Guest Blogger: Lindsay Wills

OSU-ChUME organized a watch party for the Tuesday night debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham entitled, “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”. This was a long debate, scheduled to last two and half hours, so we got some pizza and gave people a place to watch the debate with fellow scientists and engineers.

The debate was a very interesting watch. Our audience was primarily on the evolution side of this debate, cheering several times at points made by Bill Nye. Nye made several excellent arguments to show that the earth is much older than the 6,000 years asserted by Ken Ham. Nonetheless, Ken Ham reiterated many times throughout the night that he believes that the bible is the literal word of god, and no one could ever convince him that the word of god is not true.

However, it didn’t seem like Bill Nye was there to change Ken Ham’s mind. Nye put a strong emphasis on reaching out to voters and kids during his chances to talk. He appealed to voters that the U.S. must continue to fund science education and warned that the U.S. could fall behind technologically if we do not keep science important in the classroom. For more information about the debate, or to watch a replay, visit http://debatelive.org/.

OSU-ChUME hosted this event to give undergraduate and graduate science students a chance to intermingle and talk about issues relevant to the lives of both groups. We will continue to host events like this throughout the remainder of the year. For more information about the OSU-ChUME program, contact Maduka Ogba (ogbao@onid.orst.edu) or Lindsay Wills (willsl@onid.orst.edu).