What are we debating, really?

So I lost over an hour of my life tonight.

I was feeling too ill to go out to youth group so I thought, geez, I may as well check out the debate.  It seemed to be the Christian thing to do.  But it was quite boring.  I have no issue with Ken Ham's worldview, or even the fact that Bill Nye does not subscribe to them.  I did feel like this was much of a bait and switch event.

See, this debate had very little to do with whether creationism is a viable scientific model.  What it has everything to do with is this: is faith reasonable?

Mr. Ham had no issue pointing out that scientists have faith in their particular beliefs.  However, Mr. Nye scoffed at the idea that creationism is even worth belief.  Mr. Nye was more gracious than I expected, given reported comments previously comparing teaching creationism to child abuse, even when he told viewers that creationism is magical thinking. We aren't trying to validate our science anymore.

In his opening statements, Mr. Ham mentioned that evolutionists felt that they should not debate creationists.  I would have encouraged him of the opposite.  Creationists needn't debate evolutionists because we begin at different places.

Before I knew God, you could not have convinced me that there was one.  Can we convince someone who is so indoctrinated into his own belief system (either one) to believe the other?  Of course not.  But is this the place where we, as Christians, should focus?  Is Creationism going to provide a basis for conversion?  Probably not.

I wish that I could debate that faith is reasonable and rational.  Unfortunately, it isn't.  Faith stretches our understanding of reason and often wrecks what we see as rational. 

Maybe someone will perceive a winner in this debate.  I certainly didn't. 

 

If you didn't get to see it (it actually got interesting in the last 1/2 hour),

there will be a recorded version available for "several days" at http://debatelive.org/