Well according to the bible, a new earth and new heaven is going to appear. I am not sure I consider the Earth a "home", more like visitors placed here by the Annunaki to be slaves.
The real question here is, if mother nature slaps you, do you have the right to slap nature's mother? I'm going with the scientists on this one. Young earth hypothesis is beyond bogus, and pretty much goes against everything we have learned through science in the past 150 years +. It is only believed by biblical literalists, that home school their children because they think science is evil. There is no objective evidence whatsoever for god, or any ancient storybooks, so 4.5 billion it is.
caught a bit of a debate between bill nye (evolutionist) and another chap (han??, creationist) a few nights ago.....nye is obviously convinced the earth is 4.5/4.6 billion years old while the creationist fellow is equally convinced the earth is only about 6000 years old. at one point they actually debated about the feasibility of building a "noahs ark" type vessel. good stuff.
Ham raised $150m and is getting $45m in tax breaks to build a replica ark. He runs the "creationist museum". I'm not making this up.
With that said, he still knows 1000 times more than Ken Ham and his demonstrably false claims about worldwide flood and humans living with dinosaurs. Last I heard the the museum was about to go out of business, then Ham has a debate with Bill Nye there and all of a sudden it's alive and well again. Real scientists don't waste their time debating frauds like Ham and rightfully so. I don't think Ham even believes it himself. He's all about the money.
And people wonder why I say that Christian fundies are idiots. $150m from a museum made up on a whim with no basis in science whatsoever? He's a shammer but he's damn good at it. Shame on those that actually buy a ticket to that crap.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Sadly, the Creation Museum was not going out of business by any stretch. Ham has long dreamed of making a replica ark, and he was struggling to raise the funds for it- and used the debate to help raise the rest. For his part, Nye felt that this would be a good chance to reach out to a group that rejects science outright (except for their smartphones, cars, computers, fast food, medicine, etc) and open some minds- make them see that the portrait of science painted by the preachers at the megachurches is not accurate. He was criticized by many scientists for debating with a loon, but he was absolutely right to do it because debate and discussion are how minds are changed. Also, I'm sure there were many thousands of people who were unsure about evolution/creationism, and the debate probably helped some people make up their minds. An important part of Nye's argument was pointing out that you can be devoutly religious and still accept science- it's not either/or, and I bet that that was revelatory for a number of people. Well, it's backed by Bible science. (In other words, yeah, no science whatsoever.) When you're part of a big church, with a passionate and charismatic preacher- you grew up in it, this is your identity, this is your family, your group identity. When you're singing and stomping and clapping and swaying with the jubilant crowds for 3 hours a week at the megachurch from when you were a toddler 'til now- then that's your culture and that's who you are. You just go with it. All of it. You seek out people who are going to reinforce your group beliefs, and that's why the Creation Museum exists, and that's why they're building an Ark instead of something that will help people.
Religious belief is not always about group dynamics, programmed instruction, intellectual coercion and proselytism. There are many religions that do not rely on the latter three and a few that do not rely on the first. Right now it seems as though the four factors above are dominant in many of the mainstream religions however I would argue that it is the most extreme positions in those religious schools of thought that are commonly ascribed to the religion as a whole, when in fact most adherents are not extreme.
Shilling is bad business, although he does go up against some of the bigger whackjobs out there. He's as false as they are.
Meh, I don't actually think that promoting science education should be considered "shilling," because that has a negative connotation. I can't find anything objectionable about what he does, and I'm not aware of any falsehoods that he's spreading.
He stopped promoting science education in the 90s. Now he just pops up for political issues when he's not battling the scourge of conspiracy theorists who promote anti government issues. He looked like a complete nitwit talking about the nuclear plant in Japan and fell back because of that, and now makes his shillbucks fighting the fringe. He's nobody to be respected. Let go of the childhood attachment, because that's the only reason he still exists.
I admire and respect him for what he's done to encourage kids to go into science. I'm very anti-conspiracy theory/fringe/whatnot (as you know,) so that explains why we have really different takes on him. I think we can agree that it would've been better for the TV show to have asked an actual nuclear engineer to explain things, but there are exactly zero nuclear engineers that the public would recognize on TV, and that's really all that matters to the producers.
And that's why he is a shill. He goes onto national broadcasts and tries to give the message that has been dictated to him. Fuck the children's shows. He belongs to our government, the only reason he was on that broadcast was because they thought he would be recognizable and influential to people who were easily manipulated. It backfired. Fuck Nye and fuck the assholes that tried to use his face to lie to the general public.
