Tonight’s the night that Bill Nye and Ken Ham flail at each other in one of the more widely publicized creation/evolution debates of the year. I think Nye made major mistakes in setting this up — handing over total control of the venue and the revenues to Ham was just a tremendous error — but I’m hoping he’ll persevere through force of personality, if nothing else. Ham is this charisma-free guy who relies on a gospel-based script, while Nye has lots of charisma, but is going into an unknown situation where he’ll have to ad lib a lot. Could be interesting, could be a disaster.
The Cincinnati newspaper has Ham’s bio (I notice they didn’t return the favor for Bill Nye).
There are a couple of sites where you can watch the live debate, presumably. 7pm EST tonight will be your only chance to see it streamed for free; after that, your only access will be to buy the video from Answers in Genesis (see what I mean? Big mistake). If you really want to watch the debate, AiG is selling preorders of cases of 60 DVDs — they seem to know that this is going to be a big success for them, no matter what. Of course, that also means that evangelists will probably be handing these suckers out like candy, so you might be able to get a copy after all.
Don’t get your hopes too high for the streaming event, though. The tickets for the event sold out almost instantly, and it wouldn’t surprise me if demand overwhelms the streaming service, too…or if it mysteriously dropped out accidentally. I’ve been dealing with creationists for too long — I’m cynical, and they are the sleaziest mob of lying frauds around. I’ve only done a few debates, but every time, I get a call a few hours before asking to change the topic, for instance — they are all about the dirty tricks.
It’s that Christian morality, you know.
By the way, here’s a poll. It’s going the right way, but it’s kind of meaningless — the house at the debate is going to be packed with creationists.
Whose side are you taking on the origins of Earth and life?
Bill Nye – Evolution 76.52%
Ken Ham – Creationism 21.46%
Neither 2.02%
Who gets to decide who won, and what criteria are they using?
Doesn’t matter, the creationists will say they won, and sell a whole bunch of nicely edited DVDs. This is a no-risk proposition for them.
The site http://debatelive.org/ claims the following:
Intuitively, I just feel it’s a big mistake to egg Ham on. Over & out.
I posted this over in the lounge, but now that this is up it’s clearly the appropriate place. Bill Nye has another speaking engagement in the area after the debate, so if you’re in the Cincinnati area and missed the debate, or just want to hear from and ask questions of Nye without the taint of Ham, the details are here: http://www.schillingschool.org/
I hope someone is going to capture that stream and upload it in as many places as possible. AiG will no doubt get DMCA takedown happy, but it won’t matter much by that point.
There’s another poll that currently has Ham in the lead: http://local.cincinnati.com/community/pages/debate/index.html
I’m questioning whether or not the debate will actually take place tonight. Apparently God is bringing a major ice storm this way making the narrow winding uphill road to the creation “museum” rather treacherous. Last I heard, He doesn’t want to be further embarrassed by Mr. Ham so He’s doing his best to call things off.
How can there be a poll as to whose side we are taking before the debate’s even happened? Isn’t the point of a debate to try to convince people of the strength of their side of an issue? So shouldn’t interested parties be going into it with an open mind?
Disclaimer: I realize this requires one to have no prior knowledge of what a sleazy hunk of slime is Ken Ham.
I REALLY hope Nye has memorized the onslaught of non-sequiturs, misconceptions and outright lies that the Creationism “shotgun approach” is comprised of. Even then, it takes much longer to address and refute them than to simply spill them out like Creationists do. And I hope Nye doesn’t depend too much on the “attacking Biblical Literalism” approach either. Creationists simply fallback on “well, we recognize that OUR beliefs are faith-based, we just wish evolutionists would do so as well…” nonsense.
I’m just hoping Bill Nye manages to ignore the bulk of what Ham has to say, and just strings together a clear picture of what evolution actually is. “Winning” the debate isn’t really the issue here (IMHO), this is a chance to sneak a little bit of reality into the minds of some people who’ve grown up in a carefully maintained bubble. My parents would have let me watch something like this, expecting God to triumph over the heathen, and a clear and concise picture of evolution instead the lies I had been fed for years wound have knocked some mighty big cracks into my faith.
But even if he does pull that off, you can bet it won’t survive into the DVD version.
*would, not wound. All hail Tpyos!
tubi,
No.
I like Bill Nye, but in all honesty, I’ve seen him have a tough enough time just dealing with dimwitted TV hosts, never mind professional liars for Jesus. I’m not optimistic.
It would also require a person to have zero knowledge about creationism and evolution. This is simply a matter of scientic evidence, wich has already destroyed creationism.