‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye Blasts Evolution ‘Deniers’

The Christian Diarist ^ | August 28, 2012 | JP

[CHRISTIAN DIARIST]

Bill Nye used to be “The Science Guy” on PBS. Now he’s just a godless hater.

The former host of the “educational” TV show targeted to preteens, which aired from 1993 to 1998, said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots. And that we ought not pass along that belief to our children.

“I say to the grownups,” Nye condescended, “if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, your world that’s inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it.”

Because, said Nye, who places his faith in Darwin, rather than God, “We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.”

As I considered Nye’s remarks, I wondered if he passed along his thoughts on evolution to Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, who presided over The Science Guy’s quicky marriage back in 2006 (which lasted a mere seven weeks before ending in a decidedly weird, decidedly ugly breakup).

What does it say about Nye’s integrity that he stood before a pastor who absolutely believes the creation story set forth in the Book of Genesis; that he exchanged marriage vows with his seven-week bride before a God in Whom he doesn’t believe?

Yet, he presumes to tell the rest of us what we should teach our children.

And while Nye may be scientifically “literate,” notwithstanding that he has no formal scientific education, he is not nearly as infallible as he makes himself out to be.

Just last year, in fact, The Science Guy demonstrated his scientific shortcomings when he appeared on CNN to discuss damage sustained by a Japanese nuclear plant in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Nye stated, incorrectly, that cesium is used to “slow and control” the nuclear reaction. But as any nuclear scientist would tell him, cesium is a nuclear fission product, not a control rod material.

Nye also stated, incorrectly, that the nuclear reactor involved in the Three Mile Island accident was still online.

And The Science Guy erred in telling CNN viewers that use of boron to slow the nuclear reaction is uncommon, when, in fact, boron-10 is commonly used in control rods and is circulated in the coolant of most, if not all, reactors in this country.

Now, the average CNN viewer could not be expected to know these things. But Nye, the so-called Science Guy, should have known better. Especially if he was going to discuss the subject on national TV.

It obviously doesn’t occur to Nye that, if he was dead wrong on nuclear energy, he could be just as wrong on evolution.

Otherwise the former Science Guy wouldn’t be so contemptuous of those of who are not scientific illiterates; who simply find less believable the science-fiction that ape transmogrified into man, than the Bible’s explanation that all-powerful God created man.

[CHRISTIAN DIARIST]

No surprise that Nye has come out in support of Obama's reelection.

[conservative sympathizer]

The battle isn't between evolution and creation, IMO. It's between strict materialism, which denies a spiritual realm, and idealism which permits its existence.

I'm fine with the idea that evolution brought into existence conscious things. I'm not fine with the idea that we're just lumps of meat.

[UCANSEE2]

Just like Obama, Nye is good at reading from a teleprompter.

AND.... he's clean and articulate.

[Alter Kaker]

Interesting - plenty of ad hominem un-christian attacks on Bill Nye, but nothing to refute the uncomfortable truth he stated.

I couldn't care less about the man personally -- but he happens to be right here.

[Uncle Slayton]

“The former host of the “educational” TV show targeted to preteens, which aired from 1993 to 1998, said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.”

Nye has spent years corrupting our youth and turning them away from their Christian faith and filling their heads with science mumbo jumbo.

He is guilty of Contributing to the Spiritual Delinquency of Minors.

[EGPWS]

.... he's clean and articulate.

said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.

Clean and articulate?

[trailhkr1]

said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.”

He never said there is no God but God created man through evolution.

[massgopguy]

“Evolution doesn’t explain Creation.” - Charles Darwin. So, why did the Universe create itself?

[pgyanke]

Interesting - plenty of ad hominem un-christian attacks on Bill Nye, but nothing to refute the uncomfortable truth he stated.

I think the argument made shows that "the science guy" isn't exactly a science expert. Sometimes, when the subject involves faith, it is a little easier to show the ignorance of the condescending offender than to recite the Summa Theologica.

Besides, if you aren't a Christian, who said you get to decide what is un-christian behavior? Good day.

[Olog-hai]

What uncomfortable truth? What is he right about?

You ever study college-level science? I have.

[trailhkr1]

So, why did the Universe create itself?

A higher power (God) created it and we have evolution which God created.

Nye does not say creationism is inappropriate for children... He says denying evolution is. I believe in intelligent design and also in evolution, I do not see these as mutually exclusive in the slightest. Religion must adapt to science and has no right to hinder its progress.

In a hundred years hopefully the 6 day creation myth will finally be in the dust bin of history just as the earth being the center of the universe was purported to be at one time..

Religion has done a poor job of keeping up with science and unless it adapts it going to be in trouble.

Even the Catholic church is heading up a serious science department and starting to work more science into religion.

[albionin]

Yes I noticed that too. The argument from intimidation is the standard fare when you can’t refute an argument with reason. Of course faith gives them a metaphysical and epistemological blank check drawn on an unlimited account so why bother with reason?

[cork]

Evolution is nothing more than a theory. One that I personally don’t subscribe to. Adaptation of a species to its environment isn’t a theory. Many confuse the two. Adaptation of a species to its environment is a trait endowed to it by its Creator. IMHO

[ontap]

that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots. Is this one of those uncomfortable truths he told!!!

[jaydubya2]

The Catholic church has stated that it’s open to the idea of evolution.

[qam1]

I agree he is mostly right but there’s no need to be a |)¡©|{ about it

He also said the same thing about people who denied his religion of Global Warming.

I don’t know what kind of career on TV this guy ever expects to have now

[manc]

well OK lets go with that then.

That means homosexuals is not natural either as it takes a man and a woman to reproduce.

Either way one looks at the homosexuals it is not natural, not healthy , not what nature intended etc

[Heartlander]

On the Derivation of Ulysses from Don Quixote

I IMAGINE THIS story being told to me by Jorge Luis Borges one evening in a Buenos Aires cafe.

His voice dry and infinitely ironic, the aging, nearly blind literary master observes that "the Ulysses," mistakenly attributed to the Irishman James Joyce, is in fact derived from "the Quixote."

I raise my eyebrows.

Borges pauses to sip discreetly at the bitter coffee our waiter has placed in front of him, guiding his hands to the saucer.

"The details of the remarkable series of events in question may be found at the University of Leiden," he says. "They were conveyed to me by the Freemason Alejandro Ferri in Montevideo."

Borges wipes his thin lips with a linen handkerchief that he has withdrawn from his breast pocket.

"As you know," he continues, "the original handwritten text of the Quixote was given to an order of French Cistercians in the autumn of 1576."

I hold up my hand to signify to our waiter that no further service is needed.

"Curiously enough, for none of the brothers could read Spanish, the Order was charged by the Papal Nuncio, Hoyo dos Monterrey (a man of great refinement and implacable will), with the responsibility for copying the Quixote, the printing press having then gained no currency in the wilderness of what is now known as the department of Auvergne. Unable to speak or read Spanish, a language they not unreasonably detested, the brothers copied the Quixote over and over again, re-creating the text but, of course, compromising it as well, and so inadvertently discovering the true nature of authorship. Thus they created Fernando Lor's Los Hombres d'Estado in 1585 by means of a singular series of copying errors, and then in 1654 Juan Luis Samorza's remarkable epistolary novel Por Favor by the same means, and then in 1685, the errors having accumulated sufficiently to change Spanish into French, Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, their copying continuous and indefatigable, the work handed down from generation to generation as a sacred but secret trust, so that in time the brothers of the monastery, known only to members of the Bourbon house and, rumor has it, the Englishman and psychic Conan Doyle, copied into creation Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and then as a result of a particularly significant series of errors, in which French changed into Russian, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina. Late in the last decade of the 19th century there suddenly emerged, in English, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and then the brothers, their numbers reduced by an infectious disease of mysterious origin, finally copied the Ulysses into creation in 1902, the manuscript lying neglected for almost thirteen years and then mysteriously making its way to Paris in 1915, just months before the British attack on the Somme, a circumstance whose significance remains to be determined."

I sit there, amazed at what Borges has recounted. "Is it your understanding, then," I ask, "that every novel in the West was created in this way?"

"Of course," replies Borges imperturbably. Then he adds: "Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote."
- David Berlinski

[trailhkr1]

The Catholic church has stated that it’s open to the idea of evolution.

They know they can only deny for so long...

[Heartlander]

"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
-Pope Benedict XVI

[max americana]

I used to watch this idiot in Seattle’s ALMOST LIVE back in the 90’s when I was a kid, and that Seattle show came before SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. He was a hoot.

Now he’s an idiot. Everyone of his science experiments were elementary-school grade stuff, but when it came to high school physics, my old classmate who is on the JPL staff told me years ago they used to laugh at Nye because he was teaching them the wrong fundamentals of science on his show.

[so_real]

Love the Science Guy ... still, it's not cool to present evolution as a singular concept where microevolution and macroevolution exist, and then claim the children must be brainwashed into accepting the whole enchilada as fact for the national "good". (If that were the way science and politics worked, we'd all be flat-earthers watching the Sun rotate around us.) Macroevolution remains a hypothesis unsuccessfully tested.

[jaydubya2]

Thanks, I agree with that.

"Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.

Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution."

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution

[dfwgator]

He couldn’t hold a candle to Julius Sumner Miller...this guy was the real deal. I even got my kids hooked on watching his old videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV8oK_x1_aI

[BrandtMichaels]

Shannon’s theory of information trumps Darwin on evolution.

DNA aka living code does not write itself nor can it re-write itself for new and improved functions and life forms.

Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html

[Mr. Lucky]

Mr. Nye chose to make an argument from authority. In so doing, he made his lack of authority a central issue.

[Yashcheritsiy]

I am unsure of what uncomfortable truth you are speaking.

[Yashcheritsiy]

Nye stated, incorrectly, that cesium is used to “slow and control” the nuclear reaction. But as any nuclear scientist would tell him, cesium is a nuclear fission product, not a control rod material.

Wait just a second! Given enough time, it's entirely possible that the probablistic forces of materialistic evolution could produce control rods made of cesium that would work. After all, given enough time, anything can happen!

[Olog-hai]

Evolution came from Greek philosophers such as Anaximater of Miletus; he first proposed that all life started in the hydrosphere and gradually moved to live in the atmosphere. Daoism also has the notion of “constant transformation” of living beings. Merely acknowledging the spiritual realm does not mean believing in the truth about it.

[Olog-hai]

Deny what?

[Alter Kaker]

Nye has spent years corrupting our youth and turning them away from their Christian faith and filling their heads with science mumbo jumbo.

Science mumbo jumbo is why Americans live in comfort and prosperity (Obama's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding). If you want your children to be free from science mumbo jumbo, you might consider enrolling them in school in Afghanistan or large parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

[gdani]

DNA aka living code does not write itself nor can it re-write itself for new and improved functions and life forms.

Like lactose tolerance?

[manc]

ah but he really is saying without him knowing that we do need a male and a female to reproduce not two homosexuals.

So if he is stating for nature and Darwin then he is still saying one man and one woman is need to reproduce in order for the human species to survive.

The left really are dumb, no matter how they go about their agenda they still get back to a male and a female not two males for reproduction.

[Yashcheritsiy]

Nye has spent years corrupting our youth and turning them away from their Christian faith and filling their heads with science mumbo jumbo.

While it may be mumbo jumbo, evolution isn't really "science."

[manc]

but it takes a male an a female to reproduce for the human species to carry on.

Guess he’s saying homosexuals are doing what nature did not intend for them to do.

[hsrazorback1]

Since Nye is using observation as his argumentative basis, he must not have a brain since we can’t observe it.

[Alter Kaker]

Shannon’s theory of information trumps Darwin on evolution.

Nice try, but bogus. Information theory is not applicable to evolutionary models because there is no pre-stated alphabet of biological features.

[RightOnTheBorder]

Just saw on Drudge that archealogists are now studying 230 million year old mites encased in amber. Other than the fact that these mites ate confiers (which most modern mites do not) the old and current are basically the same. There are multiple species of insects and animals (crocodiles for one) that are largely unchanged for millions of years. Are we to believe that evolution is selective as to which species are evolved, or that some species reached the height of a suposedly ever changing system? The “evolution” of dominant genes can explain why there are less redheads in the world today but as for turning monkeys into men, the theory has just too many holes to be put forth as certainty.

[albionin]

The uncomfortable truth is the massive amount of evidence that contradicts the bible version of creation. There is massive amounts of evidence for the process of evolution acting over many billions of years. Science can describe the mechanism of evolution to a certain extent but it can not explain why there is life. What the evidence does, categorically, is contradict the young earth creation story of the bible. The theory of evolution does not preclude the possibility of intelligent design but it does preclude the biblical account, taken literally. To dismiss that evidence is willful blindness to facts of reality.

[Catholic Canadian]

Hey Bill Nye - Crocodile and Sharks buddy, Crocodiles and Sharks.

[2nd Amendment]

I can’t believe so many otherwise rational Freepers give any credence to either evolution or uniformitarianism. Bothe Lyle and Darwin’s expressed purpose was to “kill” God. For the past 150 years or so the left has fed you hook, line, and sinker the evolution mantra and so many erstwhile theologians and so-called scientists have bought it. 6000 years old created in the image of God.

[albionin]

If you can ignore the evidence and give credence to a story which directly contradicts that evidence and must be accepted on faith then you are not a judge of what is rational.

[Alter Kaker]

Are we to believe that evolution is selective as to which species are evolved,

Yes. Species evolve in response to selective pressures. Some crocodiles may have evolved smaller teeth along the way, but they died out because they were less able to compete.

BTW, the idea that crocodiles and mites haven't evolved is a bit silly, although I do agree that there are certain morphological features that tend to stay the same due to their selective advantage.

Just as one example of crocodilian evolution, try looking out for one of these the next time you're in the Everglades.

[Yashcheritsiy]

Shoooore there is.

(Hint - it’s about interpretation, not empiricism)

[gdani]

6000 years old created in the image of God.

And don't forget - dinosaurs on Noah's Ark!

[OriginalIntent]

There are many brilliant men and scientists who disagreed and do disagree with evolution as a mechanism capable of creating new genetic material required for life to climb from slime to higher animals and man.

[CatherineofAragon]

Creation and evolution contradict each other; there's no reconciling them.

One says that suffering and death entered the world because of man's sin, after the expulsion from the Garden. The other says that suffering and death existed for eons before humans ever came onto the scene. It has to be one or the other. If creation is true, God created a perfect world and we're responsible for ruining it. If evolution is true, He created a world full of bloodshed and death to begin with, making Him the source of evil. And if that is the case, and there was no fall, why was Christ necessary? What are we being redeemed from?

Then there's the account of God causing Adam to fall into a sleep and creating Eve from his rib. No evolutionist believes that. They think humans evolved from ape-like creatures. This takes the Biblican account of perfectly created man who fell into a degraded state, and reverses it.

Genesis says every animal reproduced after its own kind, which rules out the transformations evolution requires.

Lastly, there's the matter of Mark 10:6, where Jesus said that from the beginning of the creation God made male and female. By contrast, evolutionary theory says we came along pretty recently.

[UCANSEE2]

I'm not fine with the idea that we're just lumps of meat.

"HOLY COW!"

[UCANSEE2]

Clean and articulate?

He pronounced 'idiots' correctly.

[UCANSEE2]

said this week that those of us who believe that God created man and woman are idiots.

Maybe he meant "created them as idiots".