Ham on Nye

The Ham on Nye evolutionary/creationist debate is over. We don't know who won, and we don't care. If we may ourselves take a vague stance on such an unknown we will borrow from the evolutionist Dr. Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago: any such debates are 'pointless and counterproductive'.

He's right, of course, but not for the reasons he or the other evolutionary scientists believe. Their ilk simply don't want to give Intelligent Design the time of day; it would give its supporters, they fear, scientific respectability. That's why Nye was debating a strict creationist rather than a Intelligent Designer anyway. Strict creation is the evolutionist straw man used against any idea that a Creator is behind creation.

Having said that, it strikes us that anyone all that secure in what they believed would have no trouble swatting gnats. But the actual issue here really isn't anything like a science versus religion debate. That's what all too many scientists espouse, and for good reason. It keeps them tied up in the world of nothing except physical facts. It places them squarely in the realm of empiricism. That's fine, too, with empirical works. Yet what empiricists rarely care to consider is the question of what other kinds of truth exist. Empirical evidence is the proper hallmark of science. It is also, when you get down to it, the lowest type of knowledge.

You can say all you want about cold hard facts, but at the end of the day it's the philosophic questions which we may or not be able to answer which matter more than the raw data. And all scientific knowledge, if it is purely empirical, is little more than so much data. At best, science can only teach us the how of things. It can't tell us one single thing about the why. Why things are as they are is far more critical to our well being than the how.

While debates such as Ham on Nye may offer entertainment it is doubtful they can produce any useful conclusions. The reason for that is twofold: for the one, a strict accounting of Genesis is adhered to while the other relies, or pretends to rely, on rote science. Yet creation and science seen rightly are not quite so adversarial as either the rabid evolutionists or strict creationists believe. That's why we the details or the outcome of last night's little tiff is entirely meaningless. It is all, both sides, smoke and mirrors.