Bill Nye vs Ken Ham creationism/evolution debate

[Kaslo]

Yes, religious studies are extremely important as far as cultural studies go. It explains the origins and meanings behind diverse cultures, how they developed, and how their life was shaped by religion. It should be taught side-by-side with history and humanities - separate it for the schools that want to teach it as its own course in theological study (Catholic schools and other denominational private schools).

I learned more about religion and Christianity at my University (private Baptist Institution...highly liberal in today's conservative Baptist standards) than I ever did at my Catholic elementary school, and mostly because religious studies at Uni are not about "This is Jesus, believe or repent" but rather "This is why Jesus and what it means to Jesus as a narrative or literal truth, believe or not" You will honestly find better conversations about the sciences and religion from theologians and those that went to a seminary school rather than the cranks you see and hear on the media because their voice is so loud.

This is why I like my church (a large methodist church in a red state). For instance, when we discuss Genesis its with context of why there are two different stories of creation (to bring in believers of both ancient stories).

[Jaybar]

Also one thing that I think Bill Nye got horribly wrong was assuming people in the past can't be trusted with translations. Prior to the written documents tribes and communities used oral story telling with exceptionally high accuracy. This is still applicable today. You can find people that have memorized the entire Bible and can recite it word for word - and that's not because they have super powers, but because that is how their family and society grew up.

Now to say that the Bible has been translated "4,000 times or so" is another false statement. The early writers (not Moses btw) took the oral histories and jotted them down into manuscripts in Hebrew. That constitutes the Old Testament. Many originals are still around today - they didn't go through any translations. In order to make the Greek transcripts a new Hebrew written language had to be created to create the vowels, but otherwise nothing was lost in the transition. Today all English and other foreign languages are derived from the Greek original transcripts for the Bible. I don't know which Christian Bibles use the Hebrew transcripts however you can find some Bibles that include both Hebrew, Greek, and English passages put side-by-side.

[Byrthnoth]

Almost everything you wrote in that post is objectively false.

Here's a wikipedia link for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible

[ronin sparthos]

They could just teach Christianity under the same subject i learned about Islam, various african,native american,aboriginal,etc cultures and so on in my school. Make some of it part of social studies.
Of course considering the bullshit Americans pull would completely ruin that so the chances of an idiot fucking it all up so that it's not a viable is too high but a very basic explanation of history and basic tenets should be fine.
Honestly most of it should be taught by the family/parents anyway. It's not the school's job to educate a person about religion outside of a purely academic context unless they're a catholic school.

Problem is the proponents of Christendom don't see their religion as social studies but a statement on the metaphysics of the universe. That flood was literal, those dinosaurs were living 5000 years ago records of other cultures be damned, the world is destined to be swept up in prophecy and the second coming of Christ. It's all literal. Every passage of it.

Christianity is not like Islam or any of the other fraudulent religions but the inerrant word of God so why shouldn't pervade every level of society?

You cannot reason with Biblical literalists. These are the same people who jump through hoops to justify God's homicidal rampages and will defend concepts like slavery as being just because God said it was just.

[Ksandra]

I do believe world religions should be a required class in school because knowledge is power. Look at how many ignorant statements are made about the Quran to attack "Muslim terrorists." You will always find ignorant people, but we should try to minimize it. Equally, there are a lot of ignorant thoughts about the various sects of Christianity (yes, including from Christians themselves), that I would consider it beneficial to gain more understanding. However, as mentioned, I doubt it would ever happen in places with an influx of fanatics who would flip over their kids being taught that stuff.

[Jaybar]

Almost everything you wrote in that post is objectively false.

Here's a wikipedia link for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible

Since I have no idea what part of my post you are referring, I am going to go ahead and assume it's my dumbed-down translation history.

"The Bible exists in multiple manuscripts, none of them autographs, and multiple canons, none of which completely agree on which books have sufficient authority to be included or their order."

This makes it seem like the Bible has a thousand translations and no Bible is therefore the same (this is indeed how you arrive at the Apocrypha), however -

"The higher the volume of the earliest texts (and their parallels to each other), the greater the textual reliability and the less chance that the transcript's content has been changed over the years."

This is what I was inferring. All translations are aimed at primary sources. Here's another finding that might pique your interest -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript

"When comparing one manuscript to another, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two copies agree completely throughout. There has been an estimate of 400,000 variations among all these manuscripts (from the 2nd to 15th century) which is more than there are words in the New Testament. This is less significant than may appear since it is a comparison across linguistic boundaries. More important estimates focus on comparing texts within languages. Those variations are considerably fewer. The vast majority of these are accidental errors made by scribes, and are easily identified as such: an omitted word, a duplicate line, a misspelling, a rearrangement of words. Some variations involve apparently intentional changes, which often make more difficult a determination of whether they were corrections from better exemplars, harmonizations between readings, or ideologically motivated.[6] Palaeography is the study of ancient writing, and textual criticism is the study of manuscripts in order to reconstruct a probable original text."

And the name of the Bible I was mentioning with both English and Greek is the Polyglot for scholars to see how the Greek Septuagint holds up to the English translation. I forget the name of the Hebrew version (Concordant?)

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5136/5...6f6bd4b0_z.jpg

[notorious bum]

I feel like Neil Degrasse Tyson would have been a better orator for this, he's much less likely to hold punches against the blithering cavemen.

[Pirian]

I feel like Neil Degrasse Tyson would have been a better orator for this, he's much less likely to hold punches against the blithering cavemen.

Are you kidding? He is super culturally sensitive. While I agree that Bill Nye looked to be intentionally non-confrontational, I don't think NDT would been any harder on them.

[ringthree]

While I don't agree a lot (why do people still think the world is only 6,000yrs old?...I mean seriously?) with what Ken Ham said, I consider myself religious but I don't agree with viewpoints on abortion and evolution, and would say Nye easily won this debate, I still find nothing wrong with religion. Yes, it can be a detriment to society when you take it to such crazy levels like Repubs and people screaming about Abortion/Gays/Blahblah but like everything, the crazies are ALWAYS the ones that people notice. There's nothing stopping a scientist from being great and still having a religious philosophy, so long as it doesn't interfere with his work...and a good scientist won't let them happen. Scientific findings are always skewed one way or the other though, mostly for funding, so it's hard to say it would never be skewed or isn't skewed by religion...but if the discoveries/inventions lead to better life...who cares?


I believe students in school should be given both sides, and in a way that doesn't try to discredit one or the other. I'm sure people will flip a shit over that, but why not? Each side should tolerate the non-crazies of each side, and condemn the fuckwads on both sides who flip a shit on everything. In no way should we say "This is better" and force it upon people, let people figure shit out on their own. If they want to go super religious and believe the bible word for word, so long as they arn't being horrible detrimental to the whole, I don't give a shit.

Religion however should never be in fucking politics, laws should never be made based on the viewpoints of a single group.

The problem is that, scientifically, there is no other side. You cannot present something that can be objectively proven false (the age of the earth, e.g.) as an a legitimate alternative. If you want to debate different theories of evolution in class, go for it. There is no evidence on the creationism side of the debate.

[Kyte]

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014...91576908-9.jpg

There's only so much you can do when you're dealing with adults like this.


At any rate, one thing Bill could have maybe done better (unless I missed it- I tuned in a little late) is to explain the difference between the scientific definition of a theory and the colloquial meaning, as I think that's one of the biggest sources of misunderstanding.

[ringthree]

I agree with that fully, it was definitely more "My side is right because (x)" even though they did say they agreed on certain points (At least I know Ken did a few times).



Oh what i'm saying more is that we shouldn't teach ONE thing as THE ONLY TRUTH. Which is how schools are taught now and children are raised in certain families. Let people go out and figure things out on their own, provide them with knowledge but tell them "This is just one of many possible solutions, here is the data to support this". Critical thinking just isn't taught to children and in schools nowadays. It's just "hey just parrot back all these facts on the test and move on".

This doesn't happen. Ever. The term scientific theory inherent disproves that claim, but there is a mountain of evidence to support the theory. I have never ever been in a science class that has ever claimed the theory of evolution is the "ONLY TRUTH". That is both a claim that creationists make about creationism and yet, at the same time, completely hypocritically, level against the theory of evolution.

[ringthree]

Also one thing that I think Bill Nye got horribly wrong was assuming people in the past can't be trusted with translations. Prior to the written documents tribes and communities used oral story telling with exceptionally high accuracy. This is still applicable today. You can find people that have memorized the entire Bible and can recite it word for word - and that's not because they have super powers, but because that is how their family and society grew up.

Now to say that the Bible has been translated "4,000 times or so" is another false statement. The early writers (not Moses btw) took the oral histories and jotted them down into manuscripts in Hebrew. That constitutes the Old Testament. Many originals are still around today - they didn't go through any translations. In order to make the Greek transcripts a new Hebrew written language had to be created to create the vowels, but otherwise nothing was lost in the transition. Today all English and other foreign languages are derived from the Greek original transcripts for the Bible. I don't know which Christian Bibles use the Hebrew transcripts however you can find some Bibles that include both Hebrew, Greek, and English passages put side-by-side.

LOL

Did you just say that there are ORIGINAL COPIES still around from the Old Testament? The Dead Sea scrolls which are considered to be the oldest available reference to the Old Testament are from ~450 BC.

/facepalm

This thread is so god damn stupid.

[ringthree]

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014...91576908-9.jpg

There's only so much you can do when you're dealing with adults like this.


At any rate, one thing Bill could have maybe done better (unless I missed it- I tuned in a little late) is to explain the difference between the scientific definition of a theory and the colloquial meaning, as I think that's one of the biggest sources of misunderstanding.

The funniest thing to me is that the most legitimate claim to the existence of god is the comment about the sunset, because at least that is a question of aesthetics and metaphysics, not one of the stupid attempts to question science.

[Cream Soda]

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014...91576908-9.jpg

There's only so much you can do when you're dealing with adults like this.


At any rate, one thing Bill could have maybe done better (unless I missed it- I tuned in a little late) is to explain the difference between the scientific definition of a theory and the colloquial meaning, as I think that's one of the biggest sources of misunderstanding.

http://img.pokemondb.net/artwork/mankey.jpg

[Jaybar]

LOL

Did you just say that there are ORIGINAL COPIES still around from the Old Testament? The Dead Sea scrolls which are considered to be the oldest available reference to the Old Testament are from ~450 BC.

/facepalm

This thread is so god damn stupid.

Not one sentence implies that. If you are confused then I apologize for not including dates but I did mean the scribes for manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (originals) i.e. primary documents for which translations are derived and canon is issued.

[ronin sparthos]

Are you kidding? He is super culturally sensitive. While I agree that Bill Nye looked to be intentionally non-confrontational, I don't think NDT would been any harder on them.

Need more polemics like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dawkins or the legions of capable handling young-earthers. Then again, the problem is you're debating yourself essentially.

[ronin sparthos]

http://img.pokemondb.net/artwork/mankey.jpg

Because some Mankey evolved into Primeape but it doesn't mean all Mankey are gone.

[ringthree]

Not one sentence implies that. If you are confused then I apologize for not including dates but I did mean the scribes for manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (originals) i.e. primary documents for which translations are derived and canon is issued.

Except we had the bible before we had the Dead Sea scrolls. You can't claim to have original copies of the bible when you didn't even have the oldest (unknown at the time) versions. It is a book that has been passed down over and over and over.

Your claim is still false, and it is getting weaker. Also, don't imply that I am confused. You made a direct claim to originality, either defend the claim (you can't) or admit you are wrong (you won't).

Again I say, this thread is so god damn stupid.

[Meresgi]

Still not sure why it matters what someone believes in so long as it doesn't hold back society as a whole. Is religion holding back our country? Only in the sense that congressmen know if they say "Jesus" most of the south will foam at the mouth...but money in politics are what is holding back everything. Religion is just a method for the repubs to garner support.

Fucking hell, with the internet nowadays it's so easy for people to only believe in what they want and never look at anything else everyone is closeminded as fuck, not just religious types.

ITT: People arguing over shit that doesn't really matter and trying to prove they are smarter then the person above them.

[Day]

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014...91576908-9.jpg

This is a Katt Williams bit.