In a recent interview with National Geographic in January 2015, Bill Nye the Science Guy said: This is the big concern of mine with respect to the organization Answers in Genesis and Ken Ham and all those guys: their relentless, built-in attempts to indoctrinate a generation of science students on a worldview that is obviously wrong. (See the article at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150125-bill-nye-science-guy-evolution-creation-book-talk-culture)
You may recall that in February 2014, Bill Nye had a national debate with Ken Ham on the topic of evolution. After that debate, Nye felt compelled to write a “primer” on the Theory of Evolution called Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation. He was so worried that youth were going to be turned away from belief in science to belief in what he considers a fantasy, that he just had to write this book.
My question for Bill Nye is, “How clueless can one man be? Especially someone who is educated like he claims to be?” He has no idea what he is even talking about.
His great mistake is equating methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. Methodological naturalism is simply the scientific method – which a nothing more than a methodology which uses observation and experiment to discover things about the natural world. Metaphysical naturalism, on the other hand, is a faith system which believes that all of reality is contained within the physical universe. Nye thinks these are one and the same. They are not! Every Christian I know is good with methodological naturalism. We believe in the use of the scientific method to discover things about our natural universe.
Nye’s great problem is that he does not hold his own beliefs to the same standard he requires of Christians. He demands that Christians prove what they believe about God using methodological naturalism. At the same time, he simply assumes his metaphysical naturalism is true and doesn’t believe he needs to subject it to the scientific method. But we will not allow him to get away with that. If he is going to be consistent, he must prove, using the scientific method that : 1) it is actually possible for the natural universe to have a natural origin, 2) life could have originated by natural means, 3) the variety of life forms on earth could have come into existence based on naturalistic evolution, and 4) consciousness could have come into existence by natural means. He believes all these things, but there is no actual science to back up any of them. In other words, Nye has a religious belief in metaphysical naturalism and he is trying to force that belief on everyone else by shaming people into thinking other beliefs are unscientific.
I’m sorry, but Nye is clueless. He simply does not know how to make the distinction between his religious faith and experimental science. Until he does, he will continue to go around making silly assertions like he did in this interview with National Geographic.