How many Creatonists do you suppose even pay attention to such debates. Believe me, I spent a fifteen years debating Creationists on talk.origins, and I saw maybe one Creationist in all that time start to question their world view. The rest were proof against any evidence, and even after a claim was debunked, the very same person would, a few weeks or months later, trot it out again.
Debating Creationists does no good, and in some ways probably does harm.
If you got one creationist to change their world view, it's likely you also prevented many who might have adopted their world view from doing so. That sounds good to me.
Debates aren't likely going to change a zealot's mind. But they might keep a few people from becoming zealots themselves if you have demonstrable facts on your side.
It worked. At least in some small way.
Quite a few religious people were riled up because when an audience member asked "What would make you change your mind" Ham's answer was "Nothing" instead of "God". Most Religious people are quite aware of the difference between someone who has faith in God and someone who uses God to create faith in themselves for their own personal gain and that answer made it clear to those who weren't already familiar with him which category he falls into.
I doubt any non religious people believe in creationism.
Plenty of non-religious people believe in creationism. They just don't believe the Bible's explanation of creation. Even a number of religious people believe the Bible's explanation of creation is akin to how a modern engineer might explain how they build a skyscraper to a 4 year old.
Ham's views are like a 40 year old voraciously defending his belief that babies are delivered by a stork because someone he trusted told him that's how reproduction works when he was a kid.
That's pretty much how it went. It really came down to one question though.
Someone from the audience asked "What would it take to change your mind?"
Nye answered "Evidence". Ham answered "Nothing".
After someone posted the video of it online my Pastor (I haven't been inside a church since I was 15, and he's long retired, but he's still a close family friend) posted on his Facebook page that if the guy was sincere in his Christian beliefs his answer could have been nothing other than "God". And since then there's been a lot of discussion of the Book of Job. They seem to have come away giving it to Nye.
You are not thinking like a Corporation. Under Corporate logic, the test makes perfect sense.
If they can get this test adopted, then for children to be considered intelligent they must be able to score well on this this test.
Which means teachers must be able to teach students how to pass the tests.
Which means a huge market for textbooks and study aids will explode overnight as they will be the only means to make any of the test questions make sense.
And with plenty of copyright filings and a good, litigious law firm on retainer, all such materials will be created and sold exclusively by Pearson Education for many, many years to come.
It's a win/win for them. If they get the tests through, they strike gold. If they don't, they've already got a ton of gold from the Gates'.
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