He wouldn’t have to. He would just have to judge whether or not the literalist had proven that Genesis was indicated by science using the stated standards of evidence. If he can’t, he loses.
Hmm… Actually, the rules allow for neither participant to win.
I suspect that the creationist will explain away whatever evidence the scientist puts out and say, “God created it that way”, and then will present 50 examples of things that “conflict” with the evolutionists view, each of which is either a misrepresentation of the evidence or has a scientific explanation, but accounting for each one of these would take an hour or so to lay down the groundwork, so there won’t be time to cover them all.
So on one side you have the unfalsifiable god did it claim, and on the other side you have set of evolutionary “contradictions” that there wasn’t time to refute.
I don’t think there is going to be any serious takers of this. Which of course is exactly what Stropalo is counting on so he can say that no one took the money because they knew he was right.
Bullshit.
No, he’s kinda right.
It is impossible for there to be such a thing as a creationist who argues or debates honestly, and in good faith, because simply to be a creationist requires either such a vast amount of ignorance as to make debate impossible, or the inherently dishonest approach of selectively ignoring and/or misinterpreting actual data.
I have never once met a creationist that was both well-informed on the relevant data and theories and intellectually honest.
Why should we bother with a measly $10,000 award, when Kent Hovind’s creationist challenge offered $250,000? (not sure if this one is still in effect, seeing as how Hovind at last report was still serving his 10-year federal prison sentence in a tax case).
There is such a thing as a court set up to award judgments on the basis of a preponderance of evidence (i.e. the Vaccine Court). it is true however that scientific questions are ultimately settled in the arena of science, not a courtroom, and that’s the fatal flaw with the “contest”.
Other problems with this latest “contest”, apart from vagueness about whether/how the judge arrives at a decision, include selecting a judge agreeable to both parties and having no appeal process.
In the end, this sounds similar to other woo challenges - they are set up to create sufficient hassles and problems that contestants are discouraged from applying, and the creators of the challenge can claim that no one dared face them.
Georges Lemaitre seemed to be able to resolve that conflict. Also Michal Heller. And even Teilhard.
Yep spot on.
He’ll win. A quick look at the ‘Rules’ shows that all he needs to show is ‘Science indicates the literal reading of Genesis’ - whatever that exactly means. He doesn’t have to prove that’s what DID happen.
Here’s the point: Genesis **starts off **with God already existing. ie Super-natural, Omni-present miracle worker, can do anything. That part is not up for discussion. ‘In The beginning’ - God was already there.
Once you accept that this Supernatural etc being exists, the rest of it follows. We all agree, if a creature that could do anything already exists, then by definition, he could do anything.
Therefore => the story of Genesis does not break scientific laws. It may not be true, but that’s not the argument.
Concur - there are creationist experts/leaders and there are honest people who believe them, but there are no honest creationist experts - in order to prevail in creationist debate, it is necessary to know something about evolution/science, then deliberately misrepresent it.
This challenge reeks of rigged contest. I am convinced that anyone with an adequate layman’s grasp of evolution could prevail in an honest debate against creationism, but such honest debates are thin on the ground.
Is that really true?
Can God create a human being that will leave his favorite tree alone?
Can he create angels that won’t rebel against him?
Can he stop the banished angels from performing evil in the world?
Whatever the details of the arguments are, the $20,000 punchline is going to be nothing more than which side the judge takes. We could pay attention to this one isolated decision based on the limited content of this contest, but why not just shoot the works and find out what percentage of judges are believers?
I just wanted to add that there is absolutely no way to win such a debate. The statement that God created the earth and all the rest in 6 days 6000 years ago and created the fossil record at the same time to test our faith is irrefutable. The claim that He created it all 1 second ago with all our “memories” is likewise irrefutable. In fact, from the point of view of entropy, it is likelier than the state of near-entropy implicit in the big bang.
It’s better to call those statements untestable rather than irrefutable. The latter implies there’s something that needs to be refuted. In this debate, the burden of proof appears to lie with the claimant. The literalist will need to prove, according to the rules, that science supports his side of it. If he can’t, he loses. I do wonder how he will be able to show this with an untestable statement.
There is NO payoff. The winner has to pay all costs associated with this event, which would probably be more than the $10,000 prize.
Well, who exactly would have to be paid? How much does it cost to have a judge or whatever?
For minitrials usually a few hundred dollars from each party per day for the mediator, then because this isn’t official court business a hall will have to be rented. It is standard practice for the costs of the minitrial to be split between the two sides, but in this case rule #10 stipulates that the winner picks up the costs. A minitrial of this nature will certainly not be settled in a day, in my opinion.
They could really class this up if they have the judge sit at a folding card table and decides the winner by whoever can guess which of the three cards he just shuffled around is the red queen.
Oh, and the judge should be named Monte.