Quick, Friar… jazzhands!
I take issue with that. I would never let someone walk of my classroom dumber than when he walked in. Of course, this isn’t my classroom. But you’re not understanding that the students know beforehand that this is set up this way as an academic exercise, not a lesson in evolutionary biology, a subject I’m not qualified to teach anyway. Sure, I could teach the introductory level classes in chemistry and biology, but we have chemists and biologists on staff for a reason - so they can’t abscond with the mathematicians for trivial work. =P
You know, now that I’ve had time to think about, all I can say is “i c wut you did thar.” shudder
I hate to admit it, but your wit was too dry for me, and I walked into your trap. Dammit!
The best arguments are appeals to Incredulity. Irreducible complexity for example, or conflating the debate to cosmology and the origin of life rather than it’s mechanism for speciation. Really, what you ought to do is force your opponent to eviscerate your position. If she doesn’t then she will be exposed for a cheat, liar, and poor researcher. Another good one is to confuse the audience with the idea that “you can’t add DNA” or get into the old never ending goal post mover of micro vs macro evolution. That will make you seem reasonable while allowing you to continuously move the constraints around until the audience throws out the whole line of thought.
Unfortunately for me, she is actually starting from the default position, so the onus is on me to prove my argument to the exclusion of hers. She need only provide good evidence that negative position is wrong and thus not a competing theory. Alas, the disproving of evolution (even if possible) isn’t positive proof for ID or whatever they’re calling it now.
The moving the goalpost is a decent idea at least. She can’t really do that to me because since my theory is that god did it, it can incorporate any set of facts. Wait, I might be onto something there: all of the data which supports her position also supports mine because, after all, what can’t god do? Maybe she won’t really grasp the idea of parsimony so she won’t argue that to my benefit.
The new term is “teaching the controversy”.
No lie.
That’s part of why I advised against the debate, because it implies that there is a controversy rather than a manufactured one that then needs to be “taught”.
Good luck, though. You may be able to use this to educate children about critical thinking and scientific methodology. Who knows, maybe in a few generations we’ll even look at the folks who believe in this silly stuff the way we do phlogiston advocates.
Best of luck.
I think you should try to switch roles so you’re arguing the evolution position and she’s arguing the creation position.
Sure, student debaters argue arbitrary positions all the time. But their primary goal is to win the debate, not see a particular position prevail. You and your colleague, on the other hand, are each heavily invested in a particular side.
Imagine you do a really good job arguing for creationism. Afterwards the audience decides you made the better case. Hooray, the cause of creationsim has been advanced! Will you feel as though you’ve won?
You’ve set up a situation where it’s in your best interests to argue poorly. And the same is true for your colleague. Basically you’ve created a real-life version of The Prisoner’s Dilemma. The best joint outcome would be for both of you to argue well. But if either of you “defects” and argues poorly, the defector wins and the honest debater loses. The result will be that both of you have a strong incentive to argue poorly, even if for no other reason that to protect yourself from defection by the opposing side.
I think you will regret the excercise, but in any case I’d look at presenting positive evidence FOR creationism rather than attacking evolution. Pick a specific age of the earth and then explain the fossil record, how the Grand Canyon was formed and the evidence for it being the age you picked, explain when and why animals became extinct, how life was distributed across the planet in a particular manner.
Most creationsist just pick holes and look for what they see as inconsistencies in evolution. Start out by saying something like "Creationism, like all scientific theories, can make predictions and is falsifiable. Here are some of “our” predictions that have proved true.
I’d think the whole thing would come off better if Creationism was the affirmative position, Particularly if it was one specific brand. Advocating a young earth will immediately alienate anyone with even a modicum of scientific knowledge and openness, Show the evidence for the earth being old will confuse and turn off the YECers.
In other words, take stands on the following:
How old is the earth?
How old is the universe?
Were things created in the order Genesis says?
If so, was light from other stars created “in flight” so as to reach earth now?
Explain how all the animals fit on the arc.
Show the population graph (and re-population graph after Noah). It will clearly show that there can be as many people alive today as necessary, but sharp students will wonder who built the pyramids.
The more specofic you are, the more obvious it will be what BS creationism is.
What’s with all the calls of “don’t dignify creationism by participating in a debate about its merits”. Huh?
If there’s “no debate” on it, let it be debated so it can be exposed for the fraud it is. Let those who haven’t researched the two opposing views see how silly one looks compared to the other.
If “creationism” is so blindingly and obviously false as people are claiming, then you have nothing, nothing to be worried about when pitting it against evolution in a debate format.
Yeah, this is what I’m looking for. Of course, it’s hard to know which creation myth to argue for since there are so many religions. But she’s Christian, so I’ll pick one of those sects. Of course, I maintain that nothing can serve as a better refutation to the ID theory or whatever than listening to their explanations.
I will make an honest effort to present their positions as well as anyone ever has, except that I know more “science-y” terms so it’ll sound more authoritative (yet another logical fallacy to exemplify).
I’d rather have had mine be the affirmative position, but she won the coin toss.
How, um, clever. That’s like teaching a mathematics class by only talking about what mathematics can do, but doing no actual mathematics. I must remember this idea if I ever get to work hungover.
Well, it is an academic exercise; it isn’t an actual debate. The students will understand that they shouldn’t take it as a real debate. Were it a real debate, I would definitely not argue for the side I’m on now as I have a repulsion to bad reasoning.
They’ve all been expressed and elaborated on here, in this thread, what are your questions?
There is no debate on it. But because it works by trickery, fiction and appeals to emotion it can be persuasive. It is not a wise idea to give a platform to trickery under the guise of “debate”.
Except that requires a thorough grounding in the facts, a willingness to apply proper methodology, an awareness of logical and rhetorical fallacies, etc…
And, to add that all up, “Creationists” have a nasty habit of simply changing the subject, switching their argument, ignoring refutations and moving right along. It’s hard to actually engage on their argument much of the time because they present some glib-but-false bluster and then change the subject.
It’s whack a mole.
If?
Would you argue otherwise?
And no, although it’s blatant fiction, “Creationists” have a tendency to do well enough in a debate format to trick a non-zero percentage of their listeners. And real scientists debating charlatans like them only serves to legitimize their BS.
Well, largely because it has no merit. Religion has never advanced the cause of mankind, while science has a proven track record of actually making progress. Creationism is just yet another way to retain power over people. It surely isn’t a competing theory to anything in science. It has no hypotheses, predictions, observations, reasoning, integrity, or anything one finds in good science.
It will be debated in the real world, and is from what I gather. However, in this case, the moot debate, I am going to have to argue for its being a competing theory to evolution. And I don’t enjoy losing.
Oh, outside of this academic exercise, I have nothing to worry about. This minor movement is no threat to science. The only it’s a threat to is science education in lower schools. Alas, that is the only power they have is to get in the “heartland” and force it in the public schools, which has failed 100% of the time despite all of the attempts to come up with an idea that makes it sound like science. They always fail and always will because it isn’t science; it has nothing in common with science. Nothing at all.
Sorry guys… I don’t want to legitimise your positions by engaging you in a debate on it.
Classy.
Now, this is an excellent tactic I should look into.
Yield my opening statement until she’s presented the meat of her argument and then “I don’t want to legitimize her ‘religion’ by condescending to refute it with my scientifically robust theory”. Yes, this could work indeed!
Or maybe I’ll just say “Inconceivable!” a lot.
I would recommend picking up a book such as An Easy to Understand Guide for Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, by Phillip E. Johnson. Johnson was (or maybe still is…) a lawyer, and a firm proponent of Intelligent Design. He basically outlines the tactics and techniques used to “defeat Darwinism”, and if one really didn’t know anything about evolution, one could very easily be persuaded by his arguments.
Of course, if one is familiar with evolution, then one can see past the rhetoric and see the arguments for the bullshit they are, but still, the book could be useful for your purposes.
Thank you, thank you! I wasn’t super excited about having to read of Pandas and People, or Darwin’s Black Box as, well, I’ve seen excerpts of the scholarship and didn’t want to rape my education.
Having said that, I’ll go order that book post haste! (I can’t believe I’m excited about getting a book to help me defeat “darwinism”) Maybe I should propose a debate arguing the relative merits of “Newtonism” and “Einstienism”. Bleh
Thank you, again!
How about proposing an alternative debate? Resolved: Creationism is not Science.
or
Resolved: Creationism is science.
That’s the key issue, not Creationism vs Evolution.