The Bill Nye and Ken Ham Debate Mirrors American Politics

But the problem isn't necessarily Republican vs. Democrat, it's intelligence vs. stupidity

In case you missed it, a great debate occurred on the 4th of this month. The Bill Nye and Ken Ham Debate tried to answer the question: “Is creation a viable model of origin in today’s modern, scientific era?”

To many people this may seem like the most boring debate in history, but to people like me, it symbolized the very real war that is happening in America, which is greatly affecting our politics and direction as a nation.

Faith in and of itself is a necessary thing for everyone whether they recognize it or not. Unfortunately in recent years faith seems to have become synonymous with ignorance. It’s as if a person must choose between being a person of faith and a person of science. This is in part due to people like Ken Ham.

If you watched the debate, one overpowering theme that came from the side of science as represented by Mr. Nye was that people can have both faith in their choice of god and accept the observable facts and conclusions of modern science. While Mr. Ham asserted that all true science was based on the one book which he personally believes in and that secularism had hijacked “science”.

So who was right? That’s for you to decide; I’m just here to try to ask for caution when electing people who cannot separate science from religion. Unfortunately, here in America it seems as if there is a growing disdain for an educated mind and we’re electing people who share that position.

Take Republican Representative Paul Broun for example.  This man has a B.S. in Chemistry and a Doctorate of medicine, yet he describes accepted and peer reviewed scientific conclusions as “Lies straight from the pit of hell!” He also fervently insists that all of the scientific data supporting global climate change is a “hoax”.

For me, one of the defining moments of the 2012 elections came during the Republican debates. The moderator asked the candidates to raise their hand if they believed in evolution. Not one person who was trying to become the President of the United States raised their hand. My jaw dropped and you couldn’t have heard a train crash over my scream. I kept screaming “Really? Not one person who wants to be the Commander in Chief of the most formidable military force the earth has ever known has accepted peer reviewed scientific theory and conclusions? Not even one. How is this possible?”

Don’t go thinking I’m just going to bash people with Christian faith or republicans here. Democrats have representatives who also lack the most basic understanding of the world around us. Let me present to you Democratic representative Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, a Buddhist of Georgia’s 4th  congressional district. This representative for the people of the United States expressed a fear of moving additional Marines and their families to the island of Guam: “My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”

I shit you not. If you watch the video, you have to take your hat off to the Admiral for not laughing and just addressing the question. This man was concerned that the island of Guam could flip over if too many people lived on one side. The list of these sorts of uneducated and anti-scientific comments from our elected leaders and those wishing to represent us is nearly endless. This fact is especially shocking when you compare our current crop of politicians to our founding fathers.

Each of the founding fathers were intellectuals. They were men who studied history, science, philosophy and embraced education. Benjamin Franklin was a scientist who spoke six different languages and traveled the world. They each came from different economic standings, backgrounds and educational levels.

Yet each of them left an enduring legacy because they embraced knowledge and sought to answer questions when no one else at the time couldn’t. For example, Benjamin Franklin helped discover and map the gulf stream current in the Atlantic because people were complaining that ships took longer to reach New York than they did to reach Newport.

And now, with the entire world of information at our fingertips, we have politicians that firmly believe that vaccines which can help prevent cervical cancer cause mental retardation and that a record-cold winter means the climate isn’t changing.

The debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham is a reflection of our nation and our politics because of how those two men approached the same topic. If you watch the debate it’s clear that they approach the topic is from two distinctly different directions. Bill Nye, the Science Guy approaches the creation of the earth by looking at the evidence and forming a conclusion. However, Ken Ham approaches the exact same question by looking for evidence that supports his conclusion. That sort of thinking has no place in any position of leadership.

That is the sort of thinking that cost us four-thousand lives in Iraq. President Bush wanted to invade Iraq and looked for reasons for us to do it, and even made up “facts” to support his position. Bush’s process parallels Ham’s process of starting with the conclusions of the Bible and looking for evidence to support those conclusions. It’s backwards and it’s costly.

Frankly Speaking; with the 2014 elections coming I will be looking for the candidate that reviews the evidence first and forms a conclusion on which to make a decision. Their party affiliations, religious preference, gender or sexual orientation don’t matter to me as much as the quality of their decisions.  How will you decide to vote?