Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye "The Science Guy" - The Creation Debate In-Depth Analysis by a Non-Denominational Christian/Part-time Theologian-Apologist

It has become of a great worry and concern to me the world I've had to witness in the science-religion and faith-reason field. Fundamentalist religion has fought for its ideology in the name of whole religions, only to be lampooned by non-believers (specially antitheists and anti-religious groups). On the other hand, a group of atheists called New Atheists whose way of thinking and "imposing the truth" over people (in a similar way to fundamentalism) has become a common thing among my contemporaries (Yes, I'm just a 17 year old teen). It's a never-ending story of finding reasons to argue and not finding common terms.

It was no different what happened a couple days ago. And the most sad thing is that, while the fundamentalist crowd were thinking about defending God and New Atheists viewers of the debate were like "yay, atheism" when Bill Nye delivered structured arguments while Ken Ham prefered to take on a preaching-esque style instead, I think just of one thing that these guys surely will get from this debate: money, power, respect (I may be going too over-the top.... perhaps it's just that they want more plain-straight fame, whatever).

Defend the Scripture in the name of the Lord or defend science in the name of Darwin: Two ways to get some attention or cash? (and in case you guessed right, this screenshot is from the Answers in Genesis' website)

It's most likely you recognize more Bill Nye than Ken Ham (even if you're evangelical) since he was The Science Guy in a show I honestly don't remember (perhaps because it stopped running two years after I was just born) so you may be already familiar with him, therefore I'll try instead to briefly introduce this Answers in Genesis guy I honestly never heard about (at least the Science Guy gives me that "I'm pretty sure I saw you somewhere before" feel that Ken Ham doesn't).

Answers in "Bereshit": Ken Ham and the Young Earth Creationism model

Ken Ham

This will be pretty interesting as, while I know what I'll write about certain topics in this article, there are other things I'm reading and making conclusions about as I read. And this is one of them: Ken Ham.
As I just said, I know pretty much nothing about him or Answers in Genesis, so I decided to go to their website and read about them and Ken Ham's biography.

Kem Ham is the CEO of Answers in Genesis, an organization that seeks to spread "the truth" about God and the origins of this world (specially the later, apparently) to people. He has a bachelor's degree in applied science with emphasis on enviromental biology and a college diploma of education. (as a sidenote, I'm currently a sciences and letters senior student; though my interests are more focused on art and I'm not "that" inclined to Biology, Chemistry, etc. as I'm to Arts, Philosophy, and Logic. Proof a bachelor's degree has a relative value).

He's apparently written various books about his religious views of this world's origins and history, and contrary to the belief of some people, his beliefs aren't shared by most Christians, not even the ones who take the whole Bible books as literal accounts of history, as this other debate proves.

Continuing with that last statement, Wikipedia says this about the theological -not biological- criticism of Young Earth Creationism:
"Few theologians take the Genesis account of creation literally. Although Christian evangelicals largely reject the notion of purely naturalistic Darwinian evolution, most treat it as a nonliteral saga, as poetry, or as liturgical literature."

I think my church ain't one of those that don't take it literally (it's a Pentecostal Foursquare church, by the way), but at least I doubt they believe in a "young earth", and it's also very likely that my brothers and sisters in Christ have, respectively, different viewpoints about our origins. In a very zeitgeist (spirit of the ages) way, people's thinking changes through history, even for Christian believers, and many fundamentalist tenets are slowly fading away (even if some anti-religious critics say otherwise). I even know a Christian friend (and leader at my church) who studies biology, even if he doesn't accept personally all what biology says, though he doesn't go "the Ken Ham way" either.

Problems in Genesis, Theologically-wise

As someone who has personally studied the very first chapters of Genesis and translated what the text says in Hebrew by myself and making text comparisons instead of reading any of the traditional versions (Reina-Valera would be the one for me in said case, not KJV; my native language is Spanish), there are many things that apoint to a sort of "God restoring a place" meaning of Genesis instead of the traditional "origins of the world" interpretation. This is specifically evoked by "tohu wa bohu", a phrase that is often translated as "void and without form", but which apparently has a contextual meaning related to the state of a place after a catastrophe. That leads to the big new question: Is Genesis actually a story about... Genesis?

Traditionalist views would instantly see this as heresy, but it would be a very interesting topic of research. Bereshit -that word I used earlier in place of Genesis- means "in the beginning" in Hebrew, and it's how the namesake book begins (Genesis means "Beginning" in greek, a direct translation of "Reshit"), but it's never made clear how many time (be it literal or symbolical; it's equally ambiguous regardless of your interpretation) happens between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, were our "tohu wa bohu" appears.

I'll leave this interrogant till here, but I'd like to do some historical-theological research with an equally curious team someday. What I wonder is: Do other Christian apologists, including Ken Ham, have acknowledged this amazing mystery at least? (Side-note: Any obscure, Christian cults/off-shots that may exist based on this factor don't count)

(EDIT: Gap creationism. Look for it. Not that I have exactly that belief, but indeed is a belief around what I'm saying, anyway)

A Science Educator Seeking to Change the World: Bill Nye the Science (and Skeptical) Guy and How Much is Darwinist Education Influential for Progress.

Bill Nye

Former student of the late Carl Sagan. Star of a science show (that I doubt I ever watched). And a defender of evolution over creationism. William Sanford Nye a well-known science guy (indeed there's no better way to say it. He's both a science educator and scientist) and his views against creationism (calling it "dangerous for children" are nothing new, so no wonder why he liked the idea of debating against this Ken Ham dude.

But I expand upon that even more instead (perhaps because I'm a non-denominational Christian with non-conservative views, which somewhat puts me in the edge between faith and reasoning) and therefore I think what is overall actually dangerous is parents narrowing their children's thought to "one truth". I'll explain it briefly: I was raised as an evangelical Christian by an evangelical mother and a skeptic father (and that was never a problem; take notes, fundamentalists who use Paul's "do not be yoked with unbelievers" as base to forbid Christian-non-Christian marriage) and it was always in a subtle way. I always felt my mother was teaching me faith more than anything when it came to Christian stuff. It wasn't like indoctrination. It never felt like it. The fact I have abandoned evangelical faith by my own proves me that raising a child as a Christian isn't the issue for ignornace: forcing anything as an immutable truth to a child is.

Anyway, as I could listen in the video, he says (in a very USA-centric way; something I'll never like; be it an atheist, skeptic, Christian, Raelian, whatever) that creationism is preventing progress because of ignorance on scientific matter. But I think the problem isn't that. I, living in a less-developed country with poorer education, have noted that people are taught to keep things TOO simple and don't think about anything too much and it is this extremely pragmatic way of thinking, mixed with teen hedonism, which makes my contemporaries -like Wiz Khalifa's song says- young, wild, and free... but not curious nor visionary.

This is not a religious problem. Is an educative, social, and idealistic issue. People have found a replacement for religion in other things, be it hobbies, vices, and so on. There are now teens who precisely think there's no more life than this but that doesn't necessarily make them the "nerdy atheist eager to learn more for the sake of science" stereotype. They're not even curious about anything, nor about living or dying to be more accurate. (Call that YOLO philosophy; a contemporary offshoot of the hedonistic school of thought)

As a theistic evolution-supporting Christian (and don't look me now as a kinda odd Christian for that -two Popes had that theological view-), I see no problem in believing or not creation (be it Creationism as traditionally understood or a more "God created universe" kind of belief like mine) since that isn't what will determine progress. It's the disposition of knowing more, the eager of discovering more and the lack of fear of being proven wrong what will make progress happen. People should be less attached to their traditional basis, without necessarily denying it right away. Faith is personal and it won't change because science changes. But indeed one can't take the ancient interpretations of the universe as accurate in today's standards. And that's what we must fear not of losing: Religiousness.

It's quite ironical in Christianity that there's such thing as Fundamentalism, having being Jesus a big game changer not only in the sense of redeemer and savior of the world as Christians see, but a revolutionary man (or ideal man, in case you disbelief its existence) who changed the way of God-mankind relationship from Man-rules-God to Man-love-God and broke with certain Jewish traditions, even while being Jewish himself. I encourage fellow Christians to follow Jesus path and challenge authority and ancient rules when required; but wisely, not violently nor irrationally.

The other problem I see (and in this I support Nye) is that there are indeed Christians who disbelief science. I think my brothers and sisters in Christ have understood science completely wrong. Science is not a faith. Science is not the absolute truth, either. Science is the study, both rational and empirical, of everything that surrounds us and how it works. You can't disbelief in science itself since it's based on facts. However, you can disbelief a theory, as long as you consider there's a viable alternative that can be proved (even if not fully available at the time). We must not mix the matters of faith with matters of reason. "To Caesar what is Caesar's", I must personally say to fellow Christians, indistinct of their denominations. If you trust the Bible as infalible (I don't, as it was written by man, and one of its books even talks about discerning), you should follow those words. If you don't, you shall still do so, because it's wisdom. This was written in a context talking about Roman taxes, but it applies to many other things (unlike other Bible verses constantly quoted out of context, though).

My Conclusion: Let's Not Mix the Wrong Things Together

Reason and faith are two different realms. Realms of thought that are explored by philosophy separately, not as one. Faith is meant to go beyond reason, not below it. A man of faith can't force its faith to make what's possible happen through non-conventional means, even when reason proves otherwise. Faith is to make possible what's impossible, thus breaking reason's limits instead of being crushed by it. Also, metaphysics will always be a matter of conjecture and relativity. Those who don't believe in it simply don't mind about it, and those who believe in it should take in mind that if there's something beyond, it can also be beyond what we expect it to be.

These quotes summarize the difference between science and faith quite easily:

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Physician and face of the "Watch Out, We Got a Badass Over Here" meme.

"Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

-Jesus of Nazareth, according to John 20:29 (NIV)

(Footnote: Originally, as you can guess by the first pic, I was just going to skeptically say the whole debate thing was a made-up thing so that Bill Nye could reignite his fame while Ken Ham got more money for his attempt-of-Museum and his Noah's Ark project; however I instead ended up philosophizing. That's a good thing, indeed)