Bill Nye: Please don’t teach your kids creationism, because it is crazy and inappropriate

웃 · August 27, 2012

Bill Nye: Please don’t teach your kids creationism, because it is crazy

Bill Nye, host of the popular nineties children’s show Bill Nye the Science Guy, is warning parents to not teach their children creationism because, he says, it does them a disservice by undermining their scientific understanding and development.

In a short video for Big Think, Nye says that despite being the seat of some of the world’s greatest technological innovations, America is still home to so many who refuse to accept the fundamental scientific theory of evolution. If that belief is passed on to future generations, he said, America would be deprived of the scientists and engineers it will need to stay technologically competitive down the road.

“I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution, and live in your—in your world, that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in our universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it, because we need them,” he said. “We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.”

Nye added that denying evolution forces disbelievers to construct a wildly untenable theory of their own.

“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology,” Nye said. “It’s like, it’s very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You’re not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place.”

“If you try to ignore that, your worldview just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent,” he added.

Nye, who is now an occasional TV pundit in addition to his work in science, has made forays into politics in the past. Earlier this year, he endorsed President Obama for a second term. Around the same time, he said in an appearance on CNN that the network was doing viewers a disservice by giving climate change deniers equal airtime even though, he said, the science is very much not on their side in that debate.