Talking past each other: Bill Nye vs. creationist Ken Ham on evolution

Bill Nye and Ken Ham square off at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica

PETERSBURG, KENTUCKY—A brightly-lit auditorium was packed with young adults wearing bow-ties, young-Earth creationists, and a gaggle of media there to maybe see sparks fly. The sparks could have been generated by Ken Ham, president/CEO of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, but instead, they mostly talked past each other for two-and-a-half hours on a snowy Kentucky night. The topic was one near and dear to both debate participants: the nature of acceptable scientific discourse. More specifically, they attempted to answer the question “is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”

Ham and Nye both led off with short five-minute statements followed by 30-minute presentations punctuated by PowerPoint slides, video clips, and graphics intended to buttress their cases. Unsurprisingly, Ham’s starting point was Genesis, and he kept coming back to the assertion that God’s word as revealed in the first two chapters of Genesis is the definitive authority. All scientific inquiry should therefore begin with and proceed from there.

To make the case that science and creationism were compatible, he showed short video clips of scientists from around the world who believed in a literal six days of creation. "People are going to see what we really believe tonight," Ham promised. "I believe science has been hijacked by secularists" who seem to indoctrinate folks in the "religion of naturalism."