Watched the Nye-Ham debate this
evening. I thought it was a good exchange, well worth the time. I
don't think this debate could be scored in win-loss terms. Ken Ham
did a good job making sure the Gospel was proclaimed, and he did not
shrink back in any way from the Bible. He did a good job of
representing the truth.
I think Nye did a good job of
representing his position. Apart from the Spirit of God the Word is
foolishness to him. That was clearly seen, but I thought (with a few
exceptions) that he did a good job of avoiding some of the more
outrageous slanders that folks like Sam Harris sling around.
I would have liked to see Ken Ham do a
better job with the point of historical science. At times he was
almost contradictory. On the one hand, he asserted that because we
were not there in the past we don't know what the rates of processes
were. On the other hand he asserted that God is a God of order, and
because of that fact we can do science and know that we will obtain
the same results yesterday, today and tomorrow. I felt his
explanation of this was a little clumsy and a little lacking.
The best model I can think of is that
of a discontinuous function in mathematics. In some discontinuous
functions as you approach the boundaries the value of the function
gets out of hand. An example might be y=1/x. As x approaches zero
the function value approaches infinity.
Here's the point. With some possible
exceptions, "historical science" works precisely like
"experimental science" - except as you approach the
boundary of Creation. The Law of the Conservation of matter and
energy doesn't work at the moment of Creation, for example. But it
works immediately following Creation.
Ken Ham made it sound like if an event
occurred in the past, the present processes can't tell us anything
about it. That simply is not true. What is true is this: science can
not tell us about origins because it was the supernatural power of
God that originated all things. The origin of Creation is the
"boundary" of the function, to use my illustration above.
The other problem extrapolating origins is that God created with the
appearance of age. For example, to assume the presence of no
radiometric daughter products is unwarranted.
Anyway - this was my only beef with
Ham's performance tonight. Though I am sure he did not intend this,
he made it sound as though we can not extrapolate processes reliably
backwards into history. We can - so long as we do not approach the
"boundaries," and as long as we acknowledge that we do not
necessarily know the starting conditions.
Otherwise, he did an outstanding job.
One caveat with this is that in the creation model(s) the Creation event is not the only point at which historical rates of natural processes would differ drastically from current processes. The Flood event would also have been such a point: catastrophic continental separation, post-flood rapid speciation, rapid changes in nuclear decay, rapid cratering on the moon, etc. So attempting to explain that without a great deal of evidence to support it in such a short amount of time would probably not have worked. That's one reason I'm not a fan of debate formats. In this case, they shortened the original times for rebuttals to make more time for the Q&A (a mistake, I think).
ReplyDeleteBut, I think Ken Ham missed one golden opportunity: he should have provided some of the more current YEC predictions (Junk DNA isn't junk, etc.). I would also have liked to see him point out more of the problems with Nye's questions (like confounding the YEC model of Grand Canyon formation with the Flood model); Ham did point out rapid ice formation, but I don't think he got across that rapid ice layering is interpreted as old rather than directly measured. For his part, Nye seemed to be more than a little confused over what creationists actually believe, and made a few more mistakes than I'd have expected (saying the Grand Canyon was unique, when there are giant canyons all over the world, for example).
Regarding the "appearance of age," it depends on what you're discussing (Adam was certainly created in a mature physical body), but for other aspects (starlight, for example) there isn't majority creationist agreement on that.
Good points, Chad. The flood is another one of those "boundary points" of discontinuity, as a global, catastrophic event, during which rates of processes are interrupted. And it is quite possible that the antediluvian world was one in which the surface of the earth experienced far less harmful solar radiation, if the vapor canopy theory is accurate.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the appearance of age, I think that is a neglected and under-emphasized part of the creation argument.The cosmos was created "mature." Rivers, soil, geological features, all give the appearance of age simply because there are hydrological/geological mechanisms (erosion, for example)that really do produce those features over time. Yet they were present immediately in Genesis 2.
Many of the miracles of Christ demonstrate the appearance of age, so we already know that God is not averse to doing things that way.
Overall, I thought it was pretty interesting debate.