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The Looking Spoon: "So an apparently epic creation/evolution debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham took place recently.
I haven't seen it yet, but it's definitely on my to do list.
As a Christian who believes in God I don't reject evolution outright, but I totally reject the evolutionists dismissal of the creation/intelligent design crowd."

I took the time this morning to watch all two hours and forty-five minutes of this alleged "debate".

Ham vs. Nye Debate on YouTube

First of all, what everybody needs to understand is that such "debate" only exists at all because virtually nobody understands the definitions/meanings of its most important terms.
As a result, people like Ham & Nye can talk for hours right past each other, sometimes using the same words, but meaning different things by them, and often distorting their real meanings.

Second, for a debate allegedly over "Creationism versus Evolution", there was virtually no discussion of actual evolution, and no serious defense of it by Nye.
Ham made numerous unanswered claims against evolution, while Nye wandered off into other subjects.

Third, it was abundantly obvious that Ham clearly understood both his audience and his subject, while Nye grasped neither.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the subtexts of the debate were more important than the subject matter itself.
In the case of Ham that was: Christian fundamentalists can and should be scientists -- simply remember the distinction between "observational science" and "historical science".
In the case of Nye it was: science is more interesting than anything you might read in some ancient text.

Now, to begin resolving the problem of "Creationism versus Evolution", you must first understand that science itself, literally, can't debate "creationism".
It's a point that Ham tried his best to deny, but the fact is, by definition, science can't deal with anything supernatural.
Since at least the Renaissance in western civilization, the word "science" has been short for "natural-science" which means: natural explanations for natural processes, period.

As soon as you bring anything supernatural into a discussion, then it's no longer "science".
That's one reason why people like Nye can't answer the question: where did the "Big Bang" come from?
As soon as you say, "God made it", then you've left science and entered theology.

Ham made clear that he was there to defend his religious beliefs, and that no scientific evidence would ever change his mind about that.
Nye made clear that no biblical text would ever influence his scientific conclusions.
So, bottom line: the debate question was,

"Is Creationism a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era."

The answer is simple and obvious: it is certainly "viable" for Creationists like Ham, but for scientists like Nye, absolutely not.

*Thanks to Eugenie Scott.

Science does not rule out the supernatural:

http://creation.com/materialist-defence-of-bible-fails

　 "Can ‘supernatural’ events occur, or not? Doesn’t science rule out the supernatural? Well, no, it doesn’t. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Laws of science merely describe things that happen, and those things would happen whether scientists have formulated a law about it or not. It is not our scientific laws that cause things to happen the way they do. Similarly, scientific laws cannot prescribe what cannot happen. Our laws of science can no more cause or prevent something than a map can affect the shape of a coastline. ....

Science is limited. It deals with things that can be repeatedly observed and measured. But a miracle, by definition, is a ‘one-off’ sort of event not subject to repetition at will. There are many things, for example historical events, such as Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, which are beyond the scope of science to either prove or disprove. We cannot directly observe or measure things that occurred in the past, so they cannot be scientifically proven. There are other standards of proof—courts of law have various standards of legal proof, and historians have various standards of historical proof, and in these standards eyewitness accounts from credible witnesses carry enormous weight."