Bill Nye debated creationist Ken Hamat the Creation Museum about the viability of evolution last night. It was a nice, singular moment for pop culture for a few hours. The No. 1 trending topic on Facebook and Twitter was two men, 60ish and passionate, arguing about how the world began for 150 minutes in front of dueling Power Points.

Some today believe Bill Nye lost the debate. They thought he was an embarrassment for not digging in deeper, for not gnashing his teeth harder against a guy not working with facts. This contributed to the larger problem he was trying to convey:

Science is not about twisting the knife and standing over the body. Science is about standing over the knife, instead, asking why we had it in our hands to begin with -- knowing that the answer is not simple and may never truly be fully known.

We need more Bill Nye. America does not have enough people confidently celebrating the great personal value in admitting how little we all know, and how that's the only way to know anything real at all.

Buzzfeed sent a photographer down to the event to photograph the questions of creationists from the Q&A portion of the debate last night. There are, of course, some questions that try to poke holes in (and fail to comprehend the basics of) evolution, like, "If we came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?"

But the most frequently asked question is something like this: "What purpose do you think you are here for if you do not believe in salvation?"

We need Bill Nye to explain this, more than anything, to our young people: Not knowing something is not a pall on your identity. It is, in fact, how you handle not knowing something that informs your identity more than anything else.

Nye has the power to do something great, to get American kids to embrace the unknown, to not fear failure, to look forward to the moment where you don't get something immediately and to view that not as a personal failing but as a challenge.

He can alert us to the largest problem, as a whole, with American exceptionalism. Yes, that exceptionalism helped us build roads and pipelines that now seem impossible. It powered us to end wars against the truly evil. It is also bucking our lower rungs from the prospect of upward mobility in situations where pride becomes more valuable than knowledge.

He can tell our children that it is beautiful to be wrong.

In Japan, students who do not get a correct answer in some schools are told to go up to the whiteboard and, in front of the entire class, show their work until they are absolutely right. This is a horrifying thought over here. This would be a formal invitation to the rest of the class to steal your lunch money in American public school. In Japan, when the problem is eventually solved, that student is instead met with a round of applause by his or her peers.

We should not become Japan. We should be what we are – a country that helped make Bill Nye one of its most respected voices because of a few dozen well-circulated VHS tapes that taught kids how fun science can be. And we should listen to that man more.

It's really only him. It is only Bill Nye that can do this – America's two-decade substitute teacher, revered like Mr. Rogers, but punchier now, with more urgency for humankind.

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There's this twinge of exasperation on his face toward the end of the debate. You can see Nye look down and around to the audience at the unchanged or unconvinced in the Creation Museum. You get the feeling he felt like he lost.

But he likely got on the Web this morning to see, like a cheesy movie, that the world is full-up with adoration for Bill Nye. It is making little ballads for a man who went into the lion's den and escaped with the determination of getting that thing closed down.

How can we make it so Bill Nye keeps reappearing to remind us how important this is?

Should he run for Congress? The debates would be fascinating. But if he wins, the process would likely frustrate him and waste his voice. Do we give him an adult TV show with a big budget, not unlike Cosmos? This is good, but he'd be preaching to the choir.

We do not need more people preaching to the choir.

We need an enthusiastic, kind man to reassure us that we all know very little, and that this is a great thing.

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