very skeptical.

  • The shipwrights, my ancestors, the Nye family in New England, took, spent their whole life learning to make ships.

  • I mean, it's very reasonable, perhaps, to you that Noah had superpowers

  • and was able to build this extraordinary craft with seven family members, but to me, it's just not reasonable.

  • Then, uh, by the way, the fundamental thing we disagree on, Mr. Ham,

  • is this nature of what you can prove to yourself. This is to say, when people make assumptions

  • based on radiometric data, when they make assumptions about the expanding universe,

  • when they make assumptions about the rate at which genes change in populations of bacteria

  • in laboratory growth media, they are making assumptions based on previous experience.

  • They're not coming out of whole cloth. So, next time you have a chance to speak,

  • I encourage you to explain to us why... why we should accept your word for it that natural law changed

  • just 4,000 years ago, completely. And there's no record of it. You know, there are pyramids that are older than that.

  • There are human populations that are far older than that, with traditions that go back farther that that.

  • And it's just not reasonable to me that everything changed 4,000 years ago.

  • By everything, I mean the species, the surface of the Earth, the stars in the sky,

  • and the relationship of all the other living things on Earth to humans.

  • It's just not reasonable to me that everything changed like that.

  • And another thing I would very much appreciate you addressing:

  • there are billions of people in the world who are deeply religious. And I respect that.

  • People get tremendous community and comfort and nurture and support from their religious fellows

  • in their communities, in their faiths, in their churches.

  • And yet, they don't accept your point of view.

  • There are Christians who don't accept that the Earth could somehow be this extraordinary young age

  • because of all the evidence around them. And so, what is to become of them, in your view?

  • And by the way, this thing started, as I understand it, Ken Ham's creation model is based on the Old Testament.

  • So when you bring in, I'm not a theologian, when you bring in the New Testament,

  • isn't that little, uh, out of the box? I'm looking for explanations of the creation of the world

  • as we know it, uh, based on what I'm gonna call science. Not historical science, not observational science.

  • Science: things that each of us can do akin to what we do, we're trying to outguess the characters

  • on murder mystery shows, on crime scene investigation, especially.

  • What is to become of all those people, who don't see it your way?

  • For us, in the scientific community, I remind you, that when we find an idea that's not tenable,

  • that doesn't work, that doesn't fly, doesn't hold water, whatever idiom you'd like to embrace, we throw it away.

  • We are delighted. That's why I say, if you can find a fossil that has swum between the layers, bring it on!

  • You would change the world. If you could show that somehow the microwave background radiation

  • is not a result of the Big Bang, come on! Write your paper. Tear it up!

  • So, your view, that we're supposed to take your word for this book written centuries ago,

  • translated into American English, is somehow more important that what I can see with my own eyes,

  • is an extraordinary claim. And, for those watching online, especially, I want to remind you

  • that we need scientists, and especially engineers for the future.

  • Engineers use science to solve problems and make things. We need these people

  • so that the United States can continue to innovate and continue to be a world leader.

  • We need innovation, and that needs science education. Thank you.

  • Moderator: All right. Thank you both. Uh, now we're going to get to the things moving a little bit faster.

  • I think they might be quite interesting here. It's 40 to 45 minutes, maybe a little bit more, actually.

  • We'll have a little more. For questions and answers submitted by our audience here in the Creation Museum.

  • Beforehand, we handed out these cards to everyone. I shuffled them here in the back,

  • and in fact, I dropped a lot of them, and then I scooped them up again.

  • And if you saw me sorting through them here, it was to get a pile for Mr. Nye and a pile for Mr. Ham,

  • so that we can alternate reasonably between them. Other than that, the only reason I will skip over one

  • is if I can't read it, or if it's a question that I don't know how to read because it doesn't seem to make any sense,

  • which sometimes happens just because of the way people write.

  • What's going to happen is we're gonna go back and forth between Mr. Nye and Mr. Ham.

  • Each debater will have two minutes to answer the question addressed to him,

  • and then the other will have one minute to also answer the question, even though it was addressed to the other man.

  • And I did pull one card aside here, because I noticed it was to both men.

  • So we may be able to get to that at some point. Mr. Ham, you've been up first, if you'll hop up first this time.

  • And Mr. Nye, you can stand by for your responses. Two minutes.

  • How does creationism account for the celestial bodies: planets, stars, moons moving further and further apart?

  • And what function does that serve in the grand design?

  • Ken Ham: Well, when it comes to looking at the universe, of course, we believe, that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

  • And I believe our creationist astronomers would say, "Yeah, you can observe the universe expanding."

  • Why God is doing that? In fact, in Bible it even says He stretches out the heavens.

  • And seems to indicate that there is an expansion of the universe.

  • And so, we would say, yeah, you can observe that. That fits with what we call observational science.

  • Exactly why God did it that way? I can't answer that question, of course,

  • because, you know, the Bible says that God made the heavens for his glory.

  • And that's why he made the stars that we see out there. And it's to tell us how great He is and how big He is.

  • And in fact, I think that's the thing about the universe. The universe is so large, so big out there.

  • One of our planetarium programs looks at this. We go in and show you how large the universe is.

  • And I think it shows us how great God is, how big He is, that He's an all-powerful God,

  • He's an infinite God, an infinite, all-knowing God who created the universe to show us his power.

  • I mean, can you imagine that, and the thing that's really remarkable in the Bible.

  • For instance, it says on the fourth day of creation, and oh, he made the stars also.

  • It's almost like, "Oh, by the way, I made the stars." Um, and just to show us He's an all-powerful God.

  • He's an infinite God. So, "I made the stars." And he made them to show us how great He is.

  • And He is. He's an infinite creator God. And the more that you understand what that means,

  • that God is all-powerful, infinite, you stand back in awe. You realize how small we are.

  • You realize, wow, that God would consider this planet, is so significant that he created human beings here,

  • knowing they would sin, and yet stepped into history to die for us and be raised from the dead.

  • Our verse, the free gift of salvation. Wow! What a God!

  • And that's what I would say when I see the universe as it is.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye, one minute. And your response?

  • Bill Nye: There's a question that troubles us all from the time when we are absolutely youngest and first able to think.

  • And that is, where did we come from? Where did I come from?

  • And this question is so compelling that we've invented the science of astronomy.

  • We've invented life science. We've invented physics.

  • We've discovered these natural laws so that we can learn more about our origin and where we came from.

  • To you, when it says, He invented the stars also, that's satisfying. You're done.

  • Oh, good. Okay. To me, when I look at the night sky, I want to know what's out there.

  • I'm driven. I want to know if what's out there is any part of me, and indeed, it is.

  • The "oh, by the way" I find compelling you are satisfied.

  • And the big thing I want from you, Mr. Ham, is can you come up with something that you can predict?

  • Do you have a creation model that predicts something that will happen in nature?

  • Moderator: And that's time. Mr. Nye, the next question is for you.

  • How did the atoms that created the Big Bang get there?

  • Bill Nye: This is the great mystery. You've hit the nail on the head. No, this is so, where did, what was before the Big Bang?

  • This is what drives us. This is what we want to know. Let's keep looking. Let's keep searching.

  • Uh, when I was young, it was presumed that the universe was slowing down.

  • It's a big bang, phrooo! Except it's in outer space, there's no air, so it goes out like that.

  • And so people presumed that it would slow down, that the universe, the gravity, especially,

  • would hold everything together and maybe it's going to come back and explode again.

  • And people went out. And the mathematical expression is: is the universe flat?

  • It's a mathematical expression. Will the universe slow down, slow down, slow down asymptotically without ever stopping?

  • Well, in 2004, Saul Perlmutter and his colleagues went looking for the rate at which the universe was slowing down.

  • Let's go out and measure it. And we're doing it with this extraordinary system of telescopes around the world,

  • looking at the night sky, looking for supernovae. These are a standard brightness that you can infer distances with.

  • And the universe isn't slowing down. It's accelerating! The universe is accelerating in its expansion.

  • And do you know why? Nobody knows why! Nobody knows why.

  • And you'll hear the expression nowadays, dark energy, dark matter, which are mathematical ideas that seem

  • to reckon well with what seems to be the gravitational attraction of clusters of stars, galaxies, and their expansion.

  • And then, isn't it reasonable that whatever's out there, causing the universe to expand, is here also?

  • And we just haven't figured out how to detect it.

  • My friends, suppose a science student from the commonwealth of Kentucky pursues a career in science

  • and finds out the answer to that deep question? Where did we come from? What was before the Big Bang?

  • To us, this is wonderful and charming and compelling. This is what makes us get up and go to work everyday,

  • is to try to solve the mysteries of the universe.

  • Moderator: And that's time. Mr. Ham, a response?

  • Ken Ham: Uh, Bill, I just want to let you know that there actually is

  • a book out there that actually tells us where matter came from.

  • And, the very first sentence in that book says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

  • And really, that's the only thing that makes sense. That's the only thing that makes sense of why, not just matter is here,

  • where it came from, but why matter, when you look at it, we have information and language systems that build life.

  • We're not just matter. And where did that come from? Because matter can never produce information.

  • Matter can never produce a language system. Languages only come from intelligence.

  • Information only comes from information. The Bible tells us that the things we see, like in the book of Hebrews,

  • are made from things that are unseen. An infinite creator God who created the universe,

  • created matter, the energy, space, mass, time universe, and created the information for life.

  • It's the only thing that makes logical sense.

  • Moderator: Alright, Mr. Ham, a new question here. The overwhelming majority of people in the

  • scientific community have presented valid, physical evidence, such as carbon dating and fossils,

  • to support evolutionary theory. What evidence besides the literal word of the Bible supports creationism?

  • Ken Ham: Well, first of all, you know, I often hear people talking about "the majority".

  • I would agree that the majority of scientists would believe

  • in millions of years and the majority would believe in evolution,

  • but there's a large group out there that certainly don't.

  • But, first thing I want to say is, it's not the majority that's the judge of truth.

  • There have been many times in the past when the majority have got it wrong.

  • The majority of doctors in England once thought after you cut up bodies,

  • you could go and deliver babies and wondered why

  • the death rate was high in hospitals,

  • till they found out about diseases caused by bacteria and so on.

  • The majority once thought the appendix was a leftover organ

  • from evolutionary ancestry, so, you know, when it's okay,

  • rip it out. When it's diseased, rip it out. Rip it out anyway.

  • But these days we know that it's for the immune system

  • and it's very, very important.

  • So, you know, it's important to understand that just because

  • the majority believe something doesn't mean that it's true.

  • And then, I'm sorry, I missed the last part of the question there.

  • Moderator: What was the--let me make sure I have the right question here--

  • So what evidence besides the literal word of the bible--

  • Ken Ham: Okay, one of the things I was doing was making predictions.

  • I made some predictions. There's a whole list of predictions.

  • And I was saying, if the Bible's right and we're all descendants

  • of Adam and Eve, there's one race. And I went through and talked about that.

  • If the Bible's right and God made kinds, I went through

  • and talked about that. And, so, really that question comes down

  • to the fact that we're again dealing with the fact that there's aspects

  • about the past that you can't scientifically prove because

  • you weren't there, but observational science in the present.

  • Bill and I all have the same observational science. We're here in the present.

  • We can see radioactivity, but when it comes to then talking about the past,

  • you're not going to be scientifically able to prove that.

  • And that's what we need to admit. We can be great scientists in the present,

  • as the examples I gave you of Dr. Damadian or Dr. Stuart Burgess

  • or Dr. Fabich and we can be investigating the present.

  • Understanding the past is a whole different matter.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye, one minute response.

  • Thank you, Mr. Ham. I have to disabuse you of a fundamental idea.

  • If a scientist, if anybody, makes a discovery that changes

  • the way people view natural law, scientists embrace him or her!

  • This person's fantastic. Louis Pasteur--you made reference to germs.

  • Now, if you find something that changes, that disagrees with common thought,

  • that's the greatest thing going in science.

  • We look forward to that change. We challenge you--

  • tell us why the universe is accelerating.

  • Tell us why these mothers were getting sick.

  • And we found an explanation for it. And the idea that the majority

  • has sway in science is true only up a point.

  • And then, the other thing I just want to point out, what you may

  • have missed in evolutionary explanations of life

  • is it's the mechanism by which we add complexity.

  • The earth is getting energy from the sun all the time.

  • And that energy is used to make lifeforms somewhat more complex.

  • Moderator: And that's time.

  • New question for you, Mr. Nye.

  • How did consciousness come from matter?

  • Bill Nye: Don't know. This is a great mystery.

  • A dear friend of mine is a neurologist. She studies the nature of consciousness.

  • Now I will say I used to embrace a joke about dogs.

  • I love dogs. I mean, who doesn't?

  • And you can say, this guy remarked,

  • "I've never seen a dog paralyzed by self-doubt." Actually, I have.

  • Furthermore, the thing that we celebrate, there are three sundials

  • on the planet Mars that bare an inscription to the future:

  • "To those who visit here, we wish you a safe journey and the joy of discovery."

  • It's inherently optimistic about the future of humankind,

  • that we will one day walk on Mars. But the joy of discovery...

  • that's what drives us. The joy of finding out what's going on.

  • So we don't know where consciousness comes from. But we want to find out.

  • Furthermore, I'll tell you it's deep within us. I claim that I

  • have spent time with dogs that have had the joy of discovery!

  • It's way inside us! We have one ancestor, as near as we can figure.

  • And, by the way, if you can find what we in science call "a second genesis",

  • this is to say, "Did life start another way on the earth?"

  • There are researchers at Astrobiology Institute,

  • researchers supported by NASA, your tax dollars,

  • that are looking for answers to that very question.

  • Is it possible that life could start another way?

  • Is there some sort of life form akin to science fiction

  • that's crystal instead of membranous. This would be a fantastic

  • discovery that would change the world!

  • The nature of consciousness is a mystery.

  • I challenge the young people here to investigate that very question.

  • And I remind you--taxpayers and voters that might be watching--

  • if we do not embrace the process of science,

  • and I mean in the mainstream, we will fall behind economically.

  • This is a point I can't say enough.

  • Moderator: Mr. Ham, a one minute response.

  • Ken Ham: Bill, I do want to say that there is a book out there...

  • that does document where consciousness came from.

  • And in that book, the one who created us said that he made man in His image,

  • and He breathed into man, and he became a living being.

  • And so, the Bible does document that. That's where consciousness came from,

  • that God gave it to us. And, you know, the other thing I want to say is,

  • I'm sorta of a little, I have a mystery. That is, you talk about the joy of discovery

  • but you also say that when you die, it's over, and that's the end of you.

  • And if when you die, it's over, and you don't even remember you were here, what's the point of the joy of discovery anyway?

  • I mean, in an ultimate sense? I mean, you know, you won't ever know you were ever here,

  • and no one who knew you will know they were ever here, ultimately, so what's the point anyway?

  • I love the joy of discovery because this is God's creation,

  • and I'm finding more out about that to take dominion for man's good and for God's glory.

  • Moderator: And that's time. Mr. Ham, a new question.

  • This is a simple question, I suppose, but one that actually is fairly profound for all of us, in our lives.

  • What, if anything, would ever change your mind?

  • Ken Ham: Hmm. Well, the answer to that question is,

  • I'm a Christian, and as a Christian, I can't prove it to you,

  • but God has definitely, shown me very clearly

  • through His Word, and shown Himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

  • The Bible is the Word of God. I admit that that's where I start from.

  • I can challenge people that you can go and test that.

  • You can make predictions based on that. You can check the prophecies in the Bible.

  • You can check the statements in Genesis. You can check that.

  • I did a little bit of that tonight. And I can't ultimately prove that to you.

  • All I can do is to say to someone, "Look, if the Bible really is what it claims to be,

  • if it really is the Word of God, and that's what it claims, then check it out."

  • And the Bible says, "If you come to God believing that He is, He'll reveal Himself to you."

  • And you will know. As Christians, we can say we know.

  • And so, as far as the Word of God is concerned, no, no one's ever going to convince me

  • that the Word of God is not true. But I do want to make a distinction here.

  • And for Bill's sake. We build models based upon the Bible.

  • And those models are always subject to change.

  • The fact of Noah's flood is not subject to change.

  • The model of how the flood occurred is subject to change

  • because we observe in the current world,

  • and we're able to come up with different ways this could have happened or that could have happened.

  • And that's part of that scientific discovery. That's part of what it's all about.

  • So, the bottom line is that as a Christian, I have a foundation.

  • That as a Christian, I would ask Bill a question. What would change your mind?

  • I mean, you said, even if you came to faith, you'd never give up believing in billions of years.

  • I think I quoted you correctly. You said something like that recently.

  • So that would be also my question to Bill.

  • Moderator: Time. Mr. Nye?

  • Bill Nye: We would just need one piece of evidence.

  • We would need the fossil that swam from one layer to another.

  • We would need evidence that the universe is not expanding.

  • We would need evidence that the stars appear to be far away, but in fact, they're not.

  • We would need evidence that rock layers can somehow form

  • in just 4,000 years instead of the extraordinary amount.

  • We would need evidence that somehow you can reset atomic clocks and keep neutrons from becoming protons.

  • You bring on any of those things and you would change me immediately.

  • The question I have for you though, fundamentally,

  • and for everybody watching. Mr. Ham, what can you prove?

  • What you have done tonight is spent most of the, all of the time

  • coming up with explanations about the past. What can you really predict?

  • What can you really prove in a conventional scientific,

  • or a conventional, "I have an idea that makes a prediction and it comes out the way I see it?"

  • This is very troubling to me.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye, a new question. Outside of radiometric methods,

  • what scientific evidence supports your view of the age of the Earth?

  • Bill Nye: The age of the earth.. Well, the age of stars.

  • The... let's see... radiometric evidence is pretty compelling.

  • Also, the deposition rates. It was, it was, Lillel, a geologist,

  • who realized, my recollection, he came up with the first use of the term "deep time,"

  • when people realized that the Earth had to be much, much older.

  • In a related story, there was a mystery as to how the Earth could be old enough to allow evolution to have taken place.

  • How could the Earth possibly be three billion years old?

  • Lord Kelvin did a calculation, if the sun were made of coal, and burning,

  • it couldn't be more than 100,000 or so years old.

  • But radioactivity was discovered. Radioactivity is why the Earth is still as warm as it is.

  • It's why the Earth has been able to sustain its internal heat all these millenia.

  • And this discovery, it's something like, this question, without radiometric dating,

  • how would you view the age of the Earth,

  • to me, it's akin to the expression, "Well, if things were any other way, things would be different."

  • This is to say, that's not how the world is. Radiometric dating DOES exist. Neutrons DO become protons.

  • And that's our level of understanding today. The universe is accelerating.

  • These are all provable facts. That there was a flood 4.000 years ago, is not provable.

  • In fact, the evidence for me, at least, as a reasonable man, is overwhelming that it couldn't possibly have happened.

  • There's no evidence for it. Furthermore, Mr. Ham, you never quite addressed this issue of the skulls.

  • There are many, many steps in what appears to be the creation, or the coming into being of you and me.

  • And those steps, are consistent with evolutionary theory.

  • Moderator: And that is time. Mr. Ham, your response.

  • Ken Ham: By the way, I just want people to understand, too,

  • in regard to the age of the Earth being about four and a half billion years,

  • no Earth rock was dated to get that date. They dated meteorites,

  • and because they assumed meteorites were the same age as the Earth,

  • leftover from the formation of the solar system, that's where that comes from.

  • People think they dated rocks on the Earth to get the four and a half billion years. That's just not true.

  • And the other point that I was making, and I just put this slide back up,

  • cause I happened to just have it here. And that is,

  • I said at the end of my first rebuttal time, that there are hundreds of physical processes

  • that set limits on the age of the Earth. Here's the point.

  • Every dating method involves a change with time. And there are hundreds of them.

  • And, if you assume what was there to start with, and you assume something about the rate,

  • and you know about the rate, you make lots of those assumptions. Every dating method has those assumptions.

  • Most of the dating methods, 90% of them, contradict the billions of years.

  • There's no absolute age dating method from scientific method because you can't prove scientifically, young or old.

  • Moderator: And, here is a new question.

  • It starts with you, Mr. Ham. Can you reconcile the change in the rate continents are now drifting,

  • versus how quickly they must have traveled at creation, 6,000 years ago?

  • Ken Ham: Uh, the rate. Sorry I missed that word.

  • Moderator: Can you reconcile the speed at which continents are now drifting, today, to the rate

  • they would have had to have travelled 6,000 years ago, to reach where we are now? I think that's the question.

  • Ken Ham: Okay, I think I understand the question. Um, actually, this again,

  • illustrates exactly what I'm talking about in regard to historical science and observational science.

  • We can look at continents today. And we have scientists who have written papers about this on our website.

  • I am definitely not an expert in this area and don't claim to be.

  • Uh, but there are scientists, even Dr. Andrew Snelling, our Ph.D. geologist,

  • has done a lot of research here, too, as well. There are others out there into plate tectonics and continental drift.

  • And certainly, we can see movements of plates today. And if you look at those movements,

  • and if you assume the way it's moving today, the rate it's moving, that it's always been that way in the past,

  • see that's an assumption. That's the problem when it comes to understanding these things.

  • You can observe movement, but then to assume that it's always been like that in the past,

  • that's historical science. And in fact, we would believe basically in catastrophic plate tectonics,

  • that as a result of the flood, at the time of the flood, there was catastrophic breakup of the Earth's surface.

  • And what we're seeing now is sort of, if you like, a remnant of that movement.

  • And so, we do not deny the movement. We do not deny the plates.

  • What we would deny is that you can use what you see today as a basis for just extrapolating into the past.

  • It's the same with the flood. You can say layers today only get laid down slowly in places,

  • but if there was a global flood, that would have changed all of that.

  • Again, it's this emphasis on historical science and observational science.

  • And I would encourage people to go to our website at Answers in Genesis

  • because we do have a number of papers, in fact, very technical papers.

  • Dr. John Baumgardner is one who's written some very extensive work dealing with this very issue.

  • On the basis of the Bible, of course, we believe there's one continent to start with,

  • cause the waters were gathered here there into one place. So we do believe that the continent has split up.

  • But particularly, the flood had a lot to do with that.

  • Moderator: And time on that. Mr. Nye, a response.

  • Bill Nye: It must have been easier for you to explain this a century ago

  • before the existence of tectonic plates was proven.

  • If you go into a clock store and there's a bunch of clocks, they're not all gonna say exactly the same thing.

  • Do you think that they're all wrong?

  • The reason that we acknowledge the rate at which continents are drifting apart,

  • one of the reasons, is we see what's called sea floor spreading in the Mid-Atlantic.

  • The earth's magnetic field has reversed over the millennia

  • and as it does it leaves a signature in the rocks

  • as the continental plates drift apart.

  • So you can measure how fast the continents were spreading.

  • That's how we do it on the outside.

  • As I said, I lived in Washington state when Mount St. Helen's exploded.

  • That's a result of a continental plate going under another continental plate

  • and cracking. And this water-laden rock led to a steam explosion.

  • That's how we do it on the outside.

  • Moderator: Time. And this is a question for you Mr. Nye. But I guess I could put it to both of you.

  • One word answer, please. Favorite color?

  • Mr. Nye: I will go along with most people and say green. And it's an irony that green plants reflect green light.

  • Moderator: Did I not say one word answer? I said one word answer.

  • Mr. Nye: Most of the light from the sun is green. Yet they reflect it. It's a mystery.

  • Mr. Hamm: Well, can I have three words seeing as he had three hundred?

  • Moderator: You can have three.

  • Mr. Hamm: OK. Observational science. Blue.

  • Moderator: All right. We're back to you, Mr. Nye.

  • How do you balance the theory of evolution with the second law of thermodynamics? And I'd like to add a question here.

  • What is the second law of thermodynamics?

  • Mr. Nye: Oh, the second law of thermodynamics is fantastic. And I call the words of Eddington who said,

  • "If you have a theory that disagrees with Isaac Newton, that's a great theory.

  • If you have a theory that disagrees with relativity, wow, you've changed the world. That's great.

  • But if your theory disagrees with the second law of thermodynamics, I can offer you no hope. I can't help you."

  • The second law of thermodynamics basically is where you lose energy to heat.

  • This is why car engines are about 30% efficient. That's it, thermodynamically. That's why you want the hottest explosion

  • you can get in the coldest outside environment. You have to have a difference between hot and cold.

  • And that difference can be assessed scientifically or mathematically with this word entropy, this disorder of molecules.

  • But the fundamental thing that this questioner has missed is the earth is not a closed system.

  • So there's energy pouring in here from the sun. If I may, day and night. Ha, Ha.

  • 'Cause the night, it's pouring in on the other side.

  • And so that energy is what drives living things on earth especially for, in our case, plants.

  • By the way, if you're here in Kentucky, about a third and maybe a half of the oxygen you breathe is made in the ocean by phytoplankton.

  • And they get their energy from the sun. So the second law of thermodynamics is a wonderful thing.

  • It has allowed us to have every thing you see in this room because our power generation depends on the

  • robust and extremely precise computation of how much energy is in burning fuel,

  • whether it's nuclear fuel, or fossil fuel, or some extraordinary fuel to be discovered in the future.

  • The second law of thermodynamics will govern any turbine that makes electricity

  • that we all depend on; and allowed all these shapes to exist.

  • Moderator: Any response, Mr. Hamm?

  • Mr. Hamm: Let me just say two things if I can. If a minute goes that fast along.

  • One is, you know what, here's a point we need to understand.

  • You can have all the energy that you want, but energy or matter will never produce life.

  • God imposed information, language system. And that's how we have life.

  • Matter by itself could never produce life, no matter what energy you have.

  • And, you know, even if you've got a dead stick, you can have all the energy in the world in that dead stick,

  • it's going to decay, and it's not going to produce life.

  • From a creationist perspective, we certainly agree. I mean, before man sinned, you know,

  • there was digestion, and so on, but because of the Fall, now things are running down.

  • God doesn't hold everything together as He did back then.

  • So now we see, in regard to the second law of thermodynamics, we would say it's sort of,

  • in a sense, a bit out-of-control now, compared to what it was originally, which is why we have a running-down universe.

  • Moderator: And that's time. A new question for you, Mr. Ham.

  • Hypothetically, if evidence existed that caused you to have to admit that the Earth was older than 10,000 years,

  • and creation did not occur over six days, would you still believe in God and the historical Jesus of Nazareth

  • and that Jesus was the Son of God?

  • Ken Ham: Well, I've been emphasizing all night. You cannot ever prove using, you know,

  • the scientific method in the present, you can't prove the age of the Earth.

  • So you can never prove it's old. So there is no hypothetical.

  • Because you can't do that. Now, we can certainly use methods in the present and making assumptions,

  • I mean, creationists use methods that change over time. As I said, there's hundreds of

  • physical processes that you can use, but they set limits on the age of the universe,

  • but you can't ultimately prove the age of the Earth, not using the scientific method.

  • You can't ultimately prove the age of the universe.

  • Now, you can look at methods, and you can see that there are many methods that contradict billions of years,

  • many methods that seem to support thousands of years.

  • As Dr. Faulkner said in the little video clip I showed, there is nothing in observational astronomy

  • that contradicts a young universe. Now, I've said to you before, and I admit again,

  • that the reason I believe in a young universe is because of the Bible's account of origins.

  • I believe that God, who has always been there, the infinite creator God, revealed in His Word what He did for us.

  • And, when we add up those dates, we get thousands of years.

  • But there's nothing in observational science that contradicts that.

  • As far as the age of the Earth, the age of the universe, even when it comes to the fossil record.

  • That's why I really challenge Christians, if you're gonna believe in millions of years for the fossil record,

  • you've got a problem with the Bible. And that is, then, that you've got to have death and disease and suffering before sin.

  • So, there is no hypothetical in regard to that. You can't prove scientifically, the age of the Earth or the universe, bottom line.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye.

  • Mr. Nye: Well, of course this is where we disagree.

  • You can prove the age of the earth with great robustness by observing the universe around us.

  • And I get the feeling, Mr. Hamm, that you want us to take your word for it.

  • This is to say your interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago,

  • as translated into American English, is more compelling for you than everything that I can observe in the world around me.

  • This is where you and I, I think, are not going to see eye to eye.

  • You said you asserted that life cannot come from something that's not alive. Are you sure?

  • Are you sure enough to say that we should not continue to look for signs of water and life on Mars?

  • That that's a waste. You're sure enough to claim that.

  • That is an extraordinary claim that we want to investigate.

  • Once again, what is it you can predict? What do you provide us that can tell us something about the future; not just about your vision of the past?

  • Moderator: A new question, Mr. Nye.

  • Is there room for God in science?

  • Mr. Nye: Well, we remind us. There are billions of people around the world who are religious and who accept science

  • and embrace it, and especially all the technology that it brings us.

  • Is there anyone here who doesn't have a mobile phone that has a camera?

  • Is there anyone here whose family members have not benefited from modern medicine?

  • Is there anyone here who doesn't use e-mail? Is there anybody here who doesn't eat?

  • Because we use information sent from satellites in space to plant seeds on our farms.

  • That's how we're able to feed 7.1 billion people where we used to be barely able to feed a billion.

  • So that's what I see. That's what we have used science for the process.

  • Science for me is two things. It's the body of knowledge--the atomic number of rubidium.

  • And it's the process--the means by which we make these discoveries.

  • So for me that's not really that connected with your belief in a spiritual being or a higher power.

  • If you reconcile those two. Scientists, the head of the National Institutes of Health is a devout Christian.

  • There are billions of people in the world who are devoutly religious.

  • They have to be compatible because those same people embrace science.

  • The exception is you, Mr. Ham. That's the problem for me.

  • You want us to take your word for what's written in this ancient text to be more compelling than what we see around us.

  • The evidence for a higher power and spirituality is, for me, separate.

  • I encourage you to take the next minute and address this problem of the fossils, this problem of the ice layers,

  • this problem of the ancient trees, this problem of the ark. I mean really address it.

  • And so then we could move forward. But right now, I see no incompatibility between religions and science.

  • Moderator: That's time. Mr. Ham, response?

  • Mr. Ham: Yeah, I actually want to take a minute to address the question.

  • Let me just say this, my answer would be God is necessary for science.

  • In fact, you know you talked about cell phones. Yeah, I have a cell phone. I love technology.

  • We love technology here at Answers in Genesis. And, I have e-mail, probably had millions of them

  • while I've been speaking up here. And, satellites and what you said about the information we get,

  • I agree with all that. See, they're the things that can be done in the present.

  • And that's just like I showed you. Dr. Stuart Burgess who invented that gear set for the satellite, creationists can be great scientists.

  • But, see, I say God is necessary because you have to assume the laws of logic. You have to assume the laws of nature.

  • You have to assume the uniformity in nature. And that is the question I had for you.

  • Where does that come from if the universe is here by natural processes.

  • And, Christianity and science, the Bible and science, go hand in hand.

  • We love science. But again, you've got to understand. Inventing things, that's very different

  • than talking about our origins. Two very different things.

  • Moderator: Mr. Ham, a new question. Do you believe the entire Bible is to be taken literally?

  • For example, should people who touch pigs' skin, I think it says here, be stoned?

  • Can men marry multiple women?

  • Mr. Ham: Do I believe the entire Bible should be taken literally? Remember in my opening address

  • I said we have to define our terms. So, when people ask that question, say literally, I have to know

  • what that person meant by literally. Now, I would say this.

  • If you say "naturally" and that's what you mean by "literally", I would say, yes, I take the Bible "naturally".

  • What do I mean by that? Well, if it's history, as Genesis is,

  • it's written as typical historical narrative, you take it as history.

  • If it's poetry, as we find in the Psalms, then you take it as poetry.

  • It doesn't mean it doesn't teach truth, but it's not a cosmological account in the sense that Genesis is.

  • There's prophecy in the Bible and there's literature in the Bible concerning future events and so on.

  • So, if you take it as written, naturally, according to typal literature, and you let it speak to you

  • in that way, that's how I take the Bible. It's God's revelation to man. He used different people.

  • The Bible says that all scripture's inspired by God. So God moved people by his spirit

  • to write his words. And, also, there's a lot of misunderstanding in regard to scripture

  • and in regard to the Israelites. I mean we have laws in our civil government here in America

  • that the government sets. Well there were certain laws for Israel. And, you know, some people

  • take all that out of context. And then they try to impose it on us today as Christians

  • and say, you should be obeying those laws. It's a misunderstanding of the Old Testament.

  • It's a misunderstanding of the New Testament.

  • And, you know, again, it's important to take the Bible as a whole. Interpreting scripture as scripture.

  • If it really is the word of God, there's not going to be any contradiction. Which there's not.

  • And by the way, when men were married to multiple women, there were lots of problems.

  • ...and the Bible condemns that for what it is, and the Bible is very clear.

  • You know the Bible is a real book. There were people who did things that were not in accord with scripture,

  • and it records this for us. It helps you understand it's a real book. But marriage was one man for

  • one woman. Jesus reiterated that in Matthew 19, as I had in my talk.

  • And so those that did marry multiple women were wrong.

  • Moderator: Time there. Mr. Nye, a response?

  • Mr. Nye: So it sounds to me, just listening to you over the last two minutes,

  • that there's certain parts of this document of the Bible that you embrace literally

  • and other parts you consider poetry. So it sounds to me, in those last two minutes,

  • like you're going to take what you like, interpret literally, and other passages you're gonna interpret as poetic or descriptions of human events.

  • All that aside, I'll just say scientifically, or as a reasonable man, it doesn't seem possible that

  • all these things that contradict your literal interpretation of those first few passages,

  • all those things that contradict that, I find unsettling, when you want me to embrace the rest of it

  • as literal. Now, I, as I say, am not a theologian. But we started this debate,

  • Is Ken Ham's creation model viable? Does it hold water? Can it fly? Does it describe anything?

  • And I'm still looking for an answer.

  • Moderator: And time on that. Mr. Nye, here's a new question.

  • I believe this was miswritten here because they've repeated a word. But I think I know what they were

  • trying to ask. Have you ever believed that evolution was accomplished through way of a higher power?

  • I think that's what they're trying to ask here. This is the intelligent design question, I think.

  • If so, why or why not? Why could not the evolutionary process be accomplished in this way?

  • Mr. Nye: I think you may have changed the question just a little but, no, it's all good.

  • Moderator: The word for word question is, have you ever believed that evolution partook through way of evolution?

  • (talking at the same time) Mr. Nye: Let me introduce these ideas for Mr. Ham to comment.

  • The idea that there's a higher power that has driven the course of the events in the universe

  • and our own existence, is one that you can not prove or disprove. And this gets into this expression, "agnostic."

  • You can't know. I'll grant you that.

  • When it comes to intelligent design, which is, if I understand your interpretation of the question,

  • intelligent design has a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of nature.

  • This is to say, the old expression is if you were to find a watch in the field,

  • and you pick it up, you would realize that it was created by somebody who was thinking ahead,

  • somebody with an organization chart, somebody at the top. And you'd order screws from screw manufacturers

  • and springs from spring manufacturers and glass crystals from crystal manufacturers.

  • But that's not how nature works.

  • This is the fundamental insight in the explanation for living things that is provided by evolution.

  • Evolution is a process that adds complexity through natural selection, this is to say,

  • nature has its mediocre designs eaten by its good designs.

  • And so, the perception that there is a designer that created all this, is not necessarily true,

  • because we have an explanation that is far more compelling and provides predictions, and things are repeatable.

  • I'm sure, Mr. Ham here, at the facility, you have an organization chart.

  • I imagine you're at the top, and it's a top-down structure.

  • Nature is not that way. Nature is bottom-up.

  • This is the discovery. Things merge up. Whatever makes it, keeps going. Whatever doesn't make it, falls away.

  • And this is compelling and wonderful and fills me with joy and is inconsistent with a top-down view.

  • Moderator: And that's time. Mr. Ham.

  • Ken Ham: What Bill Nye needs to do for me is to show me an example of something, some new function

  • that arose that was not previously possible from the genetic information that was there.

  • And I would claim, and challenge you, that there is no such example that you can give.

  • That's why I brought up the example in my presentation of Lensky's experiments in regard to e coli.

  • And there were some that seemed to develop the ability to exist on citrate,

  • but as Dr. Fabich said, from looking at his research,

  • he's found that that information was already there.

  • It's just a gene that switched on and off. And so, there is no example, because information that's there,

  • and the genetic information of different animals, plants and so on, there's no new function that can be added.

  • Certainly, great variation within a kind, and that's what we look at.

  • But you'd have to show an example of brand-new function that never previously was possible.

  • There is no such example that you can give anywhere in the world.

  • Moderator: Uh, fresh question here. Mr. Ham, name one institution, business, or organization,

  • other than a church, amusement park, or the Creation Museum

  • that is using any aspect of creationism to produce its product.

  • Ken Ham: Any scientist out there, Christian or non-Christian, that is involved in

  • inventing things, involved in scientific method, is using creation.

  • They are, because they are borrowing from a Christian worldview.

  • They are using the laws of logic. I keep emphasizing that.

  • I want Bill to tell me, in a view of the universe, as a result of natural processes,

  • explain where the laws of logic came from. Why should we trust the laws of nature?

  • I mean, are they going to be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday?

  • In fact, some of the greatest scientists that ever lived: Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday were creationists.

  • And as one of them said, you know, he's thinking God's thoughts after Him.

  • And that's really, modern science came out of that thinking, that we can do experiments today,

  • and we can do the same tomorrow. And we can trust the laws of logic. We can trust the laws of nature.

  • And if we don't teach our children correctly about this, they're NOT going to be innovative.

  • And they're not going to be able to come up with inventions to advance in our culture.

  • And so, I think the person was trying to get out that, see, you know,

  • there are lots of secularists out there doing work. And they don't believe in creation.

  • And they come up with great inventions, yeah. But my point is, they are borrowing from the Christian worldview to do so.

  • And as you saw from the video quotes I gave, people like Andrew Fabich

  • and also Dr. Faulkner have published in the secular journals.

  • There's lots of creationists out there who publish.

  • People mightn't know that they're creationists because the topic doesn't specifically pertain to creation vs. evolution.

  • But there's lots of them out there. In fact, go to our website.

  • There's a whole list there of scientists who are creationists,

  • who are out there doing great work in this world and helping to advance technology.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye

  • Bill Nye: There's a reason that I don't accept your Ken Ham model of creation.

  • Is that it has no predictive quality as you had touched on,

  • and something that I've always found troubling.

  • It sounds as though and next time around you can correct me.

  • It sounds as though you believe your world view, which is a literal interpretation of most parts of the Bible, is correct.

  • Well, what became of all those people who never heard of it?

  • Never heard of you? What became of all those people in Asia?

  • What became of all those first nations people in North America?

  • Were they condemned and doomed? I mean, I don't know how much time you've spent talking to strangers,

  • but they're not sanguine about that. To have you tell them that they are inherently lost or misguided.

  • It's very troubling. And you say there are no examples in nature.

  • There are countless examples of how the process of science makes predictions.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye, since evolution teaches that man is evolving and growing smarter over time,

  • how can you explain the numerous evidences of man's high intelligence in the past?

  • Bill Nye: Hang on, there's no evidence that man or humans are getting smarter.

  • No, especially if you ever met my old boss. Heh, heh, heh.

  • No, it's that what happens in evolution. And there's, it's a British word that was used in the middle 1800's.

  • It's survival of the fittest. And this usage, it doesn't mean the most push-ups or the highest scores on standardized tests.

  • It means that those that "fit in" the best. Our intellect, such as it is, has enabled us to dominate the world.

  • I mean, the evidence of humans is everywhere.

  • James Cameron just made another trip to the bottom of the ocean, in the deepest part of the ocean,

  • the first time since 1960. And when they made the first trip, they found a beer can.

  • Humans are everywhere. And so, it is our capacity to reason that has taken us to where we are now.

  • If a germ shows up, as it did, for example, in World War I, where more people were killed by the flu

  • than were killed by the combatants in World War I.

  • That is a troubling and remarkable fact. If the right germ shows up, we'll be taken out.

  • We'll be eliminated. Being smarter is not a necessary consequence of evolution.

  • So far, it seems to be the way things are going because of the remarkable advantage it gives to us.

  • We can control our environment and even change it, as we are doing today, apparently by accident.

  • So, everybody, just take a little while and grasp this fundamental idea.

  • It's how you "fit in" with nature around you. So, as the world changed, as it did, for example, the ancient dinosaurs,

  • they were "taken out" by a worldwide fireball, apparently caused by an impacter.

  • That's the best theory we have. And we are the result of people, of organisms that lived through that catastrophe.

  • It's not necessarily smarter. It's how you "fit in" with your environment.

  • Moderator: Mr. Ham, a response?

  • Ken Ham: I remember at university, one of my professors was very excited to give us some evidence for evolution.

  • He said, "Look at this. Here's an example. These fish have evolved the ability not to see."

  • And, he was going to give an example of blind cave fish.

  • And he said, "See, in this cave, they're evolving, because now the ones that are living there, their ancestors had eyes.

  • Now these ones are blind." And I remember, I was talking to my professor, "But wait a minute!

  • Now they can't do something that they could do before." Yeah, they might have an advantage in this sense.

  • In a situation that's dark like that, those with eyes might have got diseases and died out.

  • Those that had mutations for no eyes are the ones that survived.

  • It's not survival of the fittest. It's survival of those who survive.

  • And it's survival of those that have the information in their circumstance to survive,

  • but you're not getting new information. You're not getting new function.

  • There's no example of that at all. So, we need to correctly understand these things.

  • Moderator: Alright. Um, we're down to our final question here, which I'll give to both of you.

  • And in the interest of fairness here, because it is a question to the both of you,

  • let's give each man two minutes on this if we can, please.

  • And also, in the interest of you having started first, Mr. Ham, I will have you start first here.

  • You'll have the first word. Mr. Nye will have the last word.

  • The question is: what is the one thing, more than anything else, upon which you base your belief?

  • Mr. Ham: What is the one thing upon anything else which I base my belief?

  • Well, again, to summarize the things that I've been saying, there is a book called the Bible.

  • It's a very unique book. It's very different to any other book out there.

  • In fact, I don't know of any other religion that has a book that starts off by

  • telling you that there's an infinite God, and talks about the origin of the universe,

  • and the origin of matter, and the origin of light, and the origin of darkness,

  • and the origin of day and night, and the origin of the earth, and the origin of dry land,

  • and the origin of plants, and the origin of the sun, moon and stars, the origin of sea creatures,

  • the origin of flying creatures, the origin of land creatures, the origin of man,

  • the origin of woman, the origin of death, the origin of sin, the origin of marriage,

  • the origin of different languages, the origin of clothing, the origin of nations,

  • I mean it's a very, very specific book.

  • And it gives us an account of a global flood and the history and the tower of Babel,

  • and if that history is true, then what about the rest of the book?

  • Well, that history also says man is a sinner and it says that man is separated from God.

  • And it gives us a message, that we call the gospel, the message of salvation, that God's son stepped in history

  • that God's son stepped in history to die on the cross, to be raised from the dead,

  • and offers a free gift of salvation.

  • Because the history is true, that's why the message based on history is true.

  • I actually went through some predictions and listed others, and there's a lot more that you can look at,

  • and you can go and test it for yourself. If this book really is true,

  • it is so specific, it should explain the world, it should make sense of what we see.

  • The flood. Yeah, we have fossils all over the world.

  • The tower of Babel, yeah, different people groups, different languages,

  • they have flood legends very similar to the Bible. Creation legends similar to the Bible.

  • There's so much you can look at, and prophesy and so on.

  • Most of all, as I said to you, the Bible says, if you come to God, believing that he is,

  • he'll reveal himself to you. You will know. If you search after truth,

  • you really want God to show you, as you would search after silver and gold,

  • he will show you. He will reveal himself to you.

  • Moderator: Mr. Nye?

  • Mr. Nye: Would you repeat the question?

  • Moderator: The question is: What is the one thing, more than anything else, upon which you base your belief?

  • Mr. Nye: As my old professor Carl Sagan said so often,

  • when you're in love, you want to tell the world. And I base my beliefs on the information

  • and the process that we call science.

  • It fills me with joy to make discoveries every day of things I'd never seen before.

  • It fills me with joy to know that we can pursue these answers.

  • It is a wonderful and astonishing thing to me, that we are, you and I,

  • are somehow, at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself.

  • You and I are a product of the universe. It's astonishing. I admit, I see your faces.

  • That we have come to be because of the universe's existence.

  • And we are driven to pursue that. To find out where we came from.

  • And the second question we all want to know:

  • Are we alone? Are we alone in the universe? And these questions are deep within us,

  • and they drive us. So the process of science, the way we know nature is the most compelling thing to me.

  • And I just want to close by reminding everybody what's at stake here.

  • If we abandon all that we've learned, our ancestors, what they've learned about nature and our place in it,

  • if we abandon the process by which we know it,

  • if we eschew, if we let go of everything that people have learned before us,

  • if we stop driving forward, stop looking for the next answer to the next question,

  • we, in the United States, will be outcompeted by other countries, other economies.

  • Now, that would be okay, I guess, but I was born here. I'm a patriot.

  • So we have to embrace science education. To the voters and taxpayers that are watching,

  • please keep that in mind. We have to keep science education in science and science classes. Thank you.

  • Moderator: One tiny bit of important housekeeping for everyone here, the county is now under a level two snow emergency.

  • Drive home carefully. You'll have a lot to talk about, but drive carefully.

  • This debate will be archived at debatelive.org. That's debatelive.org, one word.

  • It will be found at that site for several days. You can encourage friends and family to watch and take it over.

  • Thanks so much to Mr. Nye and to Mr. Ham for an excellent discussion.

  • I'm Tom Foreman, thank you, good night from Petersburg, Kentucky and the Creation Museum.

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