My first real debate with a YEC

[Ariphaos]

Snip stuffs

If the students are looking for an avenue to rebel against their teachers, research Gnosticism a bit, which was one of the three main branches of hristianity that, on its own, makes Pascal look like an idiot for his Wager argument.

In a nutshell, the Gnostics believed that the Hebrew God was, in fact, evil, and only by rejecting and surpassing him could one escape his cycle of torment for humanity.[/url]

[Sriad]

There are a lot of good points being sent your way here (you did come to the right place, after all ); I'll just reinforce a couple, with maybe a new thought here and there.

1 Staying on the offensive:
Very important. There are an unlimited number of questions or accusations that can be flung your way which will take much more effort to answer than to ask. When this happens answer one or two well, then segue into a counterattack which should be the main point of your talking segment. Or if you don't answer the questions at all and are challenged on the point, ask why he doesn't answer (one of the nearly unlimited questions that point out a huge hole in Creationism)? "After all, who's the teacher here?" may be slyly inserted, if you feel it appropriate at that time.


2 Know what you know:
You should have a supply of stock responses down cold. Read the source materials and practice speaking them confidently and with only the refrence you'll have at the debate. To prepare for pressure, try running around the block and then speaking through them, or something like that if you have time.


3 Be a rules stickler:
If they break the rules of the debate, call them on it. They may not stop breaking their own rules, but you'll score big points with your target questioning students anyway. Conversely it's very important that you not break the rules.

4 Take notes while the other guy is talking:
Debate fundamental. This helps to plan your response and keep track of what you need to respond to, and makes sure you don't get thrown off the scent by some throw away line or challange at the end of his statement. If he tries that out, start out with something like "Responding to the body of your statement..." to point out his misdirection to the audience. Then get on with point 1.

Your God is an asshole:
(If the debate turns this way, don't overtly force it or else you'll look like an ugly evangelical Athiest and their minds will snap shut)
This is the weakest point of conservative Christianity; it is certainly where I started to question mine. What kind of God condemns 90+% of all human beings who lived to Hell? Inefficient, at least. 10% is a pretty lame success rate for The Perfect Being. (If non-YECers are Hellbound the success rate will, of course, be much lower.)

"Are you trying to tell me God is some sort of demented cosmic third grader?" you might well ask of his Grand Game of Gotcha. Creating the Earth 6,000 years ago and then going to all the trouble of making photons already on their way to Earth from stars (apparently) billions of light-years away, creating the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation to trick people into believing in the Big Bang and damning themselves, making a fossil record over a billion years deep and then planting it in the ground for scientists to discover, making Sol's spectrum read as a six billion year old main sequence star... well, it's an awful lot of trouble to go to just to "test our faith" or "get an excuse to torture lots of people forever and ever." And you want us to worship this psychopath?

Plenty of biblical examples too.

[Adrian Laguna]

And then, instead of answering his points directly, just try to find excuses to segue from his points onto yours. This is quite frankly a lousy debate tactic in front of an intelligent audience, but it's how political debates are done 100% of the time, and for good reason: it doesn't work in front of an intelligent audience but intelligent audiences are rare.

Let me see if I get this straight. Not answering an opponent's arguments and instead moving into saying one's own arguments does not make one a worthless trolling fucktard. However, if called on it and one continues to do this, then is one a worthless trolling fucktard. Am I getting this right? Or am I missing something?

[Ariphaos]

Let me see if I get this straight. Not answering an opponent's arguments and instead moving into saying one's own arguments does not make one a worthless trolling fucktard. However, if called on it and one continues to do this, then is one a worthless trolling fucktard. Am I getting this right? Or am I missing something?

If you have a sufficiently large repertoire of facts, you can legitimately get away with this type of thing. No beneficial mutations, they say? Bring up the mutants who are immune to plague and HIV. They try to use the Lunar dust argument? Bring up the fact that the honest data actually suggests about four billion years.

Throwing fact for fact in their face is fun, but it's hard to do in a live debate.

Personally, if my audience is truly creationist, I prefer explaining instead of attacking. Making someone curl up into a defensive shell and breaking that shell only works if they don't have creationist buddies to fall back on for advice.

[Drooling Iguana]

And then, instead of answering his points directly, just try to find excuses to segue from his points onto yours. This is quite frankly a lousy debate tactic in front of an intelligent audience, but it's how political debates are done 100% of the time, and for good reason: it doesn't work in front of an intelligent audience but intelligent audiences are rare.

Let me see if I get this straight. Not answering an opponent's arguments and instead moving into saying one's own arguments does not make one a worthless trolling fucktard. However, if called on it and one continues to do this, then is one a worthless trolling fucktard. Am I getting this right? Or am I missing something?

Kon-El's Baptist highschool != SDNet. The deck will be stacked against him there so he'll have to fight dirty.

[Superboy]

Well, the debate was last night and it actually went very well.

It wasn't what I was expecting at all, apparently his idea of a "formal debate" is sitting in front of a large group of people and arguing with no rules or guidelines. He insisted we do it this way, which threw me off guard at first as he continually interrupted me and rambled on about his points endlessly.

The "debate" started with the topic of genetics and he completely threw me off guard with this idiotic line:

"No scientist will ever say that mutations can be benificial!"

"What? That's just...that's just not true."

"Yes it is."

" No... it's not."

I was so suprised to hear something so stupid come out of his mouth I couldn't think of how to respond, and since we couldn't exactly start pulling out text books, the audience basically had to decide who to believe based on who sounded more convicing.

Eventually I realized that he doesn't know much about science and would just lie his way out of it as much as he could, and the audience probably wouldn't have the knowledge to know the difference, so I made the debate about the logic of christianity instead. I pointed out the basic fundamental flaws and contradictions in the belief, and eventually got to the point about how a loving god could condemn the people he loved to eternal torment. He talked around the question a bit but after I hammered the question in some more it was made incredibly obvious that he had no answer.

He simply said "people chose to reject God and go to hell, he doesn't make them".

I responded by saying that going to hell is based entirely on whether you believe in Jesus or not, and a person cannot chose what he believes. He disagreed and said that a person can chose what he believes.

I pointed to an empty space in the middle of the room and announced that there is an invisible unicorn there. The croud laughed. I then asked the teacher if he can choose to believe in the unicorn. Eventually, he had to admit that no matter how he tried, he couldn't actually choose to believe in it, much in the same way that a person can not choose to believe in god just because they want to. From that point on the audience was mine and I was on the offensive non-stop.

By the end of the argument, I was essentially grilling him about how he could believe in something that obviously makes no sense (since he admitted previously that a lot of the contradictions cannot be explained), until finally I got him to openly admit that his religion was "blind faith" (in those exact words). I call that a victory, especially since the audience cheered at that point. He got very quiet and somber after that.

Thanks for all the help guys, in was invaluable.

[Ypoknons]

That sounds it went way better than normal. Congrats. Hopefully your old friends are somewhat understand of your beliefs now...

"No scientist will ever say that mutations can be benificial!"

"What? That's just...that's just not true."

"Yes it is."

" No... it's not."

I don't know ... I would have snapped back, "Actually, what they're saying right now is that most mutations are not beneficial, and a fair number are harmless, but a small percentage of mutations are good..."

[Wyrm]

Good for you, Superboy! And glad to be of help!

[Frank Hipper]

Sounds like you did much better than a lot of people do when up against a YEC in a debate on their terms, Superboy, fucking awesome.

You could've snagged him on the mutation lie with "What scientists say that, and when/where?", but getting crowd approval is their strongppoint; beating him on that is an unbelievable victory.
Be proud.

[Drooling Iguana]

All praise the Invisible Pink Unicorn!

[Zero]

How can an invisible unicorn be pink, or any color?

[Drooling Iguana]

It just is. The Invisible Pink Unicorn is not bound by such mundane human concepts as "logic."

[wolveraptor]

So...you really didn't need to know shit about biology, physics, or science in general. All you had to do was grill him on yhwh's evil nature.

You done made your old man proud.

[CaptJodan]

The guy started out sounding like an idiot. Despite that, though, they can usually turn whole crowds on you with their stupid logic. You really did a great job to focus the entire debate on your terms, and nailed him, all with using their own tactics (making things simple, giving fanciful examples, etc). Very impressive.

[mr friendly guy]

How can an invisible unicorn be pink, or any color?

Remember since Science can't explain how something can be pink yet invisible, it must be real. It doesn't have to make sense. You just have to have faith.

[Metatwaddle]

How can an invisible unicorn be pink, or any color?

Remember since Science can't explain how something can be pink yet invisible, it must be real. It doesn't have to make sense. You just have to have faith.

As I recall, IPUism is based on both logic and faith. Logically, we know she is invisible because we can't see her. We have faith that she is pink.

[Ariphaos]

Well, the debate was last night and it actually went very well.

It wasn't what I was expecting at all, apparently his idea of a "formal debate" is sitting in front of a large group of people and arguing with no rules or guidelines. He insisted we do it this way, which threw me off guard at first as he continually interrupted me and rambled on about his points endlessly.

Ha.

In that case, some tips about breathing, speech and posture might have helped you out. Will have to remember that the next time someone asks for debate/discussion help.

[Morilore]

I pointed to an empty space in the middle of the room and announced that there is an invisible unicorn there. The croud laughed. I then asked the teacher if he can choose to believe in the unicorn. Eventually, he had to admit that no matter how he tried, he couldn't actually choose to believe in it, much in the same way that a person can not choose to believe in god just because they want to. From that point on the audience was mine and I was on the offensive non-stop.

By the end of the argument, I was essentially grilling him about how he could believe in something that obviously makes no sense (since he admitted previously that a lot of the contradictions cannot be explained), until finally I got him to openly admit that his religion was "blind faith" (in those exact words). I call that a victory, especially since the audience cheered at that point. He got very quiet and somber after that.

Thanks for all the help guys, in was invaluable.

FLAWLESS VICTORY!
I have always feared that those who are rational will inevitably lose in the field of public opinion to those who are irrational. Thank you for casting this bright ray of hope. *sniff*

[darthdavid]

You've made my night with this thread.

[Superboy]

He's done it again. My old physics teacher has challenged me to another public debate. He says he has "strongly considered" my points from the previous debate and would like to have what he calls a 'discussion'. Of course, he wants to have this 'discussion' in front of the the entire high school where he is teaching (the high school I graduated from).

The last debate we had was in the evening and all the people that were there showed up by their own choice, out of interest. This time will be different. Once a week at the high school, they have what's called "chapel service", where all the students are brought into an auditorium for 2 hours and forced to sit through what is essentially a church sermon. The teacher convinced the principal to use one of these chapel service to host this 'discussion', so there will now be a few hundred students listening in.

Since the last debate went so well, I'm feeling pretty confident, but there is one more thing I could use some help with (of course, any additional tips would be more than welcome).

One of his main points last time around was that we've never observed or have evidence for new information been created in DNA. Essentially, he was saying that mutations never cause new information, and that the only difference from one generation to the next is a 're-shuffling' of current information in the DNA.

I could probably argue this point with pure logic and science, but if I plan on winning over the audience, I'd need to do it with a little flare. So, anybody have any suggestion on a good responce for when he brings this up again (which is inevitable)? I'm hoping for a good, easy to understand way of explaining why he's wrong without getting bogged down in semantics or quoting sources. Any analogy or example or just a good way to word a response would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance, guys.

[Darth Wong]

Try to remember every argument you used last time, and realize that he has probably spent hours crafting a response to each one. Either that or he has some tactic in mind for trying to sidestep the entire argument.

He might bring up the same arguments again, but I wouldn't count on it. Expect him to re-tool and try to come at you from a different angle; one does not normally try the same thing twice, especially if it did not go so well the first time.

One of his main points last time around was that we've never observed or have evidence for new information been created in DNA. Essentially, he was saying that mutations never cause new information, and that the only difference from one generation to the next is a 're-shuffling' of current information in the DNA.

He is confusing "material" with "information". It is perfectly possible to create new information by simply re-ordering existing material. Take the example of a pile of sand, and a sand-castle. Does the sand-castle contain more information than the pile of sand? Obviously yes, but it does not contain any more material. It is just re-shuffling of current material. Also consider the example of a CD-R; the only difference between a blank CD-R and a CD-R full of data is a "re-shuffling" of material already on the disc.

The thing he doesn't understand is that re-ordering of existing material is new information. And we don't have more genetic material than all other animals, no matter what he may think. Does he know that we actually have fewer chromosomes than apes? So much for the "information" argument; whatever we have over the apes, we did it with less genetic material.

Of course, it also bears noting that you can add genes, through a process called gene duplication. In essence, one of the genes gets doubled. Then, the doubled one is altered, and so you end up with a new gene tacked onto the end of the existing set. But it's important to point out how this silly argument is wrong from both angles: not only is he wrong about the fixity of DNA material quantity, but he is also wrong about mere "re-shuffling" being incapable of adding new information.

[tharkûn]

He is confusing "material" with "information". It is perfectly possible to create new information by simply re-ordering existing material. Take the example of a pile of sand, and a sand-castle. Does the sand-castle contain more information than the pile of sand? Obviously yes, but it does not contain any more material. It is just re-shuffling of current material. Also consider the example of a CD-R; the only difference between a blank CD-R and a CD-R full of data is a "re-shuffling" of material already on the disc.

Depends on the definition of information, which means you want a definition of information up front. In physics information is a conserved quantity related to the log of the distinguishable states. One can find plenty of valid science saying no new information was created in a process, because under this definition of information, no physical process can create it.

A more common definition of information comes from Shannon, but that is trivial to show counterexamples. Any addition mutation, polyploidy, or telemorase activity will add information in that sense.

I'd ask for a definition first, as information has many valid definition sdepending upon application, and then look for counterexamples.

[Akhlut]

One of his main points last time around was that we've never observed or have evidence for new information been created in DNA. Essentially, he was saying that mutations never cause new information, and that the only difference from one generation to the next is a 're-shuffling' of current information in the DNA.

I could probably argue this point with pure logic and science, but if I plan on winning over the audience, I'd need to do it with a little flare. So, anybody have any suggestion on a good responce for when he brings this up again (which is inevitable)? I'm hoping for a good, easy to understand way of explaining why he's wrong without getting bogged down in semantics or quoting sources. Any analogy or example or just a good way to word a response would be very helpful.

Mutations are transcription errors and/or multiplied chromosomes. If you were transcripting a book, letter for letter and space for space, then if you made a typo or accidently wrote the same paragraph twice, that is new information. Sure, it's sometimes dangerous (the miscarriage rate is roughly 15-20% and miscarriages usually occur in the first trimester, probably indicating that it's the fetus's biology that killed it, not the mother's), but most of the time it is either neutral (either the codon that was changed didn't affect what it codes for or the change was so minute that everything works all right enough), or rarely beneficial (like antibiotic resistant bacteria). Plus, DNA transcription and replication isn't perfect. I can't cite any examples offhand, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if a single codon was accidently inserted into a length of DNA everyonce in a while. Further, viruses insert their genetic materials into other organisms' cells in order to reproduce. Sexually transmitted diseases do have the possibility of infecting sex cells, inserting completely new genetic information into gene sequence. There are some theories that say junk DNA is old viral DNA.

To return to my book transcription analogy: a typo or repeated paragraph usually doesn't detract from a book too much, does it? A repeated chapter, though, or (assuming we're doing transcription with a typewriter or computer) having a hand on the wrong area of a keyboard for touchtyping resulting in yrcy yjsy ;ppld ;olr yjod ("text that looks like this") would obviously make the book either more difficult to read (repeated chapter) or nigh-impossible to read (hands in the wrong place).

There's also that "reshuffling" taking place, but that's where the mutations occur too, because that's when genes are being unraveled and copied. That just so happens to be the time when mutations occur.

At anyrate, I hope this helps you some and that you do well next time.

[Akhlut]

The thing he doesn't understand is that re-ordering of existing material is new information. And we don't have more genetic material than all other animals, no matter what he may think. Does he know that we actually have fewer chromosomes than apes? So much for the "information" argument; whatever we have over the apes, we did it with less genetic material.

Actually, while we have a lesser number of chromosomes, evidence suggests that we have a chromosome that is, essentially, just two chimp chromosomes fused together. Therefore, we have roughly the same amount of "information" as a chimp does in our genes, not less.

http://mednews.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/5045.html

http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/chro.all.html <- side-by-side comparisons of all the great apes' chromosomes

http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/articles/ ... osome.html <- pretty good article that has a link to the chromosome comparison

[Darth Wong]

Depends on the definition of information, which means you want a definition of information up front.

Which he won't provide. Worse yet, he will interpret this response as an evasive delay tactic, as will much of the audience. That's why I suggest responses like the CD-R and sandcastle analogy, because they play to ordinary peoples' sensibilities with down-to-Earth imagery.