So, I finally finished watching the Bill Nye-Ken Ham "evolution v/s creationism" debate (YouTube link), just to see what the fuss was all about. While the world wide internet is saturated with opinions on who "won", I found the debate itself to be quite disappointing - and would be surprised if it shifted any opinions.
It was generally a diffuse debate (like US presidential debates); the only pointed moment, in my opinion, came when an audience member asked Ken Ham whether he could imagine the form of any new evidence that would compel him to abandon his theory. He said "no", which essentially means his theory is non-falsifiable, and hence mostly a fairy tale. (For a moment I wondered what if God himself came down and told him that this literal interpretation was stretching it! Wouldn't that be compelling, even within the restrictive set of assumptions he works with?)
It was generally a diffuse debate (like US presidential debates); the only pointed moment, in my opinion, came when an audience member asked Ken Ham whether he could imagine the form of any new evidence that would compel him to abandon his theory. He said "no", which essentially means his theory is non-falsifiable, and hence mostly a fairy tale. (For a moment I wondered what if God himself came down and told him that this literal interpretation was stretching it! Wouldn't that be compelling, even within the restrictive set of assumptions he works with?)
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