It's crucially important that this insane accusation stop that says creationists are opposed to Science as such. That's the BIG lie that's bandied about here and that Bill Nye perpetuated. There is no problem whatever for creationists in appreciation and engaging in the normal sciences that are testable.
I will give you that creationist scientists can do actual science and have done so in the past. The funny thing is that these discoveries aren't based on the ever-changing model of science that is required for creationism, but rather on the hard, testable sciences based on the physical laws of nature.
There is no contradiction whatever between creationism and the hard testable sciences based on the physical laws of nature. There is no "ever-changing model of science required for creationism." You are confounding the efforts of creationists to defend the Flood, which is the creationist approach to the INTERPRETIVE HISTORICAL PART OF THE SCIENCE, with the kind of work required in the hard sciences, which ought to be obviously a different kind of science. This is SO obvious for me to have to keep defending it among people who pride themselves on their scientific reasoning is ludicrous. But you go right on denying the obvious:
There is no difference between historical science and observational science, this is simply a red herring made up by the creation movement to confuse the believers into denying that which they could observe for themselves.
The difference is patent, and I just posted again that article that shows that NONcreationists recognize the difference. Funny you all here fight it when you should also acknowledge it.
All science is testable, even the long age of the Earth, it is tested by disproving that which does not work, such as a young Earth.
Sorry but you are very confused. You cannot disprove anything about the past. All you have is interpretations. Really, this ought to be obvious. The sciences of the unwitnessed past are NOT testable, certainly the age of the Earth isn't, nor even the age of any given formation as ought to be obvious in the constantly readjusting of dates given for this and that. It's ALL speculation.
Example: You know there must be a past, correct? There is no guarantee that it is any length in time, I claim it began last Thursday. You return this with, well I have a receipt for an item purchased on January 7th. Now, I am forced to retreat further back to stating that it was actually the Thursday before the 7th of January. We continue to gather evidence that forces my beliefs on when the past began further back, we are testing a longer past through the disproving of a short one.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE PAST THAT WE'VE ALL LIVED THROUGH, THIS IS ABOUT THE PREHISTORIC OR UNWITNESSED PAST. There are tons of witnesses to all kinds of claims one could make within the historic past and certainly within the past that living people have experienced. You guys are just not thinking.
This is similar to what the original individuals calculating the age of the Earth went through, albeit on a much smaller scale. They started with an age of 6,000 years, just as you did but the evidence forced them to consistently push this further and further back.
No, the EVIDENCE did not push them back, their incredulity when faced with certain evidence caused them to push back. There is a huge difference. Hutton looked at Siccar Point and subjectively decided it had to be millions of years old. The evidence was the formation itself, the angular unconformity, but the idea of millions of years was an INTERPRETATION, a SPECULATION, his own idea of how it must have formed, that HE COULD NOT PROVE. It was argued for years in the science societies BECAUSE there is no proof that would be given, only his own thought process. THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. I happen to think angular unconformities do NOT require a lot of time to form and I've argued that here many times. I can't prove that either, but it can be argued just as he argued for his view. THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE FOR THE UNWITNESSED PAST. Speculation, reasoning, argument, imaginative reconstructions, there is no laboratory test you can do. IT IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF SCIENCE.
You are now left with, as Bill Nye put it, an extraordinary claim because the evidence all points a different way
NO, THE RECEIVED INTERPRETATION OF THE EVIDENCE POINTS THE OTHER WAY, NOT THE EVIDENCE ITSELF. It contradicts the creationist interpretation, but it has nothing on the creationist interpretation except that it's come to dominate the minds of conventional scientists.
(unless you posit changing laws of nature which would also require extraordinary evidence).
Nobody is changing the laws of nature, this is just a ridiculous piece of evolutionist bias. And nothing extraordinary is required.
And as Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Yet, creationists simply say, "The Bible" (Such as Ken Ham did all night), as their extraordinary evidence. This is not sufficient to deny the reality and evidence we can witness with our own eyes, which is why Bill Nye asked individuals to actually look at their world, which would be a powerful motivator against creationism.
Except he isn't looking at the world but at the world through his own interpretive biases. This is the part you all fail to see.
Ken Ham's description required, as shown by Bill during the debate, an enormous adjustment to the laws of nature, such as 11 new species every day to equal that which is extant (33 new according to Ham's revised "Kinds" list), 170 summer-winter cycles each year to account for snow-ice patterns, and for the trees about three growth rings per year, plus surviving underwater....Where is the evidence of these changing laws, outside of just assuming God told us right? Whereas, science has evidence of the laws of nature staying constant, so much so that they are able to make predicitions about theories such as where individual species may turn up (Tiktaalik), how radioactivity will work (smoke detectors/Nuclear fission), or how long sediments take to lay down and become lithified and the process that occurs (Reading the rocks and anticipating future findings). Even the creationist scientists have to use these natural laws when they are actually doing science, instead of just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the other believers to keep them deluded.
Bill Nye blathered on about a lot of strange stuff which Ham had not brought up and which Ham did not address at any point. That is not a debate and you can't get away with just asserting such stuff either.
Let's not get off into other issues. The issue I brought up that you are supposedly answering is the fact that the sciences of the past are not testable. Stick with that.
You acknowledged SLIGHTLY that the Flood could account for the fossils but you need to do better than that. You need to acknowledge that the billions of fossils are in fact excellent evidence for a worldwide Flood. This isn't the same as saying it PROVES there was such a Flood, but it IS excellent evidence and to deny it is indefensible. Also the strata themselves are excellent evidence for the Flood. You need to acknowledge these things instead of prattling on about all the things you think disprove the Flood. FIRST the fossils and the strata ARE excellent evidence for such an event. Start there.
Then you can go on and acknowledge that the sciences of the past cannot be tested the way laboratory sciences can be, that their explanations must remain hypotheses for that reason. It's wacko to deny this.
Also acknowledge that there is NO problem for creationists with NORMAL TESTABLE SCIENCE, that it is ONLY the interpretive historical sciences of the unwitnessed past that creationists object to.
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