Evolution Versus Creationism, a twist

Great Debates
1

I kind of think this is more of a general question, but given the nature of the topics involved, I have a sneaking suspicion it would wind up here. Thus, I’ll start it here to save a moderator the trouble.

Now, I suppose a small amount of backstory here is relevant. A Christian with whom I work and I discuss creationism and evolution quite a bit. In the faculty break room last week one of the debate professors posed to us to have a debate mirroring one he’s having his students do. My first instinct is to beg off since I’m not of the opinion that oral debates are a good format for science; that’s why we have peer-reviewed journals.

But my coworker wanted to have one since her arguments have been unpersuasive on me, and mine on her. She wants to let a random audience decide which of us has the better of it (irrespective of the science which supports my position). I accepted with a small proviso, such that I might have unwittingly made a deal with the devil in the process. The affirmative position is that the theory of evolution is best model which explains the diversity of life we find. The negative position, obviously, is that creation (read Intelligent Design) is a competing theory to the affirmative and is scientifically valid and strong enough to replace evolution. Or something like that.

The catch is, though, that she will argue the affirmative and I will argue the negative. My reasoning is that there’s no way better for her to learn the reality of things than making her do the research herself and present arguments to do it justice. It might work, or not. The downside is that I now have to weed through all of the claptrap of the ID movement. I’m not really sure where to begin.

So, here I am. I would like to present three, maybe four of their best arguments, but my trouble is that I can’t separate out the bad ones from horrible ones since they’re all equally worthless in my view. Now I turn to the Teeming Millions to ask:

What are the best argument(s) supporting the alleged Intelligent Design “Theory”?

Please don’t shine me on too much as I’m going to have make an honest go of presenting their ideas in the best possible light.

2

Well, this is in GD so I’m going to do a bit of Witnessing: call this off. Call it off right now. All you’re going to do is give the student body the idea that “Creationism” is in any way, shape or form a defensible or debatable position. Added to that, your adversary is almost definitely going to make a total hash of scientific truth (do you really trust her to accurately and persuasively present facts which she already disagrees with/doesn’t grok?)

You, on the other hand, will have to work at making “Creationism” sound at all plausible. And that’s the problem, there does not exist one single, solitary good argument for it. Not one. The best you’ll be able to do is confuse your students and make them think that “Ah-hah, what are the chances of random processes creating DNA? It’s like a hurricane in a junkyard building Optimis Prime!” is a valid argument. There can no more be a rational, fruitful debate between the truth and “Creationism” than there can be between Germ Theory and Evil Pixie theory. Acting as if they can be debated only harms the truth and empowers fiction, much like faux ‘objective journalism’ will take two positions like vaccine truth and the anti-vax nutters and pair them up for debate, since if there are two positions the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. :smack:

Call this off.

Edit: if you’re actually going to go through with this, argue the affirmative side (not the fiction) and absolutely demolish her. But I’d still advise against it. Use the bully pulpit of your classroom to educate your students as to why “Creationism” (or if someone wants to call it by a different name, “Intelligent Design”) is a bizarre fraud.
And if you do debate it, point out that they’re one and the same, despite rebranding. Remember, cdesign proponentists.

3

Yes, I actually do trust that she will present it with honesty. That’s one of the reasons that I’m trying to find at least some credible argument so that I can do likewise.

Of course, I’ll make it clear before the debate, as will she and the other guy, that this isn’t the view held by the overwhelming majority of scientists (hi there, Project Steve). It’s also not for the campus-at-large. No one is invited in, no recording devices and no notes may be taken. After the debate, probably the next class day (which I think is two days from the day of our debate) the class will present a critique of each argument, and each of us who took part will also critique each, with a focus on why a “good” sounding argument might not be a good argument at all.

I didn’t include any of that because it wasn’t relevant to actually having the debate.

I can assure that due consideration will be given to make sure these students understand that this is a debate for its own sake and they should reserve judgment on the issue until such time as they take appropriate classes covering the material.

Also, I have to read of Pandas and People and Darwin’s Black Box; neither prospect is alluring to me.

4

I agree with FinnAgain. The only way you can make intelligent design seem at all reasonable is to lie, or lie by omission. Even if you rely on your opponent to debunk these lies by omission, she is unlikely to understand the subject well enough to do so adequately. If she was capable of doing so, she would not be a creationist.

5

Well, I’m certainly not going to lie. I’m going to present their arguments, but I’m going to present them in a light most favorable, provided someone contributes something meaningful other than “don’t do it”.

I realize the arguments on their side aren’t that great, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine that they’re perfectly wrong about everything. (ok, I’m not, but still)

The point of an oral debate is to persuade the audience. The creationists seem to have little problem doing so, though I imagine they get stacked audiences. However, I’m interested in what their best arguments are.

Who knows, maybe an IDer will happen by with the skinny on what current pet theory they’re working on is.

6

Define Creationism. Does it include God-directed (Theistic) Evolution?
Define Evolution. Does it allow for the existence of a Creator?

If you are actually going to be arguing that the evidences for Evolution negate any need for a Creator, forget it. You’ll lose the audience. If it is to show that Evolutionary Theory is more substantiated by the evidence than is Special Creationism (especially Young-Earthism), you have a chance.

If you call it off as some are recommending with the idea that Creationism doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a debate, that’s only going to give the Creationists the idea that you won’t debate because you know you’ll lose.

Old-Earth Creationist/Theistic Evolutionist here.

7

That’s the point, though. There is no pet “theory”, they don’t have stacked audiences. They work by exploiting ignorance, false analogy, dishonesty, etc… Some of their arguments sound reasonable to people who don’t know better.

Like the claims

-“Natural Selection is obviously false, it would require a force to go out and select things that are better than others, but use no energy at all, this is impossible.” Deliberately ignoring that Natural Selection is ‘active’ in exactly the same way a 6 foot tall door frame actively determines that no 7 foot tall individual can get through.

-“Natural Selection is totally random, how can randomness create something specific?”
Deliberately ignoring that mutation is (in general) random, but what allelic shifts are favored is absolutely not random, at all.

-“It would take X million/billion/trillions years a for X million/billion/trillion proteins/base pairs/atoms to combine, one after the other, using trial and error, to reach functional organisms.”
Deliberately ignoring that these combinations didn’t happen in sequence slowly over time, each step waiting its turn politely, but that there were trillions of interacts at any one given time and even then, some were favored in terms of stability and could be built upon.

Etc, etc, etc.
The reason “Creationist” arguments are at all compelling is because they exploit people’s ignorance in order to trick them. The same way 9/11 conspiracy theories have found a following, too.

And yeah, the fact that your colleague doesn’t understand the basic facts/methodology/logic well enough to understand why “Creationism” is bullshit tells me that she is simply mentally incapable of arguing for the truth. If she was, she’d believe the truth, after all. The best you can hope for is that, in doing her research, she realizes how wrong she’s been and calls off the debate. I don’t believe that’ll happen, as again, if she was interested in doing honest research and clearing up her ignorance, she’d already have abandoned “Creationism” in the first place.

8

Well, I’m not sure that you read my OP since you demonstrate the complete opposite in every respect of what I said.

I will have to argue for creation, or in the alternative at least against evolution, while my christian friend will argue for evolution.

Indeed, I’m not really sure what to argue to make Creationism look at all like it’s remotely theoretically possible. The theory, and I use the term loosely, is utter hogwash.

However, as a more rudimentary matter, evolution is silent on the issue of god, as is all science. Science concerns itself with the natural world, of which the supernatural world is manifestly not part. Anyway, that would be precisely the wrong for me to say if I’m going to make a go at arguing their side for them.

I imagine that this will be for the students a lesson in how logical fallacies actually show up in many reasonable sounding debates.

That said: I’m looking for a couple or so of the ID movement’s best arguments. They’re all equally crap to me, so I have no real way to determine which abysmally poor example of science I should use.

9

I think this creationist method should be one I adopt. Of course, I won’t have a snazzy accent in the background to correct my errant maths, but I’ll at least have the RP to make it sound nearly as cool.

The best part comes around 5:10 into the video with, “A fast walker can typically move about 3 mph . . . a typical walker moves about 600 mph!”

10

Finn, I don’t dispute your point. You and I are in full agreement about the reality of science and what pretends to be its check. But this is an academic exercise.

Maybe I can modify the forum a little bit such that it’ll be two debates with us each having to argue the affirmative positions so that any bad information can be immediately corrected. I’ll discuss it with them. But a debate, as anyone knows, isn’t predicated on truth per se; it’s about one’s ability to persuade. I’m not sure that I can present these arguments in a logical way, but I can at least present them in the best possible light given what they are. Perhaps we can make it an example of having to find out why an argument can be both persuasive and completely wrong.

But, I have to have some starting point, which at the moment, I don’t. I suppose I could use some of what I know of their arguments from what I see in the papers and the like, but I wouldn’t know which one to pick since they’re all crap. They all show an underlying immunity to mathematics and simple physics. And chemistry. And biology. And logic. Man, I’m fucked.

Other than “don’t do it” I need some helpful advice about where to at least start. I’m not positive that I’ll get any advice on here other than don’t do it. But surely someone has some insight into which subset of arguments they have out of all the ones they’ve raised which are the least bad.

11

A good lawyer can advocate on behalf of a guilty client.

The arguments have all been debunked, but you can still present them. This debate has been very thoroughly explored.

Work through the list:

http://creationwiki.org/Index_to_Creationist_Claims

They’re all equally crap
That is indeed the problem…

12

Yeah, I’ve been through the t.o. a lot. I’ve even used some of the material in my discrete mathematics class. Or, maybe I should say discreet so that no one knows.

To be frank, I wasn’t really aware of the whole controversy until last year sometime. I was under the impression that the debate had ended long before I was born. Clearly, for some people, it hasn’t. At any rate, thanks for the links.

13

I agree with FinnAgain - by participating in the debate, you are as good as saying that they are equal and opposite points of view - matters of opinion, in fact. It just plays into their hands and perpetuates the idea that they have some valid points.

Anyway, as you said you will go through with it anyway, turn it into a comedy by adhering precisely to their arguments, and resolving that faith is the only basis for their side.

14

Well, as I said, I will remain true to their tenets, but I can’t seem to nail them down. Maybe that’s the tenet: I should just make up whatever crazy shit comes to mind and argue that.

I don’t think that arguing this in a debate class for the purpose of debate alone implies that the two concepts are on equal footing. I suppose given my department, some student might take away that a “scientist” says x and y so evolution is a theory in crisis. But he’d have to totally ignore the caveat of the debate in the first instance, which is that I will make it emphatically clear that this is an academic exercise and science disapproves of everything I’m about to say because all the evidence collected in the last 150 years by the smartest people in the world refutes it. Then the debate starts.

I mentioned changing the format so that she and I revert to our normal positions and then have a debate about that. I’d fair considerably better at that I would imagine since a.) I know the material, b.) am comfortable with and c.) won’t have to just make shit up. But scientific points don’t fare well in oral debates because, well, the argumentation isn’t impassioned, or exciting. It’s quite simply boring for most people. Maybe jazzhands will help?

15

Pray about it and hope for divine revelation. As far as I can tell that is the best argument I’ve seen from the creationist camp, and the only one I really can’t argue against with much other than “I don’t believe you.” or “You must have been hallucinating.”

16

LoL. With friends like you, who needs enemas? I’m actually not allowed to pray right now as I still have an outstanding response from God on its way. Something about I exceeded my limits on the payment plan I’m on or something. Also, he doesn’t even send it back priority mail. It’s sent as parcel post, and I have to pay when it gets here. Sheesh.

But next month, you just wait!

17

Jazzhands always helps.

18

Sure, but not if he was arrested at the scene, chewing on the victim’s face, and carrying the tax invoice for the murder weapon. Eventually, you have to admit that there’s no plausible way to defend your position without just making things up.

Only if you’re willing to lie at great length to the audience, with the only possible “benefit” being that you make them stupider.

19

Woot, now the good ideas are flowing like wine! tears up a little

20

:smack::smack::smack:

Never mind!