Getting The Word Out

I was not sure I liked the idea of Bill Nye the Science Guy debating Ken Ham of the Creation Museum in Kentucky.  

The Creation Museum is where you can see exhibits like this one, showing a girl not being ripped to shreds by an animal that lived 100 million years before there were humans - or 6 thousand years ago according to Ham's imaginative take on the bible.

Ham read the bible carefully - or not - and decided that the world was created 6,000 years ago, which probably came as a surprise to a lot of people at the time.

I guess someone forgot to tell him that
the Flintstones were a children's cartoon

Anyhow, the question among people who paid attention in science class was whether even standing up in public to talk to Ham would give him credibility.  As Mark Twain wrote, "Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience".

This must have been edited out of my 

copy of the bible.

Today Phil Plait, who definitely paid attention in school, wrote an editorial explaining why the debate was a good thing.  He pointed out that scientists too often think that the facts are obvious and need no explanation.  They are seen as snobby intellectual atheists.  

(A note on that atheist thing:  while more probable than the fact that some gigantic, petulant - read your old testament, folks -  man-like creature is watching over us and visiting us with plagues, atheism likewise is not based on observed fact.  In fact, science can not prove a negative.  Just because something has not been found doesn't make it impossible.  It just makes it unlikely.  So a true scientist must be an agnostic - not proven awaiting further data.)

What is needed, according to Plait, is articulate people people of faith to stand up and explain things.  People like Pope John Paul II, a deeply religious man, who stated that there is no conflict between the fact of evolution and his religion.  So, ironically, what we need are people of religion who can explain science and let the masses know that most traditional religions have no problem with science.

I wonder if Ham has a problem with science in the form of microchips, gps, internal combustion, television, medicine beyond quarantining lepers.

Phil Plait's article may be seen here.