Bill Nye The Science Guy Booed In Texas

[Ivy]

IMO he is sticking to science by hoping to keep it separate from religion. I think he was encouraging people not to use isolated verses in the Bible to disprove well-supported science, because as you said, it is not a science book. What he said in that Brian Unger podcast is that religious figures such as Jerry Falwell are not sticking to religion but instead making asinine remarks about science, and that it concerns him. And I agree with him about that.

 

[93JC]

As far as I can tell the mischaracterization was of what the reaction was not what Bill Nye said. So the report that he made a stupid comment about the bible referring to a light when the moon is actually a reflector of light was true.

So you mean to say you were there and you knew his intent, the context and recall precisely what he said? Please regale us with the tale of the time you were in Waco seven years ago and listened to Bill Nye.

 

[Kalach]

I imagine the reason religion as an institutional lifestyle is so pugnacious is because you can't get to the proof with having the faith. There's an automatic division of people into us and them. Which I suppose is fine when you focus on your own belief and you're busy working out what is "us". But then dummies go and insitutionalise the faith. The faithful get emboldened and start thinking their faith means something about people who don't have it.

Freaks.

 

[Coriolis]

Bill Nye needs to contact Merriam-Webster because the moon is their example of a light.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/light[noun]

This definition is wrong. It states:

the steady giving off of the form of radiation that makes vision possible

Light is a form of energy, pure and simple; a subset of the electromagnetic spectrum, to be more scientific. The dictionary definition is more appropriate to emission, the process of giving off light. Emission is distinct from reflection, as the first implies generation while the second, simple redirection. Moreover, nothing requires light or its emission to be steady. The world is full of examples of pulsed light, and light with varying intensity. But then Bill Nye probably knows all this.

You're losing credibility and looking like you just have a vendetta against religious people.

I wouldn't call it a vendetta, but I do have limited respect for the willfilly ignorant, religious or otherwise.

Yeah, but all we know is that these people were bothered by Nye's irreverence. That's it. So I don't see why anyone would condemn them when what Nye was bringing up was so obviously stupid.

I know there are backwards people with stupid beliefs. But, simply because someone balks at what a scientist says about the bible doesn't make them stupid or backward.

The audience balked at what a scientist said about nature, and labelled it irreverence.

I'll only give in enough to say that people choose to be literalists on this or that Biblical topic. The way to argue against this is to say, "You don't believe that the Earth is flat and rests on four pillars, why do you believe God put two lights in the sky?"

Even at the Scopes trial, people were using the Bible to determine the age of the earth. How's that for literal interpretation? Someone who believes that would indeed find it hard to be taken seriously as a scientist. That doesn't make all scientists atheists by any means, though. They are just much more likely to see value in the interpretations that fundamentalists dismiss as "metaphor".

 

[Beorn]

IMO he is sticking to science by hoping to keep it separate from religion.

I don't think they should be seperate at all and I apologize if my previous statements made that unclear.

I think he was encouraging people not to use isolated verses in the Bible to disprove well-supported science, because as you said, it is not a science book. What he said in that Brian Unger podcast is that religious figures such as Jerry Falwell are not sticking to religion but instead making asinine remarks about science, and that it concerns him. And I agree with him about that.

Bill Nye is an Atheist and thinks knowledge of science should overwhelm revelation. So I'm not really interested in how he thinks verses of the bible should be interpreted because he thinks they all should be interpreted according to what we can know scientifically. Where does it stop? The resurrection and ascension certainly aren't very scientific.

So you mean to say you were there and you knew his intent, the context and recall precisely what he said? Please regale us with the tale of the time you were in Waco seven years ago and listened to Bill Nye.

I don't care what his intent was. I know in general his intent is to prevent children from being creationists because then (obviously) they can't become engineers. I'm not really a creationist myself, but I get annoyed by anyone militant about it on either side. In this context I happen to be more frustrated with the evolutionist.

Admittedly, under other circumstances I might have been pissed off at creationists.

 

[93JC]

I don't care what his intent was.

Genre, grammar, and intent matter.

Bravo.

 

[Ivy]

Bill Nye is an Atheist and thinks knowledge of science should overwhelm revelation. So I'm not really interested in how he thinks verses of the bible should be interpreted because he thinks they all should be interpreted according to what we can know scientifically. Where does it stop? The resurrection and ascension certainly aren't very scientific.

That's almost the opposite of what he said, though, in the podcast where he described what happened. He says he doesn't think the Bible is about science and so shouldn't be interpreted that way, that it's about "the human condition."

I don't think they have to be separate either, but I do think Jerry Falwell knows fuck-all about science and he and others who also know fuck-all about science should stay out of it, similarly to your feelings about Bill Nye and religion.

 

[Beorn]

Bravo.

Fine. I'm willing to focus more on the intent of the authors of the world's most important book, and am more dismissive of any run-of-the-mill atheists presuming I understand their modus operandi.

I'm totally fine with that.

 

[Beorn]

That's almost the opposite of what he said, though, in the podcast where he described what happened. He says he doesn't think the Bible is about science and so shouldn't be interpreted that way, that it's about "the human condition."

I didn't see the unger podcast.

Nonetheless, what I'm getting at is that his philosophy of knowledge is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of knowledge of any Christian who would be considered orthodox. So I'm not interested in what he thinks we can know from religion.

I don't think they have to be separate either, but I do think Jerry Falwell knows fuck-all about science and he and others who also know fuck-all about science should stay out of it, similarly to your feelings about Bill Nye and religion.

Fair enough.

 

[The Ü™]

Right when he referenced God and the Bible was when he had it coming. Nothing bad would've happened if he didn't. And he didn't have to. I'm pretty sure that the public was booing at his implied slam against religion, not the scientific fact.

 

[Ivy]

A transcript of the Unger podcast was one of the links 93JC posted earlier. It was pretty interesting (I only read the Bill Nye part).

 

[Ivy]

A transcript of the Unger podcast was one of the links 93JC posted earlier. It was pretty interesting (I only read the Bill Nye part).

 

[Beorn]

A transcript of the Unger podcast was one of the links 93JC posted earlier. It was pretty interesting (I only read the Bill Nye part).

Yeah, I thought it was wrong link or something because I didn't see that Bill Nye was in the interview later.

None of that really changes my opinion. He wants to change people's world view. Now both he and I think Jerry was an idiot for being such a jerk about driving a suburban and both he and I don't think that the bible is a scientific textbook. The difference is that I think the problem with Jerry and that verse is a matter of interpretation and application of the bible. Nye simply think's it's impossible for the bible to inform us about our physical reality. Frankly I don't think it matters what the bible says about the human condition if it doesn't inform us about our physical reality. So I have to presume that when he makes that argument about the moon he's not just trying to upend creationism, but a fundamental Christian belief.

 

[93JC]

Were you at the event in question?

 

[Beorn]

Were you at the event in question?

Are you kidding???

I've looked at the evidence and reached my conclusion. What part of the evidence doesn't support my conclusion that Nye brought up the fact that the moon reflects light and that Genesis refers to the moon as a light in an effort to change the worldview of the children present so that they wouldn't believe that the bible can inform them about their physical reality.

 

[93JC]

Are you kidding???

I've looked at the evidence

Are you kidding?

I didn't see the unger podcast.

That's some fine, upstanding lookin' you're doin' there, slick.

 

[Beorn]

Are you kidding?



That's some fine, upstanding lookin' you're doin' there, slick.

So it confirmed my presumptions.
You still haven't pointed out where I'm wrong about his intentions.

Besides even before I read the unger podcast I was going off the YouTube video I posted earlier.

 

[93JC]

His intentions? You don't know what his intentions were! Neither do I! (In fact when I pointed out your hypocrisy on the subject of 'intent' you retorted with what amounted to "I don't really care what his intentions were.") I don't know what he said exactly, and neither do you. I don't know what the context was, and neither do you. That's been my whole point all along.

Like I quoted earlier: "[This is] not just an example of this kind of conditioning that allows people to close themselves off from any contrary evidence to their views, no matter how obvious and common sensical, but how, in the Internet age, stories take on a life of their own and are more likely to catch fire because they are cast in their most sensationalistic light."

You've latched on to this, posted a link to a YouTube video that's got nothing to do with the event in Waco, blathered on incessantly about how much of an idiot Bill Nye is and how much he hates creationists, blah blah blah, and obstinately lashed out at everyone who has said anything that you could construe as remotely contrary to your views.

What you have done here is made a bunch of presumptions based on a sensationalized story from seven years ago and run with. You've done EXACTLY, exactly, what was done to this story in the first place to make it into a sensationalized piece. It has become so perverted and mutated that nobody has a fucking clue what really happened in the first place anymore.

I freely admit I've been needling you pretty much the entire time since you quoted my first post and said "Well, I don't see anything in here that contradicts my claims, wah wah wah wah wah," because that's not the point. That was never my point. The point is that you are arguing about a story that is based in half-truths and spin, and you are making it worse. You are perpetuating what the author of the first blog post I linked correctly identified as one of the biggest problems on the internet. You're continuing to distort a story that was already incredibly fucking distorted to begin with, and that's not cool.

While I'm being honest let me tell you this: I don't give a flying fuck about you, your religious beliefs, your views on creationism, your views on the literary merits of the bible, and I don't even give a fuck about Bill Nye. What gets me fired up is you and other people continuing to perpetuate a bunch of complete horse shit by injecting an already fucked-up, horse shit story with even more horse shit. So don't. You can believe whatever the hell you want to believe but if you keep running with this story you're a fucking idiot. That goes for both 'sides' of this 'argument'.

 

[Thalassa]

Ask the lady who stormed out of the lecture with her three kids in tow, screeching, "We believe in God!"

A literal interpretation of the Bible is the narrow-minded. Religion remains static while science grows and evolves.

Yet those people have a sense of certainty that you will never have.

Besides, I know atheists with a similar sense of certainty, in fact they seem suspiciously more certain that god doesn't exist than they do about the components of human blood or how to make a fire.

 

[Thalassa]

Are you kidding???

I've looked at the evidence and reached my conclusion. What part of the evidence doesn't support my conclusion that Nye brought up the fact that the moon reflects light and that Genesis refers to the moon as a light in an effort to change the worldview of the children present so that they wouldn't believe that the bible can inform them about their physical reality.

I actually agree with you for once. It was blatant trolling.