Bill Nye Debates Creationist Ken Ham Live 2/4/2014

You obviously have no idea what science is, based on this one line.

Scientific method - a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.

Science isn't trying to prove or disprove anything, it's searching for the answer to any question you could ask, without bias or malice.

"Prove based on faith" is an oxymoron. The very concept is to trust without knowing with any certainty.

It's a bit too acerbic to simply state that he doesn't know "what science is" based on a statement such as this. In your (Jassik) case, just by reciting the basic definition of the scientific method without considering the thought process that goes behind each and every experiment is simply naive. I can equally say "You obviously have no idea what science is either" because you're analyzing his statement superficially.

So what is "Kingnobody" talking about? I'll give an example that everyone would be familiar with. Let's say you are a microbiologist. One day, when culturing your pathogenic bacteria, you find a colony of mold growing on one of your petri dishes. To your surprise, it seemed like there was a zone of clearing of bacteria on the plate.

What is your first thought? What do you think caused this zone of clearing?

I bet most of you thought about Alexander Flemming and the discovery of the first mass produced antibiotic. "It must be an antimicrobial! It's an antibiotic!". But let me burst your bubble. You might be right, but you're likely wrong. Why? Because there are hundreds of reasons that it's "not" an antibiotic. For example, the mold might depress the pH of the surrounding area. Microorganisms are very sensitive to pH fluctuations and some can lower pH in order to gain an edge over other organisms. It can be depleting the surrounding nutrients, it can be vitamins, minerals, amino acids. The mold could be releasing qurum sensing molecules, molecules that are used between bacteria to communicate biochemical pathways that merely signals the other cell to grow slower, but does not kill them. This list can go on and on and I can think of at least a dozen other ways that "it doesn't have to be an antibiotic".

As a scientist, you have make sure that your hypothesis "This is an antibiotic" can not be proven otherwise. This is the nature of science. You're constantly asking "Yes" or "No" questions and you're using experimental design to accomplish this. This is the nature of science; it's all binary. More on this later. (back to work)

So lets ask this, how does one modify your hypothesis? Could it be because your original hypothesis has been disproved? Could your methodology been incorrect? Did somebody else tried your experiment and produced different results?

Plus Keityan said it better than me.

I was giving an overall summary and correlation between the two which showed different methods to produce the same idea. Which was my argument, that science and religion are two different "coins" in the concept of determining fact.

So what process exactly does faith/religion do to prove facts?

I actually don't have a big problem with describing science as "proving based in disproving" since that's often part of it, but saying religion is trying to "prove facts" is totally laughable, unless you consider "because god is trying to test my faith" a proof.

You assertions are fundamentally flawed. Science isn't seeking to prove or disprove anything, it's a systematic method for answering questions about the universe. Anyone who says science is trying to disprove has no understanding of the scientific method. And I'm not assessing anything superficially, you can't put science and religion as opposing forces in that sense, they aren't related in any way. Science is a method of answering questions, religion offers BS answers for people who just need something to fill in the blanks so they can cope with existence.

In your example, the scientific approach is to hypothesize why the mold displaced the bacteria, then design a way to test that hypothesis, examine the results, either modify your hypothesis or present the test for peer review. Your peers then perform the test as well as their own tests of the hypothesis to see if they can replicate the results. If the hypothesis is repeatable with the same results it becomes the common theory until something comes along that either changes or further modifies it, which will also go through the same process. It's static, inflexible, repeatable, and universal.

Edit: This post is not against either of these two posters I quoted above.

I never said that they do so. But try to explain to a Christian that God doesn't exist.

Which is also a point I need to make: People think differently than you.

That doesn't mean that you are always right and they are always wrong. Because if you do, so do they, and that is where 100% of the arguments come from.

Your viewpoint is your viewpoint. Christians believe that God exists, and that God created the earth XXXX years ago, and, as Bill Nye had the displeasure of finding out, trying to talk them out of it is near impossible.

Does that mean that Christians are right and you are wrong? No.
Does that mean that you are right and Christians are wrong? No.

So, open your mind and realize that you are not the center of the universe (not saying the two posters I quoted, but everyone) and look at people for who they are and respect them for who they are. Because disrespecting them will earn you nothing more than a headache and a label of "***."

This is splitting hairs, but it depends on if you care to factor in the researcher's own slant, I suppose. Obviously the methodology used has to be objective but the researcher is probably going to have his own slant which affects what the hypothesis is. It's just that the difference between science and religion is that ideally the scientist comes back and says "Oh, my hypothesis was wrong", whereas the religious will either come up with more reasons why the test was invalid, or they'll reinterpret whatever book/scripture to fit the world.


Please spare me the "keep your mind open" stuff, because the religious people that earn the ire of people in these debates are always because these people say something idiotic. Do you ever see people crapping on Einstein because he said he thinks there was a creator? No, and that's because he simply left it at that so that you know he was stating it as a matter of personal belief. If you want to discuss theology/cosmology in a reasonable way, I'm sure plenty of people are very much interested in the topics. However, you arn't getting why I show 0 respect for "debaters" like Ken Ham and scummy religious sites like creation.com. I already mentioned it earlier:


This isn't a matter of respecting all religious peoples' opinions, because almost none of the people involved in such debates are people who care to show your stated respect by understanding even the basics of the topic(s) they claim to be able to be knowledgeable enough to debate about. I have plenty of respect for people who believe god exist and understand that that belief is based in faith, because they actually know how to separate the two topics. The problem isn't that these particular people believe in god, the problem is that they knowingly spread misinformation about both science and religion with their anti-intellectual horseshit. I don't need to respect people that do this for a living.

Or rewrite the book/scripture to reflect their thinking.

I can respect someone who believes there is another dimension.

I cannot respect someone who disregards scientific facts, like that movement of people who think the earth is flat and all pictures of space are fake.

Those who believe in the latter are in a very very very VERY small minority.

I was talking in general.

Respect should be given to those who deserve it imo.

Just 'cause it seems to fit:

"It beefsteak when I am hungry,
Corn whiskey when I am dry,
Pretty women when I am lonely,
And religion when I die" - Traditional.

Science is not opposed to faith.

Faith can easily be opposed to reason. Doesn't have to be. The Jesuits do both faith and reason and do both quite well. They do science well too.

As to proselytizers? That's why I read the bible all the way through. For ammunition.

This is one of the major points for Nye: religion doesn't have any predictive power. However, being able to prove facts doesn't mean that you're not allowed to ask the same questions. Both can equally scrutinize scientific papers and offer an alternative hypothesis.

One of the major points that Ham makes is that scientists extrapolate data well into the past without without knowing what the conditions of the earth in the past. This is an entirely valid argument. We're extrapolating from what we observe today, but we don't have data from that long ago-- so we have to depend on artifacts of the past that can be misleading.

As a scientist, you always have to be aware that even though you don't know something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means that we don't know that it exists... yet.

In this respect, creationists are overemphasizing "what we don't know". This concept doesn't make them less reasonable. It's perfectly reasonable to believe that there might be something that we may be missing in every piece of evidence. But as science begins to explore more frontiers and we understand more about what is around us, the "what we don't know" argument is a continually receding paradigm.

The "we don't know" argument becomes unreasonable when the intent of it being made is that you want to cherry pick one of the unknowns and then assume it's true with no supporting evidence

That logic can be used to question your knowledge of basically everything in existence (except maybe the fact that you exist) so when you bring that into the debate the debate basically becomes about nothing

You're missing the fact that we do know much about the earth's conditions in the past. We can mathematically determine many things based on current conditions. We have actual samples of ancient atmosphere and can observe similar processes on neighboring planets. Nye said many times that the natural laws in the past cannot be different than they are today, you can take that on almost any level, even down to simple things like a bush burning but not being consumed. Rapid oxidation is a static process, there is no way a bush could burn and not be consumed, it's utter nonsense. Someone living inside a fish, also, complete nonsense. A wooden boat large enough to house 14,000 animals is also absolutely impossible and any ship engineer is thoroughly disgusted at the idea that such a ship could ever exist even with modern technology due to the physics of waves (i.e. bridging, large ships bridge waves and tend to collapse).

Extrapolation is only useful as long as it can be tested. Someone observes that it took billions of years for multicellular life to emerge, hypothesizes that there wasn't much oxygen in the ancient atmosphere. They test the air bubbles trapped inside ancient rocks and find that the atmosphere was much lower in oxygen at that time. They then find that the oxygen levels rose steadily up to a certain point which corresponds with the emergence of multicellular life. They test whether multicellular life can survive at the lower oxygen levels and they all die very rapidly. Tested, confirmed, this becomes the current theory until new data comes along.

Again, science is a method for answering questions about the universe, and when new information comes along, scientific methodology demands that theories change.

god did it.

Which one.

I'd be willing to go Pagan if beautiful women are going to take me to Asgard to train with the most badass men the world has ever known. Eat, drink, carouse and then the final battle? *** yes.

I'd add to the "We can't know the past spiel" by saying that there is some merit to that. We don't know for sure, but we have reasonable evidence that suggests that our processes and methods are accurate.

We have little to no evidence to the contrary that states that at some point the way physics works suddenly changed in some drastic way that would make the opposing side's story any more likely.

The difference is that when/if we FIND that evidence, we are willing to look at it and re-evaluate what we know while the other side will sweep it under the rug or appeal to the book and say we are wrong.

Honestly though... I don't understand how anyone can subscribe to the "you weren't there, how can you know" thought. It's self destructive.

"you weren't there when the bible was written, how do you know it was written by god inspired people?"

"you weren't there, how do you know I wasn't?"

At this point, a valid argument turns in to a silly "All purpose excuse" for explaining away anything that doesn't match up with your own ideals.

sign me up!

Let me organize your thoughts more clearly since the ideas jumped around.

1. You think my assertions are fundamentally flawed because the book definition of science never mentions prove or disproving. Your assertions is that science is just a method, not a concept of simply proving or disproving anything. (Just wanted to make sure our definitions are straight). What I hope to explain to you is #2.

2. You claim that you are not superficial and I am claiming that you are superficial. I say that you are superficial because the fundamental idea of experimental design is based on proving and disproving facts. You mention hypothesis testing but you never realize what questions we ask during hypothesis testing. What I was trying to explain to you with the example of Penicillin is that science is all about answering "yes" and "no" questions. It's proving and disproving. This is why I call you superficial. You give us the entire process of how scientific papers are released but you gave no thought to the thought process of each and every experiment we perform. I was hoping you would extrapolate from the scenario that I had presented, but I'll make it more detailed and easier to understand.

I'd kinda laugh if after we die, we're presented with a God from one of the religions that got wiped out over the centuries due to the religious conflicts caused by warring nations.

You know, like Viracocha. Suck on that Eurasia, the one true god was actually in South America and thanks to some conquistadors we never got to bask in his presence.

Thanks, Spain.

The basic process of science is testing, not dis/proving. The problem with looking at it in a binary sense is that you are blind to the outside variables. You design experiments to test single variables, yes, but within those closed experiments there are nearly infinite variables. Every experiment yields data, data isn't intrinsically binary, it's just information. The idea that science is looking for proof is heresy, it's goal is understanding. Looking for proof closes you off from new information, that's exactly why Newton never managed to test the actual mechanics of gravity. Yes gravity exists, stuff falls, PROOF!... but why and how?

You're trying to bridge bias/perspective into a strictly sterile method. You can't merge science with scientists, they are not the same thing.

I don't think anyone is saying science doesn't prove or disprove things, just that the point of science is not just to do those things. It's to find answers. The method uses this as one of its key elements but science didn't come around to destroy faith or kill puppies.

I think one thing that people miss fairly often is that you don't use science to prove yourself right or others wrong, you use it to BECOME right.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." —Isaac Asimov

Yes, I am aware of this process of getting a paper published in a scientific journal. This is my day job. But how you're superficial is this. What is your hypothesis? You're asking a question. The answer to that question is binary. It's a yes or no answer. You make your assumptions based on these yes or no answers. These yes or no answers are proving and disproving an idea. This is all that experimental design is. Science is based on experimental design.

Let's get into the lab. I'll show you how scientific reasoning actually looks like. I'll let you play with these thoughts and think about what the controls are going to be. Even your (+) and (-) controls are going to give you binary yes/no answers.

I have a zone of clearing of this bacteria around a piece of mold.
Question. "Is it a pH change change that is causing inhibition?"
But then you'll have to ask
Question: Is there a pH change around the colony at all?
Experiment: Let's use a dye that we can put in the plate that will change color if the pH drops.
Results: There is a color change around the colony.
Yes, there is a pH difference.

This doesn't mean that it "can't" be antibiotics because we have to test this question more indepth.
Question. "Is the pH affecting anything with the surrounding colonies?"
Experiment: Gradient of pHed tubes and innoculate bacteria.
Results: No, they can live even in lower pH environment. Therefore pH is not something that is inhibiting it.

Now you can go on and on with all the reasonable scenarios that you know with the question and maybe, you get to this question:

Question. "Is it an antimicrobial agent?
Experiment: Take a bunch of mold and extract everything. Take the liquid supernatant and add it to a tube of bacteria (I'm over simplifying, it's can get much more complicated than this).
Results: It didn't grow.
Yes, it can be an antimicrobial agent.

But how does it work? Is it specific to Gram(-) bacteria or Grame (+) bacteria? Can we purify this molecule? More experimentation. Knock out some bacterial genes, clone them with different polymerases etc.

This concept of binary questions is all that scientists do. It's proving or disproving statements. This is why science and the process in which it conducts all its experiments is based upon proving and disproving. You can't simply make scientific judgement without it.

This is the misconception that people have about science-- no one ever "becomes" right or wrong. It's a process in which people understands things around them. We can always think of theories as "how things work". These theories hold up very well because they explain how things work and are predictive. We know they are predictive because we've studied them experimentally. (More binary yes/no questions being answered to prove/disprove alternative hypothesis). It doesn't mean that they are right. It just means that no one else has a better model of prediction.. yet.

This is the grandeur of science. It can always change. The quintessential example of this is the theory of relativity. We're sure it works under experimental design in the large scale. It should work with ALL matter. But it doesn't. That's called quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics defines how subatomic particles move. Under the theory of relativity, even subatomic particles are subject to its laws (and constantly gives you poor predictive models). Under quantum mechanics, these laws work but don't hold true once you get to full atoms! But they simply both can not be right! (But to say that they are both wrong is incorrect as well, because they are highly predictive in their respective fields.) I encourage you to read "The Elegant Universe" if you I piqued your interest in this subject, although I do admit, it's a bit of a dry read.

Keityan, I would drop it if I were you. I agree and I appreciate that you went beyond my simplistic summary of the method involved with science, but with some posters here who deal with absolutes, there is no reasoning with them.

You will be continuing this argument until the thread got locked and/or you were banned for arguing with Jassik (even if you were right and Jassik was the one who started the argument and he continued for the sake of argument).

That's just stirring antagonism KN. If you have further insight on the subject you can express it, but you're not helping the conversation with that post.

Now that you mention it, this has passed through my mind a couple of times. Are we less intimidating to approach? Are we seen as that easily swayed?

I've had experiences that are very similar to Kara's, then again, it's The South, so...