Measles (they’re baaack)

In the year 2000, measles was virtually nonexistent in the United States.
But this week, a measles advisory was issued in New York City after the twentieth case of measles was confirmed. Before the week was over, it was twenty-one cases. Orange County in California also reported its twenty-first case of measles so far this year. Last year, nearly 200 cases of measles were reported in the U.S., and we are on track to top that in 2014.
Measles is making a comeback due to the increasing number of parents who are opting out of vaccinations for their children.
Despite the “childhood disease” euphemism, measles is a highly contagious, often serious and potentially deadly disease. The virus can linger airborne in a room as long as two hours after an infected person has been there.

Because measles has been rare for so many years, the memory of the disease for parents and health care workers has faded (“Remembering How to Fight Measles”, The New York Times, March 27). Many clinicians have never seen a case of measles. In the recent outbreak in New York City, some of the cases were thought to have resulted from exposure in hospitals – undiagnosed patients were not isolated immediately and exposed others waiting to be seen.

Nineteen states allow “personal belief” exemptions for school-required vaccinations.

If a single parent does not immunize a child, the risk to that individual is low. But as the number of unvaccinated children grows, the risk of numerous people contracting and spreading the disease multiples, creating a health risk for a large segment of the population…When the immunization rate falls, the danger to the young and the elderly increases dramatically (“A Doctor’s Take on the Anti-Vaccine Movement”, Forbes, March 20).

Cosmos and Bruno: Debunking the Monk

I think the new Cosmos series is brilliant thus far – but the first episode drew criticism for its portrayal of Giordano Bruno as a hero of science (“How Cosmos Bungles the History of Science”, Daily Beast, March 23).

In lengthy animation, Bruno is depicted as the only man on the planet who believed that the universe was infinite. In the Cosmos cartoon, Bruno wandered through Europe, mocked, rejected and impoverished because of his staunch refusal to disavow his scientific hypotheses about the universe. Eventually, demonically-drawn church officials imprisoned him and ultimately burned him at the stake – all for standing up for science.

Here’s the problem: Bruno wasn’t a scientist – far from it – even by 16th century standards. Bruno espoused Hermetism, practicing adoration of the sun as the center of all (hence his affection for Copernicus). The church inquisition listed eight charges against Bruno, including denying the divinity of Jesus, practicing magic, and believing that the earth and all animals had souls. He wasn’t the poor cast-out loner depicted in the animation – he had multiple important patrons throughout Europe.

Call Bruno a martyr for religious freedom, but not a martyr for science. Of course there were actual scientists who were persecuted by the Church (Galileo, for example), but focusing on Bruno as the archetype science-martyr doesn’t make the point. For many posters on social media and journalists in popular media, the Bruno story (unfairly) picked a fight between science and faith.

To a certain extent, misunderstanding the story of Bruno isn’t going to do a whole lot of harm – especially in a country where so many people are in denial about basic scientific facts. But that Cosmos added an unnecessary and skewed version of Bruno – especially one skewed in this particular way – is a good miniature lesson about our tendency to turn the past into propaganda for our preferred view of the present (“How Cosmos Bungles the History of Religion and Science”).

Flying Monkeyducks and the the Awesomeness of Pterosaurs

Up in sky! It’s NOT a bird! It’s NOT a dinosaur! It’s a pterosaur!

Pterosaurs were reptiles, close cousins of the dinosaurs. Pterosaurs evolved on a separate branch of the reptile family tree. There were dozens of species of pterosaurs, some as large as an F-16 fighter jet and others as small as a paper airplane. Pterosaurs were the first animals after insects to evolve powered flight—not just leaping or gliding, but actual flight by flapping their wings to generate lift and travel through the air.

The American Museum of Natural History is opening a new pterosaur exhibit April 4. If you are expecting nothing but pterodactyls, think again.

Sordes pilosus

Sordes pilosus looked like a flying monkeyduck. Some fossils indicate that Sordes had a thick coat of fibers similar to fur.

Quetzalcoatlus northropi

Quetzalcoatlus northropi was probably the largest animal ever to fly – and – it’s a native Texan! Quetzalcoatus had a wingspan of at least 33 feet.

Thalassodromeus sethi had the largest crest of any known vertebrate – three times larger than the entire rest of its skull. Thalassodromeus probably looked a lot like Toucan Sam’s more flamboyant cousin. It had a wingspan of 14 feet.

Thalassodromeus sethi

Here’s a link to more info about the exhibit.

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I believe that the heavens declare the glory of God.

I believe that day after day the cosmos pours forth speech and night after night the cosmos reveals knowledge.

I trust that the evidence and knowledge that is revealed is true because the Creator of the cosmos is Truth.

Baby Pictures of the Universe

They thought it was pigeon poop – but what it really was earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were experimenting with a super-sensitive antenna, trying to detect radio waves bounced off a satellite. But mysterious background noise (static) was interfering. Penzias and Wilson discovered pigeons roosting in their high-power antenna – and thinking that was the source of the interference – they set about removing the birds and scrubbing away all of the poop. Yet, the background noise remained. Eventually Penzias and Wilson realized they had just observed the earliest known baby picture of the universe. The faint glow of cosmic background radiation they discovered dates back to just 380,000 years after the big bang. Before that time, the just-born universe was too hot to even allow light to travel. Cosmic background radiation is the light that began to glow when the universe cooled – 380,000 years after the big bang.

If you have an old TV around, the kind with a rabbit-ear antenna – you own a time machine. Tune the TV between channels and one percent (1%) of the static you see is cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang. How cool is that?

This week, an international team of physicists announced the discovery of an even earlier universal selfie – a newborn photo. It has long been a mystery as to why the universe is uniform from pole to pole and not a jagged warped mess as you might expect from an explosion like the big bang. It was hypothesized that following the initial “bang”, the universe ballooned out and swelled inconceivably fast – faster even than the speed of light – and this rapid expansion (called inflation) ironed out all the wrinkles and irregularities. If inflation had indeed occurred, we would expect to find ripples of gravitational waves in the radiation as the universe was wrenched ferociously apart. Long-term observations of the cosmic background radiation found just that. The team of researchers announced this week that the light from the cosmic background radiation is distorted, rippled, and polarized in a pattern that fits the gravitational waves left over from inflation. What this means: we now have a “picture” of the universe, just one-trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang. Wow.

Cosmos, Episode 2: Some of the Things Molecules Do

The second installment of the new Cosmos series with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson ventured into the universe of molecules inside of us. This episode focused on the beauty and diversity of life resulting from eons of natural selection. Dr. Tyson noted right away that many people are very uncomfortable at the thought of sharing an ancestor with the apes. Amen to that. Moms, wanting their prodigious science-loving offspring to understand that science and faith are not in conflict, have often asked me to explain to their kids why dinosaurs and humans didn’t coexist. Mom beams with pride as offspring comprehends the evidence of an ancient earth and evolution of animals, but breaks out in a blotchy sweat when her junior scientist asks the inevitable “so did we come from monkeys?”

Dr. Tyson brought us on a journey through the “tree of life”, demonstrating that in reality humans are related to all of life, even plants. Just like DNA testing can tell us about paternity and who is related to whom, DNA can demonstrate relatedness between all living things. The closer the relative, the more DNA in common. I found it fascinating that on a section of DNA carried by both oak trees and humans – in the same spot for both – we find genes coding for the breakdown of sugar. Digesting sugar is so basic to life that the ability to do so evolved before all the myriad forms of life split off from each other. I loved this observation by Dr. Tyson:

The stuff of life is so malleable, that once it got started, the environment molded it into a staggering variety of forms.

An exceptional animated graphic tracing the evolution of the eye illustrated how living things are molded in response to their environment. (here’s a link to episode 2 – the segment on the evolution of the eye begins at 21:37) Dr. Tyson addressed the claim that evolution is “just” a theory, as if it was someone’s opinion. Evolution is a theory… like gravity is a theory. Evolution really happened – it’s in our DNA.

Note: Francis Collins is the author of one of my top-ten of all time books, The Language of God. Dr. Collins headed the ground-breaking Human Genome Project, is currently the director of the National Institutes of Health and is a vocal and committed Christian. According to Francis Collins, DNA is the “language by which God spoke life into being”. Beautiful.

Intelligent Design in the News

Advocates of Intelligent Design have long insisted that ID was a science-based explanation of the diversity of life. God is never mentioned in ID materials, only an “intelligent designer”. Despite these claims, in the high-profile 2005 Dover case a U.S. district judge ruled that ID was indeed religious in intent, replacing “God” terminology with “design”. Stephen Meyer, a respected leader in the ID movement recently reiterated the “non-religious” claim:

Contrary to media reports, Intelligent Design is not a religious-based idea, but instead an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins—one that challenges strictly materialistic views of evolution.

However, a conference held last weekend at Faith Bible Church in the Woodlands (north of Houston) may represent a shift in the ID model. The conference featured three stars of the ID movement: William Dembski, John West, and the author of the preceding quote, Stephen Meyer. The website for the conference presents a straightforward choice: science either undermines essential Christian doctrines or points to intelligent design.  Does this move to explicitly link leaders of the ID movement and Intelligent Design itself to Christian “essentials” represent a paradigm shift? If so, the multiple movements in several states to teach ID alongside evolution might get a bit more interesting.

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I believe that the heavens declare the glory of God.

I believe that day after day the cosmos pours forth speech and night after night the cosmos reveals knowledge.

I trust that the evidence and knowledge that is revealed is true because the Creator of the cosmos is Truth.

(I couldn’t find the original, but you get the idea)

The cartoon illustration elicited gales of laughter from the audience. The ridiculous creature was half cow/half whale. How could such a poor beast exist? The speaker was the late Duane Gish, arch-creationist debater. The place was Tampa, Florida in 1982 and Gish was in a high-profile debate with Dr. Kenneth Miller (a Christian, a cell biologist and author of Only a Theory and Finding Darwin’s God). Gish had long ridiculed the evolutionary prediction that whales had evolved from land animals. Gish pronounced the cow-whale critter an “udder failure”. But paleontologists from the University of Michigan (unknown to Gish) had discovered evidence that the transition from land to sea probably took place near India and by 1994, three intermediate fossils had been discovered. Today, we have multiple fossil examples of land-sea mammal intermediates.

In the early to mid 1980s, Kenneth Miller debated both of the prominent creationists of the time – Gish and Henry Morris. Dr. Miller recounts that Gish and Morris did not just have a problem with Darwin, they had a problem with all of modern science. The debates demonstrated that Gish and Morris were willing to discount modern physics, geology, and astronomy in order to support a literal reading of Genesis.  That willingness to jettison all of modern science, according to Dr. Miller, would become a real PR problem for the creation science movement in the United States.

A New Playbook

Out of the poor showing by creationist heroes Gish and Morris in the debates and the 1988 US Supreme Court decision that outlawed teaching creationism in public schools, the Intelligent Design movement was born. The ID movement was meant to circumvent the anti-science vibes of the creationism science proponents:

They’ve done so not by changing their ultimate goals, but by writing a brand-new playbook, one that’s lighter and infinitely more flexible. With a wink and a nod to the Bible, they’ve set that heavy book aside and stepped into the ring unencumbered by its literalist baggage. ID, they maintain, is a scientific theory, not a religious conviction, and therefore the age of the earth doesn’t matter (Only a Theory, p. 41).

A Stone and a Watch 

Before Darwin there was William Paley, an English clergyman whose 1802 work, Natural Theology, posed this familiar scenario:

If a man crossing a field comes upon a stone, the man might assume that the stone had lain there forever. But if a man came across a watch upon the ground, he would not assume the same. The watch, he reasons, must have had a maker. The complexity of the watch implies that its parts were designed and assembled for a purpose – telling time.

Paley’s watch analogy was picked up by the ID movement and expanded upon by Michael Behe, one of the leaders of the movement. Behe reasoned that complex biological systems could not have evolved because of a principle he termed irreducible complexity. This simply means that complex living systems could not have gradually come into being (as in evolution) because the intermediate forms would be missing key parts. And if a system is missing a key part, the whole thing breaks down.

Mousetrap

Behe’s analogy was the mousetrap. In order for a mousetrap to perform its intended function, all component parts of the trap must be present and working. A mousetrap is designed to catch mice.

Take away just one part of the trap, and no mousies will be caught. 

According to Behe, a mousetrap cannot be reduced – it is “irreducibly complex” -it cannot be reduced by even one part and still be functional.

ID Hall of Fame

The Blood Clotting Cascade. The cartoonist Rube Goldberg was known for his clever drawings of complicated contraptions. Goldberg would string together an array of unrelated items to perform some sort of mundane task.

Blood clotting in the human body is often compared to a Rube Goldberg machine. Even the tiniest breach in a blood vessel sets off a cascade of events ending in the formation of a blood clot which plugs the leak. The blood clotting pathway consists of multiple steps, each triggering and amplifying subsequent steps. So precise is this clotting pathway that the absence of just one of the components in the cascade has a devastating effect. Individuals (usually males) that lack a factor in the blood clotting cascade will often bleed uncontrollably from even a small wound or bruise – a condition known as hemophilia. Until recent medical advances, missing just one factor in the blood clotting cascade meant hemophiliac boys rarely reached adulthood.

The blood clotting cascade is a favorite of intelligent design advocates:

Consider what this means: If each and every part of the system has to be simultaneously present for blood to clot, then the system could never have been produced by gradual, step-by-step evolution. It is indeed irreducibly complex, and therefore unevolvable (p. 33).

The Flagellum. The blood clotting cascade may be in the ID Hall of Fame, but the flagellum is the darling of the ID movement. Flagella are microscopic whip-like structures powered by a complicated chemical motor. Your body is host to billions of helpful bacteria which zip around your gut driven by their own little outboard motors – the flagella. An array of protein components (maybe as many as thirty, p. 36) must be securely in their places in order for a flagellum to operate properly.

Remove just one of the components and our cute little bacterial outboard motor sputters to a halt.

Advocates of intelligent design presume

By the logic of irreducible complexity, these components should have no function whatsoever until all thirty are put into place (p.36).

The human eye. The vast information encoded in our DNA. The mammalian ear. According to the intelligent design model, it would be impossible for these things to arise via evolution.

 A Price Too High

For many people of faith, traditional young-earth creationism demands too high an intellectual price. It’s not that they are great admirers of Darwin – they’re not. They actually have a lot more in common with Ken Ham than they would care to admit.

The price of young-earth creationism is too high because

…young-earth creationism requires a full frontal assault on virtually every field of modern science” (Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God).

Enter intelligent design. Infused with scientific vocabulary and complex concepts, ID has no objection to evidence from physics or geology.

And, important to people of faith, ID assures that an intelligent author is behind it all, putting each protein, molecule, and structure into exact position. Intelligent design offers an alternative to natural processes that are perceived to be blind, cold, and uncaring.

In upcoming posts in this series, I want to examine the idea that scaffolds the intelligent design model: irreducible complexity. Does the concept of irreducible complexity hold true? Is the human body bursting with “mousetraps” that cannot be taken apart?

Does irreducible complexity cast an ominous and final shadow of doubt over the theory of evolution?

I also want to consider philosophical issues of science and faith:

Does natural = cold and uncaring?

Can an evolutionist be a creationist?

What does the theory of evolution say about God? (Spoiler: nothing)

This series is an overview of Kenneth Miller’s Only a Theory with my discussion and commentary. My goal is to examine intelligent design and look at the science behind the antievolution claims of the ID movement.

I believe that the heavens declare the glory of God.

I believe that day after day the cosmos pours forth speech and night after night the cosmos reveals knowledge.

I trust that the evidence and knowledge that is revealed is true because the Creator of the cosmos is Truth.

It was a nondescript, address label-sized sticker on the front inside cover of the biology textbook.

 At the time, my kids were attending a small (conservative) Christian school. Despite the misuse of the term “theory” on the sticker, I felt the tiniest twinge of optimism that evolution would actually be “studied carefully” and “critically considered” in my kids’ biology class.

Snowball’s chance.

Drawing Battle Lines

The text of the sticker, however, was not original with our private school, or any private school. The sticker was composed by the Cobb County (Georgia) Board of Education and was the centerpiece of a federal court case in 2004. In an effort to align with state science education standards and placate anti-evolutionists, the Cobb County Board created the sticker and placed it in public school science textbooks. In the end, the federal court found that the stickers were a violation of the First Amendment and ordered them removed from the public school textbooks.

Just a few years prior to this case, the Kansas Board of Education removed all references to evolution in the public school curriculum. The state board was voted out the next election cycle, but four years later an anti-evolution majority was seated. The board again re-wrote the science standards, leaving evolution in but requiring that “evidence against” evolution also be included.

School boards in Pennsylvania, Texas, and now Virginia – all have hosted show-downs between science standards, science teachers, and anti-evolution forces.

Kenneth Miller in Only a Theory recounted a conversation with a British scientist who was incredulous at the ongoing battles over evolution in American schools. In Britain (he opined) this would never be! Oxford or Cambridge would simply dispatch a couple of dons who would lay out their degrees and credentials before the local school officials, and then explain the standing evolution had in the modern scientific community. The locals would acquiesce to their expertise, and lay the issue to rest.

Americans, Miller explained to his Brit friend, are free thinking rebels at heart. Americans instead would have thanked the experts for their time, but would go on to do just as they pleased. Education in America is a local responsibility.

Blatantly teaching creationism, even as an alternative to evolution, is actually illegal in the United States.  In 1987, the Supreme Court of the United States found that creationism is a religious concept and therefore cannot be a part of public school curriculum.

What now?

Not long after the Supreme Court ruled that creationism could not be taught in public schools, the anti-evolution forces regrouped and emerged with a new strategy. Creationism evolved (ha!) into a new movement known as “intelligent design” (ID). The most popular intelligent design textbook was originally written as a creationist textbook. The text had been repackaged by substituting “intelligent design” for “creationism”.

Intelligent design purposefully avoids any reference to the God of the Bible. Proponents of intelligent design contend

• purely naturalistic process could not have produced life as we have it on earth
• the theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of living things
• an “intelligent designer” (by which they mean God but won’t say it) was required to specially design life

Because overt creationism cannot be taught, the push at present is to also teach “design” alongside evolution in order to provide “balance” and expose the “weaknesses” in evolution theory.

For example, there is currently legislation before the Virginia state assembly which would require public schools to

assist teachers to find effective ways to present scientific controversies in science classes

…(help) students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories

If bills like this become the foundation of science education in Virginia schools, its students (as well as those in several other states moving in similar directions) will learn that:

• evolution is a deeply flawed theory, unable to explain very much
• evolution only endures because of coercion and the herd mentality of the scientific community
• intelligent design (ID) is a better explanation, but has been marginalized because scientists are closed-minded and irrationally committed to naturalism

American students will learn these and many other things that students in Japan, Germany, France, Canada and the rest of the developed world are not learning (Karl Giberson).

A More Science-y Alternative

The intelligent design movement sees itself as the Christian-friendly alternative to the head-in-the-sand young earth creationism of Ken Ham and the Answers in Genesis crowd. Most ID proponents accept an old earth and attempt to support their position with evidence outside of a literal reading of Genesis. The Discovery Institute is the primary think tank for intelligent design.

And, as much as the Discovery Institute would like to be the middle ground between Nye and Ham, their aggressively anti-evolutionary agenda and constant negativity towards science make them allies of Ham, not Nye. As a result, bewildered young people will continue to wander out of the church wondering if they really have to choose between science and their faith. (Karl Giberson, How Creationism Hurts Christian Colleges – And Their Students)

This series is an overview of Kenneth Miller’s Only a Theory, with discussion and my commentary. My goal is to examine intelligent design and look at the science behind the anti-evolution claims of the ID movement.

I believe that the heavens declare the glory of God

I believe that day after day the cosmos pours forth speech and night after night the cosmos reveals knowledge.

I trust that the evidence and knowledge that is revealed is true because the Creator of the cosmos is Truth.

The twitterverse was ON FIRE.

Snippy-snarky comments about Ken Ham or Bill Nye, links to related articles, quotes from the speakers …. I stand amazed in the presence of all those who can listen to a live event, be funny and do research simultaneously.

If you were on the Nye-side, you hashtagged creationdebate. If you were a Ham-fan, you were #ham on nye. It was sciency-theology-former debater-girl nirvana.

And in the middle of it all, this tweet:

Bored of this…can’t we just say God did it and get about feeding the poor?

Well… buzz kill.

 Why should we care?

• Millennials (brought up in Christian homes) are leaving their faith in droves, and antagonism toward science is a primary reason.
• Most evangelicals reject scientific evidence about the age of the universe and the development of life on earth.

Ken Ham, with the home-field advantage of his Creation Science Museum,

    challenged Bill Nye (the Science Guy) to debate this proposal:

“Is creationism a viable model of origins in today’s scientific world?”

 I did not have high hopes for this debate – Nye can be snarky and Ham can be smug. Fortunately, both reined it in. (Ham did deliver his signature line “where you there?” or its counterpart “you weren’t there” innumerable times, but without dipping it too deeply in smirk).

Nye, a science advocate, has been outspoken lately about teaching creationism to children. It is theists, specifically evangelicals, who are drawing the battle lines in state houses and with textbook companies. In order to stop those battles (which Nye wants), the hearts and minds of evangelicals must be won. Bill Nye is Not That Guy.

Ham spoke first and immediately his game plan for the debate was apparent. In slide after slide and point after point – through opening remarks, rebuttal, and Q&A time – belief in young earth creationism was equated with

• belief in the Bible
• trust in God
• the plan of salvation
• God’s image
• morality (euthanasia, abortion, marriage)
• the testimony of Jesus

Ham also equated belief in evolution and an old earth with atheism. In a Freudian slip, Ham used the word “secularist” instead of “evolutionist” during one of his rebuttals.  As an aside, Ham stated that Jesus is the way to salvation not young earth creationism, but overwhelmingly his arguments stated otherwise. (Ham has written previously in his blog that a specific Christian evolutionist theologian was categorically “not evangelical” and doubted that he was a Christian in any sense.

Regardless, in the debate Ham unequivocally defined Christianity by a belief in young earth creationism.

From the center of his 6,000 year-old-universe, Ham drew a line in the sand: Choose science or choose God.

And across the internet, like the residents of Whoville yelling and whooping with big banging noises trying to make themselves heard to the outside world, millions of Christians were shouting “It doesn’t have to be that way!”

“We’re here! We’re here! We’re here!”

Following the debate, Karl Giberson tweeted

Ken Ham’s bizarre approach to creation makes it hard to have a serious conversation about why sensible people still think God is the creator

Yes it does, Dr. Giberson, yes it does.

My favorite quote of the night came during the Q&A time in a question posed to Nye: “Is there room for God in science?” Nye said this:

The head of the National Institutes of Health is a devout Christian, there are billions of people in the world who are devoutly religious, they (science and faith) have to be compatible because those same people embrace science. The exception is you, Mr. Ham.

Props to Nye (an agnostic) for acknowledging premier top-of-their-game  scientists who are also devout Christians.

Props also to Nye for his dogged adherence to the debate topic. Throughout the (almost) three hours Nye prefaced his evidence and his arguments with the debate proposal: is creationism a viable model of origins in today’s modern, scientific era? Nye consistently reminded Ham and the audience that the value of a scientific model is its ability to predict and repeatedly asked Ham what the creationist model is able to predict.

The weakest point in Nye’s debate was his argument against a worldwide flood premised on the inability of an ancient shipwright to build a flood-waters worthy vessel of the magnitude described in Genesis. Again, Nye is not a believer, much less a theologian. There is strong evidence against a world-wide flood and “flood geology” (which Nye presented), but his discourse on ancient shipbuilding confounded his points.

Here are my highlights:

Ham had a three hour window of opportunity to lay out a science-evidenced-based rational for a young earth creationism model (as indicated by the debate topic). Instead, Ham spent the vast majority of his time in his initial presentation, his rebuttals, and the Q&A making the case that evolution and an ancient earth cannot be reconciled with belief in the Bible and the authority of God.

As a result, a lot of time was spent in philosophical discussion, with Ham saying you can’t believe in God and evolution and Nye saying well I know lots of people who do.

Here are the primary points Ham made regarding creationism as a model:

• Observational science versus historical science (a dichotomy coined by Ham).  The only valid scientific evidence is what we can see – right now. Since “you weren’t there” (Ham’s mantra), no conclusions can be made regarding any geological or biological event in the past. We cannot assume that natural processes we observe today have always been in place.
• Because “you weren’t there” at the beginning, we must use the Bible timeline for earth history (6,000 years as defined by Ham, based on genealogies).
• The universe is expanding “to show that God is big”.
• 7,000 “kinds” of animals left the ark approximately 4,000 years ago. All living species are descended from those 7,000 “kinds”.
• The world-wide flood caused continental drift

Nye’s primary points as to why creationism is not a viable model:

• We have visibly observable ice cores and tree rings demonstrating age far greater than 6,000 years. We have reliable and repeatable rock dating methods that demonstrate ancient age.
• Considering the billions of animal species alive today, eleven entirely new animal species would have to emerge every single day if Ham’s timeline was accurate.
• Valid science theories can predict. Evolution theory predicted where certain fossils would be found long before they were actually discovered.
• There is no evidence to suggest that natural laws have changed.
• Science is predictable and self-correcting. A single piece of evidence to support creationism as a viable model (for example, atomic clocks resetting) would, in Nye’s words, “change the world”.

I read through my favorited tweets from the debate. If you don’t want to watch the entire thing, I think these three sum it up quite nicely:

@peteenns: Ham comes clean: if Gen 1 is not literally true, the Gospel falls apart. Enter theologian please to help Ham with this. #nyevsham
@BrianZahnd: If it had been Francis Collins talking by himself for two hours I would have watched. #NyeHamDebate
@Arumi_kai: I kept waiting for Neil Degrasse Tyson to burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid guy and set up a third podium. #creationdebate

Watch the Ham/Nye debate

I believe that the heavens declare the glory of God.

I believe that day after day the cosmos pours forth speech and night after night the cosmos reveals knowledge.

I trust that the evidence and knowledge that is revealed is true because the Creator of the cosmos is Truth.