This is an old article by Jim Lippard, whose atheist and pro-Darwinian credentials are impeccable, but who decries the anti-creationist tactics used by a couple of anti-Gish debaters. Regardless of what side you are on, it offers some important lessons about debating your points.
2 comments:
Good stuff. I would never get into a debate with a creationist, as doing it correctly would entail me taking about a month off to prepare. I would much rather engage in a written correspondence debate (like correspondence chess). Debates tend to end up putting the focus on irrelevant factors like charisma, the ability throw out zingers, and the time constraints don't allow for detailed deflation of a bad idea.
That said, despite my efforts to the contrary, this blog seems to uphold principles of virtuous discourse. Unfortunately, reading these blogs has taken too much of my time from research, so I'm going to have to bow out for a while. The main insight that I gained from the blog was that I should be less sure of the conservation of energy argument. I started to think about it from a biophysical perspective (e.g., enzyme function and other well-known energetic processes in nervous systems) and I realized it will take me a long time to do the ideas of Broad (etc.) justice. If I ever do take that time (it is not my area of expertise, which is systems/computational neuroscience (http://science.ethomson.net)) it would be something so involved that I would try to get it published somewhere.
At any rate, so long, and thanks for all the fish! Time to focus on my chess blog.
As you say, Vic, Jim Lippard's atheist and pro-Darwinist credentials are impeccable. But then, so are Lippard's credentials as a former Christian. His testimony is in the book, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists.
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