How Did Bill Nye Become the Science Guy? 220
An anonymous reader writes "Whether he's debating creationists, taking selfies with President Obama, or 'Dancing with the Stars,' Bill Nye the Science Guy is no stranger to the spotlight. But what about the man behind the public persona? How did Bill Nye become the Science Guy?(video)
Bill Nye has made his debut on the PBS series, The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers, to reveal the story of how he rose from being a young comedian from Seattle to becoming a science icon.
In his profile, Bill Nye talks about his early days impersonating Steve Martin, why bow-ties are important in the lab (and with the ladies), and how Carl Sagan's advice helped to shape his hit television show."
a bow-tie guy is Bill Nye (Score:2)
He didn't become the science guy. (Score:5, Funny)
He was created by God just as you see him now.
John Keister (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:John Keister (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember the first season or so when Almost Live was hosted by Ross Shafer and was a lackluster Seattle-area clone of Letterman's Late Show on NBC.
But the reboot with John Keister and the rest of that gang was great! Speed Walker; Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan ("be like Billy - behave yourself!"); Worst Girlfriend in the World; and Bill Nye the Science Guy! The reruns are still pretty funny, although some of the old jokes don't work without the temporal political context. And also unfortunately, the old jokes about the Seattle Mariners being awful still work just fine...
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Folk Songs of the Inebriated (Score:2)
Still a classic
http://youtu.be/YRg6CgxM0T8 [youtu.be]
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And has anyone seen "The (206)" [wikipedia.org] yet? Is it anywhere near as good? If so i need to figure out a way to watch that. (Preferably a legal way that will help convince them there's a demand and keep the show from being canceled.)
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The 206 has some hilarious stuff; but it's not as good as Almost Live was overall. I really like Pat Cashman, and Keister is great - but not having some of the other guys like Bob Nelson and Bill Stainton is definitely a minus.
Speed Walker! (Score:4)
bit.ly links (Score:5, Informative)
Please, editors, for the love of science, do not allow bit.ly links in summaries.
http://bit.ly/1gkfa7z [bit.ly]
is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KkKejZnazw [youtube.com]
"Bill Nye: Change The World" by user "NOVA's Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers".
It rhymes! (Score:4, Funny)
How did he become "The Science Guy" Because nye rhymes with guy, and he probably has a penis.
He got kids interested. (Score:4, Insightful)
Need I say more?
In Summary.. (Score:5, Insightful)
... captain obvious
... He's no scientist.
... Bill Nye the Attention Whore
... Mr. Bill Nye is NOT and has NOTHING to do with science
This out of 31 posts so far.
This on a guy who makes science fun for kids.
Beta might not be Slashdot's biggest problem,
but going the way of kuro5hin is.
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True. But much of what the person you quoted is true too. Denying the facts isn't going the way of kuro5hin, it's going the way of the creation "scientists".
Give Bill a break... (Score:5, Interesting)
From Wiki: "He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where one of his professors was Carl Sagan) and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977. Nye occasionally returns to Cornell as a professor to guest lecture introductory level astronomy and human ecology classes."
I would think that is sufficient education to be "the Science Guy". Why do we need to tear him down?
Re:Give Bill a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we need to tear him down?
Because, according to a bunch of Slashdot neckbeards, he's not a 'real' scientist.
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Why do we need to tear him down?
Because, according to a bunch of Slashdot neckbeards, he's not a 'real' scientist.
I think it's actually because a bunch of Slashdot neckbeards didn't get enough nurturing as a child, so they've gotta run around and tear people down to feel better about themselves. Haters gonna hate, and masturbators... you know
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First of all, the Science in "Bachelors of Science" means nothing. Many scientists do not have Bachelor of Science degrees they have Bachelor of Arts degrees -- usually referred to as a BA. Many non scientists have Bachelor of science degrees. It mainly depends on where you get your degree.
Secondly, much of what Nye does is not science but engineering. Blurring the distinction like that is harmful to science.
For example an older child may try to build a robot using an Arduino and fail. He correctly deems hi
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I, for one, applaud his effort to bring science to the masses. One doesn't have
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Re:Give Bill a break... (Score:4, Informative)
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By this test, Bill Nye still fails to be a scientist because he was never part of any scientific investigation. Otherwise, what you're doing is stretching the meaning of "scientist" so far as to render it meaningless.
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For some reason Dr. Cox's delivery irritates the hell out of me - I can't watch him for very long. I don't know if it's the pacing of his speech or what.
Why bow-ties? (Score:3)
Because bow-ties are cool [knowyourmeme.com].
Science Guy, Engineer Guy... (Score:2)
He was an engineer at Boeing before turning to comedy and then to science education. He also is at least partly responsible for a "marsdial" instrument that was both a cheap and interesting experiment/tool on a Mars lander/rover.
WTH is Bill Nye? (Score:4, Insightful)
Massive cultural assumption or what. What about international science presenters like David Attenborough or Brian Cox
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I totally agree. I had never heard of Bill Nye until this debate controversy blew up.
One thing I notice with Americans is that their whole conversation is based around U.S. TV shows.
Unless you watch USA TV, their conversations make very little sense.
In the rest of the world, TV just isn't that important. It certainly doesn't inform intelligent debate.
Re:WTH is Bill Nye? (Score:4, Insightful)
The man lost interest in science a long time ago (Score:3, Insightful)
he's now more about harassing religious fundamentalists and flame baiting people in the climate change debate.
I have very little regard for any of the so called scientist media personalities that spend most of their time engaging in various topics that are unproductive and rarely about science.
Religious fundamentalists cannot be argued against with science. Its utterly pointless. Their interpretation of their religion means they will not agree. End of story.
Possibly they can be argued off of it on philosophical, ideological, or theological grounds. But science is utterly futile in dealing with this issue. Yet many do this, piss off the fundamentalists for no reason, accept the applause of some atheist supporters, and then take a victory lap like they accomplished something.
As to the climate debate, that isn't a scientific debate either at this point. Its a political, economic, and ideological debate. Science doesn't even really come into it.
You have one faction that says the solution to fixing the climate is to nationalize everything, give the government sweeping control over the economy, jack up taxes hugely, and grant lots of power to non-democratic international organizations.
So... spoiler alert... many people have a problem with that. If you removed all of that from the climate change rhetoric, most of the opposition would be gone tomorrow. Yet, it is pretended that the issue can be solved by explaining the science again. Waste of god damn time.
Bill Nye was fun once... when he explained little science experiments on tv. He was great. But he hasn't done that in a long time and frankly since he stopped doing that I fail to see why anyone should give a damn about him.
Now I'm about to get attacked by some people that think I'm supporting creationism or anti global warming science or both. Right off, anyone that makes that accusation after reading the above post is a fucking retard. But this site is full of them. So let me explain again, IT DOES NOT MATTER and THAT IS NOT MY POINT. My point is that indifferent to the science, science is often not a viable answer to various debates. In matters of belief, politics, or economics you can't just cite the science and expect everyone to fall into instant obedient lockstep with whatever you want. That's foolish.
If you ACTUALLY want to solve the creationism issue... you need to respect the religious rights of people that find evolution to be a threat to their theology. We have a freedom of worship in this country which means people can believe the universe came from a cooked potato if it makes them happy.
Yes... public schools and public money... well, that's a problem because the government isn't allowed to infringe on their beliefs. Which means you might need to give them money to run their own home schools or whatever. I know... you're not happy about that. But you'd only need to give them their share of the education money which after all came out of their own taxes. So they're hardly taking anything away from you.
That is how you coexist. You either are happy to grant that or you want to dominate people and force your own beliefs on people... yes, your beliefs are backed by science. Show me where in the constitution that matters. It doesn't. Being right doesn't mean you get to force people to agree with you. They're going to be contentious. Tolerate their differences and demand the same in return.
In regards to climate change... We really need to go over some solutions to the issue that don't instantly piss everyone off.
Obviously we need to reduce our usage of sequestered hydrocarbons. So... to that end, nuclear power really needs to be put back on the table. If only as a stop gap until energy storage systems become more practical.
Doubtless that makes some people unhappy... its called a compromise... you're not supposed to be happy. In addition to that, we should look at syngas/biogas to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel. That will further reduce our dependence on sequester
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Most of the "pro-science" crowd doesn't give a damm about being productive or constructive. Being right is their goal, and because they're right anyone who doesn't believe as they do is completely wrong. (And even though they admit that "science isn't perfect" in the abstract.... they're loathe to deal with it in the concrete. It's all about the ego and the self ima
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Which is why the pro science crowd went out of their way to confront every religious fundamentalist they ran into over the last 1000 years and told them they were wrong.
Oh wait, no they didn't.
This is mostly a new development. Its a game. Its like bear baiting only with theologists.
It accomplishes NOTHING bu
Who the fuck is Bill Nye??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, news for nerds? I've never heard that name before in my life. And what is a "science guy" anyway? Sounds pretty stupid to me.
Anyway, got to go to work now - science calls.
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science calls.
Indeed...
Science called. It said not to make a quick dismissive judgement on something you know nothing about.
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Beakman's World (Score:2)
Never understood why Bill's TV show was ever popular. Beakman predates him, and that show was both sciency and a lot more fun.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01... [imdb.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I remember watching bumblebees (Score:2)
I remember watching bumblebees. But Nova was too pathetic to find video of a bumblebee, so here's some pictures of a honeybee.
I always prefered Beakman's World. . . (Score:3)
to Bill Nye.
Beakman's assistant was *way hotter* than any bunsen burner Nye had. . .
Re:WTF (Score:5, Funny)
You just described 2/3 of Slashdot.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a science educator. Some science educators *are* bona fide scientists, like Carl Sagan; but science is not mysticism. String theory might be beyond most people, but there's a lot of basic stuff most people can explore and understand, and if you can do that you can explain it to others.
If you think about it, a background in comedy is a very good preparation for being an educator. First you have to get and hold their attention. Second, you have to make really, really sure they get your point. People don't laugh at jokes they don't understand -- at least not the kind of laughter they paid to come experience. So comedy is all about making sure people get the point and are entertained along the way.
His debate (Score:3, Interesting)
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them. Well it really happened and now the people he debated received enough money and even MUNICIPAL BONDS to build a life sized Ark. Thanks Bill Nye.
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MUNICIPAL BONDS to build a life sized Ark
If a member of our community wants to set sail for the promised land, let them go with god, but just go! (A little funding was to give them a nudge on the way. ) ;)
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Why would you find this fascinating? There have been numerous studies showing a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. [wikipedia.org]
Correlation != Causality. Also note that Lynn and Nyborg published the same kind of results for gender vs. I.Q. and race vs. I.Q.
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Causility != Implication
1) Smoking causes lung cancer, but not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer. If smoking would imply lung cancer every smoker would also be suffering from lung cancer. It is clear that religion does not imply a low IQ, because some really smart religious people do exist.
2) Lack of intelligence also does not imply believe in God, because there are stupid atheists as well.
3) There are many possible causes for both religion and low intelligence.
- If religion is one of the rare sources of
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You don't seem to understand the meaning of implication. If A implies B, then B must be true in all cases where A is true.
So if a lack of intelligence would imply believe in God then everyone who lacks intelligence would also have believe in God. So even a single person lacking intelligence without believing in a god shows that the implication does not exist.
You seem to understand "implication" as "contributory cause". They are not the same thing. A contributory cause makes something more likely. While a su
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The only people who take the bible literally are reddit atheists and ultraconservative wingnut christians.
Actually, atheists don't take the bible literally; it's all a bunch of fairy tail bullshit.
But if you believe random parts of the bible are just metaphorical, then why take any of it seriously? Even if you *do* take the parts you don't like (And face it; that's what many people do.) metaphorically, it still has some rather disgusting and violent messages.
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But if you believe random parts of the bible are just metaphorical, then why take any of it seriously?
Much of Sun Tzu's masterpiece is metaphorical, but is great philosophy when it comes to conflict - either in actual war or business. Likewise most of the I Ching is metaphorical - and is quite salient to daily life. Metaphors are great ways to communicate, and there is a lot of valuable underlying philosophical concepts contained in all 3 of those works (the bible, Sun Tzu's Art Of War, and the I Ching). Throwing away writings as nonsense (not to be taken seriously) because parts of it are metaphorical w
Re:His debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them.
They already have plenty of attention. More than half of Americans believe in some form of creationism (young earth creationism, intelligent design, or "evolution guided by God"). The percentage in many other countries is even higher. "Ignoring them" isn't working out so well.
Re:His debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, but Bill Bye fell into the same trap all sciency types do. He didn't argue evolution, he argued against the creationists idea of Intelligent design. There is nothing incompatible with Intelligent design and evolution. If there is a God that created the universe then, that God also created evolution and therefor science is simply discovering Gods work. He should have made that point and left it at that. You can't invalidate theology with logic. But you can validate science with it. Evolution is a fact. If you believe in god then evolution is his work, stop denying Gods work you pagan.
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There is nothing incompatible with Intelligent design and evolution. If there is a God that created the universe then, that God also created evolution and therefor science is simply discovering Gods work.
I've never heard intelligent design described that way before. Intelligent design is the idea that biological organisms required an intelligent entity to create them, that it is unlikely that complex organisms could exist without a designer, which is an idea fundamentally contradicted by evolution. It sounds like you are describing deism, not intelligent design.
Re:His debate (Score:5, Interesting)
There is nothing incompatible with Intelligent design and evolution. If there is a God that created the universe then, that God also created evolution and therefor science is simply discovering Gods work.
I've never heard intelligent design described that way before. Intelligent design is the idea that biological organisms required an intelligent entity to create them, that it is unlikely that complex organisms could exist without a designer, which is an idea fundamentally contradicted by evolution. It sounds like you are describing deism, not intelligent design.
That's essentially the approach the modern Catholic church takes. Broadly speaking: Religion (overall) attempts to subjectively answer 'why?' Science attempts to objectively answer 'how?'. Objective and subjective reasoning methods are largely incompatible to begin with, and anyone used to thinking objectively at all times should find subjective reasoning infuriating and off-putting at best - but it's at the heart of the logic within theology.
Personally, I see evolution as part of the creation, a mechanism no more consequential to the question of God's existence than the rainfall. Besides, if we are truly made in God's image, it should only be natural that we should attempt to understand how we were made on all levels of that question.
The problem I think is small minds need a small God. Every time science pushes the boundaries of what we know about the size and complexity of the universe, ignorant rats scuttle about to stick their heads in the sand and deny the truth of what is observable in the universe, so that they may preserve their small God. If God did indeed make the universe, then the universe itself is the ultimate testament to truth (whatever that is) - not a book - for the universe alone was authored by the hand of God. To deny it is to call God a liar.
Religion doesn't care at all about "why" (Score:2)
Broadly speaking: Religion (overall) attempts to subjectively answer 'why?'
Except they don't. Religion doesn't care about "why" at all. They make up some stories to tell people to achieve some social ends but they don't remotely actually address the question of "why". "Why" is a VERY difficult question. Richard Feynman [youtube.com] said it better than I can. To answer the question of "why" you have to be in a framework that allows something to be true. Religion doesn't do this because religion is not concerned with truth - everything about religion is based on something that cannot be fal
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To my mind religion is fundamentally about power and money and influence.
Then you know nothing beyond what your prejudice limits you to.
Religion is like a virus of the mind to which we have built insufficient vaccines for. I'd modify that to say only small minds need a god at all.
Small minds aren't limited to theists. Gnostic atheists display small minded bigotry all the time, as you have just have.
Personally, I'm agnostic, but unusual in that I am an agnostic theist. The Gnostic question (Can God's existence be proven?) and the Theist question (Does God exist?) are too often conflated by laypeople. To anyone who has done even a cursory study of theology, the conflation is as absurd as confusing RAM for diskspace becau
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Then you know nothing beyond what your prejudice limits you to.
I know "nothing"? Prove me wrong. Prove to me that religion is not about power and influence and money and tribalism. I've got a mountain of objective evidence that shows that religion is very much about those things so you've got a large task in front of you. Belief in a deity or proving the existence of one is a very separate issue from relgion.
Small minds aren't limited to theists. Gnostic atheists display small minded bigotry all the time, as you have just have.
Small minds rely on personal attacks rather than actual ideas based on observable evidence. I'm not the least bit ashamed to say that I think people who worsh
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That's the way I see it too. For the moment, let's assume that the universe was created by a deity according to a plan he had. Which type of deity is more impressive:
1) A deity that, around 10,000 years ago, created the world as-is.
or
2) A deity that created the Universe via a Big Bang, guided (in the background, mostly via certain natural laws) the formation and destruction of stars to make heavier elements, guided the formation of our star and planet ov
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As a rational theist who actually does believe in his religion- I can't find a darn thing wrong with anything of what you wrote.
And it makes me angry. Not at the atheists, or the agnostics, or even the fundamentalists.
At all of the lukewarm, go along to get along people who are perfectly willing to eliminate WIC funding and get into pre-emptive wars and use the death penalty (while claiming to be pro-life), as well as the type on the other side who doesn't care who dies as long as they can still fuck.
But l
Re:His debate (Score:5, Interesting)
The only winning move is not to play.
Re:His debate (Score:4, Informative)
Did you watch the debate? Nye was debating against Young Earth Creationism that Answers in Genesis was putting out; he himself pointed out that millions do reconcile a belief in God and evolution.
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I don't think you know Ken Ham believes. Please watch the debate of Nye and Ham on Youtube, for example. Ham believes in the literal meaning of the creation myth. He believes that god created everything literally in 6 days and he believes that everything else in the bible is literally true, like a 6000 years old earth, Noah's flood, etc. That is absolute toxic to science and progress. If you want to see more: Ken Ham brainwashes children https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
What you present here is a deist posi
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If there is a God that created the universe then,...
I think you've got it backwards. God is what created the universe. If there is nothing but a collection of impersonal physical laws, so be it. Any collection of impersonal physical laws complicated enough to create creatures which will anthropomorphize them, deserve to be anthropomorphized.
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Replace "same organism" with a common ancestor. Because to say that all live evolved from the same organism is just absurd, and is not supported by evidence. But otherwise I agree.
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The percentage in many other countries is even higher.
Which countries?
Certainly my experience from growing up in New Zealand and living my adult life in Australia is that those two are not one of the "many other countries" - in fact, until the Internet showed me otherwise, I grew up believing Creationists were like flat-earthers, they pretty much didn't exist except as a couple of isolated crazies.
Nothing I've seen of the UK makes me think creationists are very prevalent there either. In addition both the Church of England and the Catholic church acknowledge t
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So which countries other than the USA have a high percentage of young-earth creationists?
Nearly all Muslim countries, nearly all of Africa, most of Latin America, and much of Asia do not accept evolution by natural selection. Your three samples of NZ, Australia, and the UK are highly skewed data points.
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No, not nearly all Muslim countries. As with Christianity, it is rather more complicated. See here [wikipedia.org].
Likewise your blanket statement about "all of Africa, most of Latin America". These continents are almost exclusively Roman Catholic and if you haven't noticed the Roman Catholic views on evolution are not nearly as black-and-white as those of many US protestants. "Much of Asia" is just plain wrong, as someone else pointed out.
So actually, from where I am standing, it does look like there is basically no other
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Sadly, I have. I used to belong to an Orthodox Jewish temple back when I was living with my parents. (It meant I didn't need to pay my own temple dues and I wanted to save money.) The rabbi would, semi-regularly, rail on how science knew nothing because they were always changing their minds but religion always kept the same story and that was proof they were right. The very thing that science sees as a strength (correcting your theory when new data comes in), they see as a weakness. That rabbi definite
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The northern europe doesn't even believe god exists.
Not really. Look at these statistics from the eurobarometer poll:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#Europe [wikipedia.org]
Europe seems to be split between Theism, Pantheism and Atheism.
Re:His debate (Score:5, Informative)
Literal Creationism (or "Intelligent design") is primarily an American thing pushed by fundamentalist protestants.
The vast majority of old school mainstream christian religious people (eg. Catholics Anglicans, etc) hold that evolution is a scientifically established principle (supported by both observation and related scientific theories). As far as how a deity fits into their picture, it is generally understood that the biblical stories are allegorical and not literal tellings of an event.
The concept of 'evolution guided by God' is simply a restatement that scientific evidence guides the description of how the universe works, and the random events that coincided to an eventual outcome may have been influenced or set in motion by some divine force. And even then, that is the simplistic layman's way of interpreting the phrase 'you/people were created by god'. With a deep theological understanding, the physical and spiritual aspects of the human condition are not necessarily connected and therefore unconflicted when it comes to changes in how we understand the workings of the known universe.
In general, religious belief does not hinge on anything that can ever be proven/disproven by observation, and is purely the domain of spiritual fulfilment and ideas that exist outside of the physical universe. For these people, there is no need for debate or argument. Science is science. Religion is religion. Their minds are open.
For the biblical fundamentalists that treat their bible as literal tellings of actual events, the 'debate' will never end. Science is religion. Religion is science. Their minds are closed.
These 'debates' are not attention whoring by the religious right, it is attention whoring by the media. More eyeballs for all involved.
Descriptive religion (Score:2)
As far as how a deity fits into their picture, it is generally understood that the biblical stories are allegorical and not literal tellings of an event.
I don't think they see it as allegorical - at least not completely. If they are christian at some level they either believe that Jesus was the "son of god" or they do not. Jesus is not seen as allegorical. Whether the stories are literally true or not is irrelevant to the purpose of religion. If they do see Jesus as allegorical then there is little point in continuing to worship under that structure because then Jesus isn't real and there is no point in worshiping something that isn't real.
In general, religious belief does not hinge on anything that can ever be proven/disproven by observation, and is purely the domain of spiritual fulfilment and ideas that exist outside of the physical universe.
That is NOT h
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But is it particularly important? Sure, Occam is wildly stropping his leather strap about the statement, but if both explanations agree 100% on the outcomes, and agree 100% of the mechanisms of action, and agree 100% on the observations, why does that ma
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But they don't believe in evolution, they believe in theistic evolution, that is, evolution guided by god, which is not really evolution. One of the fundamental aspects of evolution is that it does not require a guider, just chemistry, statistics, and time.
No, they don't (well, some of them do, I can't really speak for all of them). God doesn't have to guide evolution: why would he? He's an omnipotent omniscient being in Catholic theology: he is completely capable of creating the universe with a set of physical laws that will result in evolution following the path he wants it to without intervening directly in it later.
It sounds like you are describing a god whose existence is indistinguishable from it's non-existense. How would you ever tell if that god exists? Why should anyone believe in it if you can't tell?
Scientifically, yes: the universe with a god is indistinguishable from one without one (well, aside from the fact that the universe does actu
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More than half of Americans believe in some form of creationism (young earth creationism, intelligent design, or "evolution guided by God").
"Evolution guided by God" = Theistic Evolution is not creationism. That is just new atheist crap. The most common version of Theistic evolution does not make any testable predictions different from the scientific theory of evolution. It just adds a untestable metaphysical believe to it or as Francis Collins phrases it: "evolution is real, but that it was set in motion by God". Just because you disagree with this metaphysical claim it does not turn theistic evolution into creationism.
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More than half of Americans believe in some form of creationism... The percentage in many other countries is even higher.
No. It's not. The percentage in an overwhelming majority of the developed world is lower. Much lower.
The USA is unique in this regard. Nowhere else can you find such a technologically advanced country populated by such backwards people.
Fellow Americans, we're rapidly becoming the laughing stock of the modern world. The pervasiveness of supernatural and mythological beliefs in this country is truly astounding. Ignoring these people may or may not be working out, but it's dangerous to think that "the pe
Re:His debate (Score:5, Funny)
I'm okay with this, as long as we can call it 'B'.
Re:His debate (Score:5, Funny)
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You do realize that the planet Golgafrinchem was ACTUALLY destroyed by a virulent disease spread on a dirty telephone, right?
You guys randomly quote Douglas Adams and then utterly fail to see his point.
The telephone sanitizers inherited the Earth, and the people Golgafrinchem freaking died out.
You do not want to ship them all off.
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Two weeks before the debate I asked the guy on twitter if he'd isolate Ken Ham's version of YEC away from the other actually possible
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The fact that competitive debating is a thing is pretty clear evidence that you are wrong.
Of course that wasn't the type of debate being discussed - but you changed "the" into "a" thus making a more general claim.
Also surely "when your opponent's arguments convince you to agree with them" is winning, "When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?" and all.
How to debate crazy people (Score:2)
Most scientists told him not to debate the creationists as it only brings more attention to them.
Debating them directly is probably pointless. Your debating someone about something that is fundamentally irrational. You're almost certainly not going to convince them of anything and anyone listening probably has already made up their mind on the topic. It's unclear what the point of such a debate might be. Maybe if there was something directly at stake like in the Scopes monkey trial it might be worthwhile.
No, the way to "debate" them needs to be through education, media and legislation. Strong sepa
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I didn't see the whole debate, but the telling part to me was when both were asked what would change their minds. What would make Bill Nye believe in creationism and Ken Ham accept evolution?
Bill Nye said evidence. If a rabbit fossil was found in the same soil layer as a T-Rex fossil, it would seriously make him question his theories. He might not jump to creationism right away, but it would push him in that direction.
Ken Ham said nothing. To him, even if God
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I'd much rather have a bunch of people out there building a life sized Ark (and maybe even employing some skilled tradesmen) than for that same money being spent winning local elections for candidates that want to take evolution out of textbooks.
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On the other hand that Ken Ham makes Australians look like idiots even if he has been infected by some sort of fringe American pentacostal rabies :(
An antidote to that is Dr Karl who's sort of our version of Bill Nye only from more of a medical background (http://www.drkarl.com).
How's this for funny?
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1. You are not dumbing[sp?] it down, if you are trying to target people who have no idea of the base concepts or your target audience isn't ever sure they want to be involved. What do you expect him to do? In front of a bunch of kids, who can barely do arithmetic, giving them the formulas mountains of raw data, and a formal proof and expect them to get it? Bill Nye the science guy doesn't teach a degree in science, he is really good at giving the introduction, and inspiring people.
2. Back in the 80's ster
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Okay, then, what do you think it means?
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So you can only come up with a rambling and vaguely confrontational statement of what you think it doesn't mean? Nice.
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The AC does have a point: "creationism" (and "intelligent design") are potentially ambiguous terms to people who aren't engaged in the evolution debate. To us here (I assume), both terms refer to anti-evolution philosophies. To others, the terms may simply suggest that the universe was "created" and "intelligently designed" by a Creator, a belief which is in no way incompatible with evolution or science in general. It just feeds the false dichotomy of "religion vs science".
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Bill Nye won out? Huh, that's interesting. Here in Brazil, back in the 90s, both shows were aired: Beakman's World was quite popular, while Bill Nye was completely ignored. In fact, I recall watching Nye once and thinking... "this Beakman-wannabe is much less fun."
Exactly right! (Score:2)
Your feelings about the "Beakman wannabe" are exactly right.
However in the U.S, Nye was backed by Disney which meant he was pushed EVERYWHERE (including the Disney theme parks) while Beakman's show had a good run but then was cancelled. Disney just kept Nye going and going...
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And Bill Nye had the ever so cute and perky Suzanne Mikawa [youtube.com] on the show. She made a lot of teenage boys very interested in science.
Nothing (Score:2)
Beakman had, frankly, way hotter lab assistants than Nye ever did (No offense meant to Suzanne).
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I grew up during this. I was a geeky nerdy kid, right in the target demographic of these lines of shows.
I never saw Bill Nye. I dunno man, I was 10 when it aired. I just never saw it.
I saw Beakman, but I honestly didn't like how goofy he was. It was over the top.
I preferred Mr. Wizard reruns. [wikipedia.org]
Eliza has done a lot! (Score:2)
Eliza Schneider [imdb.com] was Liza on Beakman's world, looking at her IMDB credits she has mostly done voice work in quite a lot of well known video games. Very impressive, though too bad we don't see her in person.
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She was *red hot*!
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