For anyone who can think critically, Nye was the clear winner.

For everyone else, it was Ham.

He was by far the more polished debater, more relaxed, and seemingly more confident. He didn't need to joke about his bowtie. All he had to do to keep up appearances was to repeat, "I don't know, I wasn't there," implying "Neither were you, so how do you know?" When Nye asked how Noah and his family could have built a huge seaworthy Ark by themselves and kept 14,000 animals (Ham's figure) afloat for a year, Ham said "I don't know, I wasn't there." Of course, he could have said, "Because God gave them the ability," but he didn't. That would have been a little too obviously ad hoc.

Nye accused him of invoking "magic." But instead of showing that he wasn't, Ham ignored the charge. Obviously it didn't deserve a reply. (Just ignoring a serious charge is Trick Number One in any debater's book, and many people are impressed!)

Just how Ham's repeated confessions of complete ignorance could be taken as a defense of his position is beyond me, but that was his main strategy. Then he explained that he *did* know what happened in the past, because Genesis explains it, and if you add up the ages of the patriarchs plus 2014, you get a little over 6000 years for the age of the Earth. Which brings us back to the circular argument commented on above.

What's more, the resolution that "Creationism is a viable explanation..." set the bar far too low. How many viewers know exactly what "viable" means? If (as many think) it simply means "possible," then Ham wins immediately: of course Creationism is "possible" - if you assume, as does Ham, that anything inconsistent with Genesis is wrong! The resolution should have been "Creationism is the best explanation..." or "Creationism is a better explanation than Darwinism."

But even Ham acknowledges that he believes in evolution. Nye looked surprised when Ham said "of course" plants and animals evolve - but never into new species. (None of the finches Darwin found had evolved into, say, eagles.)

Even that admission would have been unthinkable years ago, but it lets Creationists say that the claim they *don't* believe in evolution is a "secularist" smear.

I don't have the time or energy to analyze it all, but Ham looked better and sounded better. And in the Entertainment Age, isn't that what really counts?

C'mon, you know it is.