Bill Nye vs Ken Ham Evolution debate

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Uteunayr [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not necessarily. They can offer a bit of consistency through being an information shortcut. While yes, you should always temper someone's qualifications with critical thinking about what the person says, if a person has a PhD, there is a level of prestige that comes along with that in terms of whether that person knows what they are talking about in relation to that field. It doesn't make them infallible, but I'd rather ask Dr. Lijphart about democratic institutional arrangements than a random individual on the street with no PhD in comparative institutions.

But, I think the essence is that you should always temper qualifications with logic. If a PhD starts saying absolutely fucking idiotic stuff that you can't find anywhere else, and there is no logic to what is said, totally disregard them. In that way, yeah, totally right. The ideas matter.

Certainly qualifications can help in an otherwise low information environment. But a 2+ hour debate is not what I'd consider a low information environment. At that point, I don't care who has what letters behind their name. If they're giving good, verifiable information, that's all that matters.

I mean, Ken Ham pointed to a bunch of people with PhDs when trying to justify his position. It was total appeal to authority bullshit, which is to be expected from a man of religion, which is the ultimate appeal to authority fallacy lol

Also, take it from someone who is working on a PhD and regularly has discussions with plenty of people ranging from undergrad students to multiple PhDs. Nobody ever says anything about what degree a person has when considering their ideas. And when discussing a paper or article or talk, I can't recall a single time where we asked "what qualifications did that person have?" It's all about the ideas. That's one of the things that really sets science and religion apart.