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You saw the argument all over Twitter on Tuesday night: Why are we even having this debate? Why did Bill Nye, a respected science educator, agree to spar with Ken Ham, a Creationist few of us have heard of? Didn't it give Ham too much of a platform, especially as the debate was held in his home turf, the Creationist Museum?
Didn't it plant the false suggestion that Ham speaks for the majority of Creationists, or that Creationists speak for the majority of the faithful? Even the Vatican declared evolution valid decades ago. Didn't the very existence of this dispute make the U.S. look like a bunch of numbskulls to the rest of the world?
That was one line of argument. Another pled futility: no one's mind is going to be changed by this. Either you believe the theory of evolution, and you understand the scientific rigor behind the word "theory," or you don't get it, and you falsely believe a "theory" is something unproven. Science is science and faith is faith, and never the twain shall meet.
These are all valid concerns. But what is undeniable is that the Creation debate was a sensation. Between 500,000 and 600,000 people were watching live on YouTube. "Creation debate" was trending on Twitter — not just in the U.S., but worldwide. There hasn't been this much attention focused on a single discussion of evolution since the Scopes monkey trial.
It was a golden opportunity to address questions of science and education at length, and provide answers at length that the demands of television normally reduce to sound bites.
See also: Neil deGrasse Tyson Has 10 Reasons You Should Fall in Love With Science
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, Justice Brandeis famously said. That's what we saw on stage Tuesday: the sunlight of science. Not science as some fundamentalists have portrayed it, a shadowy secular conspiracy to deny the supernatural and shut God out of the universe, but science as it really is: repeatable, verifiable, predictable and backed by peer-reviewed experiments.
Nye told his audience — most of whom, he knew, were online, not there in that lion's den — that he was happy to be proved wrong, that there were boundaries to knowledge and that science is humble in the face of mystery. None of us can yet prove what preceded the Big Bang, or explain why consciousness exists. And that's exactly why we need science education, so some curious child watching this debate can go out and push back the boundaries of knowledge a little further.
Ham, by contrast, came across as exactly what he is: a rambling and inconsistent charlatan, not the scientist he claims to be. None of the "papers" he kept mentioning have been submitted for any kind of peer review. He drew a patently false distinction between observable behavior and "historical science." He said that the Bible explains everything, and that he can never be swayed from that circular logic.
And yet he didn't even have the courage of those convictions. Asked whether he considered every word of the Bible to be literally true, from Adam's rib to keeping kosher to the necessity of stoning, Ham prevaricated: "it depends what you mean by literally," he said, and would not explain further.
Nye's performance was far from perfect (personally, I would much rather have seen Neil deGrasse Tyson take Nye's role). His jokes fell flat. He got a few details wrong, such as the date when astronomers discovered that the universe's expansion is irreversible. He got drawn into debates over Noah's Ark and how many kinds of creatures might have been aboard.
But at the same time, he presented the best possible image of a scientist: joyful, thoughtful and packed with facts. He urged the audience to explore the world, to keep an open mind and to find explanations for themselves.
Too often in the modern world we preach to the choir. Nye came to Kentucky, a state that teaches Creationism alongside evolution in the classrooms, and did his best to explain why that doesn't make sense.
If his arguments engaged one school board member there, or in Texas, or Tennessee; if it told one curious child that she wasn't wrong or alone in asking questions of religious dogma, then the debate will have been worth it — yes, even at the risk of giving equal time to a fringe figure.
BONUS: 10 Must-Follow Tumblrs for Science Lovers
Love looking at muscle tissue and stem cells at extreme magnifications? This photo blog is for you.
WNYC's Radiolab is a fantastic show (and podcast!) that explores scientific and philosophical quandaries in rich detail. The Tumblr curates sciency musings from around the web.
The lucky owner of Tumblr username "science" does indeed blog on topics like galactic collisions, mathematical formulae and the Higgs particle.
Beautiful pictures of nebulae. What else is there, really?
Fascinated by the physics of water? Does the word "viscosity" get you all hot and bothered? Follow this Tumblr for some mind-blowing videos.
Jonathan Q is a systems engineer with a fascination for phsyics and science fiction. As such, a lot of his Tumblr is focused on cosmology news with the occasional does of sci-fi art.
The romance that surrounds the Victorian naturalist is in his sketchbook. This Tumblr shares wonderful illustrations from a bygone era of exploration.
Image courtesy of Flickr, BioDivLibrary.
Get up close and personal with flea hairs, plant spores and crystals, compliments of this beautiful photo blog. The source material is always linked for inquiring minds.
Arguably one of the most important public repositories of scientific knowledge, the AMNH in New York City tumbles a behind-the-scenes glimpse at its exhibits.
Math nerds, rejoice! This blog offers proofs, problems, diagrams, math memes and numerical witticisms galore.
Interested in how the human mind works? This Tumblr curates articles from around the web that deal with cognitive science and neurobiology.
Image Courtesy of R Psychologist.
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