Bill Nye Program (Unwittingly) Praises Creationist Research

Wait just a moment! Isn’t Bill Nye “The Science Guy” the person who debated me and basically said that if students are taught creation and not evolution it will undermine all of science and undermine technological advancement?

Yes, that’s the guy!

Bill Nye even mocked the state of Kentucky during the debate with me in February 2014 when he made a false claim about our Kentucky’s medical technology. Bill Nye falsely charged that Kentucky does not have a nuclear medicine program within its borders. Apparently that was Nye’s attempt to show that the Creation Museum’s home state is backward technologically, and that the museum that holds to the biblical creation position has supposedly been contributing to scientific illiteracy in Kentucky.

This false charge caught the eye of a diagnostic radiologist, who wrote a letter to Bill Nye to correct him. For instance, such a program is located in Lexington, Kentucky, according to the Nuclear Medicine Technology Certification Board’s website, the governing body for certifying nuclear medicine technologists.

Before the Nye/Ham debate (which has now been viewed by an estimated 15 million people), Bill Nye produced video segments and appeared on various secular media outlets making the claim that students who don’t believe in evolution and are taught creation will be at a disadvantage in the sciences and detrimental to advancing technology.

In fact, back in 2012 Bill Nye was quoted in an article titled “Bill Nye Warns Americans Believing in Creationism Are Stifling Innovation” as saying,

If we raise a generation of students who don’t believe in the process of science, who think everything that we’ve come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, you’re not going to continue to innovate.1

And the video of Bill Nye that really was integral in beginning the negotiations leading to the Nye/Ham debate, which was posted by Big Think and received millions of views, was titled “Creationism Is Not Appropriate for Children.”

That’s why, during my debate presentation, I showed video clips of biblical creationists who are scientists and have developed incredible technological advancements. One of the scientists I featured was Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of the MRI scanner. The MRI technology is world famous and one of the greatest technological advancements in medicine in our era of history. I encourage you to watch this short video segment (even if you’ve seen it before) as Dr. Damadian not only explains he invented the MRI scanner, but boldly states he is a biblical creationist and illustrates that belief in evolution has nothing to do with developing technology:

Many of you will be aware of the television program Bill Nye the Science Guy, which made Bill Nye quite famous. In season 2, episode 1, on the topic of magnetism, Bill Nye includes a segment on the MRI scanner. In many of the Bill Nye video programs, he included a segment called "Way Cool Scientist," which features a different scientist whose work is related to the topic of the episode.

Now in the episode on magnetism, Bill Nye features Ed Weinberger, a doctor who works with the MRI scanner. Watch the video clip from this episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy here:

This segment of course is meant to applaud this fantastic piece of technology. However, by doing this, Bill Nye is actually unwittingly praising the phenomenal achievement of a creation scientist—namely the inventor of the MRI scanner, Dr. Raymond Damadian.

As I stated during the debate and also documented, it is a false claim to insist that students have to be taught evolution to be able to develop technology. In fact, I asked this question of Bill Nye at the debate, and have asked it of him publicly a number of times since:

Can you name one piece of technology that could only have been developed starting with a belief in molecules-to-man evolution?

Of course, the answer is no!

The bottom line, as I pointed out at the debate, is that Bill Nye and I have different worldviews. He wants his worldview of naturalism (really, his atheistic religion) imposed on generations of students.

And I want to remind everyone one of the following:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7)

To me, it’s ironic that when Bill Nye had a video segment in his program praising the technological advancement of the MRI, he was actually praising the work of a creation scientist, and unwittingly praising our Creator God!