If you are anywhere near my age, Bill Nye is synonymous with science-themed remixes of ‘90s songs and getting out of doing worksheets in class.
The small, tube television on the rolling cart meant serious business back in the day. I consider learning with Nye one of the many small rewards of growing up.
Now that I’m in college, he still positively impacts our generation because of his eagerness to properly educate children. He stepped outside his sole responsibility of making an entertaining program because he is genuinely passionate about science. However, if I was in his position, I would have a hard time sitting back as well.
For someone like Nye, seeing schools teach creationism exclusively is a disservice to children no matter what your beliefs are. Throwing out years of empirical evidence, painstaking research and scientific methods in exchange for one “correct” answer is ultimately stunting the potential success of the following generations.
While I am glad that Nye is coming to Kentucky to debate the origin of humanity with Creation Museum CEO Ken Ham, I am also disappointed that this is still a debate in the first place. Ham, the founder of the Creationist Museum, will be defending his position on the denial of evolution. How he can support teaching creationism as the only right thing to do is beyond me.
It is one thing to be a Christian, but many Christians accept evolution as a perfectly explanatory theory. They would not be so quick to argue that our earth is 6,000 years old. They know better than to believe the earth reached its developmental hiatus in seven days. It actually is not inconsistent with being a good Christian to believe in evolution theory.
I can’t help but think Ham is a genius, regardless. Taking creationism and casing it in a museum is disguising it as fact. We go to museums to look at history. We know our past because museums preserve parts of it. To take a religious theory and put it in a museum setting is ultimately parading it as factual history and, unfortunately, people buy into it. It’s a good money-making scheme. If certain people are ignorant enough to believe that humans did not evolve over time, then they are ignorant enough to throw money at whoever supports their ill-researched ideas with a museum.
I am not displeased because of my personal beliefs. I was just always taught to look at all possible explanations before selecting the one I feel is correct. Teaching creationism alone bypasses that process, giving children a narrow scope of theory when it should be wider than ever. It is refreshing to see that Nye is still on our side.
He didn’t stop after entertaining us as children. He continues to support us as adults by using his weight within the scientific community to speak out against a creationist-only curriculum.
Nye is not just a man with a funny bow tie that hosted a cute show anymore. He is the voice of reason that we desperately need to support learning about science. This is why I can still say, at the age of 21, that Bill Nye is my favorite guy.
Column by Carly Besser, Opinion Editor