Creation Debate: Presentations

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Summary

Both Bill and Ken have the same evidence, the same observations. They interpret it different. Bill interprets the evidence using made-up stuff as a starting point. Ken interprets the evidence using Divine revelation as a starting point.

Every argument that Bill Nye brought was based on made-up stories, arbitrary assumptions, irrational thinking, or outright lies. This is not to say that Bill is insincere. He probably believes all of this made-up stuff. Although, in many ways, we see Bill being deceitful. Yet, Bill considers this to be Okay. As Bill stated since the debate: "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." This is a very typical Post Modern comment. In Post Modernism, it is believed that there is no right or wrong, no truth or error, only winners and losers. Students are advised to be winners.

Instead of substance we find ad hominem, marginalization, genetic fallacy, appeal to emotion, misleading vividness, suggestion, irrelevant thesis, irrelevant conclusion, appeal to presumption, alleged certainty, jumping to conclusions, argument from ignorance, circular reasoning, personal incredulity, distraction, outright lies, selective evidence, omitting evidence, tautology, over simplifying, using a worldview as a filter for evidence , ad hoc rescue, special pleading, moving the goal posts, denialism, hasty generalization, innuendo, red herring, non sequitur, appeal to ridicule, someone tried that and failed so it can't be done, projecting the present into the past, presentism, proof by assumption, affirming the consequent, proof by contempt, unsupported assertion, violations of the law of cause and effect, proof by repeated assertion, wishful thinking, understatement, selling the defectas a benefit, rewriting history, assumptive statements, appeal to authority, false cause and effect, false premise, appeal to consequence, and self-refutation.

Bill asserted that the Creation Model can't make predictions. But this was after Ken had showed a slide with many predictions and went into detail on some of them. When Bill Nye made this point, it was after Ken Ham had shown it false. Bill Nye never even acknowledged the fact that Ken Ham had shown many predictions, so he certainly had not refuted them. He simply claimed there were none. That is the logical fallacy of an outright lie, a misrepresentation. And one can only wonder why Bill would do this. Throughout the debate, Bill Nye kept using the fallacy of proof by repeated assertion as he kept refusing to acknowledge the examples of predictions that Ken Ham showed but just kept asserting that Ken was not able to show any examples. This is a common tactics of Atheists, and it shows zero intellectual integrity. Even more devastating is the fact that Bill Nye's examples of the ability of the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story to predict were bogus. They are actually examples of confirmation bias and faulty reasoning based on assumptions.

Bill Nye falsely frames the question as a dilemma of science versus the Bible. This is not dilemma between science and the Bible. In fact, no scientific observation is in any way in conflict with the recorded history in the Bible. A thought chain is as strong as it's weakest link. Add one assumption and you can prove anything. The disagreement centers on revelation versus assumption. Both sides have the same evidence. They interpret the evidence differently. Bill has made-up stuff. Ken has Divine revelation. Bill denies revelation based on the arbitrary assumption (made-up stuff) of Naturalism (there is no God so God does nothing and reveals nothing). Ken denies Bill's stories and assumptions (made-up stuff) because it is made-up stuff.

Bill Nye's argument was that the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story was necessary as a starting point before any technical innovation could be developed, that believing what God says about the history of the world would eliminate technology. Ken asked if Bill could name one piece of technology that could only have been developed starting with a belief in the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. Bill ignored the question, being unable to name one such piece of technology, and that single question destroys all of Bill Nye's argument. There are many Atheists who have since tried to answer this on websites and blogs. The ones we reviewed were based on assumptions that research would not have been done if people didn't believe in the molecules-to-man story (an unsupported assertion), equivocating on the word, Evolution, or playing other semantic games with the word, Evolution. They have not been able to find a single piece of technology that would have any problem that would be caused by a belief in the Biblical historical account. But Bill is proposing that every piece of technology would have a problem that would make it impossible if we believe that Biblical historical account.

That means that Bill's basis, his main point, falls flat. It turns out to be a big lie.

There is one other problem of special pleading. Bill Nye is asking for absolute physical evidence for God's revelation. When the physical evidence is given, Bill still denies it. He uses only logical fallacies to refute it. Bill doesn't require the same level of proof for his supposed "problems" with the history recorded in the Bible. This double-standard is known as special pleading.

Ken Ham: Presentation

Creation is the only viable model of historical science that is confirmed by observational science
Bill needs to Define science: experimental versus observational
Scientists can be Creationists or Evolutionists.
There is nothing that can be observed using scientific method that conflicts with the recent Creation.
Many scientists are sympathetic to the Creation Model, but they are intimidated by the Atheist lobby.
The lack of freedom of thought is a problem.
Non-Christian scientists must borrow from the Christian worldview.
How do you account for the laws of logic and the laws of nature in an Atheistic worldview.
You cannot observe the past directly.
Some textbooks recognize the difference between observation and historical science: quote contrasting physical geology and historical geology.
We have to assume things to make up stories about the past.
There is a difference between what you observe directly and your interpretation.
Can you [Bill Nye] name one piece of technology that could only have been developed starting with a believe in molecules-to-man Evolution.
We all have the same evidence. It is a battle over the interpretations because it's a battle over worldviews/starting points.
The difference is whether God is the ultimate authority or God is the ultimate authority.
There is a difference between historical science and experimental science, and kids aren't being taught this in public schools, and they aren't being taught to think critically.
Both Creation and molecules-to-man Evolution are a combination of historical and experimental science.
Ken Ham lists several predictions that the Biblical account makes and how they were fulfilled.
- We see the kind from Genesis 1 as somewhere near the level of family. There is a Creation Orchard at the level of family. You don't see transitions between them. This is one of the predictions fulfilled.
  - Evolution bait and switch. The same word is used for observable changes and also for supposed changes that are not observed.
  - The Creation Model is confirmed by observation but Evolution is not confirmed.
  - Public schools are teaching a religion when they teach Evolution. They need to be teaching them observational science.
  - Public schools teach that Evolution is science and that Creation is religion. But observation confirms the Creation Orchard and contradicts the Evolutionary Tree.
  - Public schools are rejecting scientific observation and imposing a Naturalistic religion on students.
  - Clip of scientist who notes that the claim that Evolution takes place in e coli, but the information for digesting citrate already existed in the genome. No new information is added.
- Evolution predicted multiple races. Creation predicts one race. Scientific observation confirms one race.
- There were many others shown, but there was not time to go into all of them.
Secularists have a belief aspect. They don't like to admit it.
- Bill Nye on tape played by Ken Ham: “You can show the Earth is not flat. You can show the Earth is not 10,000 years old.”
  - This is the logical fallacy of faulty comparison.
  - How do we know that the Earth is not flat? We could see that it constantly falls away to the horizon. We could calculate the way this happens and do a very rough estimate of the circumference. We can go out in a space craft and look at it as we orbit it. That’s how we know. What do we have to assume?
  - How do we know the age of the Earth? Can we observe the age of the Earth? No. We have to assume whether or not there was a global flood (or else believe God). We have to assume a starting point for every so-called clock. We have to assume that nothing happened in between the beginning and the present for each clock. This is to assume a closed system, an assumption that is in conflict with scientific observation. The clocks differ wildly when used with the same assumptions, and the vast majority of them give us a young age for the Earth. So, Bill Nye is forced to assume that only a few of the clocks are valid and that it's OK to cherry-pick data. Since Bill Nye, and those who share his belief system, will only use the clocks that they can manipulate to give a billions-of-years old Earth, this is also the logical fallacy of cherry-picking data. And then there is the fact that when dates using the favorite methods don’t give the desired results, that data is thrown out, disregarded, and new tests are run until the desired results are obtained. This is an extreme example of the logical fallacy of stacking the deck.
- Bill Nye on tape played by Ken Ham: “Apparently people with these deeply held religious beliefs, they embrace that whole literal interpretation of the Bible as written in English as a worldview, and at the same time they accept aspirin, antibiotic drugs, airplanes, but they’re able to hold these two worldviews, and this is a mystery.” The fact that this fallacy fooled Larry King is evidence to the effectiveness of fallacies. Fallacies are the ways we trick our own minds and the minds of others. They filter out reality. The main fallacy here is a false dichotomy. We are not really choosing between innovative new developments and believing the history that God gives us through Scripture. The two are not in any way mutually exclusive, yet the false dichotomy, along with the appeal to ridicule, worked very well in fooling Larry King. Bill again is using the logical fallacies of faulty comparison and equivocation. Bill uses this old straw man fallacy: literal interpretation. The Bible must be read as led by the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit reveals that there is meaning to words. Most, perhaps all, of the Bible is understood on more than one level. With the historical part, the part that Bill Nye is trying to argue against, there is literal history as written, and there are also types and shadows pointing toward larger spiritual truths. The spiritual truths are superimposed on the underlying historical account and in no way take away from the validity of that account. When he says, as written in English, Bill is using the red herring fallacy in that this has no bearing on anything. Throughout the debate, Bill kept repeating this mantra, but he was either ignorant of the fact that we have the original text in the original languages or he was knowingly being deceptive. Then he uses a fallacy of false dilemma. Bill Nye loves to proclaim that there is a mutually exclusive relationship between having a living relationship with Jesus Christ and being a scientist, or even understanding technology. When Ken Ham gave irrefutable evidence that Bill's position is counterfactual, Bill simply ignored it and continued to repeat the mantra. There are many scientists and engineers who know Jesus Christ, who experience His leading and wisdom. Bill commits fallacy abuse by implying that the Bible somehow conflicts with science, referencing people who hold these two worldviews, when there are no two such worldview as understanding technology versus believing God. Bill's is an unsupported assertion. Bill Nye is trying to create confusion between observational science, a common term in the scientific community, and historical science, another common term in the scientific community. Larry King apparently thinks the Bill Nye is making sense, from his reaction on the clip when Bill makes an assertion contrary to fact stating that there are two different and incompatible worldviews at work here. There is nothing that is observable using scientific method that in any way is in conflict with a young Earth and Creation by God. Bill Nye was not able to bring any evidence. He only brought fallacies. There is no technology that has ever been developed that would in any way require a big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man worldview. Bill ignored that whole issue. There is much that is observable using scientific method that is absolutely in conflict with the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story.
Evolutionists don't admit their beliefs.
The Creationists should be teaching the kids because we would teach them the right way to think.
Creation means the account as it is in the Bible. Ken gave a history of the world and the Gospel.
Jesus believed that Genesis was real history.
Every doctrine of Christianity is rooted in Genesis. (This was for the compromising Christians, reminding them that they have an inconsistent worldview).
Ken gave more examples of the bias in the News.
Schools are imposing the religion of Naturalism on students.
When secularists speak of freedom, they only want their religion taught.
If you are concerned about the society, look at the result. There is more disregard for life because of secularism/Naturalism. Why not? It has no value. The Christian worldview preserves and protects life.
Moral relativism is the result of kids being indoctrinated into the religion of Naturalism.
If scientist understood the nature of the Universe, it would help science, but instead they are taught the religion of Naturalism.

Bill Nye: Presentation

"Well, let’s take it back around to the question at hand: Does Ken Ham’s Creation Model hold up? Is it viable? We’re here in Kentucky on layer upon layer upon layer of limestone. I stopped at the side of the road today and picked up this piece of limestone that has a fossil right there. Now, in these many, many layers in this vicinity of Kentucky there are coral animals, fossils, zooxanthellae, and when you look at it closely, you can see that they lived their entire lives, they lived typically 20 years, sometimes more than that if the water conditions were correct, and so we are standing on millions of layers of ancient life. How could those animals have lived their entire life and formed these layers in just 4,000 years? There isn’t enough time for this limestone we’re standing on to have come into existence."

"Well, let’s take it back around to the question at hand: Does Ken Ham’s Creation Model hold up? Is it viable?" But that's not the question at hand, Bill. Bill Nye is using the ad hominem fallacy, which is a fallacy of irrelevancy, by framing this as a question about Ken Ham rather than framing it as a question about the Creation Model using sound logic with true premises, true conclusion, and sound reasoning. When he modifies the debate question to “Does Ken Ham’s Creation Model hold up? Is it viable?” and when he speaks of “Ken Ham’s Flood,” this is an awkward form of ad hominem fallacy. There is a mantra that Bill used throughout the debate of tending to use this ad hominem to jump-start a logical fallacy of appeal to emotion, attempting to make Ken Ham out to be someone bad or weird for believing what God says. This is a kids playground intimidation tactic, and it is used because it works on weak people who aren't willing to take unwarranted ridicule. Atheists/Agnostics, and people who follow Atheistic/Agnostic dogmas, must use logical fallacies, because they are trying to sell a lie. Ad hominem, appeal to emotion, intimidation, ridicule are fallacies because they distract from the real issue, though these fallacies may be convincing to someone who doesn’t want to know God or to submit themselves to His will.
We’re here in Kentucky on layer upon layer upon layer of limestone. I stopped at the side of the road today and picked up this piece of limestone that has a fossil right there. Now, in these many, many layers in this vicinity of Kentucky there are coral animals, fossils, zooxanthellae, and when you look at it closely, you can see that they lived their entire lives, they lived typically 20 years, sometimes more than that if the water conditions were correct, and so we are standing on millions of layers of ancient life." Bill Nye uses the logical fallacy of misleading vividness, adding many pieces of unnecessary information, and this fallacy works to make people think that there is actually substance to what he claims because of the details given. The tactic works in spite of the fact that both the premises and conclusion are false. In other words, this is flimflam.
"How could those animals have lived their entire life and formed these layers in just 4,000 years?" This is an irrelevant question. It could also be catagorized as a question-begging complex question. The layers would not have been laid down during the 4,000 years following the Flood but they would have been laid down very rapidly during the Flood. Bill implies that there is not enough time after the Flood, a red herring, since the most rational explanation for the deposits is that they were laid down during the Genesis Flood. The Genesis Flood is obvious. The evidence for it is overwhelming. Following the links will show the details of why this is true. These layers are deposits that were laid down during the Flood, as are most of the sedimentary deposits around the world. We know that the Genesis Flood occurred. We know it absolutely by divine revelation. Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of suppressed evidence, since Bill doesn't even mention or evaluate evidence for the Genesis Flood.

“Snow ice forms over the winter as snowflakes fall and are crushed down by subsequent layers, they’re crushed together, entrapping the little bubbles, and the little bubbles must needs be the ancient atmosphere. There’s nobody running around with a hypodermic needle, you know, squirting ancient atmosphere into the bubbles, and we find certain of these cylinders to have 680, 000 layers. 680,000 snow winter-summer cycles. How could it be that just 4,000 years ago all of this ice formed? Let's just run some numbers. This is some scenes from lovely Antarctic. Let's say we have 680,000 layers of snow ice and 4,000 years since the great Flood. That would mean we would need 170 winter-summer cycles every year for the last 4,000 years. I mean, wouldn't someone have noticed that? (laughing) Wow! (laughing) Wouldn't someone have noticed that there's been winter-summer-winter-summer 170 times one year?"

“the little bubbles must needs be the ancient atmosphere” How ancient is this atmosphere? Bill has already defined 6,000 years as young. Here, he mentions 4,000 years as too short. Four-thousand years is certainly ancient, but Bill is using the word to paint a different picture. You cannot date the ancient atmosphere trapped in the little bubbles? The word, ancient, is a presupposition, a fallacy of presumption, and a tactic of suggestion all at once. It is a ploy to get you to think millions and billions of years. The bubbles obviously got there before the day they drilled the ice core, but we can’t know how long ago they got there. However, the bubbles are more likely a result of the post-Flood storms--multiple storms per week.
"There’s nobody running around with a hypodermic needle, you know, squirting ancient atmosphere into the bubbles" Bill Nye is using the fallacies of irrelevant thesis and irrelevant conclusion, since he is proving that no one is messing with atmosphere in any way--a point that is not even challenged. The little bubbles are interesting. The atmosphere in them is of some unknown age. Ancient is a nebulous term and is just that much more ambiguity in the argument. But none of this proves anything. It is all irrelevant. The arbitrary assumption is that a ring equals a year, but observation tells us that this is far from true. Not only that, but the rings only go down a short distance because of compression. After that, it's all speculation, because everything gets so compressed.
“680,000 snow winter-summer cycles” This is the logical fallacy of hysteron proteron, stating that these air bubbles equate to 680.000 winter-summer cycles when that story is not shown to be true. Bill Nye is going beyond the evidence by assuming the cause of the ice rings and the cause of the bubbles to be winter-summer cycles, which is the fallacy of false cause and effect. Bill's story has been refuted long ago. In fact, the reason that scientists who believe in billions of years come up with such long ages is that they assume billions of years to begin with. This is the logical fallacy of circular reasoning, assuming the conclusion to prove the conclusion. They do a similar thing in Antarctica and publish it as "science." (article: Do ice cores show many tens of thousands of years? No.)
"winter-summer cycles” We know that many cycles can be formed each year as evidenced by some World War II planes that landed there in Iceland. There are snow ice cylinders, that have many layers, but the layers cannot possibly be winter/summer cycles. This is the logical fallacy of appeal to presumption, alleged certainty, and jumping to conclusions all stacked into one. Bill Nye is assuming that these layers are winter-summer cycles. This is also the logical fallacy of stacking the deck. Bill Nye may have been ignorant of the fact that some planes went down in Greenland during World War II--perhaps someone stacked the deck with him telling him only selective evidence. It would be amazing if he were actually ignorant of these planes, though. However, he could have been ignorant. If he was ignorant, then his is not knowingly lying. He is only repeating a lie that he heard and accepted without checking it out. Forty-six years later, the planes were found deep under the ice and snow, 250 feet down. This means that actual observation shows that Bill Nye’s example of the ice cores actually represents only about 2,000 years rather than the claimed 680,000 years. It's amazing what one assumption can do to a calculation. If Bill Nye was aware of this, he knowingly committed a fallacy, which is unethical. He knowingly lied. But if he was unaware of this, then he still committed a fallacy but not with intent to deceive.
Note how this claim of 680,000 snow summer-winter cycles, like so many claims that students hear, is of the type that would be difficult for most people to check out on their own. We don't get to see the ice core to see if someone is stretching the truth. Students, faced with this in school, tend to trust the teacher and the textbook. That is a huge mistake since they often promote errors. Such a tactic (selective evidence) is commonplace in the schools, since they have an a priori commitment to the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. The schools fully expect that students will just take his word for this and believe that there is evidence for tens of thousands of summer-winter cycles.
"Let's just run some numbers. This is some scenes from lovely Antarctic. Let's say we have 680,000 layers of snow ice and 4,000 years since the great Flood. That would mean we would need 170 winter-summer cycles every year for the last 4,000 years." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of misused statistics. This relates back to previously jumping to conclusions about the cause of the ice rings and making assumptions (based on presuppositions of billions of years) about the bubbles. You cannot rationally "run the numbers" when the numbers have been generated by circular reasoning, presumption, alleged certainty, and jumping to conclusions.
"I mean, wouldn't someone have noticed that? (laughing) Wow! (laughing) Wouldn't someone have noticed that there's been winter-summer-winter-summer 170 times one year?" This is an irrelevant question. It could also be catagorized as a question-begging complex question. It presupposes that the previous statements about rings and bubbles are true when those statements are false. Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of appeal to ridicule. While this logical fallacy definitely works because no one likes to be ridiculed, it is irrational. A better tack would be to use real reason.
Most importantly, this so-called evidence conflicts directly with what God says to us by Divine revelation as He communicates to our innermost minds through the Bible. And His revelation can be tested and verified because everyone who seeks Him finds Him. We can't rationally go beyond what He tells us. And, when we do, He shows us to be liars. This is not only true of assumptions and stories about history. It also applies to any theologies that go beyond the Bible. But every person can find Jesus and know His moment-by-moment leading. And the Holy Spirit will reveal that the Bible is the Word of God without error, that it must be understood by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, just as the physical world around us must be understood by revelation.

“. . . bristlecone pines. Some of them are over 6,000 years old, 6,800 years old. There’s a famous tree in Sweden, old Tjikko, is 9,550 years old. How could these trees be there if there was an enormous flood just 4,000 years ago.”

“. . . bristlecone pines. Some of them are over 6,000 years old, 6,800 years old. "Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of hysteron proteron along with the logical fallacy of presumption as there are assumptions in this computation, and the assumptions are stated as facts. They are actually presupposed. Bill also uses the logical fallacy of oversimplification since he didn't tell us that there is no single tree, but there is a process of matching tree rings between multiple trees to try to compute how old the series of trees is. This is not cut-and-dried science. Bill told half the truth, but left out the fact that there is much research that needs to be done to fully understand this. He neglected to say that there are two alternate explanations for these tree rings other than that the trees are collectively this old. The articles below go into some detail on this.
"There’s a famous tree in Sweden, old Tjikko, is 9,550 years old. How could these trees be there if there was an enormous flood just 4,000 years ago.” Bill Nye uses the logical fallacy hysteron proteron as well as the logical fallacy of hasty generalization by asserting, in very strong and absolute terms, the ages of these trees, when the evidence for such age is actually very weak. The age for old Tjikko was not determined by tree-ring dating, but by carbon dating, which has has repeatedly been shown to have many sources of error and is also dependent on several arbitrary assumptions.
It is deceptive to falsely frame the question as a dilemma of science versus the Bible. This is not a case of science versus the Bible. This is a case of arbitrary assumptions as compared to Divine revelation. Arbitrary assumptions are always an irrational basis for making conclusions.

“You can try this yourself, everybody. I mean, I don’t mean to be mean to trees, but get a sapling and put it under water for a year. It will not survive in general, nor will its seeds. They just won’t make it. So how could these trees be that old if the Earth is only 4,000 years old?”

Bill Nye probably meant to ask how the trees could have survived the global Flood of Genesis, and there is an answer to that question.

This is a confused statement that is veiled in ambiguity and innuendo, so it's difficult to analyze. It appears that Bill Nye's argument is that if he doesn't know the answer, and he bets you don't know the answer, so this lack of knowledge proves that Bible has an error. Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of an argument from ignorance. Bill Nye’s knowledge or lack thereof has no effect at all on reality. In fact, the sum total of human lack of knowledge has no effect on reality. All of the questions that Bill Nye asked during the debate would fall into the class of fallacies known as ad ignorantiam. This is a common tactic: asking questions and then claiming that if the other person doesn't fully answer them that proves some conclusion is true. In this case, Bill is trying to prove his desired conclusion that a young Earth, the Genesis Flood, and Creation are impossible. Bill asks this presupposition-filled question along with many others in a format that will not allow time for detailed answers. Arguments from ignorance can sound very convincing; however, they are irrational. Just because Bill Nye the science guy doesn’t know some things about science doesn’t mean that those things are impossible.
“You can try this yourself, everybody. I mean, I don’t mean to be mean to trees, but get a sapling and put it under water for a year." Bill is proposing an experiment that is guaranteed to give a false feeling that science has been done when all that would be accomplished would be a sleight-of-hand magic trick. Bill does this by inserting a false criteria fallacy into the experiment. To be science, you would need to focus on seeds rather than trees, since any trees that were under water would likely be buried under tons of sediment that turned quickly to rock. In addition, you would need seeds of all species, and then you would find that many seeds do survive. You would need to look at the fossils and realize that not all kinds of plants did survive the Flood. You would need to realize that the Genesis Flood would have resulted in many floating mats of vegetation that would be able to survive the Flood by being on huge floating islands. And, you would need to factor in the fact that the food on the Ark probably consisted mostly of seeds, plus the bedding for the animals would have been full of seeds. And, if you are not going to use circular reasoning, by assuming Naturalism, you could not assert that there was no Divine provisioning. Bill is rigging the experiment to yield the answer that he desires. This is not ethical science.
"It will not survive in general, nor will its seeds." “Many terrestrial seeds can survive long periods of soaking in various concentrations of salt water (Howe, 1968, CRSQ:105-112). Others could have survived in floating masses. Many could have survived as accidental and planned food stores on the Ark.” And we don't know whether or not this was salt water. There are reasonable explanations for the survival of plants as the links below document. Again, Bill resorts to the logical fallacy of hysteron proteron, stating what has not been proven as if it were a fact. However, this is a bit of a red herring as well. The Ark would almost certainly have carried seeds as one of the main food supplies. There is evidence that there were floating islands, huge mats of vegetation during the Flood. These would have had many seeds on them above the water. Most importantly, Bill is assuming Naturalism and basing his whole argument on that. It is the unspoken basis for his premises, his proof. This is a form of hysteron proteron, using the unproven assumption of Naturalism as proof.
Bill Nye is claiming that the trees could not have survived a Flood, and claiming that this proves that the Flood didn't happen. However, his claim that the trees could not have survived is based on poor logic and assumptions. So, this is an argument by Bill Nye that pits his poor logic and arbitrary assumptions against Divine revelation. However, Bill deceptively presents it as a conflict between observation and the Bible. Assumptions are not real and cannot be verified. Divine revelation is real and can be verified. Revelation can be verified, since every single person who comes to Christ will find Christ. Whoever seeks Him finds Him. Anyone can verify this. Of course, they must come in submission and deep respect desiring to do God's will. Once they know Christ, the Holy Spirit will teach them that the Bible is God's Word without error. From that point it is an unfolding revelation pressing toward the mark of the high calling, the manifestation of the sons of God.
"So how could these trees be that old if the Earth is only 4,000 years old?” Bill's question has nothing to do with what he said just before asking his question. He probably just lost his train of thought and forgot what he was trying to prove. He probably meant to ask how the trees could have survived the Genesis Flood. The links below give answers to that question, but Bill meant this question as a rhetorical question to state the following conclusion: "The trees could not have survived a year-long Flood!" The problem that Bill has is that his conclusion doesn't follow from his premises.

“When we go to the Grand Canyon, which is an astonishing place I recommend to everybody in the world to someday visit the Grand Canyon. You find layer upon layer of ancient rocks, and if there was this enormous Flood that you speak of, wouldn’t there have been churning and bubbling and roiling? How would these things have settled out? Your claim that they settled out in an extraordinarily short amount of time is, for me, not satisfactory.”

“When we go to the Grand Canyon, which is an astonishing place I recommend to everybody in the world to someday visit the Grand Canyon.” Bill Nye is using the fallacy of misleading vividness. By telling us how astonishing the Grand Canyon is and recommending a visit, the purpose is to make you think that what he says next about it will be equally true. What follows is not true, though.
“ancient rocks” Bill Nye is using circular reasoning. He is presupposing the rocks are ancient, which, in his definition, is billions-of-years. In other words, with the word, “ancient,” he is assuming the very thing that he is trying to prove. That is circular reasoning.
“if there was this enormous Flood that you speak of, wouldn’t there have been churning and bubbling and roiling? How would these things have settled out?” Bill Nye implies that they would not have settled out in a way that reflects what we can observe, however, there is no evidence supplied to support Bill Nye’s implication.
“Your claim that they settled out in an extraordinarily short amount of time . . .” Bill Nye is presupposing Uniformitarianism (no-Floodism), the very thing he is trying to prove. In other words, he is using the fallacy of circular reasoning, that is, begging the question. If there were no Flood, then the time would be extraordinarily short, however, Bill Nye has not shown evidence other than this circular reasoning that the Flood didn’t happen. And we already know that the Flood did happen. We know it by revelation. God says so. In case someone thinks that God can’t say so, the non-existence of God has also not been proven. And we, who follow Jesus, know God in a moment-by-moment relationship. And anyone can test this. It is testable. Anyone can have this same relationship. What is truly interesting is that the anti-Christ people, when faced with the fact that they can just turn to Christ and find Him, almost universally refuse to do so. This, of course, is what God foretells through Scripture when He says that they are willingly ignorant and they refuse to hold God in their knowledge or acknowledge Him as God. He further clearly states that they do this because their deeds are evil. They love darkness rather than light.
“Your claim . . . is, for me, not satisfactory.” Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of personal incredulity. It makes no difference what is satisfactory to Bill Nye. His requirements have no effect at all on reality. The only reason that Bill Nye is having trouble with this is because it doesn't fit into his worldview, his fake-reality. Since that fake-reality is fake, real reality is going to conflict with it.
Here, once again, we have Bill Nye arguing against the Divine revelation that is coming from God, and He is opposing this revelation with his assumptions and faulty logic. It's important that we realize that we are not comparing science/logic with the Bible. We are comparing assumptions and stories to Divine revelation.

“You can look at these rocks. You can look at rocks that are younger.” This is part of Bill's argumentation for billions of years. Some rocks are under other rocks. When sediments are laid down, the bottom layers are laid down first. That is pretty obvious. But how does that fact equate to billions of years in Bill's mind? What would be the physical law that Bill thinks would keep massive amounts of churning water coming up with volcanic power from under the Earth from carrying the volume of sediment that would settle back out of that watter and cause these layers of rock that would quickly become solid rock under the great pressure as the water is squeezed out? There is none. This absolutely computes in the Flood models. Did Bill reject them without examining the evidence? If so, this is the logical fallacy of jumping to conclusions.

“You can go to sea shores where there is sand. This is what geologists on the outside do, study the rate at which soil is deposited at the end of rivers and deltas, and we can see that it takes a long, long time for sediments to turn to stone.”

“geologists on the outside” This is the continuing attempt to make the concept of Creation seem as if it is isolated to Ken Ham and the Creation Museum. First, this is an implied outright lie. Very few Americans believe in pure Naturalism/Atheism, so this is a logical fallacy of misused statistics. And the lie is told to facilitate a fallacy of bandwagon. How could a majority opinion affect reality? Ungodly people have been playing the fake statistics game for a long time, because they know that it fools people and that many people who can't think for themselves just follow what they think is the majority. However, what the majority believe cannot determine what is true.
“study the rate at which soil is deposited at the end of rivers and deltas,” If there were no catastrophic worldwide Flood, then rocks would not form quickly. Rates of deposits would remain about as they are today when there is no catastrophic worldwide Flood today. But in a catastrophic worldwide Flood, models show that soil would be deposited quickly and rocks would be formed quickly. This is confirmed by scientific observation. Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of circular reasoning. He is assuming that there was no Flood (Uniformitarianism), and, based on this assumptions, he is saying that there was no Flood. That is what he assumed first. In other words, this is circular reasoning. In another sense, Bill is using the logical fallacy of unwarranted extrapolation, extrapolating the current rates back into the supposed billions of years. When he has so extended the numbers back in this way, he uses that same unwarranted extrapolation to prove his original presupposition, that there is no Flood. That is question-begging, also known as circular reasoning.
“we can see that it takes a long, long time for sediments to turn to stone.” Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of stacking the deck, sometimes called cherry-picking evidence or omitting evidence. At the end of streams, rock does take a long time to form. However, under certain conditions, such as those that would have existed during the Genesis Flood, rock forms quickly.
More importantly, Bill Nye is contradicting what God says through Divine revelation. Are we supposed to take Bill Nye's and his followers' opinions based on assumptions instead of believing God? It is no great surprise that Bill is unable to make this contradiction in a logical way. You cannot logically prove an untruth. But, you can be pretty tricky and fool a lot of people with fallacies.

“Also, in this picture, you can see where one type of sediment has intruded on another type. Now, if that was uniform, wouldn’t we expect it all to be even without intrusion?” Bill Nye either became momentarily confused and had a slip of his tongue or he is using a sort of tautology: If things are uniform, then they are even, without intrusion. He has not shown that a violent, catastrophic worldwide Flood could not create the formation in the picture. His premise does not support his implied conclusion.

“Furthermore, you can find places in the Grand Canyon where you see an ancient river bed on that side going to an ancient river bed on that side and the Colorado River has cut through it.” Bill Nye makes this irrelevant argument with great enthusiasm as if it proved something. Perhaps he forgot to make his point. It seems, from the general trend of his talk, that his point is that billions of years happened and the Genesis Flood didn't happen. If that is his point, then this is non sequitur.

“And by the way, if this great Flood drained through the Grand Canyon, wouldn’t there have been a Grand Canyon on every continent? How could we not have Grand Canyons everywhere if this water drained away in this extraordinarily short amount of time, 4,000 years?” First we should note that there are huge canyons all over the world. If Bill is implying that they are not there, then this is an outright lie and the logical fallacy of omitting evidence of these other canyons. One Grand-Canyon-type canyon, but on a smaller scale, was formed quickly at Mt. St. Helens recently. When certain specific things happen, a canyon forms. The Grand Canyon is not the biggest. Bill Nye is also using the logical fallacy of unverified evidence. His evidence was supposed to be that there should be canyons on every continent and that there are not. Well, there are canyons, but if they were not there, this would not be evidence that the Flood didn't happen--so he is wrong on both counts.

“Now, when you look at these layers carefully, you find these beautiful fossils, and, when I say beautiful, I’m inspired by them." Bill Nye is using the fallacy of misleading vividness once again, along with the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion. He is using this fallacy to give a false sense of credibility to his next statement. The fact is that we, the Christ-ones, are also inspired by these fossils because we know their origin. They originated in the mighty judgment of God on a fallen Creation. The huge rocks and boulders that we see are evidence of the great, catastrophic, worldwide Flood of Genesis, where God put an end to the violence on the Earth during that time. All these things remind us of the fire that is going to judge the Earth in the future. We know this by Divine revelation through Scripture as God leads and teaches His people.

“They’re remarkable, because we’re looking at the past.” No matter how beautiful the fossils are and no matter how inspired Bill Nye is by them, we have not moved into the past on a time machine. We are looking at fossils in the present, and we can deduce that the animals and plants died in the past. We can make as many assumptions about our observations as we like, but those assumptions are arbitrary or they would not be assumptions. They don't propel us into the past even if we make assumptions about the past. We can make up creative stories about what we observe, but creative stories are creative stories; they are told but are not known to be true. If we tell a story about the past, we are not looking at the past. Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of the outright lie. He is telling this lie to support his claim that there is no difference between historical science and observational science. Are we really looking at the past? We are looking at something in the present and making up stories about the past based on assumptions that are based on a fake-reality/worldview/paradigm that is based on made-up stuff.

“Down low, you’ll find what you might consider as rudimentary sea animals. Up above you’ll find the famous trilobites. Above that you might find some clams, some oysters. And above that, you might find some mammals." Mr Nye is over-simplifying the order. The sorting has long been discussed in the scientific literature. Models show that the kind of sorting that we see is exactly the kind of sorting we would expect in a global Flood. The big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story predicted that we would have only small lizard-like mammals with lizards, one of the types of living things that Bill Nye left out. We find a great variety of modern mammals going all the way back to what is labeled the Jurassic layer, something that Evolutionists were surprised by. They did not, by the way, question the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story as a result.

"You never, ever find a higher animal mixed in with a lower one. . . . People have looked, and looked, and looked. They’ve not found a single one.” This is the logical fallacy of both hysteron proteron and the outright lie, just as it was the previous time that Bill Nye stated it. We are just supposed to take Bill Nye's word that there are no fossils out of place when all the evidence shows us that out-of-place fossils are found all the time. It is true that not every type of living thing is found in every rock layer, but there is a lot of mixing, and there are many methods that Evolutionists use to explain away the mixing as the articles below document. Clams make up 95% of all fossils and are found the the bottom layers, the top layers and the layers in between. Not only fossils, but index fossils are found out of place all the time. Out of place, in this context, means in the layers where Evolutionists don't expect them. What can be observed is the kind of sorting one would expect if there were a worldwide, catastrophic Flood. We find a general sorting but some inconsistencies. "Creationists have long recognized this ordering in the fossil record and have related it to the progressive destruction of ecological habitat as the transgressing waters of the Genesis Flood reached higher and higher topographical regions of the planet." (John Baumgartner) Bill Nye's conclusion isn't supported by the evidence; it is a hasty generalization. It is also an argument from ignorance. On the other hand, there is nothing that can be observed using any scientific equipment that in any way conflicts with the Divine revelation that we receive from God as He speaks to us through Genesis and the rest of the Bible.

"You never, ever find a higher animal mixed in with a lower one. You never find a lower one trying to swim its way to the higher one. And by the way, anyone here, really, if you can find one example of that—one example of that anywhere in the world, the scientists of the world challenge you, they would embrace you, you would be a hero, you would change the world if you could find one example of that anywhere.” This is an outright lie. Bill Nye is a perfect example of this lie. His mind is so closed that he can't even see reality any more. There are many methods that Evolutionists use to explain away the mixing as the articles below document. One of the ways that Geologists use to explain away this out-of-placeness of fossils is to label this reworking into lower layers and leaking into higher layers. The data is often ignored, since it doesn't seem to make sense through the filter of the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story, and this is an example of the logical fallacy of using a worldview as a filter for evidence. Dates of rocks are thrown out, cherry-picking data until the remaining data fits the desired stories: the logical fallacy of card-stacking. Sometimes the fossil is renamed to an entirely different family of living thing, even though it is identical to the index fossil: the logical fallacy of denialism. Sometimes a special case is made with new assumptions to interpret the data and new stories as an ad hoc rescue fallacy and special pleading. Sometimes, the ranges of the index fossil are changed: the logical fallacy of moving the goal posts. Sometimes the index fossil is no longer used as an index fossil and new index fossils are chosen: the logical fallacy of moving the goal posts. Books have been written about this problem. It really hurts the credibility of science when this type of behavior and dogmatism takes place, not being open to new ideas that fit the data better. It is dishonest to doctor the data to fit a made-up story. It is equally dishonest to pretend that there is open-mindedness and ethical behavior in the scientific hierarchy on this subject.

Would Animals and Plants Found in Unexpected Places in the Fossil Record Change an Evolutionist's Mind?

"Now here’s an interesting thing. These are fossil skulls that people have found all around the world. (Bill Nye shows a slide of many human skulls) . . . I can assure you that not any of them is a gorilla. . . . Where would you put modern humans among these skulls? How did all these skulls get all over the Earth in this extraordinary fashion? Where would you put us? Well I can tell you we are on there, and I encourage you when you go home to look it up." Bill Nye didn't state his conclusion, so this is innuendo. Innuendo makes it more difficult to determine whether or not someone is being irrational. We can assume that he is proposing a conclusion that the variety of human skills proves that we all came from an ape-like ancestor who was not human. This is non sequitur. The skulls don't support his conclusion. We are well aware of the astonishing variety within homo sapien sapien. And it is an interesting thing, but it only proves the wide variety within human-kind. Not only that, but humans can be very tall and very short. Racism says that some people are "more evolved" than others. In the same way, we see wide variety in the cat kind and also in the dog kind. No one argues with that. When he says, "Where would you put us? Well I can tell you we are on there," he is implying that one of these humans is more evolved than all the others. The ones who are more like us are more evolved. The other humans are not as evolved as "we" are. That is a philosophy known as racism. However, the evidence doesn't point to racism, as Bill implies. It was once thought that those humans who had a rounder head and a less pronounced brow bone were more evolved, and we actually put some people into zoos, thinking they were less human than Caucasians. Some Evolutionists still believe this, and you can read about it in the literature. These skulls are certainly not proof of the molecules-to-man story as Bill implies. Why does Bill Nye think that variation within a kind is any indication of one kind turning into another kind? As Bill Nye tells us later in the debate, he does so based on his assumptions that are based on, Bill claims, "experience." However, those assumptions would not be assumptions if they were based on experience. They would be logical conclusions that could be shown to be rational, but they can't be demonstrated to be rational. They are really pulled from a worldview, a fake-reality, a paradigm. And that fake-reality, like the fake-reality of every person alive today, is built on a mix of memories, arbitrary assumptions, made-up stories, outright lies, and irrational thinking. This is why Bill Nye can confidently be irrational in this way. Bill Nye is arguing against what God plainly reveals to every person, that He created the Heavens and the Earth, and Bill Nye is driving his argument against God using the logical fallacy of non sequitur.

Would Animals and Plants Found in Unexpected Places in the Fossil Record Change an Evolutionist's Mind?
Did Humans Really Evolve from Apelike Creatures?
Making Man out of Monkeys
It’s an Ape… It’s a Human… It’s… It’s… a Missing Link!
What Proof Do We Have of a Literal Adam and Eve? (audio)
DNA Proof that Neanderthals Were Just Humans

“One of the extraordinary claims associated with Ken Ham’s worldview is that this giant boat, very large wooden ship, went aground safely on a mountain in what we now call the Middle East. And so, places like Australia, are populate then by animals who somehow managed to get from the Middle East all the way to Australia in the last 4,000 years. Now, that, to me, is an extraordinary claim. Somewhere between the Middle East and Australia, we would expect to find evidence of kangaroos. We would expect to find some fossils, some bones, in the last 4,000 years.” The only reason that Bill Nye finds Ken Ham's worldview extraordinary is because it disagrees with his own, secular-humanist worldview/fake-reality. It is fallacious to use a worldview, which is, after all, a fake-reality, as evidence for anything. We could term this the fallacy of using a worldview as proof. This is a type of hysteron proteron. Have you ever seen an animal die in your back yard and turn into a fossil? How about a leaf? They don't. They rot. Fossils form under special conditions. If there was a worldwide Flood, we would expect to see a lot of them because of the rapid burial, but we would not expect to see fossil kangaroos from the Middle East to Australia, because the conditions would be wrong. So, Bill Nye's premise that we would expect to find some fossils is false, a hysteron proteron fallacy and an assertion contrary to fact. We would not expect to find fossils from the Middle East to Australia--and we don't. To be complete, it should be noted that Bill Nye's unspoken conclusion from this false premise would have been an argument from ignorance had it been stated. It would go something like this: If the Flood happened and the animals were let out of the Ark in Ararat, we expect to see some kangaroo fossils from Ararat to Australia. We don't see the fossils from Ararat to Australia, therefore, there was no Flood. That is the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance. Not only that, it either exposes that Bill Nye doesn't know how fossils form or else he is trying to deceive on purpose. All these logical fallacies are used by Bill Nye to try to convince us that God's Divine revelation, which He freely gives us through the Bible, is false. We are just supposed to take Bill Nye's word that there should be these kangaroo fossils in spite of the evidence.

"And furthermore, there is a claim that there was a land bridge that allowed these animals to get from Asia all the way to the Continent of Australia. And that land bridge has disappeared—has disappeared in the last 4,000 years. No navigator, no diver, no U.S. Navy submarine, no one’s ever detected any evidence of this." Bill Nye once again uses an argument from ignorance. Interestingly, both Evolutionists and Creationists propose a land bridge, since both have the same problem with places like Australia. Somehow animals got there. We don’t know how, but we know they are there. So this argument is silly, since it proves nothing. Like all fallacies of argument from ignorance, it is vacuous. There is much more to be said about this, and the following links take you to articles that deal with it in some detail. Once again, Bill is arguing against God's revelation that we, who follow Christ, receive from Christ.

"If there are 4,000 years since [the] Flood, today, the very, very lowest estimate is that there are about 8.7 million species, but a much more reasonable estimate is it’s 50 million or even 100 million when you start counting the viruses and bacteria, and all the beetles that must be extant in the tropical rain forests that we haven’t found, so we’ll take a number which I think is pretty reasonable, 16 million species today. If these came from 7,000 kinds . . . we would expect to find 11 new species every day. So you’d go out into your yard. You wouldn’t just find a different bird, a new bird, you’d find a different kind of bird—a whole new species of bird. Every day a new species of fish, a new species of organisms you can’t see, and so on. And this would be enormous news. The last 4,000 years? People would have seen these changes among us. . . . There just isn’t enough time. Bill Nye is using a red herring fallacy. Moses didn’t get two of every insect, bacteria, and virus. He only got those animals that had breath. More research needs to be done to determine how many kind of animals would have been on the Ark, but it's safe to say that there were between 1,000 and 16,000. This is a statistical question that Bill framed incorrectly. How many species of air-breathing land animals now exist compared to an original 1,000-16,000 kinds that existed at the time of the Flood, 4,000 years ago? At that time, there were not species per se. Each kind only contained two animals that were the same species (if the term, species, even makes sense in that context). A very few kinds saved fourteen animals. So Bill's logical fallacy is one of misused statistics. He is talking about the few air-breathing land animals that were on the Ark. He then compares those few air-breathing animals to all the species that might possibly exist, though only a small percentage of the supposed species have been observed. The comparison is meaningless, because you can't have different parameters on the two sides of the equation. Noah didn't bring every kind of bug, bacteria, or fish for example, yet Bill Nye includes these on the back side of his calculation. Vertebrates, minus the fish, are estimated at 30,000 species. Using the correct numbers in the calculation brings the total new species to somewhere in the range of 2 to 30 per year, which is realistic. These biased statistics are used, by Bill Nye, to try to discredit those who follow God--to try to discredit God's Divine revelation. The tone of Bill's delivery was the logical fallacy of appeal to ridicule, which is an irrational approach.

"Talking about Washington State: You can see these enormous boulders sitting on top of the ground. Now out there in regular academic pursuits, regular geology, people have discovered that there used to be a lake in what is now Montana, which we charmingly refer to as Lake Missoula, It’s not there now, but the evidence for it is, if I may, overwhelming, and so, an ice dam would form in Lake Missoula, and once in a while it would break, it would build up and break. There were multiple floods . . . there are these rocks, so, if as asserted here at this facility, the heavier rocks would sink to the bottom during a flood event, the big rocks and especially their shape, instead of aerodynamic they’re hydrodynamic, the water changing shape as water flows past, you’d expect them to sink to the bottom, but here are these enormous rocks right on the surface, and there’s no shortage of ‘em. . . . so how could those be there if the Earth is just 4,000 years old? How could they be there if this one Flood caused that?"

"Talking about Washington State: You can see these enormous boulders sitting on top of the ground. Now out there in regular academic pursuits, regular geology, people have discovered that there used to be a lake in what is now Montana, which we charmingly refer to as Lake Missoula, It’s not there now, but the evidence for it is, if I may, overwhelming, and so, an ice dam would form in Lake Missoula, and once in a while it would break, it would build up and break. There were multiple floods . . . enormous rocks right on the surface, and there's no shortage of 'em . . . so how could those be there if the Earth is just 4,000 years old? How could they be there if this one Flood caused that?" Bill is again using innuendo. If his conclusion were stated clearly, he would have said, “There were about 90 floods, and there was not enough time for 90 floods since the Genesis Flood 4,500 years ago. However, the evidence strongly suggests that there was a single Ice Age (not multiple ice ages) and that a single Missoula Flood (not multiple Missoula floods) took place near the end of this single Ice Age. There are problems, internal inconsistencies, for the story of the multiple Missoula floods. It appears that this one Missoula flood was one of the largest floods in history. That being the case, the fallacy could be classified as hysteron proteron.

"Now out there in regular academic pursuits, regular geology" . . . “if as asserted here at this facility“ Bill Nye is continuing his use of the logical fallacy of ad hominem and marginalization, though a bit awkwardly. The fact is that this is not a comparison of "regular academic pursuits, regular geology" (whatever that is), and some other opinion. Bill Nye is comparing his own irrational thinking, the stories told by himself and others, and the arbitrary assumptions made by himself and others--he is comparing all of that to Divine revelation that comes from the Throne of God through the Bible and through Creation (scientific observation--not conjecture) to anyone with a mind that is open to God. The actual scientific observation is the same for everyone, leaving nothing to compare between the two interpretations. However, if we examine the interpretation of the observations, we find that these interpretations are either by made-up stuff or by Divine revelation. Bill prefers made-up stuff. Those who actually know Jesus Christ personally tend to believe what He says to them, and will prefer Divine revelation.
In rebuttal, Ken Ham stated that we cannot observe the age of the Earth. Addressing the idea that radioactive decay dating methods found the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old, Ken Ham stated that we observe radioactive decay in the present, but using this to know about the past, there are problems. In Australia, engineers drilled down into some basalt/lava layer with woody material encased within it. Potassium-argon dating dated the lava at 45 million years old and radio-carbon dating, in the same lab, dated the wood encased in the lava at 44-45 thousand years old. Another example: there was a lava dome that began forming in the 1980s when Mt. St. Helens erupted. The rock created there in the 1980s was dated using potassium-argon dating: whole rock at .35 million years old, amphibole at .9 million years old, and pyroxene concentrate at 2.8 million years old. Using different dating methods on the same rock gives different, very old dates, but the rock had just been formed.
Ken Ham showed Bill Nye a slide explaining that there are hundreds of dating methods, and 90% of the processes used for dating show a younger Earth than Bill Nye claims. All dating methods involve assumptions and are subject to error. There is one exception. We can give some parameters for dates without making assumptions by what God says about it through the Bible. There is nothing in geology or astronomy that contradicts a young age for the Earth or any Biblical historical account.

"Inherent in this worldview is that, somehow, (pause for drama) Noah and his family (pause for drama) were able to build a wooden ship that would house 14,000 individual [animals] . . . and these people were unskilled. As far an anybody knows they had never built a wooden ship before. Furthermore, they had to get all these animals on there, and they had to feed them, and I understand that Ken Ham has some explanations for that which I frankly find extraordinary, but, this is the premise of the ‘bit,’ and we can then run a test, a scientific test. People in the 1800s built an extraordinary large wooden ship, the Wyoming. It was a six-masted schooner, the largest one ever built. It had a motor on it for winching cables and stuff. But this boat had a great difficulty. It was not as big as the Titanic, but it was a very long ship. It would twist in the sea. It would twist this way, this way and this way. (moving his hands to illustrate exaggerated twisting in four directions while making extreme facial expressions). And in all that twisting, it leaked. It leaked like crazy. The crew could not keep the ship dry. And indeed it eventually foundered and sank—loss of all 14 hands. So there were 14 crewmen aboard a ship that was built by very, very skilled shipwrights in New England. These guys were the best in the world at wooden ship building (pause) and they couldn’t build a boat as big as the Ark is claimed to have been. Is that reasonable? Is that possible that the best shipbuilders in the world couldn’t do what eight unskilled people, men and their wives, were able to do?"

To conclude that it would be unlikely that Noah could have built the Ark as stated in the historical record is definitely a case of shoehorning data to fit a conclusion when the data doesn't fit the conclusion.
"Inherent in this worldview is that, somehow, (pause for drama) Noah and his family (pause for drama) were able to build a wooden ship that would house 14,000 individual [animals] . . . and these people were unskilled." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of circular reasoning. Inserting the word, "somehow." is a way of implying impossibility, which is question-begging, since this is what Bill Nye is trying to prove. It is the logical fallacy of the question-begging epithet. We don't know how many animals were on the Ark, but 14,000 is probably high. However, the Ark could have handled the maximum possible number of animals, 16,000. (article that explains this) He is assuming the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story to prove the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. His assumption is that we are evolving, so we are becoming more skilled, so these people would be unskilled. By using innuendo rather than forthright statements, Bill hedges his statement. Later in the debate, he used that hedging to deny the very thing that he implied here. That made all of this part of his argument meaningless, but, separated by time, most people would never be aware of the conflict. If, however, these people were close to God and all wisdom and knowledge comes from God, and if this wisdom and knowledge increases with age and Noah was probably around 500 years old when he started building and 600 years old when he finished, then he would not be unskilled.
"As far an anybody knows they had never built a wooden ship before." This is a suggestion that no one had ever built a wooden ship previously, which would be a pure assertion without evidence. We do know that God Himself designed the Ark.
"Furthermore, they had to get all these animals on there, and they had to feed them, and I understand that Ken Ham has some explanations for that which I frankly find extraordinary," Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of personal incredulity. However, the mindset of Bill Nye has no effect on realty.
"this is the premise of the ‘bit,’" The word, bit, here implies a comedy bit. This is the logical fallacy of appeal to ridicule.
"we can then run a test, a scientific test . . ." Bill Nye followed this with a history of a ship that was built that was large and that sunk. If he thinks this is a scientific test that proves that a large ship cannot be built, then we can wonder about his understanding of science. This is the logical fallacy of questionable criteria. If one person fails at something this doesn't prove that no one else can ever succeed.
"These guys were the best in the world at wooden ship building (pause) and they couldn’t build a boat as big as the Ark is claimed to have been." Bill Nye is using a twist on the logical fallacy of presentism, assuming that the skills of people who are living now can be projected into the past, in this case, assuming less and less skill going back in time.
"Is that possible that the best shipbuilders in the world couldn’t do what eight unskilled people, men and their wives, were able to do?" We are just supposed to take Bill Nye's word that Noah and his family worked alone on the Ark and that they were unskilled. Bill Nye is assuming that Noah didn't hire the best shipbuilders of his own day. Bill Nye is assuming that God didn't design the ship. It is likely that God did build the ship through Noah and his family, and there is nothing that challenges belief in that, except that it violates Bill's no-God worldview/fake-reality. It is clear that Noah was on speaking terms with God and that God was directing Noah, leading him, and blessing his work. Bill is using the logical fallacy of appeal to Naturalism, which is a type of hysteron proteron fallacy. The ship took about 100 years to build, so there would be a fair amount of craftsmanship involved. One of the things that skeptics who love to argue against the Bible do is to make assumptions that would make the thing that they are busy arguing against impossible--but only if the assumptions were true. They tend to presuppose their assumptions rather than stating them. Presupposition makes it much more difficult to detect the irrationality. Hint: in order to use a hypothetical approach to try to prove that something could not possibly have happened, if there is any assumption that could be made that would make the thing possible, then it is not impossible.
We know, by Divine revelation, that the Genesis happened. God predicted that there would be a day when some evil people would deny this. Bill Nye is denying it, but, not surprisingly, he cannot deny the truth without being irrational.

"If you visit the national zoo in Washington D.C.—it’s a hundred and sixty-three acres—and they have 400 species—by the way, this picture that you’re seeing was taken by spacecraft in space orbiting the Earth. If you told my grandfather, let alone my father, that we had that capability they would have been amazed. That capability comes from our fundamental understanding of gravity, of material science, of physics, and life-science where you go looking. This place, as any zoo, is often criticized for how it treats its animals. They have 400 species on 163 acres, 66 hectares. Is it reasonable that Noah and his colleagues, his family, were able to maintain 14,000 animals and themselves and feed them aboard a ship that was bigger than anyone’s ever been able to build?"

Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of misleading vividness here. Bill implied that Noah could not possibly have put the animals on the Ark because this well-funded zoo is often criticized for how it treats animals. He included the other information to frame this non sequitur in a lot of detail and technology, spacecrafts taking pictures, etc., to try to give the irrational statement credibility. The human mind is easily tricked by misleading vividness.
"This place, as any zoo, is often criticized for how it treats its animals. They have 400 species on 163 acres, 66 hectares. Is it reasonable that Noah and his colleagues, his family, were able to maintain 14,000 animals and themselves and feed them aboard a ship that was bigger than anyone’s ever been able to build?" Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of non sequitur. It does not follow that present-day zoos being criticized is evidence that Noah could not have had these animals on the Ark. The gene pool would have been cleaner. God personally selected these animals for the Ark. Bill Nye assumes that the Spirit of God cannot preserve these animals on the Ark. On the Ark, they didn't have people who were willing to bring frivolous lawsuits or a media that often gets carried away. Many computations have been made concerning the animals and the food needed to sustain them, and the Ark could have carried a lot more than it did, to the point that some people speculate that the extra space was to show that any of those people to whom Noah preached, if they had repented, could have come along and been saved from the Flood. For Bill to try to project this zoo's situation back to Noah and the Ark is the logical fallacy of unwarranted extrapolation. Bill would have to prove that extrapolation with more than just a question-begging complex question.
". . . aboard a ship that was bigger than anyone’s ever been able to build?"
Tagging this line onto the previous statement about zoos is very confusing. Bill is either using this as a tactic or else he actually thinks this way.
Keep in mind what Bill is trying to prove. He is claiming that the Ark could not have possibly existed. One of the reasons he is giving is that the Ark would have been bigger than any ship that anyone has ever built. Stating it clearly: no one has ever been able to build a ship this big, therefore, this ship could not have existed. Another way to state this would be to say: no one was able to build the Ark, therefore no one was able to build the Ark.Bill Nye is using the fallacy of circular reasoning. Bill Nye is assuming that no one, especially not Noah, has ever built a ship this large. Then, Bill uses his assumption to prove what he is assuming, that Noah didn't build the Ark. That is circular reasoning. This is also the fallacy of presentism, projecting the knowledge and worldviews of the present into the past, in this case, assuming that knowledge of ship-building at the time of Noah was equal to or less than the knowledge of ship-building back just a century or so ago. We know almost nothing about the pre-Flood culture and technology. However, there are many things that people did thousands of years ago that we aren't able to do today. The pyramids come to mind. And, there were ship-building techniques in the past--we have archeological evidence of this--that made stronger ships than the best wooden ships of the last two centuries. Ken Ham, of course, mentioned this to Bill, who ignored the evidence. Through Scripture, God speaks to us of the design of the Ark only at a high level. We don't have the details of the plan. There are design-features that could have been built in, some of which have been discussed in various articles that deal with the Ark. And Bill Nye ought to keep in mind that the almighty, all-knowing, all-wise God knows more than present-day humans do, and may have incorporated design features that have been lost to human knowledge over the last 4,000 years.

Now here’s the thing; what we want in science (pause), science as practiced on the outside (pause for dramatic effect), is an ability to predict. We want to have a natural law that is so obvious and clear, so well understood that we can make predictions about what will happen. We can predict that we can put a space craft in orbit and take a picture of Washington D.C. We can predict that if we provide this much room for an elephant it will live healthily for a certain amount of time. So, I’ll give you an example: in the explanation provided by traditional science, of how we came to be, we find, as Ken Ham alluded to many times in his recent remarks, we find a sequence of animals in what generally is called the fossil record. This is to say, when you look at the layers, that you find in Kentucky, you look at them carefully, you find a sequence of animals, a succession, and, as one might expect, when you’re looking at old records, there’s some pieces seem to be missing-a gap. So scientists got to thinking about this. There are lung fish that jump from pond to pond in Florida and end up in people’s swimming pools. And there are amphibians, frogs, toads, croaking and carrying on and so people wondered if there wasn’t a fossil, and organism, an animal, that had lived that had characteristics of both. People over the years had found that in Canada there was clearly a fossil marsh, a place that used to be a swamp. It dried out. And they found all kinds of happy swamp fossils there, ferns, so on, animals, fish that were recognized. And people realized that with the age of the rocks there, as computed by traditional scientists, with the age of the rocks there, this would be a reasonable place to look for an animal, a fossil of an animal that lived there. And indeed, scientists found it. Tiktaalik, this fish-lizard guy. And they found several specimens. It wasn’t one individual. In other words, they made a prediction that this animal would be found and it was found. So far, Ken Ham, and his worldview, the Ken Ham Creation Model, does not have this capability. It cannot make predictions and show results.

"Now here’s the thing; what we want in science, science as practiced on the outside, is an ability to predict." Bill Nye is implying that the Creation Model cannot predict. This is an outright lie. In addition, Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Formally, it goes like this: If the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story is true, then we would be able to predict. We can predict. Therefore, the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story is true. Here is the same logical error in a way that let's you know why it's a fallacy. If it's raining, the sidewalk will be wet. The sidewalk is wet. Therefore, it is raining. Is rain the only thing that can make the sidewalk wet? In fact, the predictions of the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story are mere confirmation bias. They are an example of many closed minds looking for anything that might give their story credibility. It has come to the point where whatever is observed automatically is transformed into evidence for the favored story. Alternately, evidence is routinely dumped, claimed to be irrelevant, if it contradicts the favored story. Of course, they find "evidence" then, since anything they will ever observe will always "prove" the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. If they find soft tissue in fossils that are supposed to be millions of years old, no problem--it actually "proves" the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. There are always ad hoc rescuing devices to save the story. "If everything looks designed, it proves that it is not designed." "If most of the processes that are used to guess the age of the Earth show a young Earth, but a very few show an old Earth, that proves an old Earth, since only those processes that can be manipulated through assumptions to show the desired ages are relevant. The rest don't matter." If all else fails, there is always, "That's a great mystery." (how molecules-to-man evolution affects science)
- Would Animals and Plants Found in Unexpected Places in the Fossil Record Change an Evolutionist's Mind?
"science as practiced on the outside" Bill Nye is using contempt as proof with this type of phrase that he chose to use as a mantra throughout the debate. What he is implying is something that he has plainly stated. He is implying, by this, that those scientists who don't believe in the arbitrary assumptions of Naturalism (which is one view of Atheism), Materialism (which is another view of Atheism), Uniformitarianism (which denies the Flood a priori), and Evolutionism (meaning the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story), are not real scientists. His attitude is one of contempt toward them. This is the no true Scotsman fallacy. The lie is that the scientists who don't make these assumptions, who don't really believe these things, are using a different scientific method or assuming that the laws of nature have changed. They are not using a different method. Nor are they assuming that the laws of nature have changed. They simply are not accepting the Atheistic assumptions, stories, and presuppositions.
"science as practiced on the outside" This is a loaded phrase. It means accepting, not challenging, and not even daring to question the sacred cow of the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man (bbboym2m) story. You can discover anything you like so long as you adapt the bbboym2m story to fit the evidence. This is an appeal to tradition.
"We want to have a natural law that is so obvious and clear, so well understood, that we can make predictions about what will happen." When Bill Nye uses the term, natural law, he is talking about it from the worldview of Naturalism. He includes the presupposition of Naturalism, so it is a loaded term as he thinks about it. Since this Naturalistic/Atheistic worldview is so prevalent in society, in movies, on the news, among the talking heads on TV, and even in churches, it is a temptation to think that it has something to do with reality. For many, it becomes a truism. It is simply an arbitrary assumption. We, who follow Christ, know by revelation that the exact opposite of Naturalism is what is happening. The natural laws are what God happens to be doing. God is very faithful, as He reveals. He enforces the natural laws moment by moment with tremendous faithfulness, and, as we are finding out, with great complexity. We can make predictions that God will continue to be faithful. Under Naturalism, there is no mechanism for enforcing the laws of nature. They are just there. There is no cause and effect possible with the arbitrary assumption of Naturalism, so making the assumption is not only the logical fallacy of unsupported assertion but it is also violating the law of cause and effect, since Naturalism provides no cause for the laws of nature. As a result, Naturalism can provide no reason that the laws of nature will not change tomorrow for no known reason. This is known as the logical fallacy of limited depth. In short, it is irrational to believe in Naturalism. In addition, in his focus on prediction, Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
". . . so well understood that we can make predictions about what will happen." One of the mantras that Bill Nye harped on was predictions, claiming that the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story allows predictions and Creation does not. The opposite is the case. This is the logical fallacy of bare assertion, or, more accurately, assertion contrary to fact. Bill gave zero evidence for his claim. Since Bill Nye continued to repeat this mantra after Ken Ham gave many examples of successful predictions of Creation, it is also the logical fallacy of proof by repeated assertion. Actually, this method is used so often on the Internet blogs by Atheist trolls that we need a new name for the fallacy that specifically describes it. Perhaps we could call it the logical fallacy of proof by repeatedly ignoring the answer and re-asking the question while implying that the question has not yet been answered. That seems a bit cumbersome, though.
"We can predict that if we provide this much room for an elephant it will live healthily for a certain amount of time." Bill Nye is hinting that he thinks that there is science that proves that the animals could not have lived on the Ark as God has told us that they did. This is a fallacy of unsupported assertion. Are we just supposed to take Bill Nye's word for this.
- How Could Noah Fit the Animals on the Ark and Care for Them?
- Caring for the Animals on the Ark
". . . we find a sequence of animals in what generally is called the fossil record." This is the logical fallacy of wishful thinking. Bill Nye wishes there were a fossil record that would look like molecules-to-man with a few missing links, but there are no links. The fossils may be called a fossil record, but they aren't a record. We have fossils that we can observe and examine. We can line them up according to similarity, just as we can line up any objects according to similarity. You can line up a knife, fork, and spoon according to similarity. You can line up car parts according to similarity. All you need is a good imagination, but imagination is not the same as proof that what is imagined is real. Made up stories certainly are not science. Similarities could indicate a common designer. Similarities could indicate descent, but we would expect some links, and there are no links between kinds (somewhere around the family level). Interestingly, the fossils show families of animals with variation within each family and no fossils between kinds (something close to genus or family). For instance, we see the canine family with a great deal of variation. And we can trace the lineage from one kind of canine to another, like a family tree. But the canine family tree is distinct from all the other family trees. The same is true of the horse kind/family tree, the cat kind/family tree, the ape kind/family tree, and the human kind/family tree. Many Evolutionists have complained about this problem, but most of them have found that it's safer to keep their mouths shut about it.
"you find a sequence of animals, a succession, and, as one might expect, when you’re looking at old records, there’s some pieces seem to be missing-a gap." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of understatement. You don't find a gap. You find all gaps and no links if you are trying to see molecules-to-man. You see the same types of wonderful variations that can be observed in families of living things today, and nothing between the families. (Families seems to be about the level of the created kind, but the research on this is not completed yet.)
"Tiktaalik, this fish-lizard guy. And they found several specimens. It wasn’t one individual. In other words, they made a prediction that this animal would be found and it was found." This is a perfect example of shoehorning the evidence to fit the predication. What is the prediction? That intermediate forms will be found between kinds of living things (cat kind, dog/wolf kind, etc.) The search has been constant since Darwin. There should be millions of these intermediate forms in the fossil record, not just tons of fossils that show interesting variations of existing kinds. At any point in time, a few transitional forms are claimed. When those are discredited, new ones pop up until they are discredited. So, Tiktaalik is Bill Nye's evidence that the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story makes predictions that work. Tiktaalik is a fish with bony fin rays rather than true finger or toe bones, and even Evolutionists don't claim these to be homologous or related in any way to digits. The prediction was that a missing link to fill in a gap in the story of molecules-to-man, however, calling this a missing link would be a bare assertion, an unfounded notion. It is just like so many other so-called predictions that didn't pan out but were publicized as victories (declaring victory) anyway. Tiktaalik has already been debunked. Using such a counterfactual tale as this as a premise to support molecules-to-man would be a hysteron proteron fallacy.
All of these false and irrational statements that have been made by Bill Nye are refuted by God's Divine revelation. Irrational statements hold no weight, though they can be persuasive until you look fully into them as we have. However, we don't build our thought processes on the sands of rationalizations and Bill Nye does. We build on Jesus Christ, Himself. Jesus Christ reveals Himself and teaches us. We know He exists because we know Him. We know that the Bible is His Word because He shows us this fact as He leads us moment by moment.

"So far, Ken Ham, and his worldview, the Ken Ham Creation Model, does not have this capability. It cannot make predictions and show results." Are we just supposed to take Bill Nye's word that the Creation Model can't make predictions or show results in spite of the evidence that Ken Ham has shown that it does make predictions and show results? Bill Nye makes that rather strange claim, strange in the light of the fact that Ken Ham actually showed him a slide of 20 predictions in his opening talk. In that light, it appears that Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of denialism. And he is using the logical fallacy of proof by repetition. Specifically, Bill is trying to provide proof by repeatedly ignoring the answer and re-asking the question as if it had not been answered. This tactic needs its own name because it is becoming very popular among ungodly people who believe that logic was designed so that fallacies could be used to deceive and coerce. Get used to this from ungodly people. Learn how to handle it. Since they have no basis for their thinking that they insist on fighting against God, they must resort to flimflam. When refuted, Bill just repeats the same unsupported assertion in the face of conflicting evidence without even acknowledging the evidence let alone refuting it. Predictions based on the Bible had been given. Twenty were given in Ken Ham’s opening remarks. Then, he used a slide to mention these:

We would expect evidence confirming that an intelligence produced life. (We do find this.)
We would expect to find evidence confirming that living things produce after their kind. This would mean that we would not find evidence showing one kind changing into another kind. (We do find this.)
We would expect to find evidence confirming a global Flood of Noah’s day. (We do find this.)
We would expect to find evidence showing that there is only one race of humans. (We do find this.)
We would expect to find evidence concerning the Tower of Babel, that God gave different languages. (We do find this.)
We would expect to find evidence confirming a young Universe. (We do find this.)
For more about predictions, go here.
Here is another prediction: "Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, 'Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of Creation.' But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly." 2 Peter 3:3-7 (We do find this.)

"Here’s an extraordinary one that I find remarkable. There are certain fish, topminnows, that have the remarkable ability to have sex with other fish, traditional fish sex, and they can have sex with themselves. Now, one of the old questions in life-science, everybody, the old sort of chin strokers, is why does any organism, whether you’re an ash tree, a sea jelly, a squid, a marmot, why does anybody have sex? I mean, there are more bacteria in your tummy right now than there are humans on Earth. And bacteria, they don’t’ bother with that man. They just like, split themselves in half; they get new bacteria, like, let’s get ‘er done; let’s go. But why does any—think of all the trouble the rose bush goes through to make a flower, and the thorns, and the bees flying around, interacting, why does anybody bother with all that. And the answer seems to be, your enemies. And your enemies are not lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! Your enemies are germs and parasites/ That’s what’s going to get you; germs and parasites. My first cousin’s son died tragically from essentially the flu. This is not some story I heard about. It’s my first cousin once removed. Because apparently the virus had the right genes to attack his genes, so when you have sex you have a new set of genes; you have a new mixture. So people studied these topminnows, and they found that the ones who reproduce sexually had fewer parasites than the ones that reproduced on their own, this black spot disease. Wait! There’s more. In these populations, with flooding and so on, with river ponds, get isolated then they dry up then the river flows again, in between, some of the fish will have sex with other fish sometimes and they’ll have sex on their own, it’s called, asexually. And those fish, the ones that are in between, sometimes this, sometimes that, they have an intermediate number of infections. In other words, the explanation provided by Evolution made a prediction, and the prediction’s extraordinary and subtle, but there it is. How else would you explain it?"

"Here’s an extraordinary one that I find remarkable. There are certain fish, topminnows, that have the remarkable ability to have sex with other fish, traditional fish sex, and they can have sex with themselves. Now, one of the old questions in life-science, everybody, the old sort of chin strokers, is why does any organism, whether you’re an ash tree, a sea jelly, a squid, a marmot, why does anybody have sex?" Bill Nye is shoehorning using the logical fallacy of irrelevant thesis. The problem is not whether sex, male and female, is beneficial but how these came to be, which is the real "chin stroker." Bill Nye's fake "chin stoker" is merely a red herring. It is a framing fallacy. With the topminnow argument, Bill Nye demonstrated that sexual reproduction is beneficial for a species--and it does have this benefit along with the many disadvantages that Bill Nye briefly alluded to. But showing that something is beneficial does not explain how something came to be. See Episode 5: Why Sex. What Bill Nye calls a chin stroker is still a serious defect in the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. It is interesting to note that Bill Nye is actually trying to brush away an objection to the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story by presenting it as an example of the ability of the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story to predict. However, this is simply confirmation bias, not the ability to predict. The problem of the supposed spontaneous development of male and female is a great defect in the the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story. What Bill Nye is doing is selling the defect as a benefit, which is an old marketing ploy. If you have a defect with your product, you design a rationalization to claim that the defect is a great benefit. Then, you sell it with great false bravado.
"How else would you explain it?" The answer to this is simple, but Bill Nye is asking a question that he states as if it were unanswerable in an attempt to use a tactic of a magician's choice along with a logical fallacy of ad ignorantiam. The ad ignorantiam fallacy works this way: you present a question under conditions where a well-prepared answer is difficult or impossible to prepare and present. Then, you claim that if the question can't be answered it proves your point. In this case, Bill later resorted to the argument by demanding impossible evidence fallacy, claiming that his questions were not answered to his personal satisfaction--and then implying that this proved his point. That's irrational. The magician's choice is usually given as a false choice given between two things when a third possibility exists. In that case, it would be a false dichotomy or bifurcation. However, it could be any number. Bill presents the single choice option when other options are actually available, and the option he offers is counterfactual, as already discussed. Not only that, but the answer is simple. "How else would you explain it?" It would be explained as exactly what we would predict with the Creation Model. This very issue has been a problem for the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story believers for a long time. Bill just told a little story to explain away the evidence. It doesn't really answer the question, though. (see article) If someone can think of a way to explain some observation in a way that doesn't refute the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story, this doesn't prove the story. (This video gives some detail concerning the problem.) Bill's story certainly is not a scientific prediction that validates the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story or that refutes any of the things that make the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story a scientific impossibility.
Bill Nye is definitely using the fallacy of misleading vividness, giving many vivid details, related and unrelated to his subject, and using a lot of emotion and emphatic vocal variation and body language, all to give false credibility to an argument that doesn't prove anything. He is an enthusiastic speaker, and there is nothing wrong with being zealous, but zeal without knowledge is not good. Proverbs 19:2, Romans 10:1-3 And there is no substance to any of Bill Nye's assumptions and stories as he uses them to argue against the Divine revelation that comes from the King of kings through Scripture.

"And I would say to Ken Ham and his followers that this is something that we want in science. We want the ability to predict. And your assertion that there’s some difference between natural laws that I use to observe the world today and the natural laws that existed 4,000 years ago is extraordinary and unsettling."

"And I would say to Ken Ham and his followers . . ." Again, Bill Nye uses the logical fallacy of ad hominem and straw man, implying that Ken Ham, and a fictitious group, invented by Bill Nye as Ken Ham's Followers, are the only ones who believe that the Bible is God's Word without error. This is an extreme form of shoehorning. While the number of people who believe in anything is immaterial, according to recent polls, about 45 percent of Americans, productive contributors to society, many of them being scientists in such fields as chemistry, physics, engineering, medicine, etc. say they believe in Creation. (source) So Bill's contention is an outright lie that is used to commit a bandwagon fallacy.
"And I would say to Ken Ham and his followers that this is something that we want in science. We want the ability to predict." The tone and pacing of the way the emphasis was put on the words as this was being said doesn't show as much in the written text, but Bill Nye was again presenting the no true Scotsman fallacy by emphasizing the words "Ken Ham," and the two occurrences of "we." His actual message was another repetition of: "We are scientists (those who believe in Atheistic presuppositions) and you (meaning those who believe God) cannot be real scientists. However, basing reason on presuppositions is irrational. Science ought not to be based on irrational thinking. There is nothing irrational about receiving revelation from God. One of the Atheistic presuppositions is that God doesn't exists and therefore cannot reveal anything. This presupposition is debunked by the fact that everyone who seeks Jesus Christ finds Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ leads every person who follows Him. Not to mention that Bill's predictions for the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story were not valid and Ken's predictions for the God-Creation-Flood-young-Earth account were valid.
"We want the ability to predict." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of proof by repeated assertion, since Ken Ham has given multiple examples of how the Creation Model has been used and is being used to predict. Bill Nye has not given one valid example of how the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story can be used to predict. Through Divine revelation, God has provided irrefutable evidence that the He has preserved the Scriptures to us and that they are without error. The many fulfilled prophecies are irrefutable evidence as documented by Werner Gitt in his book, Without Excuse. And God's revelation to each person who seeks Him, telling us that the Scripture cannot be broken, is irrefutable. Every attempt that is made to refute the utterances of God through Scripture ends up being shown to be irrational, counter factual, and made-up stuff.
"We want the ability to predict. And your assertion that there’s some difference between natural laws that I use to observe the world today and the natural laws that existed 4,000 years ago is extraordinary and unsettling."
Bill is linking the idea of predictions to a straw man about natural laws. We’ll deal with the straw man in the next section, but we just want to focus of linking two thoughts with the word, and. Logic works by linking ideas. What Bill is saying is that we cannot predict anything if the natural laws keep changing. He is claiming that the revelation that comes from God requires changes to natural laws. However, it is actually the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man story that requires changes to natural laws. Divine revelation does not. In fact, God reveals that He is faithful to enforce these laws. Also, the Atheistic/Naturalistic worldview has a problem with natural laws in that it provides no cause for them, which is the logical fallacy of limited depth.
"your assertion that there’s some difference between natural laws that I use to observe the world today and the natural laws that existed 4,000 years ago"
Bill Nye is using a straw man fallacy. Ken Ham made no such assertion regarding natural laws. However, part of Bill Nye’s worldview, his fake-reality, is an assumption known as Uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the assumption that there was no Genesis Flood. However, Uniformitarianism can also be defined broadly, saying that natural laws don’t change. It seems as though Bill is suffering from an equivocation fallacy on the word, Uniformitarianism. If that’s not what he is doing, it would be difficult to guess where he is coming from. This is how the logic would look if we are guessing correctly:

Ken Ham says that the Genesis Flood took place, which would be a denial of Uniformitarianism. One of the definitions of the word, Uniformitarianism, includes the belief that natural laws stay constant over time (definist fallacy plus equivocation). If Ken is denying one part of the assumption, then he is denying all of the assumption (all or nothing fallacy). Therefore, Ken Ham is claiming that there were a different set of natural laws 4,000 years ago (non sequitur).

If this is Bill’s logic, then he is trying to shoehorn his assumptions into natural laws—in effect, transforming his assumptions into natural laws by rhetoric. By framing the question in this way, making it about whether or not the natural laws changed at a certain time, Bill is creating a red herring fallacy. How could anyone possibly know whether or not the natural laws changed? God hasn't revealed it, and we certainly cannot observe it. And what God has revealed through His historical account in no way requires that He changed the way that He is holding the Universe together and enforcing the natural laws.
"is extraordinary and unsettling."
We’ll deal with extraordinary first. If God had said that He changed the natural laws at the time of the Flood, it would be an extraordinary claim to say that God didn’t do it. However, God didn’t say any such thing. Neither did Ken, as noted above. So, all we can say is that Bill’s straw man story is indeed extraordinary. Bill’s logic is so extraordinary that we have to guess where it is coming from. As far as it being unsettling, this is known as the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion. It is equivalent to saying, "I'm upset; therefore, that proves that I am right and you are wrong."

"I travel around. I have a great many family members in Danville, VA, one of the U.S.’s most livable cities; it’s lovely. And, I was driving along and there was a sign in front of a church: “Big Bang Theory. You got to be kidding me. God. Now, why would someone at the church, a pastor for example, put that sign up unless he or she didn’t believe that the big bang was a real thing? I just want to review briefly with everybody why we accept—in the outside world—why we accept the big bang. Edwin Hubble was sitting at Mt. Wilson … sat there at this very big telescope night after night staring at the heavens, and he found that the stars are moving apart. Stars are moving apart. And he wasn’t sure why, but it was clear that the stars are moving farther and farther apart all the time. So people talked about it for a couple decades. And then another astronomer, Fred Hoyle, just remarked, 'Well, it was like there was a big bang.' There was an explosion. This is to say, since everything is moving apart, it’s reasonable to say that at one time they were all together. There’s a place from whence these things expanded. And it was a remarkable insight. But people went still questioning it for decades. Scientists, conventional scientists, questioning it for decades. These two researchers wanted to listen for radio signals from space, radio astronomy . . . there was this hiss . . . had found this cosmic background sound that was predicted by astronomers. Astronomers running numbers, doing math, predicted that, in the cosmos, would be left over this echo, this energy from the big bang that would be detectable. And they detected it. We built the cosmic observatory for background emissions, the COBE spacecraft, and it matched exactly, exactly the astronomers’ predictions. You gotta respect that. It’s a wonderful thing."

Bill Nye again uses the logical fallacy of misleading vividness as proof, this time, for the big bang story.
"Now, why would someone at the church, a pastor for example, put that sign up unless he or she didn’t believe that the big bang was a real thing?" Note how Bill Nye treats the big bang story as if it is a religious doctrine that everyone must bow to without any evidence that it actually happened and in spite of the fact that the story is in direct conflict with known and tested Laws of Science. The big bang story is actually a fallacy of far-fetched hypothesis. The reason that someone at that church put up that sign is simply this: this is what God is saying to those who follow Christ. The big bang story is a lie. The big bang story is just that, a story. This is a story that is competing with Divine revelation. Those who believe made-up stories are actually believing lies. That's what a made-up story is--a lie. So, which is to be believed, Divine revelation or lies?
"why we accept—in the outside world—" Bill Nye again uses the bandwagon & ad hominem fallacies, referring to the outside world. The majority opinion is not what determines what is true. Every scientific breakthrough is made from a minority position--if most people believed it, it would not be a breakthrough. We could say that the outside world would consist of every person who is not part of the company of saints, the Church, the ones who have been called out of the world. So, perhaps Bill is just referring to the unsaved, those who are not Christ-ones, and Bill is referring to what the unsaved accept. This is also an appeal to tradition.
"I just want to review briefly with everybody why we accept—in the outside world—why we accept the big bang." Bill Nye makes this statement, to introduce his proof for the big bang story. As you will see, his conclusion (the big bang) does not follow, is non sequitur, from his evidence.
"Edwin Hubble was sitting at Mt. Wilson (Some of the misleading vividness has been omitted here because it was too verbose, but misleading vividness is a logical fallacy) sat there at this very big telescope night after night staring at the heavens, and he found that the stars are moving apart. Stars are moving apart. And he wasn’t sure why, but it was clear that the stars are moving farther and farther apart all the time. So people talked about it for a couple decades." First, it must be noted that the stars moving apart is not proof that a Big Bang happened billions of years ago, so all of this is non sequitur to Bill's conclusion. For that reason, the rest of this paragraph is not needed to refute Bill's conclusion. It is only included to illustrate how fallacies work. Bill Nye uses a misrepresentation of what really happened, the logical fallacy of rewriting history. Edwin Hubble didn’t observe stars moving apart. He observed something that has been interpreted as the Universe expanding while galaxies, though stationary in space, are dragged along as the Universe expands. Cosmic expansion would not appear between stars but between galaxies. Bill Nye repeated this claim 3 times, which makes it unlikely that it was a slip of the tongue. And, Bill Nye’s statement is a common misconception that is often erroneously taught, actually educating people into ignorance. If the galaxies are moving apart, this conflicts with nothing in the account of Creation in the Bible, taking it as it is written. There is no conflict. Hubble only assumed a strong correlation between red shifts and distances of galaxies. He observed red shifts. That is all he observed. It is irrational to shoehorn this observation into support for the big bang story. This was actually work that started before Hubble in 1914. However, an important point is that the expansion of the Universe has not been observed. There is no direct experimental evidence, from any local laboratory experiment, that establishes cosmological expansion as a real phenomenon of nature. It is an interpretation of observation. Astronomers are aware that there are other possible interpretations. So, Bill Nye commits the hysteron proteron fallacy by making such a rash claim. By implying that this is actual observation he not only misrepresents but he also creates the illusion of only one possible conclusion. He could say that one of the interpretations is that the stars are moving apart but not that it was observed that stars are moving apart. Going on from there to attributing expansion to the big bang is the fallacy of non sequitur, a conclusion that does not follow the evidence. What was observed can be explained a few different ways through speculation, assumptions, and made-up stories. Made-up stories are very different from Divine revelation, though. Getting back to the non sequitur that was mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, expansion of the Universe doesn't point to support for the big-bang-billions-of-years story because it conflicts with Divine revelation. We know, by revelation through the Bible, that God stretched out the Heavens, which is a better explanation that fits the observations better. Keep in mind that the Bible mentions, several times, that God stretched out the Heavens. Since interpretations are always based on either made-up stuff or else Divine revelation, it must be remembered that made-up stuff is never a basis for sound reasoning. (article)
"And then another astronomer, Fred Hoyle, just remarked, 'Well, it was like there was a big bang.' There was an explosion." Actually, Hoyle was an outspoken advocate of the steady state theory, a theory that was in competition with the big bang theory. “In a 1949 BBC broadcast Hoyle commented that the universe did not begin in some big bang. Many people think that Hoyle meant the term derisively, but he later said that he used it to make it clear to his radio audience what he was criticizing. At any rate, the succinct alliteration stuck. It’s ironic that an opponent of the big bang theory is credited with naming the theory. And I am baffled as to how 'the Science Guy' could make such a blatantly false statement, if he really understands the history of the big bang model.” Dr. Danny Faulkner So Bill was rewriting history.
"This is to say, since everything is moving apart, it’s reasonable to say that at one time they were all together. There’s a place from whence these things expanded. And it was a remarkable insight. But people went still questioning it for decades. Scientists, conventional scientists, questioning it for decades. These two researchers wanted to listen for radio signals from space, radio astronomy . . . there was this hiss (We have omitted some of Bill's misleading vividness here, but keep in mind that it is a fallacy to give a lot of irrelevant detail as proof for something that the detail doesn't prove.) had found this cosmic background sound that was predicted by astronomers. Astronomers running numbers, doing math, predicted that, in the cosmos, would be left over this echo, this energy from the big bang that would be detectable. And they detected it. We built the cosmic observatory for background emissions, the COBE spacecraft, and it matched exactly, exactly the astronomers’ predictions. You gotta respect that. It’s a wonderful thing." This is untrue. The COBE project determined the temperature of the cosmic microwave background. The big bang model predicts that there would have been irregularities in density in the early Universe. And that would create slight differences in temperature of at least 1 part in 10,000 in the cosmic microwave background. The COBE was designed to find these fluctuations, but the data showed perfectly smooth temperature in the cosmic microwave background. Later, fluctuations were detected at 1 part in 100,000, so the prediction did not match the observation. It did not match the astronomer's predictions. To claim that they matched exactly would be the logical fallacy of the outright lie. They weren't even close. See article by Dr. Danny Faulkner. The phrase, conventional scientists, is another appeal to tradition fallacy.

"Now, along that line is some interest of the age of the Earth. Right now, it’s generally agreed that the big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. What we can do on Earth, these elements that we all know on the periodic table of chemicals and the ones we don’t know were created when stars explode, and I look like nobody, but I attended a lecture by Hans Beta who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the process by which stars create all these elements. The ones that interest me are our good friends, rubidium and strontium. Rubidium becomes strontium spontaneously. It’s an interesting thing. A neutron becomes a proton and it goes up the periodic table. When lava comes out of the ground, when the melt solidifies or crystallizes, it locks the rubidium and strontium in place. And so, by careful assay, by being diligent, you can tell when the rock froze. You can tell how old the rubidium and strontium are. And you can get an age for the Earth. When that stuff falls on fossils, you can get a very good idea of how old the fossils are. I encourage you all to go to Nebraska. Go to Ash Fall State Park and see the astonishing fossils. It looks like a Hollywood movie. There are rhinoceroses. There are three-toed horses. In Nebraska! None of those animals are extant today. And they were buried catastrophically by a volcano in what is now Idaho in Yellowstone National Park called the hot spot or people call it the super volcano. And it’s a remarkable thing. I can tell you as a north-westerner from around Mt. St. Helens—full disclosure, I’m on the Mt. St. Helens board—when it goes off it gives off a great deal of gas that’s toxic and knocks these animals out. Looking for relief, they go to a watering hole, and then when the ash comes they were all buried. It’s an extraordinary place."

"these elements that we all know on the periodic table of chemicals and the ones we don’t know were created when stars explode . . . Hans Beta who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the process by which stars create all these elements." Claiming that the elements were created when stars exploded is not proven by any observation, so Bill is committing a hysteron proteron fallacy. This is also a false cause and effect fallacy. In addition, it is an assertion contrary to fact, since it directly conflcts with Divine revelation. Of course, this gets down to the meat of the debate, since the real debate is whether assumption is the best way to interpret observations or Divine revelation is the best way to interpret observation. Bill Nye is using assumptive statements without any real evidence. There is no real scientific evidence, other than assumptions and stories, that the elements came from exploding stars. We do know, by Divine revelation, that God created the elements. So, once again, the comparison is between arbitrary assumptions and made-up stories as opposed to Divine revelation. And the Divine revelation can be verified, since every person who seeks Christ does find Him. When Bill Nye presents the evidence and only one solution, this is the logical fallacy of jumping to conclusions. There are two possible conclusions. He leaves off the one that fits the facts better, but includes only the conclusion that he wishes were true. This is a fallacy of omission known as stacking the deck.
"I look like nobody, but I attended a lecture by Hans Beta who won the Nobel Prize for discovering . . ." "full disclosure, I’m on the Mt. St. Helens board" Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. These are two examples. This is sort of like the guy who says, "Look out, I know karate." He included several off-hand remarks that imply his "scientist status" and "authority as a scientist." Whether he has status as an expert is not the issue, though. What is at issue is whether or not Creation is a viable model of origins. What is at issue is whether Bill has any case at all that uses sound reasoning. As it turns out, he does not have a case for his conclusion that is sound.
There is nothing in what Bill Nye said that in any way proves that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old. That remains a bare assertion. Ken Ham mentioned that the 13.7 billion years story was determined from testing comets, not things on Earth as Bill Nye seems to indicate by talking about Nebraska. Radiometric dating has many problems. It doesn't work as proof of anything, especially when the conclusions conflict with Divine revelation. The conclusions of radiometric dating are dependent on assumptions, so we are not comparing science to the Bible. We are comparing arbitrary assumptions to Divine revelation. That is what this entire debate is really about.

"Now if in the bad old days you had heart problems, they would right away cut you open. Now, we use a drug, based on rubidium, to look at the inside of your heart without cutting you open. Now, my Kentucky friends, I want you to consider this. Right now, there is no place in the commonwealth of Kentucky to get a degree in this kind of nuclear medicine, this kind of drugs associated with that. I hope you find that troubling. I hope you’re concerned about that. You want scientifically literate students in your commonwealth for a better tomorrow for everybody. You can’t get this here. You have to go out of State."

The unspoken connotation of Bill Nye's argument is that believing what God is revealing to us all through Scripture is keeping students from being scientifically literate. Of course, Bill Nye's argument uses several logical fallacies as noted below along with the logical fallacy of false cause and effect.
"if in the bad old days you had heart problems, they would right away cut you open" Are we just supposed to take Bill Nye's word for this? They didn't cut you open right away before nuclear medicine technology. Whether they did or didn't is a minor point, but we include it here as an example of a fallacy. What is critical is that Bill Nye is over dramatizing this story, using the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion to tell an untruth against those who believe what God reveals.
"Now, my Kentucky friends, I want you to consider this. Right now, there is no place in the commonwealth of Kentucky to get a degree in this kind of nuclear medicine, this kind of drugs associated with that. I hope you find that troubling. I hope you’re concerned about that. You want scientifically literate students in your commonwealth for a better tomorrow for everybody. You can’t get this here. You have to go out of State." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of a false premise to make his point. A fact check shows that there are two schools that offer this degree in Kentucky, twice as many as in Bill Nye's home state. If Bill Nye's argument were non sequitur (it is non sequitur), then the actual facts would mean that Bill Nye causes his own state to be only half as scientifically literate as the Creation Museum makes Kentucky.
"I hope you find that troubling. I hope you’re concerned about that." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion.
A Medical Doctor Answers Bill Nye

"Now as far as the distance to stars, understand, this is very well understood. It’s February. We look at a star in February. We measure an angle to it. We wait six months. We look at it and we measure the angle. It’s the same way carpenters built this building. It’s the same way surveyors survey the land that we’re standing on. And so by measuring the distance to a star you can figure out how far away it is and then the stars beyond it and the stars beyond that. There are billions of stars, billions of stars, more than 6,000 light years from here."

Trigonometric parallax is the only direct method to measure distance to stars, and it can only work on the closest stars. The way the further stars’ distances are measured is not directly but with other methods that are calibrated as much as is possible to trigonometric parallax. Bill Nye's explanation was flawed and gives the notion of more precision that actually exists, the logical fallacy of false precision. However, this is not the real problem with Bill's implication as noted below.

"A light year is a measure of distance, not a unit of time. Ken Ham, how could there be billions of stars more than 6,000 light years if the world’s only 6,000 years old? It’s an extraordinary claim."

how could there be billions of stars more than 6,000 light years if the world’s only 6,000 years old?" This is an attempt to use the logical fallacy of ad ignorantiam question. There are several models that work better than the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man model, but, as Bill Nye often likes to state, "this is a great mystery!!! That's what science is all about, discovery. If you go into science, you may be the one to discover the definitive answer." God has, so far, not revealed His means in a definitive way, but there are several possible ways that He could have done it. Consider how foolish it is to say, "The Almighty God could have no way to bring the light to the Earth either by natural means or by supernatural means." If you personally can't think of a way, there are probably some things about some other technologies that you also may not know about (for instance, how the specifics of the electronic components in GPS satellites work or how to make the correct steel for a SUV frame), and that doesn't prove that those technologies don't exist. However, there are several scientific theories for the distant starlight question just as there are several scientific theories for how gravity works. Scientists have several cosmologies, several theories, that explain this better than the billions-of-years story. Consider the Dasha’ solution, Humphreys’ white hole/time dilation, Hartnett’s theory, Lyle’s Anisotropic Synchrony Convention, Akridge’s theory, and DeYoung’s theory as solutions to the light-time question, and see which one you think is more likely. Then, become a scientist and prove one of them to be true. One other thing: these theories are able to make predictions that turn out to be true. So, Bill Nye's ad ignorantiam question is not able to prove what he wishes it would prove. This is another case of Bill Nye using the logical fallacy of special pleading. Throughout the debate, Bill Nye maintained that there is no problem with the fact that he cannot answer the basic questions of life from his worldview. He maintained that these “great mysteries” were no problem for him. In fact, he sold that deficit as a benefit. Bill Nye doesn’t even have a story that he can make up to try to explain many of the basic questions from his worldview, not even a hypothesis. If the existence of unsolved problems is a benefit for one side of an argument, then it must be a benefit for the other side of the argument. This is not a tu quoque argument, but it is pointing out a special pleading fallacy. Tu quoque fallacies have the problem of not proving any points except that both sides of the argument have problems. It resolves nothing. And that's where we would have to leave it if there were no other overriding proof, no tie-breaker. However, there is a tie-breaker: Bill Nye is basing his entire interpretation of scientific observations on arbitrary assumptions and made-up stories, while Ken Ham is basing his interpretation of the same scientific observations on Divine revelation in real-time from the Creator God. There is no higher source that Divine revelation for knowing anything. There is no violation of logic in pointing this out. If Bill Nye is asking for absolute physical evidence on the revelation side and not even needing a possible solution on the stories and assumption side, this is special pleading. However, we do have absolute evidence, the only absolute evidence that can be presented for anything. Without this kind of absolute evidence, we could not even prove that our own reasoning capacity is valid in the least. This absolute evidence is the revelation that comes from God--Divine revelation. And every person who seeks Jesus Christ does find Him, so anyone can verify this evidence without any fancy equipment or special training. No one has to take anyone else's word for it as is the case with the big-bang-billions-of-years-molecules-to-man stories. All anyone needs to do is to come in sincerity, persistence, submission, humility, and respect to Jesus and ask Him to reveal Himself to them. From that point, the Holy Spirit will reveal the fact that the Bible is the Word of God and that it is without error. And the Holy Spirit will continue to lead, to refine, to purify, to restore God's Scriptural orders, to form the called-out Body of Christ into His own Image until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to one totally complete man, Christ the Body joined to Christ the Head, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of presumption. He is presupposing that God could not have gotten the light from the stars to the Earth by any natural or supernatural means. Of course, there are some things that we do not yet know about how things work. We might consider that God might know something that we don’t. There is absolutely no shame in that.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v6/n1/astronomical-distance-light-travel-problem ~ Dr. Danny Faulkner
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v6/n1/light-travel-time-problem ~ Dr. Danny Faulkner

"It’s an extraordinary claim." Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of the question-begging epithet. Why is it extraordinary to Bill? Because it is in opposition to what he is trying to prove.

"There’s another astronomer, Adolphe Quetele, who remarked first about the reasonable man. Is it reasonable that we have ice older by a hundred than you claim the Earth is? We have trees that have more tree rings than the Earth is old. We have rocks with rubidium and strontium, uranium-uranium, and potassium-argon dating that are far, far, far older than you claim the Earth is. Could anybody have built an Ark [laughing] that would sustain the better than anybody was able to build on the Earth? So if you’re asking me, and I got the impression you were, is Ken Ham’s Creation Model viable, I say, No, absolutely not."

"There’s another astronomer, Adolphe Quetele, who remarked first about the reasonable man. Is it reasonable that we have ice older by a hundred than you claim the Earth is?" Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy (logical fallacies are not reasonable.) of the question-begging complex question. He has NOT shown conclusively that we have ice older than what God says that the Earth is. Are we just supposed to take Bill Nye's word for this? One could ask, is it reasonable to use the logical fallacy of begging the question, that is, circular reasoning by asking such a question? By implication and innuendo, Bill has also been making a case that anyone who disagrees with him (who doesn't accept his arbitrary assumptions and made up stories) is unreasonable, irrational. This is a very common intimidation tactic used by the ungodly against those who are following Christ. In fact, when Christ-followers are honest with the ungodly, and not ashamed of Jesus, when they confess that Jesus Christ leads them moment-by-moment, it is almost a knee-jerk reaction for the ungodly to imply that they are insane. And intimidation often works. Of course, the ungodly have built a fake-realities in their minds that excludes God, so any mention of the real God Who really does things and really leads His people, seems to them to be insane. We all have trouble dealing with anything that is not already in our paradigms, because paradigms seem to be reality, and they actually seem more real than real reality.
"We have trees that have more tree rings than the Earth is old." Actually, this is an outright lie as debunked previously.
"We have rocks with rubidium and strontium, uranium-lead, and potassium-argon dating that are far, far, far older than you claim the Earth is." Bill Nye's fallacies on which this claim is based have been refuted earlier.
"Could anybody have built an Ark [laughing] that would sustain the better than anybody was able to build on the Earth?" Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of appeal to ridicule, but his arguments have already been refuted as irrational. The reason that the Genesis Flood gets special treatment is because this Flood totally destroys the billions-of-years story. Appeal to ridicule is used when it is very important to keep people from realizing that something is true, and there is no real evidence or logic that can stand against the truth. For Atheists, the Genesis Flood is devastating.
- How Could Noah Fit the Animals on the Ark and Care for Them?
- Caring for the Animals on the Ark

"Now, one last thing, you may not know that in the U.S. Constitution, from the Founding Fathers, is the sentence to promote the progress of science and useful arts. Kentucky voters, voters who might be watching online, in places like Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, please, you don’t want to raise a generation of science students who don’t understand how we know our place in the Cosmos, our place in space, who don’t understand natural law. We need to innovate to keep the United States where it is in the world."

"Kentucky voters, voters who might be watching online, in places like Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, please," Bill Nye now reveals his real purpose as being political. He is looking for laws to help him with the tactic of message control. He doesn't want real discussion of this issue to be allowed, especially not in the schools. For Bill, this debate is about message control and politicking.
"you don’t want to raise a generation of science students who don’t understand how we know our place in the Cosmos, our place in space, who don’t understand natural law. We need to innovate to keep the United States where it is in the world." Bill is actually implying that message control and censorship of the history that God reveals is necessary to assure that students know their place in the Cosmos, in space, and that they understand natural law. Bill's statement, though veiled in innuendo, is also circular reasoning, in that Bill is assuming the thing that he is trying to prove. And then he is implying an appeal to consequence. Not only that, but his implied consequence is non sequitur. He is saying that his religion, Agnosticism, is what everyone must believe. If, as Bill has stated, we know our place by making assumptions, then we can change our place by making different assumptions. That would mean that we could never really know anything at all. It is not a logical fallacy to use innuendo, but it can make it more difficult to tell if someone is being irrational. Earlier, Ken Ham showed videos of recognized scientists who are Biblical Creationists. (Interestingly, some Atheist websites have posted that this was an example of appeal to authority on the part of Ken Ham. It was not, because Ken was not proving that Creation was true using authority. Ken was showing that Bill Nye's claim that "no real scientists are Creationists" was a false claim.) Then, Bill Nye repeated his, now debunked, innuendo. And, he continued to repeat this innuendo throughout the debate. See this excellent cartoon. We have raised several generations now that don't understand their place in the cosmos. They have been brainwashed into Agnostic religion by the public education system. They don't know they are children of God and that life has purpose and meaning. They have been taught Naturalism, and the results can be seen in the coarsening of the society. Atheists/Agnostics have made headway, and we have seen Atheist/Agnostic students going into schools killing other students to enforce natural selection--in their own words. With the direction set by an education system that teaches the precepts of Atheism/Agnosticism, the United States is heading toward the same place that every country that turns away from God goes. We see it in the lack of morals. We see it in the spread of incurable diseases. We see it in the attacks by enemies that are being allowed to work against this Country. And we know, by revelation which God clearly gives through Scripture, that this is how God works. We are seeing it unfold before our eyes. That is a prediction. If we continue in the Secular Humanist direction, the nation will fail. If we turn toward Christ, the nation will be restored. This is not the logical fallacy of proof by appeal to consequence, but it is a declaration of revelation.
Bill Nye is using the logical fallacy of self-refutation, of conflicting conditions, in that his argument is internally inconsistent. He claims that the United States has made all these advances in the past, a past that used the Bible as a textbook in the schools, a past that had leaders who proclaimed Jesus Christ as Lord, a past in which most Americans would not have questioned the Bible's inerrancy. Then, he claims that if we don't stop believing what God says through Scripture, the technical advances will stop. In fact, nearly every major branch of science was started by a young-Earth Creationist. So, Bill Nye's contention self-destructs.

Author/Compiler
Last updated: Aug, 2014

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Creation Debate Issue #1: Assumptions Versus Divine Revelation

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