Bill Nye: no science guy?

Scientist made popular by his educational television show bashes creationism

TV star — Nye had harsh words for creationists. YouTube screen shot

Creationism is once again under attack. In a recent “Big Think” video entitled “Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children,” Bill Nye argued against parents teaching their children creationism. The two-minute-and-30-second video was filled with false data and misconceptions.

Nye stated that the U.S. is in danger of losing the status of the most technologically- advanced country because of the prevalent teaching of creationism.

However, Marcus Ross, who has a doctorate in Geosciences and is the assistant director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University, disagrees.

“Young-Earth creationism has only grown stronger and more powerful as an explanation for life’s history over the past several decades, while at the same time the U.S. continues to lead in science and technology,” Ross said.

Nye went on to say that he believes that students who are taught creationism would not grow to become problem-solvers like engineers.

“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology,” Nye said.

This, however, confuses empirical science with historical science.

“The former is where technology is derived from and is based on experimental science that we can repeat. The latter interprets the past,” Dr. David DeWitt, director for the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University, said.

Nye’s statement that creationism beliefs will conflict with problem-solving is also a careless fallacy. Simply looking at some of the beliefs of modern science founders will demonstrate that this point is incorrect. Isaac Newton, Johann Kepler, Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, Charles Babbage, Gregor Mendel and Lord Kelvin were all known Christians and creationists.

These scientists made discoveries in mathematics, celestial mechanics, chemistry, hydrostatics, computer science, genetics and thermodynamics. These men were not only profound problem-solvers, but also furthered modern science with their creationist background.


Nye also said that creationism prohibits engineering because of an “inconsistent worldview.”

DeWitt said those claims were “quite ironic,” given that engineers create and design things.

“This notion would come as quite a surprise to several engineers that I know, including Stuart Burgess,” DeWitt said. “Dr. Burgess has received numerous awards for his mechanical engineering designs, including work on ENVISAT, which is the largest man-made satellite orbiting the Earth. He is a creationist.”

Indeed, what is engineering but design? Creationism is founded on the belief that there is purpose to every structure in nature.

“When we look at plants and animals as the product of design, then we immediately ask what functions things have and why they exist,” Ross said. “Engineers who look at nature’s designs for inspiration…use creationist principles all the time, and the results are often spectacular.”

Nye ended his video by stating that creationism is dangerous because it is illogical and there is no evidence for it. Nye listed such evidence as the fossil record as proof of evolution. Perhaps no other claim reveals Nye’s true bias than this one. Instead of directly attacking creationism arguments, he blindly stated that it was “illogical” and that there was “no evidence” for it.

Ross believes that the “no evidence” claim is an unfounded one.

“It is all around him (and us), but he does not see it for what it is, because he’s decided that science must only accept processes without reference to God,” Ross said. “The rocks and fossils of the world speak of a terrible destruction at the time of Noah, but instead he sees ‘life through time.’ The fossil record isn’t a record of life, it’s a record of death and judgment.”

With proper analysis, Nye’s main points in his video are shown to be merely misconceptions based on bias against the notion of God. By blindly stating that it takes belief in a historical science theory to develop problem-solving skills, Nye freely abandons the science and facts that he claims to love.

Based on facts, a creationist can be a problem solver, a “literate citizen” and even an engineer. Maybe it takes a rocket scientist to figure that out.

5 comments

  • If pastors, priests. rabbis, and “so called” Christians would stop their false (old Earth) and foolish (young Earth) teachings, and start promoting the truth of Genesis (Observations of Moses), then there would hardly be any room for the ridiculous teaching of evolution.

    Collectively, Bible believers are so “blind”, that their approach to Genesis is a joke. Instead of seeking the truth, they continue to support the current lies and foolishness of Creationism. Genesis does not have any “Creation accounts”. When you keep telling a person that their car is running out of gas, and they refuse to look at the fuel gauge and go to the gas station, you begin to wonder how “dumb” they are.

    Perhaps they are just like the Jews, who value tradition over the truth of scripture.

    Is it strange that Atheists want the cram their false beliefs down everyone else’s throats, without allowing a (valid) opposing view?

    Herman Cummings
    ephraim7@aol.com

  • No real scientist would make a distinction between historical and observational science. Just hinting that there may be such a dichotomy is a read flag for any real student or academician. What of quantum mechanics, or the higher level theoretical maths? Are these observed? Are they historical?
    How about aritic ice core samples? For a very long time the article ice has melted and refrozen every year. Some artic ice cores have such annual layers going back 250k years. Is that historical or observational science. Chemical analysis of the layers provides clues about the earth’s environment a quarter of a million years ago, but the observations are being done in real time.
    I realize that evidence won’t sway you lot. There’s probably a YEC “theory” about Noah caused the artic ice to thaw and refreeze in seemingly annual layers.

  • Re: My previous comment.
    *ARCTIC

    Thank you

  • Creationism is nothing more than a story from a book and that’s it. You can’t teach it as fact because it’s not a fact, it’s a myth. The fossil record does NOT support creationism and anyone that knew anything about how the fossils are distributed would see that. The “look around you” is nothing more than an argument from ignorance logical fallacy. All the evidence that’s ever been found tells us that creationism is impossible.

    There is no evidence of a god-like being, no evidence for creationism, and no evidence of design (outside of evolution) in nature…none. Not one person has every produced one bit of substantial evidence for any of this because it’s all made up. I’m shock that these people are not looking for evidence for Harry Potter because they apparently believe any story they read.

    People, stories in a book are not evidence of anything.

  • Ridicule, conjecture, more ridicule, childishness, spelling and grammatical mistakes, even more ridicule…
    If the last three comments are indicative of the best the theory of “everything made itself” has to offer, Bill Nye may be on to something about creation not being appropriate for children.

    If billions (even millions) of years are true, at present rates, the oceans should be choked with mud, the salt in the seas would kill everything in it, the Great Barrier Reef would be larger than the world, oil and gas deposits would have lost their pressure and the moon’s orbit should have already decayed. Carbon 14 has been detected in diamonds and so-called ancient coal deposits where it is not supposed to be found. Pine pollen has been found in every layer of the Grand Canyon.

    Supposed 68 million year old dinosaur bones have been found to have red blood cells still in them. Stalactites and stalagmites have been shown to form quickly under the right conditions. Crude oil is being manufactured by thermal depolymerization in Missouri from turkey offal in a matter of days.

    600 feet of layered sedimentary rock was built up in months after the Mt. St Helens May 18, 1980 eruption. Real precious opal can be formed in less than a year. Coal can be formed from simple heating of wood in a matter of months.

    Ice core sampling is subject to the same presuppositional thinking. In 1942 war planes crash landed on the frozen Greenland ice. In 1980 they were found 250 ft. below the surface. By this chronometer, the 10,000 ft. ice core brought up by the European Greenland Ice-core Project (GRIP) in Greenland in 1990–1992 would represent only 2000 years of accumulation.

    “Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution” Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology, Kansas State University)

    All plants & animals that exist today are represented in the fossil record. This is significant because it tells us that change is not a universal law. And, all major groups appear suddenly without ancestral forms.

    “Not only do characteristic and distinctive remains of phyla appear suddenly, without known ancestors, but several classes of phylum, orders of a class, and so on, commonly appear at approximately the same time, without known intermediates.” James W. Valentine and Cathryn A. Campbell, “Genetic Regulation and the Fossil Record,” in American Scientist.

    It is not the facts that speak against the Biblical account of a recent creation, but the bias of a culture that desires, at all costs, to eliminate God from their memory. Evolution cannot survive the scrutiny of the critical mind as it lacks integrity, demands too much faith and gives nothing in return.

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