Tell me a Story: September 2012

So after I watched this video part of my childhood was shattered. I have no problem with teaching children science and i loved his show growing up (it made for a more fun day in science class rather than the normal teacher talking) but in this video he stepped over the line. If you have seen it, you know what i mean. Sean found this video a few weeks back and in our LDS perspective class, our professor Dr. Gantt made a facebopk page where Sean posted this video.
After watching the video I was fuming and extremely frustrated. After reading Dr. Gantts list for Bill I feel my case has been settled and I would love to share his comments with you. first you must watch the video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJfwFgOU&feature=share

Dr. Gantt- Professor at BYU My thoughts -- telegraphic in nature:

1. Bill, you may call yourself "the Science Guy," but you're really just an entertainer. You got your start doing sketch comedy in Seattle. You were funny and have good timing. You also have a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. When you say "as my old professor Carl Sagan said. . . " you make it sound like he was your mentor and you worked in his lab or something. In fact, you only really took a class from Sagan -- along with hundreds upon hundreds of other undergraduates because Dr. Sagan was famous and an entertainer (though he came to entertainment from science, not the other way around like you).

2. Enough with the ad hominem attacks. I'll stop now. After all, they don't discredit your position, but they do help provide some context to evaluate your expertise.

3. The video title makes mention of creationism, but Nye never uses the term. In fact, I'm not sure what version of "creationism" he is actually criticizing here. There are a number of positions on the market that get loosely lumped together as “creationism” but which are very different perspectives. Heck, sometimes knuckleheads like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett accuse theistic evolutionists of being creationists. The word has become a slur more than anything else.

4. Heck, while we’re at it, I'm not even sure what version of evolution he is championing here. There are different things that that one word "evolution" might refer to and the only one that most religious folks would object to is the one whereby it is claimed that the only matter exists and that life in all its forms is nothing more than the unintended, purposeless product of random, material, non-rational, algorithmic processes.

5. All in all, Bill, you are engaging in a form of straw man argument here, attacking a position that almost nobody, or at least no serious person, actually endorses.

6. There seems to be an inherent contradiction in Nye’s argument: If religion (i.e., any belief in a creator god) is as toxic to critical thinking and scientific progress as he claims – thus necessitating insulating children from religion so as to ensure a rising generation of critical thinkers and science buffs -- then how exactly is it that the United States ever achieved its status as the most advanced technological nation on earth? Wouldn’t the creationist tendencies of its religious populace have prohibited that from ever happening in the first place? Come on Bill, you may be the “Science Guy,” but you’re definitely failing at being the “Logic Guy.”

7. You may be right that evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. I am willing to grant that your claim may be true. Oddly, however, the history of science is littered with theories that were fundamental ideas and nearly universally accepted but which later turned out to be dead wrong. Indeed, in almost every case it was the universal and dogmatic adherence to such ideas by scientists that was most often what inhibited intellectual and technological progress, not the belief in a Creator God. Heck, it was belief in a rational Creator God in Western Christianity in the middle ages that gave rise to science in the first place. Odd thing that, wouldn’t you agree, Bill?

8. As far as having to believe in evolution – again, I’m not sure which version we are talking about here, so I’ll just assume the most radical (and intellectually problematic) version that is endorsed by some of your high profile science friends (e.g., Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, etc.) – in order to life science, I’m not convinced. You may be right, but before I concede the point, I’d like you to show me what branch of empirical research in science, what avenue of investigation, what set of experiments, would cease were we to abandon naturalism and reject the possibility of God? I have asked a large number of biology PhDs this question – assuming them to know more about the matter than folks with Bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering (oops, another ad hominem . . . sorry), but not one of them has ever been able to point to any specific line of research that would come to an end were the tenets of naturalistic evolution to be abandoned. I think that the reason is that naturalism is a philosophical approach to explanation, not a requirement of scientific investigation.
9. Small point here about the history of geology. The theory of plate tectonics is of relatively recent origin. There were geologists long before that theory was developed. It’s a better theory than the previous ones – and likely to be worse than later ones waiting to be formulated in the future – but you can do geology without the theory of plate tectonics. Your answers might be muddled, but you can do it and you can progress. Just because Neo-Darwinism is in the vogue right now in the life sciences that does not mean it is a fact, will never be overturned, or that biology must cease in the absence of such a theory. Remember that it was once widely held – for hundreds of years – that Newtonian theory was fundamental to physics. That all changed, though, when a little German dude named Albert Einstein came along. If anybody deserves to be called “the Science Guy” it is him. (Uh-oh, another ad hominem . . . sorry again.)

10. “Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place” if you don’t endorse evolutionary naturalism? Are you serious?! Again, there seems to be an inherent contradiction in your claim here, Bill. On the one hand, you claim that believing in “creationism” (again, whatever that might actually mean) leads to a world of mystery and boredom, while belief in evolutionary naturalism leads to excitement and wonder. However, you claim that in believing creationism means that the world is “fantastically complicated” and “mysterious.” But how can a world that is fantastically complicated and mysterious be a boring one in which to live, to explore, and to study? The evolutionary tale is one in which the operations of the world are held to be simple, mechanical, basic, and scrutible. Wouldn’t that actually imply that living in such a world would be boring, dull, pointless, and tedious? I mean, Bill, you already have everything figured out and what you know about the origin of everything and the operations of all things is that nothing means anything, natural selection is just grinding away with no thought for us and no purpose in mind, and that no matter what empirical phenomenon we happen to discover it’s really just one more instance of the same old, same old process of random selection and mindless natural process. I think you are seriously confused about what it takes for a universe to be exciting, Bill. What could be more enervating and exciting than trying to probe the mind of God, to understand how he operates in the natural world, and the ways and means by which he brings to pass the wonderments of all that is, unfolding before our eyes. I sometimes wonder, Bill, if – to paraphrase the question of an old Jewish Rabbi – your ears have heard what your mouth hath spoken.

11. Overall, Bill, you’re beating up on a straw man here. (At least as egregious a sin as leveling ad hominem attacks, wouldn’t you agree?) While there may be some ignorant folks out there who really believe in a creation that occurred in a literal a seven 24 hour period, or that the Devil placed the fossils in the dirt to deceive us, such folks are not a threat to science or science education in this country. They have quirky and difficult to defend religious beliefs based on a sloppy misreading of scripture. They are to be pitied and tolerated. In an important way, however, they are just the flipside of a coin that sports your own picture on its reverse. They are as unimaginative and uniformed and dogmatic as you and your evolutionist colleagues are. The people you need to engage and whose arguments you need to address do not believe in either the anti-intellectual creationist nonsense or your own overly simplistic material reductionism. Stop pretending that there are only two positions to be taken on these important issues. You just need to get out of the studio more, Bill. Talk with some real people once in a while, rather than just talking to a camera.

12. I could go on, but I won’t. I will close with just one or two more quick questions. First, what empirical evidence do you have, Bill, for the validity (evolutionary or otherwise) of the sweeping moral and ethical vision you are advocating here? What is it about you knowledge of evolutionary theory that warrants you telling parents how to raise their children – especially parents who tend to produce more offspring that atheistic naturalists such as yourself? Isn’t evolution actually selecting for such beings? Why bother them or interfere with their families then?

13. You are right that we do need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We do need engineers who can build stuff. However, why must “scientifically literate” mean “committed to atheism and evolutionary naturalism”? Newton was committed to neither of those things. Does that mean, then, that he was scientifically illiterate? Same goes for Robert Boyle, Rene Descartes, Michael Polanyi, Galileo, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, Lord Kelvin, Copernicus, Max Planck, John Barrow, and biologists such as Kenneth Miller, Francis Collins, Sewall Wright, etc. Were they also scientifically illiterate? Perhaps you could ask them to stop admiring their Nobel Prizes long enough to take a lesson or two on science from you. I’m sure they would be deeply impressed with you BS in mechanical engineering.

14. Finally, of course, there is no “evidence” for the existence or actions of a Creator God, especially when you only count as evidence those things that fit neatly into a narrowed down naturalistic framework of investigation and explanation. As long as you get to define evidence as only those things that support a naturalistic worldview in which evolution – as a mindless, purposeless, algorithmic process – operates, then of course there never is (nor ever can be) any evidence for any other worldview. You’ve ruled any such evidence out of bounds from the very beginning, then feign exasperation that those who disagree with you can’t provide the kind of evidence you won’t accept. In Las Vegas this is called “playing with loaded dice” and is usually a prosecutable crime. In science, however, is just seen as being foolish and unjustified and, most importantly, unscientific. Indeed, most would say that stacking the intellectual deck against falsification in the way you and your compatriots so often do is a sign not of genuine science, but of a deep faith in a set of dogmatic religious principles. Bill Nye, the “Dogmatic Religion Guy.” Doesn’t really roll of the tongue, but it certainly seems more accurate.

Hope this was of interest to you!
Take care

Background

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Wedding Photos!!!

Friday, September 14, 2012

Aaron, the name is Aaron

Bill Nye not so much the science guy