Back on Feb. 4, 2014 I got into a
heated conversation with one of my friends (let’s call him Phil for the purposes of
this story) about the absurdity of the Bill Nye “the science guy”
vs. Ken Ham religious debate. In case you didn’t watch it, what transpired
was the classic argument about whether science and the study of evolution through
natural selection is superior to the belief that all life on Earth is a result
of a divine entity (in this case protestant Christianity).
Side note: Bill Nye is a former
aerospace engineer and one of America’s leading champions of the teaching of
science in its public schools. Ken
Ham is the curator of a Christian themed museum which, inter alia,
attempts to show through physical evidence and the dispute of accepted
scientific methods that the Earth was created in the manner described in the
Old Testament or Hebrew Bible (more specifically, the book of Genesis).
What transpired was a nearly 3
hour debate involving one of the world’s oldest questions: “How did we get
here?” As a person who considers himself intellectually flexible I attempted to
set aside my personal biases and beliefs to consider both arguments equally
with as much neutrality as possible. Both sides acquitted themselves fairly
well using the now very predictable Power-Point slide show and lecture combo
which has become de rigueur
at such modern venues. Point and then counterpoint, followed each other like a
well-choreographed dance. Argument and then rebuttal. It was really standard
stuff for any debate. In fact, it wasn’t until the contest was half-way
finished before I had an incredible insight which I later shared with my
friend. I told Phil
that the debate really wasn’t about which origin story is more valid, but in
fact was really about a deeper and more insidious argument. The real story,
which I believe was getting lost in the weeds, was about who bears the onus of
proving an origin story? The person stating it? Or the person attempting to
call BS?
Here is where my friend and I
disagreed about who actually won the argument. According to Phil, Ken Ham had “beat
the socks off” Bill Nye because Nye failed to produce a single physical specimen
or other similar example of “the missing link” between human beings and other
primates. I said, “what about the Tiktaalik (first example of
a “walking fish”) that Bill Nye demonstrated in his Power-Point slide as proof
of evolution through natural selection?” My buddy Phil wasn’t buying it. He
said that the connection between the Tiktaalik and modern man was too distant,
and therefore evolution and, by extension, natural selection fails. So then I
said, “what about when Bill Nye brought up the fact that we share almost 98% of
our genes with chimpanzees?
As far as Phil was concerned, if it were true that humans and chimps share much
of the same genetic code then somewhere on the planet there would exist a chimp
capable of speech. In other words, Bill Nye’s arguments fell flat on their
noses and the moderator should have rung a bell and rushed to lift Ken Ham’s
arm into to air as if he had just won a 15 round heavyweight boxing match
simply because Bill Nye failed to produce a talking chimp.
That’s when I told my buddy about
Russell’s Teapot
and although it did not forever change his opinion about the origin of the
world, I think Phil
gained a new found respect for my ability to analyze current events.
This post is already much too
long so I won’t bore you with details that you can learn on your own by
clicking on the hyperlink. (It’s basically a theory posited by one of the best
logicians of the modern era in which he is calling BS on religion. Russell
compares modern religions as behaving like people who make a claim that a
porcelain dish is floating somewhere in space, yet invisible to even our most
sensitive telescopes. Furthermore, the fact that nobody can prove that the
teapot does not actually exist is therefore proof, in of itself, that the
teapot does exist. Confused? Here’s Russell’s Teapot (“RT”) put even more
succinctly:
“The burden of proof is on the
claimant, not the disclaimer.”
 |
| Bertrand Russell at 44 yrs. (1872-1970) |
That is when it dawned on me that
this debate was doomed from the beginning because both sides were working
towards different goals while using different sets of tools. For example, Ken
Ham’s debate technique could best be described as a variant of a phenomena that
I wrote about last week called “Cunningham’s Law” (“CL”). Here is that theory
in short:
Ken Ham had essentially rigged
the debate by saying, “Prove my improvable assertions wrong using evidence
which cannot exist.” So in a sense Bill Nye entered this debate operating under
the perception that Ham had somehow “posted the wrong answer onto the internet”
and therefore it was Nye’s duty to attempt to “fix Ham’s code” by giving him the
right answers.
Whereas, Ken Ham was operating under
the principles of Russell’s Teapot. From his perspective, whatever evidence produced
by Bill Nye, and the community of scientists that he represented, could never
sufficiently convince him that a Christian God did not create the Earth in less than 6,000 years. Primarily
because Ham knew going in, that “even the most sensitive telescope Nye could produce
would invariably still be unable to detect the teapot that he had claimed was
floating out in space”.
(please comment, repost and donate a dollar or two if you like this, thank you for your support!)
(please comment, repost and donate a dollar or two if you like this, thank you for your support!)
