Tonight, a controversial confrontation: a science journalist will defend evolution in front of a hostile audience at the Creation Museum in Kentucky

Bill Nye, known to millions of Americans from the TV show "Bill Nye the Science Guy" will face Ken Ham, director of the Creation Museum in Kentucky

To watch the confrontation and discuss its outcome (Bill Nye's victory) see: Assessment: Bill Nye won the public debate against the director of the Creation Museum (video)

What does a science enthusiast do in a confrontation with a professional creationist? Tonight, February 4, 2014, Bill Nye, known to millions of Americans from the TV show "Bill Nye The Science Guy" (Bill Nye The Science Guy), will publicly confront Ken Ham (Ham), director of the Creation Museum in Kentucky. All 900 tickets were sold within two minutes. For the first time, a representative of science will receive a stage in front of millions of evangelical Americans, devout Christians who believe that the Bible is the only truth about how the world came into being and how long it will last. Ostensibly, this is a breakthrough in the public relations of science, but many scientists raise an eyebrow: Ken Hamm is a professional confrontationist who knows how to present the Bible as the book that contains all the scientific truths, while Bill Nye is a popular TV host, but he is not a professional scientist but an aeronautical engineer;

The showdown will be on Hamm's home turf, at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where humans are displayed alongside dinosaurs as if they were from that era, and the audience will be Ken Hamm's home crowd (not to mention that the event will bring the anti-science museum $25 a ticket). "The Ken Ham creation museum opened in 2007 at a cost of 27 million dollars and is visited by a quarter of a million people every year. Apparently, the spectators of tonight's confrontation will come from among the crowd of visitors to the Creation Museum and not necessarily from among science enthusiasts."

According to the opponents, giving equal stage time to creationism and to the scientist may be interpreted as giving kosher to anti-scientific views, and thus viewers can think that there is scientific legitimacy to creationism, while it is nothing more than a religion in disguise. So why is Bill Nye going for it?

In the United States there are eighty million evangelicals who believe that the world was created 6,000 years ago and that evolution is an atheist lie. Why is Nye trying to reach them? Why is he willing to confront a clergyman who questions the basic assumptions and basic facts of science, and all this in front of a hostile evangelical crowd? Because in the name of their faith, creationists promote legislation that diverts public funds to religious education at the expense of investment in infrastructure, research and scientific education.

Legislators in the United States repeatedly propose bills according to which in science classes the Bible will be taught as the basis of science. In Louisiana, in 2008, such a bill, LSEA, was passed, and as a result, the state stopped providing scientific education from which the researchers of the future are supposed to grow, those who are supposed to find a solution to the problems of morbidity, crowding, transportation, energy supply and the treatment of air, land and sea pollution; those who can outcompete the evolutionary pattern of viruses and bacteria to develop next winter's flu vaccines; Those who will develop new food varieties, resistant to cold, insects and diseases, to feed a growing population. Louisiana is already paying the price of education for the ignorant and is forced to import scientists from Texas and other states in the United States. Bill Nye may state in a confrontation that any argument for the existence of intelligent design or a supreme being is not scientific, because it is impossible to present scientific evidence for it. "How do you measure God?" Ney asked. "If the animals were intelligently designed, how do you bring evidence from the drawing board for such a design? What document or study presents the plan of divine consciousness?"

Ken Ham will answer: "This document is the Bible." But the mother's nest is their creation; He does not pose a research question and check what the answer is, as a scientist does, but assumes the answer in advance - everything in the Torah - and directs his "investigation" according to the answer he seeks to obtain. This is not science but sabotage of science studies, to promote a religious agenda.

In many countries in the United States, especially in the "Bible Belt" in the southern United States, where the confrontation will take place, many do not understand the difference between a circular religious argument and the scientific process of investigation and proof. These will be the spectators who will fill the chairs in the creation museum of Ken Ham this evening. And therefore it is possible that Bill Nye will take a completely different line. Nye knows that he is not addressing his usual audience, but hundreds, thousands and perhaps millions of devout Christians. Therefore it is possible that Kall will not discuss the scientific impossibility of proving God's existence, but rather seek to convince his listeners that there is no contradiction between religion and science, between religious belief and accepting the evidence for evolution.

Science does not discuss the supernatural but only what can be measured, hypothesized about, make observations and predict future developments or findings. Religious belief, on the other hand, is not related to the scientific process of accumulating knowledge about the world. Religious belief does not need to be proven and cannot be disproved, therefore its believers have no reason to fear science or act against it. The vast majority of religious biologists accept the evidence for the existence of evolution and have no problem reconciling their religious beliefs with science. They claim that God created the world, based on the laws of nature that prevail in it, and let these laws operate - including in the field of biology. Ken Miller, a devout Catholic and professor of molecular biology at Brown University, was the main expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005, and vehemently attacked creationism. In the trial, the Federal Court ruled that creationism is a religion and not a science, and therefore it should not be taught in public schools in the United States. Miller is just one of many religious biologists for whom there is no contradiction between scientific research and religious belief. If Nye goes ahead with this argument and succeeds in winning the favor of even one devout Christian, perhaps there would be some point in a confrontation on the creationists' home turf, in the heart of religious America.   In favor of Nye's participation in the confrontation:

• National Center for Science Education
• CNN
• Activists for scientific education

Against Nye's participation in the confrontation:

• The blog "The God of Evolution: Theology with Attitude" - A Christian religious site that supports evolution and opposes confrontation
• Richard Dawkins
• Jerry Coyne

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Bill Nye in a video that received millions of views: the literal interpretation of Genesis is not suitable for children
• Why is creationism not science?
• Poll: Half of Americans believe in literal creation