Get ready, dear reader. Tomorrow’s the big day. Bill Nye will be bringing a slide rule to a knife fight. The event starts at 7:00 PM, Eastern.
Ol’ Hambo has put out a press release, which you can read at his website here: “Science Guys” Garner Huge Attention for Evolution/Creation Debate at the Creation Museum.
We have no idea why “Science Guys” is plural. There will be Bill Nye, on the side of science, and on the opposite side there will be Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the ayatollah of Appalachia, who runs the infamous, mind-boggling Creation Museum, which will be the site of the debate. Anyway, here are some interesting excerpts from the press release:
In addition to CNN correspondent Tom Foreman who will moderate the debate, over 70 credentialed media will be in attendance, such as ABC, NBC, Scientific American magazine, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Al Jazeera, The New Yorker, etc.
Aaaargh!! It’s worse than we imagined. Stay with us:
Over 10,000 churches, schools, colleges, and other groups have informed the museum through http://www.debatelive.org that they will be carrying the free live stream of the debate. (That is just the number of groups that have actually told the Creation Museum of their plans.) Liberty University in Virginia, which conferred an honorary doctorate on Ham, will show a live stream of the debate in a 1,500-seat auditorium on campus.
Whoopie — Liberty University! Let’s read on:
All told, more than one million people — as a part of groups or as individuals — have already informed the museum they will be viewing the debate.
As a precaution, we’ll shut down the Drool-o-tron™. We don’t want to see it self-destruct, so soon after it’s been renamed. The press release continues:
Immediately at the conclusion of the debate, Bill Nye and Ken Ham will walk inside the Creation Museum next door to be interviewed for the Piers Morgan Live program on CNN for a 9:45 PM post-debate analysis. During the 10 PM hour and inside the museum, MSNBC TV will interview Mr. Nye by himself.
That’s stuff you can watch without signing up for Hambo’s live video. But if you want to sign up, ol’ Hambo’s press release provides the link — six different times.
Meanwhile, as you can see, our elves have enhanced the logo we’re using for the debate. And as we said, we’ll have a thread tomorrow for live commentary while you’re watching the thing. Stay tuned to this blog!
Addendum: We’re closing comments here, in order to funnel your comments into our open thread for the actual debate: Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham — Live Debate Thread.
Copyright © 2014. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Ham will be crowing about this for years. Sheesh.
So sad that Bill Nye has let himself be so set up for this abuse.
Karl Giberson’s take on the Ham on Nye [and I agree with Karl]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-giberson-phd/ham-nye-debate-evolution_b_4714334.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
As the Science Guy mumbles and stumbles aghast at the willful ignorance and mind-numbing stupidity of those creationists, Hambeaux will smirk and know that he’s eating a nice Nye on Rye sandwich. Science education will get a hickey, and Nye will have helped AiG gain publicity and money. There can be no good outcome from Nye’s folly.
I wonder if any Ky. snake-handlers will show up for the festivities. A few live rattlesnakes getting loose in the auditorium would liven things up a bit. Talking snakes tempting with apples would be even better.
A disaster of Biblical proportions.
I don’t expect Nye to produce a miracle but I suspect this will be the end of his career as the “Science Guy.”
With that much media exposure Nye will have a tough time stating any kind of positive case that doesn’t make Hambo a martyr. Worse will be Nye slinking off with “at least we can agree to disagree” which puts creationism on equal footing with science in the public’s mind.
If Nye does the right thing and calls out Hambo as being wrong and a fraud based on myths, Nye will become a chew toy for the popular media who will pound him for “attacking” religion.
Nye has truly screwed the pooch on this one.
#HopeI’mWrong
Ken Ham falsely claims that he ‘loves’ science – whilst he is sworn enemy of science.
After this spectacle is over, Bill Nye can be either the “science guy” or the “nice guy”, he can not be both. He can either basically concede the debate to Hambo and continue to be a “nice guy” but lose any standing as the “science guy” or he can forcefully call Hambo out on the endless stupidity of YEC and still be the “science guy” but he will also be seen as the “mean guy”.
Stephen Kennedy says:
I think there’s only one way he can emerge from this with no real damage, and that’s basically to ignore Hambo and wave away his bible stuff by saying: “I didn’t come here to discuss religion,” and then talk to the audience about science. If he sticks to what he’s good at, he won’t look too bad, except they’ll say that he ignored the “hard questions,” but they’re not science questions at all.
The deluded SC wrote:
Rubbish! All rubbish. Nye is dead man walking. Nye’s persona is “Nye the Nice Guy,” “Nye the Goofy Harmless Science Guy.” Nye isn’t Darwin’s bulldog, pit bull, viper, scorpion, black widow or ninja.
There is no FREAKING way Nye can go in there and say “I didn’t come here to discuss religion” because he’s entered into a religious debate. What’s Nye going to do, discuss Biblical archaeology and the chronological development of Biblical manuscripts? No way! Hambo is insane but he’s not stupid. Hambo will have ready sound bites for any of that.
Hambo routinely ignores all of science. All of it. Anything he doesn’t like he simply dismisses as “biased by fallible men” and he won’t back down or concede an inch on that. If Nye attacks the Bible, Hambo wins. If Nye is passive and ignores Hambo, Hambo wins again.
Either way, there is NO WAY Nye can come out of this totally trounced. Meanwhile, Hambo gets a million viewers he didn’t have before, he gets national press coverage and he will no doubt attract supporters from this, no matter if they are fringe whackos, so long as they have money to donate.
I can’t wait to write my apology for being so negative.
I’m just totally creeped out at the thought of 1,500 Liberty-in-name-only U. students and faculty watching this debate without a sane rational scientist to keep them from tying themselves in fundamentalist contortions as they blindly agree with everything Ham says. An abso-fn-lutely room full of crazy, hyped and looking for blood.
Bill Nye is the perfect guy for the job. He’s a TV personality so he doesn’t have a sciency reputation to sully.
This is Hambo’s hail mary throw to save his ark park. I believe this whole thing is just a front to get his sympathizers on board with his junk bonds
This debate is pointless, except from Mr Lie’s pov. Afterward, science will still be science, Ken Ham will still be a liar, but at least he’ll have more money in his bank account and will be proclaimed a hero by the terminally stupid.
I still find Klinghoffer’s chutzpah breathtaking, when he recently wrote:
If Klingy genuinely wanted to demonstrate any actual “contrast” between ID and Ole Time Creationism, shouldn’t Klingy or some other Discoveroid be challenging Hambo to a public debate?.
Now that would be something to see!
Megalonyx asks: “shouldn’t Klingy or some other Discoveroid be challenging Hambo to a public debate?”
Yes! But please, not before SC retrofits the Drool-O-Tron™ with the Slime-Gard 2.0™ upgrade
Yes, Hambo versus the Disco Tute would be fun to watch.
I’d nominate for the job YEC Tooter Paul Nelson.
They could turn it into a cartoon movie – The Unconscionables
Calling Pixar …
Megs: “If Klingy genuinely wanted to demonstrate any actual “contrast” between ID and Ole Time Creationism, shouldn’t Klingy or some other Discoveroid be challenging Hambo to a public debate?”
I just tweeted that at Klinghitler, from @DiogenesLamp0.
I’m not certain, but I think the debate can be viewed free, and without the bother of signing up, just by watching it at the Christian Today website: Bill Nye Ken Ham live stream VIDEO: Watch online creation vs science debate free here.
You can watch the debate at WCPO.com
By declaring in his blog a couple of days ago that Hambo intends to use the bible as evidence for creation he has put Bill Nye in a very difficult spot. Now the Bible is filled with absurdities and many of the accounts in it are easily disproven by what modern science has learned. One might then ask, if that is the case, why is Bill Nye facing such a challenge and why can he not make Hambo look like the fool that he is?
The problem is how do you attack the absurd bible based claims of professional creationists like Hambo without coming across as irreverent, or even taking a mocking tone, against a book that a large number of Americans believe demands deep supreme respect and should be excluded from critical analysis. The bible is unique in this respect. Nearly all people over the age of seven would consider the idea of an animal that could talk ridiculous, but on the first page of the bible we meet a talking snake. This should instantly destroy the notion that the bible is something that could be used as objective evidence of anything, but for most Americans it does not.
This is why a rational person should not debate creationists. The creationist can recite bible verses that support his argument, secure in the knowledge that our culture has not yet reached a point where it would be acceptable to most people for the scientist to expose the verse as being complete nonsense and easily disproven by science.
Ham will uncompromisingly argue that creationism is a viable model for origins studies in our modern scientific age because it is the infallible word of a perfect god and not the fallacies of sinful, flawed fallen men. It is easy to debunk Hambo in the context of science but in a religious venue, attacking Hambo’s position is perilous.
Charles Deetz wrote that he was “creeped out” by the thought of 1500 students at a creationist bible school watching this debate. I am more than “creeped out”. These are people who believe that every word of a book that demands that blasphemers be stoned to death must be obeyed.
Just noticed that the Christian Today website that is also streaming the video notes helpfully that Ham’s 900 seat auditorium “sold out within two days of tickets going on sale”. [bold added].
That’s an interesting turn of phrase. But there is no room to argue that these Christians are not telling us exactly their Gospel Truth.
I’ll be posting our live debate thread soon, and shutting off comments here. The debate starts in two hours.