Wednesday, August 02, 2017

Ken Ham Takes Potshot at Bill Nye on Climate Change

Ken Ham...Bill Nye...a plague on both of your houses.  While Bill Nye is out trying to save the world, and Ken Ham is out trying to save the world, the two of them tangled again.  First, Bill Nye was quoted as saying that we will only get serious about climate change when the older generation, who he claims comprise the largest group of climate change deniers, dies off.  From Mandy Mayfield:
“Climate change deniers, by way of example, are older. It's generational,” Nye told the Los Angeles Times. Nye said that he is calling them out with “due respect,” acknowledging that he is “now one of them.”

“We're just going to have to wait for those people to 'age out,' as they say," Nye went on, adding that “age out” is a euphemism for “die.” “But it'll happen, I guarantee you — that'll happen.”
Ken Ham took exception to this. As the Gospel Herald Society notes:
Ham accused Nye of "decrying the older generation" with his comments.

"He knows the younger generation are by and large more brainwashed in secularism and evolutionary teaching and are generally not taught how to think critically," Ham said. "Thus, he is hoping the younger generation will be more supportive of his false anti-observational science views of climate change."

As earlier reported, Nye previously came under fire when, on the season finale of his Netflix show, "Bill Nye Saves the World," he suggested that American families ought to be penalized for having "extra kids" as a solution to overpopulation and climate change.
Well, first off, accepting evolutionary theory and the evidence for an old earth do not constitute a rejection of critical thinking.  If you accept the argument that scientific evidence supports the young earth position, then you need to apply critical thinking to this argument.  Many problems occur when you do.

Here is an example of what I mean: I recently attended a Classical Conversations home school meeting in advance of the new school year.  At the meeting, someone had, for sale, a timeline of history.  I noticed a few odd things about the timeline.
  • It began in 4004 B.C., a date commonly accepted in young earth creationist circles but reflecting a somewhat facile interpretation of the biblical chronologies, which have been shown by numerous theologians and biblical historians to be incomplete or replete with symbolism.  
  • It places the world-wide flood squarely at 2500 B.C.
  • The early Egyptian, Minoan and Sumerian histories are completely absent.  The reason for this is, of course, that if the flood happened in 2500 B.C., anything happening elsewhere in the world not recorded in Genesis simply didn't happen.  No Chinese histories dating back prior to the Shang Dynasty are recorded, either.  
How do you square these things with “critical thinking?”  Objectively, these histories reflect real people, living in real places, doing real things.

As far as Bill Nye is concerned, whatever there was of the objective, humble scientist that did "Bill Nye, The Science Guy" seems long gone, replaced by some loud, obnoxious SJW in a lab coat.  Where once he gave kids a presentation on what it means to be either XY or XX, he is now hawking "Sex Junk" a truly awful video on sex.

Further, his idea of penalizing American families for having extra kids is laughable on its face.  Our population replacement rate is already treading water, as it is.  In Europe and Japan, the populations aren't replacing themselves.  In Japan, schools are closing down because there are not enough rising students to fill them.  If a population does not replace itself, society collapses.  This fact seems to be lost on these climate warriors.

Both Bill Nye and Ken Ham have incredibly warped views on science.  One was a mechanical engineer and the other has an undergraduate degree in science education.  Apparently, neither of those backgrounds are being put to good use. 

4 comments:

  1. Enjoyed the article. I wanted to followup on the numerical symbolism of the biblical chronologies. But the link directs to a login for the Univ of Tennessee. Is it possible to resolve this?

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  2. Oops. Thought it was a freebie. Should have known better. I can repost the abstract here as well as the passage I paraphrased. Here is the abstract:

    This study suggests that Cainan (LXX Gen. 10.24; Gen. 11.12; [LXX A] 1 Chron. 1.18; Jub. 8.1-5; Lk. 3.36-37), the missing thirteenth patriarch from Adam in the genealogical table in Masoretic text (MT) and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) was known to the authors of the proto-MT, and the proto-SP. Using textual and chrono-genealogical analysis, it offers evidence to show that the thirteenth generation from the thirteenth generation from Adam had to contend with a curse. An arithmetical test on the variant chrono-genealogical data in Gen. 5 and Gen. 11 in the MT, SP, LXX Vaticanus (B), LXX Alexandrinus (A) and the Peshitta show that the ages and `begetting' ages of the ancestors across the recensions create an integrated mathematical model. It would appear that the variant data in the texts was compiled by the same mathematical school of Jewish scholars, probably in Palestine and Alexandria. The arithmetical paradigm takes into account Cainan's presence in LXX B and LXX A and his absence in the proto-MT, proto-SP and the Peshitta. It is likely that the Gen. 5 and Gen. 11 chrono-genealogies can be dated to between the compilation of the LXX Genesis, in the third century BCE and the schism between the Samaritans and the Jews in the second century BCE. Here is the section of the paper that on which I focused. This is a discussion of four separate, early manuscripts:

    These results demonstrate that even the minor variants have been faithfully preserved and that there has been exceptional attention to detail. The inter-relationship between all four recensions suggests that we need to reconsider the theory that the genealogies were redacted separately over different time-periods, possibly over several hundred years.

    They appear to function together as a mathematical whole. The
    results above demonstrate that each list produces identical results when calculated in the same way, with a slight difference for LXX B in Genesis in the separate Genesis 11 recensions.

    It cannot be argued that the numbers have calendrical significance. The mathematical pattern favours a decimal numeral system, and, as such, Mesopotamian influence, which uses a base sexagesimal numeral system, may be ruled out.


    The article is about why Cainan was excised from later genealogies.

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  3. Further oops. There should be a paragraph break in between "BCE" and "Here."

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  4. The notion that the dates and lifespans reflect real years is a very rare interpretation among even conservative scholars.

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