Religious people beware: I am agnostic. God might exist. Might not. I’d rather worry about other things.

Noah built a 500 foot wooden boat. It housed eight zookeepers for 14,000 animals. Every plant in the world was underwater for a full year.

These are the facts surrounding the biblical flood that the bible describes. These are the things that Ken Ham, as well as millions of Americans, believe occurred within the last 10,000 years.

I know that this is part of the Bible and that their are many devout Christians who take this book very seriously. Forty-six percent of Americans believe in Creationism (although, many of these people do not believe in the Bible, ver batum). However, I did not consider most of these people to truly be scientists. 

Last night, Bill Nye and Ken Ham (a leader in strict Creationist thought) debated at the Creationism Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Link here.

Kentucky. The mecca of progressive thought.

“You can know that the world is not flat. I can see that.”

“You can’t know the world that the world isn’t 10,000 years old. You just can’t prove that”

Uhhh…. Yeah, you giant mook. We can.

What I learned from the debate:

Observational science is the basis for creationism. Many creationists agree that science is real, in cause and effect, and in technology. As Creationist Mook (CM) points out several times, there are incredibly influential inventors that are devout creationists. Where CM and Shy Guy Nye (and I) differed in their thoughts were as follows: when data or observations are ascertained, Nye uses a mainstream scientific approach to analyze and understand the data, while Ham would chalk the data up to the benevolent doings of God.

Throughout the history of mankind, religion has been used to explain what science and common knowledge cannot explain.

In ancient Greece, they lacked the sensory and weather technology to understand how the wind and gravity affected the ocean, so when the seas were especially choppy, they thought the Poseidon (God of the ocean) was PMS-ing or something. They sacrificed lambs and prayed in the hopes that this would relax his menstrual cramps.

What the debate kept coming back to, was that science cannot truly identify the beginnings of life; how that first cell came to be. Know what I think? In the next 100 years, science will explain that first cell. I trust in science. Just as I trust that Poseidon’s emotional instability was not the cause of the Titanic sinking.

An interesting topic that was brought up was the fossils that are in the Grand Canyon. Nye claimed that the sedimentary layers of rock, and the differing placement of fossils in this rock, proves that the world was created over more than 10,000 years ago. Basically, he is saying that something dies and sediment buries that animal. Many years later, another animal dies and is also buried by that sediment. If you know the rate by which that sediment builds (which scientists do), then you can know the time difference between when each animal lived. Spoiler alert: it’s more than 10,000 years.

However, CM believes that God placed these fossils there. I’m not sure why God chose such exact places, maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe God likes to fuck around. I know I do, and we are created in his image, right? So, maybe, just maybe, Creationist Mook is on to something.

The whole idea of organized religion seems sketchy to me. The idea that you are destined to hell if you don’t “listen to what I say”, seems narcissistic and controlling. I love the community and fulfillment that religion can give to a person. Anything that gives a positive meaning to someone’s life is great. However, this dude is so illogical and close-minded that I literally was in open-mouth shock at the fact that people believe in what this dude says.

Trust in Science. Not in the Creationist Mook.