Yep. No Bill Nye here... We didn't really watch him before, but I've banned anything that has to do with him since reading his article urging parents not to teach their children the "fairy tale" that God exists and to give our money to NASA. He should've kept his nose in his experiments instead of telling parents how to raise their kids.
No excuse, but he's had more than his fair share of stupid comments from the "anti-science" crowd. In one famous case, a bunch of people walked out when he explained that the moon reflects the sun's light. The objectors claimed that the Bible states that God created two lights, not just one, and called him various names. I have to say that rank stupidity of this type must really test the patience of some people. No wonder he responds in this way. Why don't we take umbrage at those comments, too?
I'd love to see an actual transcript of what he said, but I bet that it didn't happen quite like that. From what little info is available, I think HE stated that the fact the moon reflects light is in contradiction with the Genesis account. He's the one who is interpreting, "two great lights" to mean "two great self-emitting lights." He was being antagonistic. Why would anti-science people even go to his lecture? I'm betting they went expecting science not a diatribe on why Bill thinks the Bible is bunk. He should just stick to science and keep his public comments away from parenting and religion. I think he was looking for a reaction and had to go out of his way to get one.
To call Bill Nye anti-science, and to call Answers in Genesis science...<shakes head>...we truly can bend and twist words any way we want...
OR Bill Nye could start and lead "Answers in Atheism" and then at least he'd be honest about his agenda just as Answer in Genesis is. :wink:
Kids and I watch Bill Nye on Youtube all. the. time. and I wont stop now. I really like Bill Nye, and I don't give a hoot an' a holler what his personal opinions are about God, his favorite color, religion, or which animal he thinks is the awesomest. lol. He teaches certain aspects of science to children and I believe his videos are helpful. If there were Bill Nye videos for every aspect of science, then I would have excelled in my science classes because he is GOOD at his JOB of explaining science to Children. Also, if he teaches something you find contradictive to your beliefs then you simply look at your children and say, "...but that's not what we believe...(enter explaination)". Or you watch the video yourself first and then if you find it offensive, then you don't mention it to anyone and count it as a loss of 20 minutes of your life. All in all, I think there are many people with MANY differing opinions, and if we went bonkers about everything we didn't like, then we'd constantly be Bonkers! lol
I'm not against someone having a differing view or opinion... I'm against someone trying to TELL me what to do (with my kids, my money... my anything). You can give me your opinion, but don't "urge" me to go along with it. Apparently, I have a lot to learn... I didn't know there were "anti-science people".
But really, it's not different that living your life as an Atheist and being handed a Bible while you walk around the county fair. It's also no different than one religious group who knocks on my door and have flat out told me that I'm ruining my children because I do not teach them the Bible as their main education and guide in life. It's really frustrating when you are trying to politely tell someone that you aren't interested and they are telling you that their way is the only right way. No matter what you believe, until people realize that what they believe is up to them and they don't have to force it on anyone else, then this will never change.
I agree. I don't lump all scientists or athiests with Bill Nye, and as a Christian, I don't care for being lumped with everything some other Christian has done. So I feel Bill Nye should tread lightly when he points fingers at every person who believes God exsists.
Bill Nye gets clobbered for things he says (and I understand the point), yet so many Christians supported Newt Gingrich for president, a man who divorced two wives and treated them like dirt. Draft-dodger Ted Nugent, with five children out of wedlock, also gets a free pass, it seems. I really don't understand why. As others have said, we live in a society where different people have different opinions, and we're the first to get upset when we're told we can't express our views. Bill Nye has a talent for explaining scientific principles to children - that's great. I don't have to agree with him on everything. In fact, I'd be amazed if I did agree with him on everything, but it doesn't stop me from admiring his work and its value to my children.
Okay, I see all the comments about Bill Nye vs Christianity. But what about the article I posted a link to, that says he FALSIFIED the "experiment" to "prove" CO2 causes global warming??
Almost anything you see on a video is "falsified". You know those amazing looking turkeys you see on TV at Thanksgiving?? Yeah they are "falsified" too, some are made to look so tasty by smearing them with brown gravy mix, some are made to look so good by using a blow torch on them.... The experiment itself may really be 100% accurate, just in the video it was too hard to make that visible so they had to do what they had to do to make it show up.
Honestly, it makes me think a lot less of Apologia and it's author who claims to be a scientist to see him bashing another scientist. Where are all the videos Dr. Wile has produced?
In high school and again in my first year at college, I was taught that electrons orbit the nuclei of atoms. I was shown pictures of small little spheres traveling around a big sphere. A visiting teacher brought a model that showed an atom looking rather like our solar system. It's all a pack of lies. How could my teachers and professors propagate such obvious lies? Atoms aren't like that at all! Instead, we require quantum mechanics and Schrodinger wave functions to explain atoms. Electrons behave as waves as much as particles, and we never really know where they are. Lies were taught, and are taught every day, not to deceive but to explain complex principles in more basic terms - so students of all levels and cultures can understand. The simple model, in many ways, is capable of explaining some behaviors - such as the idea that an atom with one too many electrons for a full "set" can share it with an atom that is one short. A high school student hasn't mastered the advanced math needed to understand wave functions and would struggle with the concept of wave-particle duality. The problem comes when we don't accept that and start explaining reality in terms of those simplistic terms. That's the challenge of the teacher: You can't say that what you're teaching is a lie because students won't accept the valuable teaching. Instead, when they are at a more advanced level, you revisit the topic and explain the more advanced ideas and theories that better account for reality. After all, the simple story and the advanced math are both models of reality, not reality itself. And that, without meaning to sound controversial, is what the Genesis account is all about: explaining the fundamental ideas of creation in simple and graphic terms that people of any age or culture can understand.
A quote from Jay Wile's article: Now before I start discussing the article that shows that the experiment was faked, I want to make a quick point. I have students do a similar experiment in my award-winning text Exploring Creation with Physical Science. Unlike the one in the video, the experiment I have the students do works for most students, because carbon dioxide does, indeed, trap infrared light and produce an increased temperature in its surroundings. However, the “simple experiment” shown in the video does not demonstrate this, and anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the physical sciences should understand that. On his website, Watts Up With That?, Anthony Watts goes through a detailed analysis that explains why the experiment shown in the video couldn’t possibly work. In fact, he later replicates the experiment as precisely as possible and shows that as described, the experiment produces results that are exactly opposite of what are shown in the video! In case you don’t want to read Watts’s complete analysis of the experiment, let me summarize what I think are the two main points. First, a detailed study of the video shows that the results were faked. For example, the “results” part of the video shows two thermometers side-by-side, with the thermometer that is supposedly in the carbon-dioxide-containing bottle experiencing a more rapid rise in temperature than the thermometer in the other bottle. However, Watts shows that the “split screen” shot which supposedly shows the two different thermometers (starting at 1:10) is actually a shot of one thermometer that has been duplicated, and the duplicate has extra thermometer liquid digitally added to show the supposed increase in temperature! Second, Watts explains what anyone who knows much about infrared light should know: the heat lamps used in the experiment cannot possibly produce the effect that Nye narrates. This is because heat lamps use mostly infrared light and light from the red end of the visible spectrum. Well, glass is not transparent to infrared light! This is why a greenhouse stays warm. Visible light enters the glass of a greenhouse and warms the things in the greenhouse. Many of those things release some of that heat as infrared light, but because the glass of the greenhouse isn’t transparent to infrared light, the heat stays in the greenhouse! In the end, then, the lights in the experiment would simply heat up the bottles. They would not introduce infrared light into them! This is, in fact, why Watts’s replication of the experiment shows the opposite effect. To increase the temperature read by the thermometers in the experiment, heat energy would have to be conducted from the jars to the thermometers. However, air is a better conductor of heat than carbon dioxide! Thus, physics tells us that the experiment in the video should give the opposite results, and Watts’s replication of the experiment demonstrates this! Rather than proving that carbon dioxide causes global warming, then, all this video proves is that Bill Nye doesn’t understand the science that he is trying to “teach” in the video. If he understood how infrared light interacts with matter, he would know that the experiment he is narrating couldn’t possibly work as described. Of course, I am sure Nye had nothing to do with the experiment itself. Indeed, he says “bottle” in his narration, when the video uses jars. I am sure he simply read a script that had been prepared for him. However, if he understood the science he was reading, he would know enough to tell the writer that the experiment needed to be changed in order to work. Steve, I totally understand using simplified models to demonstrate something which in reality takes advanced science degrees to come close to understanding. But do you have to FAKE experiments to "prove" it??
