About 17 people in Ottawa got together for a group viewing of the Nye vs Ham debate. We ate bowtie pasta, pea soup with ham, black hole black bean dip, and we had a drinking game (using keywords like “kinds”, “creation”, “were you there”, mentions of numbers of years, etc).
Ham talked about how Christianity was crumbling because of people questioning the literal truths proclaimed in genesis. Nye talked about the scientific approach to knowledge used by people in “the outside world”. That one phrase encapsulates the brilliance of Nye`s approach. Someone like Dawkins would probably have used the phrase “the real world”, which both creationists and fence-sitters would have found insulting and demeaning. Nye’s term was rather more neutral (and also fed into the belief of many Christians that they are set apart as the people of God).
Here are the results of a poll from the UK evangelical Christian website, christiantoday.com
Consensus in our group was also that Nye won. Ham preached sermons. Nye touched on Ham’s points somewhat, but for the most part he spent his time teaching science. He had a golden opportunity to reach a large audience of people who were anti-science and/or not scientifically literate, and he made the most of it.