This will be your chance to discuss the debate as it happens. At the time I'm posting this the debate will start soon. Here is a link to where you can see it. Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham
There have been some issues raised about Nye taking on this debate. Feel free to express your views on that point as well.
I've only watched the openers, and though I have no intention of watching any further or engaging in any serious debate (I'm on the "side" of evolution anyway), I have a question: For the layman (i.e., someone who is not a research scientist and not involved in the peer review process), how would you refute this argument, as posited by Mac from It's Always Sunny?
"And what makes you think what your scientists are writing is any more truer than my saints? [...] You get your [scientific] information from a book written by men you've never met. And you take their words as truth, based on a willingness to believe, a desire to accept, a leap of of, dare I say it? Faith?"
I think Bill is making a lot of sense talking about Noah's Ark. I never challenged this theory before but...
Noah's flood actually isn't a theory, it's a religious belief.
Theory; A scientific explanation of related observations or events based on hypotheses and verified multiple times by different independent researchers.
Noah's flood doesn't meet this definition of what a scientific theory is. Though I do remember trying to calculate how much food all these animals would need for a year. The amount of food alone would nearly completely fill the boat.
Speaking of flood...he should have mentioned how there is nowhere near enough water on Earth for a worldwide flood
"And what makes you think what your scientists are writing is any more truer than my saints? [...] You get your [scientific] information from a book written by men you've never met. And you take their words as truth, based on a willingness to believe, a desire to accept, a leap of of, dare I say it? Faith?"
I can use their studies to produce similar effects or observe the same observations. They state their interpretation of the data, which I could very well also find similar interpretations by using their methods.
"And what makes you think what your scientists are writing is any more truer than my saints? [...] You get your [scientific] information from a book written by men you've never met. And you take their words as truth, based on a willingness to believe, a desire to accept, a leap of of, dare I say it? Faith?"
Know how in math class your teacher tells you to show your work? This is when you're solving the problem presented to you you have to show each step you took to get your answer, so that anyone can look at it and follow what you did and see if you made any mistakes and see if they get the same answer. Scientists also have to do this, we can look at the steps the scientist took to get his answer and from those facts we can see if he did anything wrong.
I can use their studies to produce similar effects or observe the same observations. They state their interpretation of the data, which I could very well also find similar interpretations by using their methods.
But I refer to the layman who doesn't have the training or the millions of dollars in equipment to recreate their methods. (Also, as far as I know, peer review generally does not involve replicating experiments.)
Ken Ham is going on about radiometric dating trying to refute the age of the Earth and claim a young Earth. See my post about the other evidence for an old Earth.
But I refer to the layman who doesn't have the training or the millions of dollars in equipment to recreate their methods. (Also, as far as I know, peer review generally does not involve replicating experiments.
No, but if the scientist did it right he showed his work. That we can look at.
I wonder what he'd say about us having added genetic material to organisms and thus changing their progeny forever? We can add pglow to E. Coli and they'll glow under UV light when they never did before. ...and so will their progeny.
...Bacteria transfer genetic material all the time and change.. which is what is making some of them so dangerous. You can still be religious and not be creationist.
The worst part I've experienced with talking with the anti-evolutionists is that they can't even explain the theory they so vehemently refute. They have no idea how it works and they just babble on and on about things that have no real value. :-/ c'est la gare I suppose...
But I refer to the layman who doesn't have the training or the millions of dollars in equipment to recreate their methods. (Also, as far as I know, peer review generally does not involve replicating experiments.)
This is why we have Lab activities in universities--to replicate popular experiments from popular Theories. For instance with computer modules, we can manipulate several values from Finch A, Finch B, and a hawk predator to understand how Competition, Natural Selection, and Bottlenecking work.
Know how in math class your teacher tells you to show your work? This is when you're solving the problem presented to you you have to show each step you took to get your answer, so that anyone can look at it and follow what you did and see if you made any mistakes and see if they get the same answer. Scientists also have to do this, we can look at the steps the scientist took to get his answer and from those facts we can see if he did anything wrong.
No, but if the scientist did it right he showed his work. That we can look at.
Here's how I interpret Mac's words: You set the truth to be previous literature to confirm another truth, in many ways similar to how creationists set the Bible as truth. But if you cannot actually recreate these experiments, why should you believe any of them to be true in the first place?
A slight tangent, but there is a point to be made there: false positives do pass through the peer review process.
Here's how I interpret Mac's words: You set the truth to be previous literature to confirm another truth, in many ways similar to how creationists set the Bible as truth. But if you cannot actually recreate these experiments, why should you believe any of them to be true in the first place?
A slight tangent, but there is a point to be made there: false positives do pass through the peer review process.
This is kinda why scientists do not make every well-supported argument a Law and declare it 100% fact.
Scientific Principles (theories) are well-supported arguments, but there are always scientists out there seeking to bring said theories under scrutiny to ask the question "Will this work under the same conditions?"
Even with this explained, it still boggles my mind. If you look at my previous thread about Heliocentrism not being a law...how is it not a law? XD But after reviewing what a Law and Theory are, I have to retract my previous statements and concede.
