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from the you-both-get-dirty-and-the-pig-likes-it dept.
McGruber writes:
"Following up on the Bil Nye and Ken Ham debate on Creationism, Creation Museum founder Ken Ham announced Thursday that a municipal bond offering has raised enough money to begin construction on the Ark Encounter project, estimated to cost about $73 million. Groundbreaking is planned for May and the ark is expected to be finished by the summer of 2016. Ham credits the high-profile evolution debate he had with "Science Guy" Bill Nye on Feb. 4 with boosting support for the project.
After learning that the project would move forward, Nye said he was 'heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky,' lamenting that the ark would eventually draw more attention to the beliefs of Ham's Young-earth Creationist ministry. 'Voters and taxpayers in Kentucky will eventually see that this is not in their best interest.' Nye hopes."
(Score: 1) by ccanucs on Saturday March 01 2014, @09:37PM
Hi,
I do not believe this is the right thing to do. Neither necessary nor appropriate - especially in the context of the governmental structures that separate Church and State - especially if it is indeed using public funds.
I am an Electronic Engineer by training, a Software Engineer and Systems Architect by discipline; I currently program Beowulf Supercomputer Clusters and I believe fully in the principles and practice of observational science - like many of those who were quoted in the debate.
I am not a "crazy American Fundamentalist" - I am British.
I grew up in a typical areligious British household. We did not go to Church. I did not believe in God. I studied Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and still hold to all of the observational and proper historical and present-day scientific principles that those and other scientific disciplines taught and which I make use of every day in a multiplicity of ways - even typing this on a computer, sitting on a manufactured chair made of materials carefully researched by scientific approaches and engineered into materials that are incorporated in every day use in this modern world :-)
I believed - as I had been taught - the theory (for so it still is) of evolution. I had no reason to think otherwise.
Nevertheless, *having* been brought to the Gospel (not by any person, not by me "searching and finding") - and then not immediately afterwards - I do believe in a 6-day Creation. I believe the earth is young - though I am not sold on 4004 BC per se.
My reason however for believing as I do now that the earth is young and in a 6-day Creation is *not* because I was convinced by anyone - certainly not Ken Ham, who I only got to know about 20 years afterwards. Rather, now, *as* a Christian, (who did not believe in the same *when* I was converted - an act of God - not man), and in spite of what some "day-age" so-called Creationists believe, or other such who seek to reconcile the theory of evolution with the Bible, there is no possible way to understand the whole of the Bible taken together - especially in the light of the words of Jesus that reference the Old Testament in this context - in any other manner. Either there was a literal Adam and Eve or the rest of the Bible is bunk. Either there was a worldwide flood or the rest of the Bible is bunk. And so on.
Seeking to convince others (which is not what I am trying to do here - simply answering the issue and addressing a little why the debates go on and how useless they are) and especially seeking to convince people with the kind of Ark that is being proposed - is completely unprofitable. It will never change anyone's mind. Never. It cannot. I believe what the Bible says that people are "dead in sin" and *can't* reach out after God and won't be convinced of anything else otherwise. It takes an act of God to save anyone. So, while I might agree with almost every point that Mr. Ham believes and makes, what he *did* in his opening presentation was to declare what the Bible says about man and about God and about the need of the Gospel and what it was, which, the hearing of which - and the consequent act of God in applying it to the person - the Bible says is the means by which people believe. Most people seem to have missed that and focused on the scientific aspects of the debate. However, the rest of the debate was - if you like - a sideshow to that and for all his possible good intentions or the supposed good intentions of others, nobody ever believed Creation by being convinced of it by so-called rational argument. I didn't. I don't. I believe it *because* I have come to faith and not the other way round.
There is a verse in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament that nails this completely. It says: "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible". i.e. It is as a *consequence* of faith that I believe that.
That, as an engineer with a keen scientific mind, who analyzes evidence, who does not reject theories "just" because they are theories, but who does seek proof of scientific theories in the proper scientific method of experimentation and validation of hypotheses, does not mean I do not undertand, appreciate, take advantage of, respect, and fully embrace proper science and engineering, but neither does that sit at all inconsistently with me believing in a rational God Who created a rational universe.
Regards
W.