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August 27th, 2012
11:31 AM ET
Bill Nye slams creationismBy Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN)–Famed TV scientist Bill Nye is slamming creationism in a new online video for Big Think titled "Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children." "Denial of evolution is unique to the United States," Nye begins in a YouTube video posted on Thursday. The video quickly picked up steam over the weekend and as of Monday morning had been viewed more than 1,100,000 times. Nye - a mechanical engineer and television personality best known for his program, "Bill Nye the Science Guy" - said the United States has great capital in scientific knowledge and "when you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in it, it holds everyone back." "Your world becomes fantastically complicated if you don't believe in evolution," Nye said in the Web video. Creationists are a vast and varied group in the United States. Most creationists believe in the account of the origins of the world as told in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories In the creation account, God creates Adam and Eve, the world, and everything in it in six days. For Christians who read the Genesis account literally, or authoritatively as they would say, the six days in the account are literal 24-hour periods and leave no room for evolution. Young Earth creationists use this construct and biblical genealogies to determine the age of the Earth, and typically come up with 6,000 to 10,000 years. Your Take: 5 reactions to Bill Nye's creationism critique The Gallup Poll has been tracking Americans' views on creation and evolution for the past 30 years. In June it released its latest findings, which showed 46% of Americans believed in creationism, 32% believed in evolution guided by God, and 15% believed in atheistic evolution. During the 30 years Gallup has conducted the survey, creationism has remained far and away the most popular answer, with 40% to 47% of Americans surveyed saying they believed that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years. Survey: Nearly half of Americans subscribe to creationist view of human origins "The idea of deep time of billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent," Nye said in the video. "I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems," he said. Creationists' beliefs about the origins of the Earth are often a narrow focus, based in large part on religious beliefs, and while they reject evolution as "just one theory," they often embrace other fields of science and technology. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter In "The Genesis Flood," the 1961 book that in many ways help launch the Young Earth creationism movement in the United States, the authors write: “Our conclusions must unavoidably be colored by our Biblical presuppositions, and this we plainly acknowledge." Their goal for the book was to harmonize the scientific evidence with the accounts in Genesis of creation and the flood. The idea of creationism has been scorned by the mainstream scientific community since shortly after Darwin introduced "The Origin of Species" in 1859. By 1880, The American Naturalists, a science journal, reported nearly every major university in America was teaching evolution. "In another couple centuries I'm sure that worldview won't even exist. There's no evidence for it. So..." Nye ends his video. soundoff (14,640 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 Next » |
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Religious Crazy is the scariest type of crazy.
Creationism: An argument for, against, and a stumper
For: If an all powerful god wanted to create the universe "in 6 days" and He had the ability to do so, would it be beyond His power to create a planet that had an apparent C14 dating of billions of years old? I mean, if you can create everything out of nothing (conservation of energy?) is it feasible that you can create a rock that is only 6,000 years old but has a C14 of 4.5B years?
Against: Too many similarities between Christianity and other religions
Egyptian God Horus: Virgin birth heralded by a star; no data between ages of 12 & 30. Age at baptism: 30, fate of the baptiser: Beheaded. Walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind, crucified, descended into Hell; resurrected after three days.
Attis of Phygia: Virgin birth on December 25, considered the savior who was slain for man's salvation. His body as bread was eaten by his worshippers. He was both the Divine Son and the Father. On “Black Friday,” he was crucified on a tree, descended into the underworld and after three days, was resurrected.
Roman God Dionysus: born of a virgin on December 25. He was a sacred king killed and eaten in an eucharistic ritual. He rose from the dead on March 25. He turned water into wine, was called “King of Kings”, “God of Gods", the “Only Begotten Son,” Savior,” “Redeemer,” “Sin Bearer,” "Anointed One,” and the “Alpha and Omega.” He was identified with the Ram or Lamb, he was hung on a tree or crucified.
Stumper: If God created the universe, He created the Earth; if He created the Earth, He is not "from" this planet; anything not from this planet is an alien; hence, God, if He exists, is an alien.
why would it take a powerful god 6 days? Sounds like man had a hand in that story.
That's a stumper?
I think God made it clear He's not from this planet.
First, C14 dating is only accurate to around 70,000 yrs. To measure billions of years you need to measure the date by an isotope with a much longer half life. Second, any sort of radioisotope dating is based on extreme extrapolation. This is discouraged in every scientific discipline and the results of such should not be taken as fact.
@ 70,000 years accuracy ... estimating the earth @ 6 billion years is accurate to within .0001 %.
That's exactly what Bill is talking about when he says our engineers suck these days.
Granted from wikipedia, not the best source, but can easily be found elsewhere.
"Radiocarbon dating (usually referred to as simply carbon dating) is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years."
Which is why I stated using an isotope with a longer half-life like uranium
"Uranium–lead (U–Pb) dating is one of the oldest[1] and most refined of the radiometric dating schemes, with a routine age range of about 1 million years to over 4.5 billion years, and with routine precisions in the 0.1–1 percent range."
So your right, Bill is correct, reading comprehension is failing.
To start life you need elements like carbon, phosphorus, calcium, as well as organic compounds like amino acids, proteins, lipids, and carotene. Let's assume (like evolution does) all these came magically out of thin air. They were created out of nothing.
Now we need to take those elements and put them in exact mixture. Let's assume (like evolution does) these elements all magically and randomlly fell into an exact mixture.
Next we need to take that exact mixture, and apply an exact set of outside influences like heat, pressure, and time. Remember this has to be exact. Let's assume this happen (as evolution does) in the exact order needed.
Now we have life, and can start down the evolution theory. Seem logical to you?
Oh forgot to mention taking just one thing or outside influence or order out of sequence blows the whole thing up. However lets just take one thing, like a protein. Scientist have proven it take 250 proteins in EXACT balance to have life in just one cell.
The odds of 250 proteins merging together in the exact balance has been estimated at 1 in a trillion, trillion, trillion. That is 1 with 36 zeros.
Now forgetting all this makeup was created out of nothing, the odds on the proteins alone show it is more plausible to accept an intelligent design theory vs this mess.
Keep reaching for answers. I am not buying yours.
"Let's assume (like evolution does) all these came magically out of thin air."
Nothing about the assumptions of evolution are magical.
It is also very much worth noting that nothing you are talking about has anything to do with evolution but rather the beginning of life on earth. Even if a magical being did create the first life on earth, it does not disprove the process of evolution that has created the numerous species we have here today. In fact, your silly questions prove nothing other than your lack of understanding of evolution and the beginning of life. Just because magic is more plausible to YOU than reality does not make it so.
Well said. Anyone who doesn't see intelligent design doesn't get outdoors much.
If your gibberish is even correct... one in a trillion can still happen. When we are talking about the universe, there are a lot of zeroes. We are but a speck in time and space.
However, I have never witnessed a shred of evidence of this god. Nor do I expect to. Unless you count the shape of the virgin mary in my cheerios this morning....
I really, really hope you get to see this response because you need to know just how disgustingly ignorant you are. Evolution has absolutely NOTHING to do with from where organic compounds came. Do you understand that? Nothing. It never has and it never will. This idiotic statement of yours proves you are scientifically illiterate and yet you speak with such arrogance. You want to talk about "sad there are people out there like this?" Just look in the mirror. Also, so you're aware, abiogenesis has never claimed that organic compounds came out of thin air. This is another, moronic comment that proves you know nothing about science. Do yourself a favor and hit the books, junior.
"Let's assume (like evolution does) all these came magically out of thin air" ... It's been proven that these are created as stars and planets form...
"Next we need to take that exact mixture, and apply an exact set of outside influences like heat, pressure, and time."
...Um...like a lighting strike?
"The odds of 250 proteins merging together in the exact balance has been estimated at 1 in a trillion, trillion, trillion. That is 1 with 36 zeros"
Any number over infinity approaches zero, no matter how many zeroes you put behind it. Meaning the odds of this happening are actually very good.
This is what Bill is talking about with bad engineering and science. All of your thesis has been proven in a lab by experiments over and over. The math is bogus as you're talking about an infinite number set, and also been proven over and over.
But let’s throw all that science out because some really poor hermits in the desert wrote a book a few thousand years ago.
I'm not sure where you get your facts, but they aren't based on reality at all. Nobody claims that anything came out of thin air. In fact, nobody claims to know exactly where things started (the big bang perhaps?) But even after that, it took a long time for atoms to form into stars, where they were turned into heavier elements and eventually formed into planets and other large bodies. The facts you state about the minimum number of proteins needed to build a cell are also incorrect. They don't yet know how the first simplest cells formed, so you are most likely seeing facts about current much more complex cells. In any event, a billion years is a loooooong time with lots of zeros. And considering the earth is a very large place with trillions of locations where this process could have been unfolding, even using your made up statistic (1 trillion, trillion, trillion) would still be possible in less than 1 billion years. Complex compounds occur naturally all over the universe. Amino acids can be made in test tubes by adding basic chemicals, water, energy, and time. So saying that it would be impossible to occur naturally is just absurd. I am a scientist, and more importantly for this argument, a mathematician, and I can say that even the largest statistics creationists manage to make up would still allow life to form naturally. The world is a big place, chemical reactions can occur very quickly in small areas, and billions of years is a very long time.
All that, AND the bible has been definitively proven wrong on more than one occasion in the past.
But what if you're wrong Bill?
But what is you are wrong A Believer? Couldn't your absurd argument be used ad infinitum?
Dear the goodman, from the gooderman, you're exactly right - so what the hell do you care? Be a decent human, and we'll find out after we die. Stop pretending to be morally superior in this life. Who cares. Why are you so insecure, paranoid, and bigoted against believers?
@ A Believer I have said nothing about believers, especially something bigoted. Please put the martyr card back in your pocket, these are not the droids you are looking for.
ABMiller – because religion causes war. It causes people to be divided and hate each other over nothing more than nonsense. It causes people to make irrational decisions and hold illogical opions that deny facts then those same people try to use their silly beliefs to pass laws that they want the rest of us to abide by. If religious people stay out of politics and other aspects of public interest then I would say they are free to do as they please, but when they want to push their beliefs on the rest us and completely disregard the facts at the expense of our health and our planet then they become dangerous and must be challenged.
Sure, Reaonable, Godless Atheists have never started wars and genocides - ever heard of Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin...? What a fool you are.
I'm a Christian, a mechanical engineer of 38 years, and believe the Genesis creation account. I'm not surprised by the atheistic comments against creation, they are to be expected. I am astounded by those calling themselves Christian (such as Elisabeth, others that say, "I'm fundamentalist, not literalist") and their disbelief. No wonder the world is utterly confused about Christians.
I agree Allen, you either take the bible to be true, or you don't.
Bill Nye The "Science" Guy
Support Education – Reduce Religion. 2 Birds, One Stone.
1. I believe the Bible is the Word of God.
2. I believe the Bible's account of Creation is more accurate than God-less theories of creation.
3. I am a scientist, not a mechanical engineer.
4. I am not alone.
What field of science?
What sort of science do you practice? Are there additional scientific facts you elect to disbelieve in despite overwhelming evidence to support them? What other myths do you tout as the "truth" despite no evidence?
I would like for you to be known to your community. Your integrity is clearly in question and at this point any scientific work you do should be put under a microscope.
So you think that birds showed up on the earth before land animals, fruit (flowering plants) before land animals, and "morning" and "evening" before the sun?
1. I believe the bible has been proven wrong on more than one occasion in the past. (see Galileo)
2. I believe visible evidence trumps a book written thousands of years ago and interpreted/translated multiple times.
3. I am a scientist, not a mechanical engineer
4. I am not alone
He didn't say he was a good engineer.
@ME II
not to mention plants before the sun, moon and stars!
What if your god made things evolve?
@!aGOPer,
Yeah, that too.
Since you're a scientist, you ought to be able to site the evidence that leads you to the conclusion that the biblical creation myth has any credibility at all. So then what is it? And if you can't site your scientific evidence to this end, then the fact that you claim to be a scientist has no bearing on your opinion in this matter.
Seems like Bill Nye simply needs to prove the "Theory of evolution." Then it will become the "law of evolution" and there will be no further debate on this topic. That would be much more productive than Bill trying to promote the theory of evolution as an irrefutable law. I think that his approach to dismissing other points of view is holding our children back from understanding the scientific method.
Hey guys, let's all back off Reason here. He said he was a scientist. That's all the proof I need to know that he knows what he's talking about.
@John,
Science doesn't deal in "proof", that's math and law. Also, in science a Theory is not promoted to a Law. A Theory is a well-substantiated, well-tested explanation of how the world works. Evolution, like gravity, is both a theory and a fact.
http://www.nationalacademies.org/evolution/TheoryOrFact.html
Think infinity and recycling with the Big Bang expansion followed by the shrinking reversal called the Gib Gnab and recycling back to the Big Bang repeating the process on and on forever. Human life and Earth are simply a minute part of this chaotic, stochastic, expanding, shrinking process disappearing in five billion years with the burn out of the Sun and maybe returning in another five billion years with different life forms but still subject to the va-garies of its local star.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Most are now finding that to be a tough pill to swallow. Although it is an elegant thought and science wants elegance.
And all of that horse hockey you are pushing will not prepare a young man or woman to create the proper algorithms or the correct structure to insure a building does not collapse. It will not help a agriculture major improve yield or a statistician to know what to order for his retail company based on previous trends. It will not make a surgeon any better in his field. It is like studying history, nice to know – but irrelevant in the end.
What we do know: (from the fields of astrophysics, nuclear physics, geology and the history of religion)–>
1. The Sun will burn out in 3-5 billion years so we have a time frame.
2. Asteroids continue to circle us in the nearby asteroid belt.
3. One wayward rock and it is all over in a blast of permanent winter.
4. There are enough nuclear weapons to do the same job.
5. Most contemporary NT exegetes do not believe in the Second Coming so apparently there is no concern about JC coming back on an asteroid or cloud of raptors/rapture.
6. All stars will eventually extinguish as there is a limit to the amount of hydrogen in the universe. When this happens (100 trillion years?), the universe will go dark. If it does not collapse and recycle, the universe will end.
7. Super, dormant volcanoes off the coast of Africa and under Yellowstone Park could explode catalytically at any time ending life on Earth.
Bottom line: our apocalypse will start between now and 3-5 billion CE. The universe apocalypse, 100 trillion years?
With an opening statement "denial of evolution is unique to the United States" Bill makes it clear that he not only is a poor dresser and ineffective pop-scientist, but also an imbecile. And sorry Bill, but evolution is completely inconsistent with the world we observe (natural selection is not).
Darwin award winner for the most retarded comment today. Congratulations!
Tell me, why then do we share over 98% of our DNA with chimps, one of the species we most recently shared a common ancestor with? Why does every step back down the tree of life, the scientific one not the biblical one, include less and less of our DNA?
Huebert, the same could be applied to cars- a Lincoln Continental shares many of the same characteristics with A Cadillac. When you get into the same manufacturer, the high end cars share the exact same parts with the low end cars. What that shows is the design is common. Think about that.
Probably have a cure for cancer today if not for years of burning and hanging people for studying chemistry. But, it's a religious world and religious people are ok with putting god above cures.
I'd say the godless school system churning out generations of imbeciles did far more to harm the progress of science.
We have had cures for Cancer for 60 years, strangely, they are "debunked" by the medical establishment as quackery so they can poison each cancer patient with over priced pharmaceuticals. A lot of cancer patients are killed by an infection caused by the chemo destroying their immune system..
I love Bill Nye. Epic, sir. Epic.
First, I am to believe that some particles suddenly found their way into an expanse to create a
big bang. Which has the 1 chance in what is described as a googoplex, which is a googol which is a number that we can't imagine, raised to the googolth power. Then we are to assume that one protein mutates somehow to form different amino acids, that in turn mix properly to create a life. Then we are to assume that evolution occurs, with a "Missing Link", because that link has to be there even though we haven't found it yet. Then, we are to assume that there were both Male and Female of those "links" that happen to be compatible. And let's not forget the odds of just having an egg fertilize. It is estimated that it's a 1 in 255Billion chance of an individual egg being fertized. Yet there are 6 Billion people in a short 6,000 to 10,000 years of human history. And we are to ignore the data that states that even though we have only recorded temperature for a little over 100 years, the world has to be heating up, and yet we are told that Weather moves in cycles(think el nino, la nina). We are to accept the laws of thermodynamics in most regards, but ignore it when it comes to believing evolution. We are also to believe in Carbon Dating even though a living molusk was said to be over a thousand years old. Wow, I believe it takes more faith to be a scientist than to believe in God.
And it takes about the same amount of faith to believe in Santa Claus as it does God
With your understanding of science, I'm not surprised that you don't believe it. Of course nothing you said in that paragraph coincides with anything in the theory of evolution, or with the big bang. And by the way those are two separate and distinct theories.
I have no problem with Bill Nye expressing his opinion in his field of study – science, but when he speaks out in the area of parenting when he is neither a parent or child psychologist that is is problematic.
I believe in evolution.
Every time, science has a answer, more question arise. That is just the nature of science.
On the other hand, religions accept everything as it was described in some books, NO questions asked.
When Creationists pick any inconsistency in science as proofs that sciences are wrong, but provide no proofs of any kind about the "magic" events happened in the bible such as virgin birth, walking on water, turning water to wine, and parting the red sea. They can never duplicate those event as scientific experiments required to do.
Sciences are based on evidences. When new evidences are discovered, the conclusion would change, and may prove that previous conclusions were wrong. Still, Sciences are based on scientific evidences not magical thinking.
Meteorologist are wrong many times, but their conclusions are based on scientific evidence, and their accuracy are improving.
I cannot say the same for rain dance or rain praying.
How many of you who are bashing the scientists here are also taking the medicines and other medical treatments discovered by scientists?
You speak of reason and evidence and testing, but yet in the same vein you appear to unreasonably stereotype all people of faith. So have you surveyed all 80% of americans who believe in God and their views on science.
You appear to black and white/all or nothing people, which is the very thing your criticize. Whether you believe in his politics, Obama seems like a pretty bright person who claims to believe in God. How is it that a person – from your template – either has to choose faith or science? I believe all truth is God's – whether that is scientific or in another realm. No one knows the origins of the universe concretely and at some point we all make leaps of faith.
I should limited my comment to those who deny the theory evolution.
My point is that creationism does not belong to the science classroom, because it is NOT science and us not based on scientific evidences.
I appreciate your clarification – most on this site would never do that. That says a lot about you.
I believe there is lots to discover – that none of us are God, and that both scientists and theologians [arm chair/degreed] should walk probably a little more humbly on the issues. I love scientific truths and helps me to appreciate my views of God, more and more.
Evolution is hinduism, absurdity of hindu's, ignorant s, by their hinduism, denial of truth absolute by through hindu Judaism, criminal self center ism, secularism.
Kindly fcuk off.
Evolution – 95% proven
Creationism – 0% proven
All you knuckleheads who say evolution is not proven need to read the endless proof that is readily available anywhere outside a christian bookstore.
America has become the laughing stock of the modern world. What an embarrassment!
False.
Jeff,
You are right. Lets make a correction.
Evolution – 100% proven. Only some verey detailed mechanisms studied by experts are still being worked out.
The steelers are going to the super bowl!!!!!!!!
Mitt Romney has magic underwear.
No he doesn't, candice. Try doing some research.
Besides the dinosaurs and other fossils:--------–>>>
As per National Geographic's Genographic project:
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/
" DNA studies suggest that all humans today descend from a group of African ancestors who about 60,000 years ago began a remarkable journey. Follow the journey from them to you as written in your genes”.
"Adam" is the common male ancestor of every living man. He lived in Africa some 60,000 years ago, which means that all humans lived in Africa at least at that time.
Unlike his Biblical namesake, this Adam was not the only man alive in his era. Rather, he is unique because his descendents are the only ones to survive.
It is important to note that Adam does not literally represent the first human. He is the coalescence point of all the genetic diversity."
For your $99 and a DNA swab:
"Included in the markers we will test for is a subset that scientists have recently determined to be from our hominin cousins, Neanderthals and the newly discovered Denisovans, who split from our lineage around 500,000 years ago. As modern humans were first migrating out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago, Neanderthals and Denisovans were still alive and well in Eurasia. It seems that our ancestors met, leaving a small genetic trace of these ancient relatives in our DNA. With Geno 2.0, you will learn if you have any Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA in your genome."