About

On January 2nd, 2014, American science educator, Bill Nye, and the founder and president of the Creation Museum, Ken Ham had a debate arguing over the legitimacy of Creationism. Nye argued that the Earth was created billions of years ago and its life forms developed millions of years ago through the processes of evolution and natural selection while Ham debated that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago by the Christian God and that all life forms on Earth are the same now as they were when they were first created. The debate was streamed live by debatelive.org^[6] and occurred at the Creation Museum^[7] in Petersburg Kentucky.

Anticipation

Before the debate actually occurred, the event was announced on January 2nd, 2014, by the Christian evangelist website Answers in Genesis.^[2] Later that day, the announcement was posted to the subreddit /r/skeptic^[7]. The post received over 1,000 upvotes and 220 comments during that month. On January 16, the Richard Dawkins Foundation^[8] posted an article including reasons on why Nye shouldn't debate Ham, which included the opinion that arguing with Creationists legitimizes their arguments.

Spread

The debate spawned various image macros based off of screen captures taken from the event on Reddit that reached the front page.^[10][11][12]

On February 5th, the viral content site BuzzFeed published an article^[13] including 22 images of Creationists who viewed the debate holding up handwritten signs including messages that they would like to address to people who believe in evolution.^[4]

External Resources