I’m sure by now many of you have read Bill Nye and his comments made for evolutionism and against those who hold to a creationist understanding of origins. Just a quick comment if I may on this issue. In his statement, Nye states the following, “It’s just really a hard thing, it’s really a hard thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view, I’m sure, will be, it just won’t exist. There’s no evidence for it.” This statement is framed in the context of evidence “for” evolution, such as “Here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they’re at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent.”
One of the interesting factors associated with Nye’s comments is his promotion of the evidences for his evolutionary/materialistic theory. However, when the preconditions of evidence are evaluated, his theory falls short of being able to account for evidences. To have a worldview that can account for evidences, one must first be able to account for the preconditions of reasoning and experience. In this case, Nye must be able to account for the laws of logic in his materialistic worldview. However, the laws of logic are not derived from or contingent on the natural realm. They are universal, abstract and invariant laws that have no material makeup and therefore, they do not fit into and cannot be accounted for via the materialistic worldview. Have you ever seen a law of logic? Tasted one? Felt one? Surely not and in this sense, the very tools that Nye and others like him use to promote the concept of evolutionary origins (which is really a philosophy) are contrary to the very worldview that they are promoting. Talk about inconsistent, a charge that Nye makes of the Christian. Now of course, one could always try to make the claim that the laws of logic are simply products of the mind. However, this is really counterproductive to scientific inquiry because (1) if the laws of logic are simply products of the mind (electro-chemical brain-gas reactions) they these “laws” lose all of their law-like characteristics, (2) these “laws” become contingent and non-invariant based on societal or subjective norms and (3) if the laws of logic are simply products of the mind, I just made one up and declared that Nye’s worldview is absurd. Anyone want to join me? In any of the presented cases, we lose universal standards of reasoning and hence, science (the god of Mr. Nye) goes right out the window. The sad thing is, Mr. Nye has probably never reflected on his own inconsistency, which is a result of his hatred for God and his deadness in sin. How does Nye account for his use of evidences and the preconditions necessary for accounting for evidences? He does not tell us nor do I believe that he ever will, because there is simply no cogent way that a materialist can answer questions about abstract realities.
Moreover, Nye, in doing science, must assume uniformity in nature. However, how can he account for this uniformity in a worldview that promotes random chance? How does he know that the future will be like the past, which is necessary for science to proceed? He might say, “Well, the future has always been like or pasts and based on our past-pasts, we have a reasonable assurance that the future will be the same.” But this is simply begging the question. Moreover, to ask a question about the future is to ask a question about the future, not the past. In contrast, the Christian worldview CAN answer the question regarding uniformity, based on the nature of God and His sustaining providence. So, on both accounts, Nye’s worldview, which seeming intellectual on the outside, is simply full of dead men’s bones on the inside. So much more could be said on this issue, but, like I said, this is simply a quick comment. For a detailed explanation of this argument, check out the Bahnsen v. Stein debate, where Dr. Bahnsen wiped the floor with Gordon Stein and the anti-theistic worldview on this issue and many more. Blessings…
Applied-Apologetics 