Ken Ham, Bill Nye Continue Sparring on Creationism; Ham Accuses Nye of 'Mocking Tone'
Creation Museum CEO and President Ken Ham and "The Science Guy" Bill Nye continued butting heads on the topic of creationism nearly three months after their debate in February, with Ham criticizing Nye for speaking with a "mocking tone" about him in a recent talk show interview.
"Bill Nye 'the Science Guy' speaks in a mocking tone about me on the NBC TV's 'Late Night with Seth Myers,'" Ham wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, referring to Nye's appearance on the show earlier this week.
"Also, he again makes the same old false accusation that if generations of children are taught creation, it will undermine science – in fact, he tries to make a ridiculous connection between the internet, computers, facebooking, tweeting, etc. and not believing in creation," he added.
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In the interview with Seth Myers, Nye makes air quotes when the host brings up the Creation Museum in Kentucky.
The science advocate, who is also CEO of The Planetary Society, says that he understands why some of his academic colleagues had criticized him for choosing to debate Ham at the Creation Museum in February, as they see it as giving credibility to the creationist argument.
Nye explained that he would have never agreed to the debate if he did not believe it was the right thing to do.
"We want to raise awareness of science literacy," or in this case, "science illiteracy." Nye continued: "And the reason I bring this up, you can hate me, you can hate everything, but science education is what leads to innovators."
"This is deeply important to me," the science advocate added. "And I hope that in the coming years, awareness will be raised and voters and taxpayers will not let these people with these extraordinary, wrong views about nature – not be allowed to try to get on school boards."
February's debate, which focused on the question "Is creation a viable model of origins in the modern scientific era?" was watched by an estimated 3 million people online.
Since then, Nye and Ham have commented a number of times on the debate, with the former writing a detailed account of his view on the event in the May/June 2014 volume for The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
"The fundamental idea that I hope all of us embrace is, simply put, performance counts as much or more than the specifics of the arguments in a situation like this. I admit that, for me at least, it took tremendous concentration. I was and am respectful of Ken Ham's passion. At a cognitive level, he believes what he says. He really means it, when he says that he has 'a book' that supersedes everything you and I and his parishioners can observe everywhere in nature around us," Nye wrote.
"After the debate, my agent and I were driven back to our hotel. We were, by agreement, accompanied by two of Ham's security people. They were absolutely grim. I admit it made me feel good. They had the countenance of a team that had been beaten – beaten badly in their own stadium."
Ham responded to the article by accusing Nye of painting an inaccurate picture of him, and rejected what he saw as attempts by the The Planetary Society CEO to portray him as a leader of a cultic fringe group.
"I believe he (Nye) is trying to portray me as some sort of tyrannical leader of the AiG (Answers in Genesis) staff and supporters, who follow me as people might do with some sort of cult leader," Ham wrote in April.
"Why does he continue to say this? I believe he is trying to get the public to believe that AiG is some sort of cultic fringe group! It's all a part of trying to marginalize Bible-believing Christians in the culture, of which there are tens of millions of people in the USA alone."
In his Facebook post, Ham says that he continues to await answers on a number of questions regarding evolution and creationism he publicly challenged Nye on, some of which he mentions in an article about the debate on the Answers in Genesis website.
Pew Research Center analysis from December 2013 shows that 60 percent of Americans believe that "humans and other living things have evolved over time," while a third, or 33 percent, disagree with evolution and believe that "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."
