the Universe does not care about Ken Ham

Creationist huckster, Ken Ham, spent a good part of his recent debate with Bill Nye babbling about the made up terms “historical science” and “observational science” to lay the groundwork for his claim that the Bible's creation myth is the best explanation for the origins of the universe*. He claims that because we weren't there, we can't know. He admits the observable laws of physics still apply, but the universe only looks old because god wants it that way. So god is Ashton Kutcher, and he's trying to punk us. Great.

Put simply, science is the analysis of observations in order to answer questions about our environment. Without even knowing, each and every one of use uses science at a rudimentary level on a minute-to-minute basis every day to make decisions. From that arises the Scientific Method and from that arises all of the combined scientific knowledge of human kind. Pretty damn cool. None of that knowledge indicates any type of intelligence created the universe. Not one piece. This is why science doesn't bother with the supernatural. There ain't no evidence for it!

When asked from where everything ultimately arose, Bill Nye answered simply and honestly, “We don't know.” This answer prompted a smattering of triumphal scoffs from the creationists in the crowd. “Ha!” they must have thought, “The egghead scientist doesn't know! Therefore everything else he thinks he knows is wrong! Therefore god did it!”

The problem is, creationists of all religions (as well as spiritualists of all types of woo) conflate the term theory with the term hypothesis. The Theory of Evolution does not concern itself with the origins of life, but with the interpretation of the fossil record. Nothing more. The Big Bang Theory concerns itself with explaining the observable universe and doesn't even attempt to explain what came before. Because we can't see that yet.

Ham and other creationists wiggle themselves into this crack, plug their ears and holler “It's just a theory!” as if it was just a wild guess pulled out of science's ass. Gravity is a theory, too, folks. Science ain't like a revealed text; you don't get to ignore the parts that don't fit your world view. Just sayin'.

I can understand why primitive people believed a violent storm was the act of an angry deity. I can understand why Bronze Age tribesman looked up at the sky and thought the sun circled the Earth and that the moon was a source of light rather than a reflector of sunlight. I cannot, however, understand why three hundred freakin' years after the Enlightenment, people still cling to magical thinking like this. It's holding us back, ferchrissake! 

*This is ridiculous. The Bible's creation myth is certainly not the most plausible (and definitely not the most interesting!). If anything intelligent created this mess, all evidence points to it being a competing gaggle of petty, vicious narcissists.