Nye / Ham Debate

I listened to a bit of the Bill Nye / Ken Ham debate. I think rather than a scientist like Nye (who was great, btw), they should have had a Bible scholar along the lines of Marcus Borg debating Ham. The root of Ham's errors are theological. His "scientific" views result from his literal reading of the book of Genesis. Nye, admittedly not a theologian, was unable to directly address Ham's flawed hermeneutic. Ham essentially said that the "Word of God" (the Bible) is "true" and therefore any "true" scientific view must be based on the Bible. So it ends up being circular reasoning. Additionally, when Ham speaks of "the Bible/Word of God" being "true" what he really means is *his interpretation* of the Bible.

Many years ago I was a fundamentalist Christian and, therefore, a young earth Creationist. My wife and I even visited the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, TX. I read books by Ham, Morris, et al. We were taught that to accept evolution was to deny the truth of the Bible, which would result in becoming unable to believe any of it, including the important stuff about Jesus. The literal hermeneutic was the foundation that the whole house of cards was built on. It took a while (and a lot of studying the Bible for myself) to realize that the truth contained in the Biblical texts is much deeper than literalism and that a faith which questions dogma and embraces uncertainty and remains open to new light is a vastly richer and more meaningful faith.