Lux Lucet

In recent years, Bill Nye has become something of an icon with the humanist, progressive, environmentalist, social justice warrior crowd.

As a result of his popular children’s science show in the 1990s, he may even be thought of as a sort of Millennial version of Mr. Rogers, a trusted fatherly figure who would never lead his followers astray.

But unlike Mr. Rogers – yeah, I’m a Gen-Xer who grew up on Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo – Bill Nye has gone full social justice warrior in his later years, pushing not only evolution, but the climate change and LGBTQ agendas as well.

Nye has been particularly active in recent years having penned Bill Nye’s Comic History of the United States: The Human Side of the Story (2014), Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation (2014), Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World (2016). This year will see the release of this latest book Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem.

Just this year, Nye served as one of three honorary co-chairs of the March for Science, an organization dedicated to proposition that it is right and just to use government force to take money from the American people and use it to subsidize scientists dedicated to pushing the false narrative of man-made global warming/climate change or whatever new crisis of the day that happens to be popular.

For my part, I’ve only recently begun to pay much attention to Nye. His science show didn’t start until well after I graduated from high school. When I was in school, we had Julius Sumner Miller as our “science guy,” whose programs were educational, memorable and, on occasion, pretty funny too.

As for Miller, I couldn’t tell you what his religious or political beliefs were. For unlike Nye, he didn’t wear them on his sleeve.

Although I had heard of him previously, Nye really didn’t come onto my radar screen in a big way until his February 2014 debate with Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis.

My best summary of Nye’s argument in that debate runs something like this: Evolution is based on the same scientific principles that have brought us electricity, polio vaccines and the internet. You cannot at the same time use and appreciate any of these scientific breakthroughs without also agreeing that Darwinian evolution is true. If you don’t insist and believing in Biblical creation and a 6,000 year old earth, not only are you contradicting yourself by accepting the benefits of science while at the same time rejecting its truth claims about the origin of life , but you’re stupid too. What is worse, if you teach the Biblical doctrine of creation to your children, you’re guilty of making them stupid. And not only that, your insistence on believing Biblical mythology over science endangers the very future of the United States of America.

Well, that’s quite a bit to unpack. Far more than time and space allow in a single blog post. And this doesn’t even touch on the rest of Nye’s body of work. Lord willing, I hope to begin a new series on Nye later this year. But for now, a few short observations on Nye’s thought will have to do.

Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

Following his 2014 debate with Ham, Nye was inspired to write Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, which was published later that year by St. Martin’s Press.

In Undeniable, Nye resumes his attack on Biblical Creationism in general and Ham in particular. As I’ve just started reading the book, what follows does not constitute a full review. But even a cursory read through the first two chapters of his book reveals a great deal about the author’s mindset and proves fertile ground for a critique of his views.

Chapter One: Me And You And Evolution, Too

Early on in this chapter (2) Nye employs a sleight of hand argument that seems to be fairly common among evolutionists, arguing that the effects seen as a result of human animal breeding are just the sped up version of Darwinian molecules to man evolution.

But when men breed dogs, or sheep or wheat, they do not create something wholly different from the original, but simply a new variety of it.

Developing a new breed of dog is simply not the same thing as turning it into a completely new species.

Nye even sees evolution in advertisements for deodorant (2).

This raises the question of just what Nye means by the term “evolution.” In this passage, he seems to mean by it any sort of modification to the natural state of a person, animal or plant. In the case of deodorant, people modify their bodies natural scent. But again, this is not the same thing as Darwinian evolution, which posits that given enough time and chance, an amoeba can become a man.

A second problem evident in this chapter is his low view of man, evidenced by his repeated reference to man as a “species.” Man, Nye tells us, isn’t really all that much different from a chrysanthemum. He writes, “Humans are just another species on this planet trying to make a go of it, trying to pass our genes into the future, just like chrysanthemums, muskrats, sea jellies, poison ivy…and bumblebees.”

And if you don’t agree with this assessment, clearly you’re a science-denying whackadoo who would have mankind “Ignore all the scientific discoveries that make our technologically driven world possible, things like the ability to rotate crops, pump water, generate electricity, and broadcast baseball” (4).

The odd thing is, crop rotation and steam powered water pumps were around long before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. So at least one reader has a hard time seeing the necessary connection between belief in evolution and technological progress.

A third problem in this chapter is that Nye makes no attempt to distinguish among the various religions, but lumps them all into the same category. Some people, Nye tells us, see Darwinism as being in conflict with their religious beliefs, but others with deep religious beliefs have no difficulty reconciling their religious doctrines and evolution. The naysayers are guilty, not only of casting doubt on science, but of showing lack of respect for the religious convictions of others.

A fourth issue with Nye’s argument in this chapter is his statement, “Like any useful scientific theory, evolution enables us to make predictions about what we observe in nature” (5).

In one respect this is not a bad statement. I would agree that scientific theories can be useful. Science developed cures for diseases, developed jet travel, and the internet. Modern dentistry, running water, refrigerators, electric lights and indoor plumbing are great blessings brought to us by science. That is to say, science can be very useful.

But what Nye doesn’t seem to understand is that the laws of science, while useful, are false. All of them.

It may seem odd to hear that a false theory can be useful. Take, for example, the mathematical value π. Probably most of us have used this when solving problems in geometry. Yet the value that we plug into the formula to calculate the area of a circle is only an approximation, as π is an irrational number. 3.14159 is useful, but it is at the same time false.

Fifth, Nye levels a curious charge at creationism: it cannot make predictions. This is incorrect. As Ken Ham has pointed out, the Bible’s account of Noah’s flood predicts that we would find billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth. And, mirabile dictu!, that exactly what the fossil record shows.

A word of caution is needed here. Christians do not claim that the fossil record proves the truth of the Bible. That the Bible in the infallible, inerrant, inspired Word of God is the axiom of Christianity. That is to say, the truth of the 66 Books of the Bible is the unproven and unprovable first principle of the Christian faith. But by beginning with the axiom that the Bible Alone is the Word of God, it is perfectly reasonable for Christians to expect to find physical evidence consistent with the history related therein.

And this doesn’t even get into the many, many fulfilled prophecies (predictions) in Scripture, including prophecies about Jesus Christ, some which were made thousands of years before he was born in Bethlehem.

Sixth, Nye confuses the rejection of the evolution with an “assault on science,” darkly warning that “If we suppress science in this country, we are headed for trouble” (5). On the contrary, it is the suppression of Christianity, first in the churches, and then in broader society, that is the source of our nations many, and worsening, woes.

Seventh, Nye refuses to properly credit the Bible for its scientific implications. He relates how Anaximander, a 6th century BC Greek philosopher, was in some sense the founder of evolutionary theory. But, he goes on to tell us, even Anaximander didn’t have a theory to explain the biodiversity we see all around us. Such a theory was not formulated “for another two millennia” (6).

Again, this is false. For as we read in the Scriptures, “So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind…And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind” (Genesis 1:21, 25). This is biodiversity with a vengeance. Yet Nye is so blind to what the Scriptures teach, that he is either unwilling or unable to credit them for furnishing us with the truth.

Eighth, Nye draws a false comparison between supposedly argumentative religious types and the cool rationality of the scientific community. “When religions disagree about just creation, there is nothing to do but argue. When two scientists disagree about evolution, they confer with colleagues, develop theories, collect evidence, and arrive at a more complete understanding” (7, 8).

But if scientists were such a rational, reasonable bunch, why did physicist Max Plank write, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”? Some have paraphrased Plank, “Science advances one funeral at a time.”

As Georgia Institute of Technology climatologist Dr. Judith Curry has found out, challenging the received scientific wisdom that man made climate change is a settled fact can lead to career death. She recently resigned her position at the school, commenting, “A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science…Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment – funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.”

Science v. Scientism

Perhaps Nye’s biggest problem is his failure to distinguish between science (study of the natural world through experiment and observation), which Christians will gladly admit is useful, and scientism (the belief the science furnishes us with truth).

It may come as a surprise to many, but the scientific method is actually based on a logical fallacy called asserting the consequent.

Consider the following example I’ve paraphrased from John Robbins. Suppose I were to say, “If my battery is dead, my care won’t start. My car failed to start, therefore my battery is dead.”

You’d probably spotted the problem with this statement right away. “Steve,” you’d say, “just because you car didn’t start does not automatically mean that your battery is dead. Maybe somebody stole your battery. Or maybe your engine is locked up because you didn’t change the oil.”

This is exactly the way the scientific method proceeds. Scientists begin with a hypothesis “this is true.” They then say, “If this is true, then that is true.” After running experiments showing “that” is true, they conclude, “because ‘that,’ in fact, is true, therefore ‘this’ is true.”

But the logical reasoning of the scientist is flawed in exactly the same way as my hypothesis about why my car wouldn’t start: Just as there can be many different reasons other than a dead battery for why a car won’t start, so too can there be many explanations for any observed phenomenon in nature.

In fact, for any data set there are an infinite number of possible explanations. And because there are an infinite number of possible explanations, the odds of a scientist, even one as brilliant as Einstein, choosing the correct explanation is (drum roll please…) zero!

The problem described above, the logical fallacy of asserting the consequent, is but one problem with the scientific method.

Another problem is that there is no such thing as data. Data is Latin for that which is given. But in scientific research, nothing is given. All observed values used in scientific research are selected by the scientist running the experiment. They are not given.

Further explanation of this idea is needed, but that will be for another day.

For now, I would like to close with this thought: There is no conflict between science and Christianity. And the conflict that Nye erroneously follows from his confused understanding of what science is. Science, properly understood, is a useful means of carrying out God’s command to “fill the earth and subdue it.” Science is not a means of discovering truth. Truth is a gift of God alone through propositional revelation alone.

Simply put, Nye’s claims about allegedly truth discovering science versus close-minded Christianity are unbelievable.