Bill Nye vs Ken Ham --What the evolution debate is REALLY about!

Everyone who grew up in the 90s loves Bill Nye, and those who are interested in Christianity and Creationism will love this debate. I watched it and tried to be as objective as possible to determine what the debate was really about.


To save you 2:45 hrs of your life, let me just explain this debate and if you want to watch it after with my enlightenment, please do so.


Ken Ham's Argument:

We should only teach the science that we know is Truth in schools.

Definitions:
Observational Science - Science that derives truth from what we can observe in the present and recreate through experiments.

Historical Science - Science that derives assumptions of the past based on the present **Which Ham emphasizes the word Assumption, because it isn't 100% provable.

Creationism - (His definition is broad, so I'm going to take the liberty of explaining what I believe is pertinent to this debate) The theory that there were around 2,000 kinds and from those kinds all other animals have evolved. I.e. Finches evolved from the bird kind, parrots evolved from the bird kind, etc.

Kind - A species of animal, such as a dog, cat, mouse, lion, bird, man, etc.

Truth - (again, his definition is broad) Anything observable and/or repeatable--OR anything God has spoken in the Bible. [he tacked that one on]

Additional claims:
Ham claims evolutionists are "hijacking" the definitions of "evolution" to include observational science (finches change generationally) AND historical science (finches spawned from a single celled organism a long time ago).


Bill Nye's Argument:

We should allow teachers to teach students the scientific process, regardless of whether what they say is true or false, the emphasis is on the process and it is an exciting thing.

Bill Nye doesn't necessarily claim evolutionists are 100% right or wrong, but he claims students should be taught about everything and all the facts and possible facts should be presented to them as well as the tools to determine if it is true or false.

Definitions:
Nye doesn't directly present definitions, his argument is straightforward in this regard however, to present his argument he presented a lot of other (in my opinion) "off topic" points that debunk some of what Ham was claiming. I have however included a few useful definitions

Evolving - Taking one species and making it more complex for some purpose.

Science - The process of discovery.

Additional claims:
Science is about the process of discovery, not the truth itself.

Nye argues that the job of a scientist is to prove theories right or wrong and that a scientist can stand on either side of the debate so long as they bring Evidence forward about it. If they can't bring evidence forward then they aren't doing science, they are making claims without founding. So...he presented a few claims and provided evidence for them, (here is one of many:) such as the layers of different rocks found in the grand canyon and the fossils found in those areas how they become more and more complex. He even challenged scientists to find just 1 species from a lower layer that is found in an upper layer because if they could do that it would be ground breaking and disprove what we understand about evolutionary science--as of yet no one has.

Nye Argues that we need to encourage the younger generation to ask questions and seek answers via science in order to solve the problems of the future and keep America economically strong because otherwise other countries will do so and surpass america.
--Along with that, he argues that if we limit what students can be taught down to just the truth, we will stifle curiosity and limit the act of science (the process of discovery).  [the assumption is, that if students are taught that one way is the truth and only the truth, then they will not bother researching other things outside that scope--and also, if that truth is false, no one will question it]



Some things to realize:

Private schools are increasing in enrollment, and private schools aren't limited to just creationism or just evolution. The debate is limited to public education.

This may have just been a publicity stunt on Ham's part to promote his museum and books.

Nye is a public education figure and mechanical engineer (scientist).
Ham has a degree related to education curriculum design (museum curator).

Nye is American, Ham is Australian.
Nye is Agnostic, Ham is Christian.


My opinion:

Ham was the better debater of the two--Nye wasn't as organized and not as focused on his actual argument but instead focused on the points of his argument rather than the argument as a whole. Ham came across well practiced.


I have to come out now and say that I side with Bill Nye. Nye's argument is non-judgmental of the truth. Under Nye's argument you can believe whatever you want as long as you back it up with proof whereas Ham's argument supposes that there are certain things that we shouldn't believe or argue about. If Nye is correct in his assumption, we already stifle our creativity and critical thinking by refusing to investigate the truth for ourselves.

I think public education should teach all viewpoints, all theories, and the pluses and minuses of those theories--even silly things that people once believed but no longer do (like the greek humors) because understanding the flaws in that way of thinking gives you a better idea of how to determine truth in the present times.
The important thing that public education should teach is how to come to the truth on your own. We live in the information age--we can look up any information we want, but if we don't know how to interpret that information for ourselvse and figure out how it applies to us, or we don't know how to determine if it is correct or incorrect, then what good does it do for us to know the said "truth?" Schools focus too much on memory regurgitation and not enough on independent thinking. Memory regurgitation was useful when our economy was more industrial and there were strict procedures for doing everything in our economy, but now that things have changed we need to focus on how to think for ourselves, how to come up with good ideas and solve problems, and to determine truth from untruth and how to objectively analyze things and to change our opinions if we are proven wrong.

Modern Marriage: Part 1

In each age, mankind has shaped the institution of marriage to fit the purposes of the times; and it is time for us to recognize the purpose of modern marriage. Marriage has seen an evolution throughout the ages. Each reincarnation of marriage has proven to be better than the last. Unfortunately, since we are in the early stages of this development, not all marriages fit the correct pattern for this time-period and we may never see 100% of marriages fit the pattern, but there is a very apparent formula for the modern marriage and the success of any couple, in this age, forming this institution depends on it.

\\\\\\\\\\\\PART ONE: EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE\\\\\\\\\

When men were still living in caves, marriage was an assertion of power. It protected and promoted the development of offspring. Being joined together, living together as man and woman, meant that the best genetics were being used to create offspring. It also meant that offspring were protected at all times by one parent while the other was searching for food and shelter and it became a manifestation of power among the cave people. If another cave man or woman were capable of having intercourse with another cave person's mate, he would be seen as more powerful. 

Eventually, the custom of marriage became a form of entitlement. Great family lines were established by formal marriage. If you were born in that household or married into it, you would be entitled to the respect designated to that household. Records were kept of marriages in order to prove who was part of that house and who was not. Family sticks together, and if you upset one member of the household he can easily enlist the help of his brothers and sisters, parents and cousins to get revenge. 

Households quickly became a means for preserving not only social status but wealth as well and then tradition. If your household became wealthy, when you died your offspring received whatever you could not take with you from this life. If you were constructive enough, you could even pass traditions down for generations. Religions were established by households as a macro-political effort to boost a household's power (sorry, not the other around). Biblicly, the Levites were given charge over all religious rules and social laws. In egypt, the priests were given political powers along with social powers, and typically priests were born not raised from outside. Social classes were established to govern the rules behind who could marry who and why.

Jump forward several hundred years to Tudor England and you see that the marriage went through another reincarnation: it was too confining. If the king couldn't have a child with his wife he couldn't have an heir to the thrown, so he attempted to get a divorce. Marriage for a king can be explained as simply as a contract between a man in power who agrees to offer his wife and her offspring with all of her desires so long as she provides the king with an heir. Many kings and queens throughout ages even had affairs to meet their sexual desires and it was not always frowned upon. 

With divorce and greater freedom among common peoples brought the notion (finally) to marry for love. Bards, including Shakespeare himself, presented the idea that one can and should marry for love--marry someone who they want to be married to rather than someone they have to marry in order to survive. Previously in Europe, if they weren't wealthy, they were forced into quasi-arranged marriages, a young poor girl to a "respectable" man with property. Studying Shakespeare's works you can see that these arranged marriages had their problems and society's response was that the man was either cuckled or tamed his wife violently. (Dear female feminists, please realize that this was the reason my sex has mistreated you for hundreds of years.)

In Puritan America, marriage became, yet again, a rigid institution without divorce and furthered the above gender roles (taming and cuckling). But America brought further freedom to marry or not marry whomever one chose. It opened the doors for the mixing of social classes--for there were new social classes and anyone could marry anyone so long as they  brought their spouse into their social class with them (whether up or down). Though geographically centered in America, the ideas they brought forth spread across the globe.

It quickly became the norm for married couples to help one another remain faithful and to assist in progression. Though the gender roles created differences, men helped their wives in educating (or not educating them if he thought it was more important) and women assisted in the care taking of their husbands. 

Eventually, in Utah, (though this isn't new, guys, come one) plural marriage was established under the explanation that it allowed for the care taking of elderly, widowed women who society was neglecting. I point this out so that you can see that marriage has always changed based on necessity. It isn't rigid, it's very fluid. Depending on the circumstances of the time the institution of marriage may change slightly to meet a need of an individual (such as a king or minority) or a society as a whole. As another example, elsewhere in the world, and for a very long time, there was a bartering aspect to marriage--women were the domestic workers, whether wife or daughter, and losing one meant a loss to the man of the house. To compensate, the groom was required to pay a dowry to make up for the difference. Most people don't do this today because there is no need. Daughters aren't expected to be domestic workers, and daughters have the freedom to walk out of the house at any time if they choose.

So that leads us up to the pre-modern time period...

Since the '50s and '60s America saw a major increase in the divorce rate. Among the military especially it became so high that it became a burden and the government instituted a law that denied a couple from divorcing while one spouse was on active duty. The significance of this increasing divorce rate is that men and women are comfortable breaking up a marriage at any time and for any reason, previously they were required to show proof of infidelity. 

Entering and leaving marriage due to unhappiness or dislike has both, planted the fear of getting married, and the disgust of ever getting married, into the minds of later generations. It is becoming more common for people to say they never intend to marry, and it is also common for people to approach marriage with skepticism and mistrust and to request a prenuptial agreement. Prenuptial agreements were non-existent or incredibly rare even a hundred years ago, let alone a thousand. 

The most recent conflict to put our thoughts on marriage into perspective is the push to allow gay marriage--marriage between two people of the same sex. We finally have something to make us stop and think about our beloved institution rather than blindly bumble through it and suffer because of it. I find it interesting that it is not the divorce rate that provokes us to think, but the possibility of other people being married--one of these affects us directly, the other only affects us indirectly based on our thoughts and perceptions of it.

As a society we are not quite into the mature stage of the modern marriage. Not everyone has embraced modern methods, in fact not even a majority of people have. Most people are still stuck in old ways of thinking. Some still think like the cavemen--that who you marry makes you look more powerful. Others follow the Tudorian approach and believe marriage is for getting offspring. With so many different types of marriages, it is no wonder that few people come to the correct conclusions about what marriage is all about in the modern world. So what is the modern marriage?

Read Part two to find out!

Mankind's Slow Evolution

I have been reading several books lately on interpersonal communication and conflict--newer books--The Guide to Compassionate Assertiveness (2012), The Triangle of Truth (2011), Conscious Communication (2010), Breaking the Argument Cycle (2009), and How to Hug a Porcupine (2009). 
These books Should be the latest and greatest knowledge on communication, yet I am under the impression that most of these books are complete garbage.

Conscious Communication seems to be the best book I have ever read on interpersonal communication. I think it comes closest to reality and the "truth" as Plato would put it. In one section of this book, Miles Sherts begins to touch on the evolution process of man and my mind began to mix with his thoughts and I think I completely understand where he is going with this thought:

One of the things that separate us from Animals is that we have the ability to create complex noises to communicate with one another and formulate sentences; we also have the ability to think about thinking--which supposedly animals cannot. Most importantly, we have the ability to recognize our feelings and to name them. We can assess ourselves and determine: I am sad right now, I am happy, I am grateful, I am distraught, I am angry.

Yet even though we can create complex sounds and communicate how we are feeling--we haven't advanced very far in this field as a human race. 

Most of us communicate logically rather than emotionally. We make assumptions and treat them as facts. When someone does something that hurts us, we say "You are a bad person" and we live on the assumption that that person is out to get us, out to hurt us, out to dishonor our families and circumvent our lives. It is the simple: "Because of this, therefore this." Logic. That's what that is. But that's now how logic is supposed to be used, because it isn't an avenue to the truth.

Rhetorical tools, Logic, Ethos, Pathos, Kairos--these are supposed to bring us closer to the truth, not theory. They are supposed to bring about good in the world, not fear. They are supposed to help you learn or teach, rather than narrow your mind to new ideas.

The thing I have learned from my recent studies has been that the NEW avenue of evolution--the area in which we humans NEED to evolve in order to survive, the area in which we have been fighting generationally to overcome this and unfortunately it has been a slow process can be explained as follows:

We have found a way to gather resources so that all of our physical needs are easily taken care of, but our emotional needs, because of society and the culture required to reach this level of human advancement, have taken a back seat. Instead of addressing emotional needs we focus on physical needs as the means to an end, but it doesn't help to heal emotional wounds.
We run away from emotional pain or blame others because of 'logical' associations we make between other people and our emotional pain. Because our emotional needs aren't met and more importantly, because we don't know how to address or resolve emotional wounds, we sever relationships, we lash back, and we "fight" to survive.
But emotional pain isn't like physical pain. We don't need to fight for our emotional well being like we do for our physical well being. Gaining possessions, securing more resources of food and water, these might help us resolve our physical well-being, but our emotional well being isn't resolved by securing more relationships. If you don't resolve your emotional needs, having more relationships will only bring more opportunities for conflict and can ultimately lead to you pushing away your relationships or hurting other people and making your emotional pain even worse because the closer people are to you the more likely they are to bring out your emotional wounds.

As a society, but more importantly as individuals, we need to focus on resolving our emotional needs ourselves and being more compassionate to others who are suffering emotional pain. But before we can do that, we need to evolve so that we can recognize emotional pain--in ourselves and in others. And then we need to learn how to resolve emotional pain, because emotional pain can be triggered by other people, but resolving that emotional pain is an individual process in which we might rely on the support of others but ultimately must make the journey ourselves in the confines of our own minds.

You shouldn't walk away from other people simply because they trigger emotional pain in you, just like you shouldn't blame the fire for burning you.