Bill
Nye on video lying about evidence! I wrote that headline to grab
people's attention. It's a little sensational, I'll admit, but I
still mean it to be literal. I'm referring to the 2
hour video released by Answers in Genesis where Nye debates Ken
during a tour of the recently opened Ark Encounter. Is it just me or
is Nye really that rude of a person? He referred to several AiG
staff scientists as “incompetent,” despite their doctorate
degrees from reputable colleges like Harvard or Ohio State; he told
Ken Ham he needed to study geology more; he told Ark visitors they
needed to go to university; and concluded his tour saying that he
couldn't be friends with someone like Ken Ham, though he might
try to rescue him if he were drowning or something like that. That
last comment was real big of you Nye! //RKBentley rolls his
eyes// Look, there are people
with whom I disagree but who aren't jerks. Bill Nye is a jerk.
Maybe it's not very Christian of me to say that. I must say that Ken
Ham was very gracious with Nye, even praying for him after Nye's
comment that he might
rescue him from drowning (which I guess also means he might not).
But you can see in the video that Nye seemed to annoy even Ham at
different times.
Anyway,
back to my point of Nye lying. I haven't counted, but I would guess
Nye used the term, “evidence” at least fifty times during his
tour of the Ark. How he used the term, though, was often, grossly
misleading.
Before
I get into Nye's use of the word, let me talk a little bit about what
evidence is and what it's not. Evidence is raw data. It's
facts or observations. Contrary to the popular expression, facts
don't really speak for themselves. Evidence just is. What we do,
then, is look at the evidence and invent theories to try to explain
why the evidence is the way it is. What is this thing? How did it
get here? What might I conclude from it? Theories are our attempts
to make sense of the evidence. A good theory should seem to explain
the evidence reasonably well. In any case, the evidence itself is
mute and doesn't care about our theories. In other words, the
evidence is never really “for” a theory.
Some
people, like Nye, conflate their theories with the evidence. During
the video, Nye routinely makes comments like (paraphrasing), “All
the evidence says that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.” Do you
see what I mean? The evidence doesn't say anything. Bill Nye
subscribes to a theory – his interpretation of the evidence –
that says the earth is billions of years old. But he never says, “My
theory is that the earth is billions of years old”; he merely
repeats over and over, “The evidence says it.”
Evolutionists
believe they have a
monopoly on the evidence. It's sort of a game of dibs where,
once evolutionists explain the evidence, that evidence is not
available to explained by any other theory. The earth can't be young
because they've already said it's old. There is no evidence for
creation because it's already been used for evolution! Evolutionists
do this so that when we disagree with their theory, it looks like
we're disagreeing with the evidence. Tsk, tsk.
Nye
certainly did this in the video. On a couple of occasions, Ken Ham
tried to pin Nye down on the differences between the evidence and the
conclusions we draw on the evidence. About 52 minutes into the
video, for example, Ham and Nye are talking about tree rings. It's
Nye's contention that there are living trees that can be dated to
before the time of the Flood based on their rings. Ham counters that
the rings aren't evidence in the sense that Nye is using them. Rings
are something that simply exist in the present. We could
count the rings of a tree and extrapolate backwards (4,000 rings
means 4,000 years old) but we know that trees sometimes grow more
than one ring per year. So 4,000 rings is the evidence and 4,000
years is a conclusion about the evidence. Even after Nye
acknowledged that multiple rings can grow in trees each year, when
Ham asked him if he could then be wrong about his conclusion, Nye
stubbornly refused to concede even that simple point. “No.
Absolutely not,” Nye says, “....
My interpretation with respect to the age on the earth in this regard
is absolutely correct.” Time after time during the
entire video, Nye offers his theory while calling it the
evidence.
But
look, if all Nye did was conflate his theory with the evidence, I
wouldn't necessarily say he was “lying” - though it is still
grossly misleading. However, Nye made other statements that were
even more misleading. At about 1:17 in the video, Ken Ham mentions
the account in Joshua where the sun stopped in the sky. Bill Nye
replies, “Why would it do that? There's
no evidence for that.”
That's
very curious. What type of evidence would Bill Nye expect there to
be for such an event? Historical events cannot be studied
scientifically. I could ask, for example, “Where is the evidence
that George Washington crossed the Delaware?” You can't study the
river and discover it. The only way we can know it happened is
because people who lived at the time wrote that it happened. The
written accounts are the only evidence we have. And the
evidence we have for Washington's crossing of the Delaware is the
same evidence we have for Joshua's long day. Nye doesn't have to
believe the written account but to say there is no evidence is
a lie.
From
there, Nye segues into a point he made several times in the video.
He defines science to mean “the search for a natural
explanation.” According to Nye, any time you invoke a miracle,
it's not science. Of course, however a person defines science does
not change what is true. If God stopped the motion of the planets
for 12 hours, then that is what happened regardless if Nye thinks
it's scientific. Nye desperately wants people to believe that, if
something isn't scientific, it's not true. Nye told Ham he was
“absolutely” wrong about
Joshua's long day. Such a rebuke implies that Nye has absolute
knowledge of the event. We know he doesn't. Therefore, Nye's
continuous appeals to the “evidence” or to an arbitrary
definition of science is pure bluff.
This
leads me to Nye's most blatant lie about evidence. While Nye was
waxing on about the account from Joshua and how science does not
allow miracles, Ham interrupts him and asks, “Why
should I accept your definition [of science]?” Nye
pauses for a moment, then, with a straight face, replies, “Because
we have so much evidence for it.”
You
can watch him make the offensive remark at 1:18 on the video. Nye
actually claims there is evidence for natural-only
definition of science. Incredible! Please, Nye, show me this
evidence! Where in the universe can I observe it? Can I put it
under a microscope or weigh it on a scale or hold it against a ruler?
Can I put it in a test tube?
Perhaps
Nye is ignorant about how much of science is based on philosophy
rather then evidence. In one Big
Think video, Nye admits he's skeptical of some of the claims of
philosophy. What he doesn't seem to realize is that his “natural
only” view of the universe has a philosophical premise. It's a
tenet of science – a belief akin to religious faith.
In
his dogged determination to prove Ken Ham wrong, Nye repeated the
word “evidence” over and over and over. He said there was no
evidence for miracles but there was evidence for his definition of
science. Watch the video for yourself. Time and time again, Nye
lied about evidence.
You're conflating "lies" with "differences of opinion" and "carelessness in speaking." On the other hand, you note at the start that you're engaging in clickbait, so let that be.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, the evidence itself is mute and doesn't care about our theories. In other words, the evidence is never really “for” a theory.
This position has some very counterintuitive implications. From phlogiston to the "no comma code" theory of how DNA coded for proteins, scientific ideas have been overturned by evidence. On your position, how is this even possible? If a prosecutor's theory of a crime is that John Doe did it, but multiple witnesses and video cameras put John Doe a thousand miles away at the time, is that "mute" and neither "for" nor "against" the prosecutor's theory? Were the results of the Morley-Michaelson experiment equally open to the idea that the luminiferous aether existed and that it did not exist?
Now, the classic YEC position is that the latter is a case of "operational science" and requires a different approach from "historical science" (like determining whether John Doe is guilty or innocent). But I don't think science can work on this basis: there's no point to doing "operational science" if you don't expect the results to apply at other times and places -- no one is interested in the tensile strength of an alloy in such-and-such a lab on such-and-such a day unless he assumes that the tensile strength will be the same in a suspension bridge cable twenty years from now, or was the same twenty years ago. The "historical science" or "origins science" dodge at first glance merely tosses out all historical inquiry and forensic science, but taken consistently implies that science in general is useless, since we have no reason to suppose that results obtained today will be relevant next year.
It's sort of a game of dibs where, once evolutionists explain the evidence, that evidence is not available to explained by any other theory.
Actually, evidence cited by one (naturalistic) theory is available all the time for explanation by a rival naturalistic theory. I run across examples all the time in my reading. Your problem is that you want to argue that, e.g. radiometric dates implying an old Earth can be "explained" by the "theory" that "well, God just made it with the appearance of age" -- or perhaps the rival "theory" that God, for ineffable reasons of His own, sped up all decay rates by multiple orders of magnitude (and all by exactly the same amount), and then considerately hid all the effects one would expect from such a thing ("considerately," I suppose, because that sort of massive increase in radiation output would have fried all life on the planet).
You don't have a rival theory; you have the hope that somehow, sometime, some incomprehensible and unnecessary miracle could have produced exactly the effects that we would expect from known natural processes operating in known ways. That is not quite the same sort of "faith" that Bill Nye has in multiple converging lines of (you should pardon the expression) evidence.
So 4,000 rings is the evidence and 4,000 years is a conclusion about the evidence. Even after Nye acknowledged that multiple rings can grow in trees each year, when Ham asked him if he could then be wrong about his conclusion, Nye stubbornly refused to concede even that simple point.
ReplyDeleteMultiple tree rings are a rare occurance. Certainly they are reason to to, e.g. regard "4000" years as an estimate rather than an exact count -- but if you want those tree rings to mean, say, "four hundred years," or maybe "four years," that's a considerably less reasonable interpretation of the evidence. There's no point to bringing up observations of years that produce multiple tree rings if you're going to invoke something that's never been observed anyway (e.g. year after year, decade after decade, of multiple rings per year). And so forth and on with regard to, e.g. variations in radioactive decay rates.
What type of evidence would Bill Nye expect there to be for such an event? Historical events cannot be studied scientifically.
Eyewitness accounts (and secondhand accounts, etc.) are the sort of evidence produced by historical events. If we had a single reference to Washington crossing the Delaware, and no British and no other American source mentioned any such thing, then at least careful historians would note that the event was of dubious historicity. It's a fairly common point in histories to note that we have only such-and-such an account to support such-and-such a historical assertion. Sometimes that's the best one can do (and the view that "extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence" applies in reverse -- a trivial and plausible historical event will generally be accepted based on a single uncontradicted account, without additional verification, while more drastic and consequential assertions preferably are based on a greater weight and variety of evidence).
Now, interestingly, I've read claims that Joshua's long day has evidence of the expected variety -- other cultures passing on stories of a long day or a long night. My own opinion, sadly, is that these reports have been cherry-picked and that no effort has been made to ensure that they all refer to the same approximate time in history, but the point is that Joshua's day is exactly the sort of thing we'd expect to have additional accounts of. Lots of ancient civilizations kept track of astronomical phenomena; the sun hanging motionless in the sky (or failing to rise) for hours on end would draw notice from Bubastis to Babylon to Beijing.
My apologies for the length of this reply, but I had a number of points I wished to make (and you may still feel that I failed to address some of your points).
ReplyDeleteNow, regarding historical accounts, it would be entirely valid to ask if anything other than an accurate account by an eyewitness could account for the story: eyewitness accounts are evidence like any other, open to interpretations (including the interpretation that someone just made that story up). Even if we granted that the isotope ratios of an igneous rock were "mute," at least they can't lie. Sadly, we're pretty sure that ostensible historical witnesses can.
So Nye speaks loosely when he says that there is "no" evidence for Joshua's long day; obviously, the account is evidence of a sort. He presumably means that there is no evidence beyond this one story in one book, for an extraordinary claim that if true should produce far more stories in far more books.
I'm not sure what to make of his claim that there is "evidence" for his definition of science. I can think of two possibilities. First, he might have been addressing Ham's claims about the age of the Earth and the common ancestry of life generally, rather than Ham's actual statement about how one defines "science." Ignoring what someone actually says to address what one assumes he really means is not "lying," although it can be abused to avoid a point. Second, since science has been defended since its inception in the 17th century on the grounds that it works, Nye may be pointing to everything from penicillin to moon landings to smart phones with video cameras as evidence that a purely naturalistic, uniformitarian conception of science yields results, whereas reliance on miracles and visions gets you witch doctors and witch trials.
I think I've brought up before the time my brother asked me if it was possible that white people were "created man" and "my Nubian brothers" were "evolved man." I told him that it was the unanimous opinion of both evolutionists and creationists that humans shared a common mode of origin: the evidence for common descent is the evidence for common ancestry of all humans, and all people who hold that white people are created hold that other races are either [a] descended from the same created ancestors as white people or [b] are descended from separately created ancestors -- but still are not evolved from monkeys. This seemed to satisfy him (he may have been simply trolling me), but it occurred to me that this is merely a statement of what people happen to think, not about all logical possibilities. Once we admit miracles as a possible explanation, his idea is as possible as any other --as you have insisted, evidence that is invoked by creationists and evolutionists alike for common ancestry of different races is "mute" and can equally well be explained by "well, we were just created that way, and you interpret it as evidence of common ancestry."
Do you see now the problems with allowing a divine foot in the door?
Steven J,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. I'm going to try to hit the highlights.
You said, “You're conflating "lies" with "differences of opinion" and "carelessness in speaking."”
You know I can't let that pass. I said in the post that if Nye were only conflating his theory and the evidence, I wouldn't accuse him of lying. However, during the 2 hour long video, Ham – on many occasions – tried to point out that Nye was making conclusions but Nye refused to acknowledge it even once. Either he can't see a difference between the evidence and his conclusion about the evidence or he's deliberately being misleading.
Concerning my point that evidence isn't truly “for” any theory, I've said before that I really don't have a problem with the term, “this is evidence for...” because sometimes one theory explains the evidence so much better than other theories. A footprint in the mud at a crime scene is evidence. Was it left by the suspect, a witness, or someone who was at the scene hours before the crime was committed? You might have a couple of theories about how the footprint got there but the evidence is the same for each theory. I'm sure I've talked about this before. Nye, on the other hand, only ever claims the evidence is “for” his theory.
You said, “Multiple tree rings are a rare occurance. Certainly they are reason to to, e.g. regard "4000" years as an estimate rather than an exact count -- but if you want those tree rings to mean, say, "four hundred years," or maybe "four years," that's a considerably less reasonable interpretation of the evidence.”
Keep in mind that my point isn't really about the tree rings but about Nye's refusal to acknowledge any distinction between the evidence and conclusions made about the evidence. The video is 2 hours long and Ham brought this up to Nye many times. I chose this particular point as a representative example. For the record though, we don't find individual trees with 6,000 rings like many evolutionists suggest we find. We also don't have an exact date for the Flood. The older trees we find probably began growing immediately after the Flood. If we're off 100-200 years on our estimate of the date of the Flood and there is a 5-10% difference in the number of rings in a tree and its actual age, it's hardly proof against the Flood.
Now to Joshua's Long Day. Again, my point isn't so much about that particular account but Nye's chronic habit of saying there's no evidence for anything supernatural. He said there was no evidence for Joshua's Long Day. I could say there's no evidence for Washington crossing the Delaware. Does that mean it didn't happen? Then what is Nye's point in saying there isn't evidence for anything miraculous? The impression Nye intends to create is that nothing supernatural can happen because it's not scientific. It's deliberately misleading.
It's generous of you to claim Nye spoke “loosely.” If it were an off the cuff remark, I would grant him that. But, again, we're talking about 2 hours of video where Nye repeats his same points over and over. Some of the same things were discussed in the formal debate between these two men at the Creation Museum. Nye has been told these things and he continues to make the same “loose” remarks as though he's never heard them.
As always, thanks for visiting. Perhaps you feel I haven't addressed your point sufficiently but time and space constrains me. I'm sure you understand.
God bless!!
RKBentley