In a debate of ideas and concepts, you're not taking on the person presenting them.
If you have to resort to attacking the individual, surely this mean your position is weak, no?
Bill Nye to debate Creationist tonight at 7 - 2.4 on CNN
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If you have to resort to attacking the individual, surely this mean your position is weak, no?
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Bill Nye had facts, figures, statistics, and hard research on his side. Ken Ham did nothing more than hold up his Bible and claimed to know the answers. Even so, there were a lot of people who said Ken won the debate. People who want to be fooled, will be fooled, and they will require no evidence to do so. Hopefully, there was at least one person out there whose mind was changed by Bill's excellent efforts.
I'm not talking about resorting to name-calling to vent frustration and insecurity. I'm talking about confronting the individual about their motives and attempts to knowingly, actively deceive the susceptible public. Instead, the onslought of fiction - often times made up, right there, on the spot - becomes this avalanche that the scientist can't get out of and has to give legitimacy to, in giving a rational response. The individual is not even there to debate, they are there to put on a show and that is what's being protected.In a debate of ideas and concepts, you're not taking on the person presenting them.
If you have to resort to attacking the individual, surely this mean your position is weak, no?
I might retort with some of the remarks we saw on the NOVA documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html
NARRATOR: If they could show Pandas started out as a creationist book, that would suggest intelligent design is simply creationism repackaged and therefore inherently religious.
BARBARA FORREST: In the first 1987 draft, which is the pre-Edwards draft, the definition of creation reads this way "Creation means that various forms of life began abruptly, through the agency of an intelligent creator, with their distinctive features already intact: fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, et cetera." The same definition in this draft, after the Edwards decision, reads this way: "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact: fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, et cetera." Same definition, just one is worded in terms of creationism, the other one worded in terms of intelligent design.
NICK MATZKE: Everyone said intelligent design is creationism re-labeled. Never in our wildest dreams, though, did we think that this would actually be recorded in paper in a way that could be documented in a court case.
**********************************************************
ERIC ROTHSCHILD: What I did was to pile on the witness stand articles all having very sophisticated explanations for how the immune system evolved, and basically challenged him to respond, given the claims that he'd made.
ERIC ROTHSCHILD (Dramatization): Now, Dr. Behe, these articles rebut your assertion that scientific literature has no answers on the origin of the vertebrate immune system.
NICK MATZKE: And then he starts to say, "Well, have you read this book, Dr. Behe?" And he starts to pile these up on Behe's witness stand. Eventually, Behe was almost dwarfed by the stack of scientific literature on the evolutionary origin of the immune system.
ERIC ROTHSCHILD (Dramatization): All these hard-working scientists publish article after article over years and years, chapters and books, full books, addressing the question of how the vertebrate immune system evolved, but none of them are satisfactory to you?
And if Ham wants to get cute:
TAMMY KITZMILLER: One letter was pretty disturbing. I think this was the one with the passage that...the last sentence especially: "Madeline Murray was found murdered for taking prayer and Bible reading out of schools, so watch out for a bullet."
CHRISTY REHM: We have a neighbor, actually, who was appointed to the school board and was in support of intelligent design, and he was out campaigning and saying very negative things about our family, how we're atheists, and, "if you vote for those atheists, well, then, God is not going to be happy with you."
So what we are left with are supposed Christians guilty of advocating both violence and fraud.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html
NARRATOR: If they could show Pandas started out as a creationist book, that would suggest intelligent design is simply creationism repackaged and therefore inherently religious.
BARBARA FORREST: In the first 1987 draft, which is the pre-Edwards draft, the definition of creation reads this way "Creation means that various forms of life began abruptly, through the agency of an intelligent creator, with their distinctive features already intact: fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, et cetera." The same definition in this draft, after the Edwards decision, reads this way: "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact: fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, et cetera." Same definition, just one is worded in terms of creationism, the other one worded in terms of intelligent design.
NICK MATZKE: Everyone said intelligent design is creationism re-labeled. Never in our wildest dreams, though, did we think that this would actually be recorded in paper in a way that could be documented in a court case.
**********************************************************
ERIC ROTHSCHILD: What I did was to pile on the witness stand articles all having very sophisticated explanations for how the immune system evolved, and basically challenged him to respond, given the claims that he'd made.
ERIC ROTHSCHILD (Dramatization): Now, Dr. Behe, these articles rebut your assertion that scientific literature has no answers on the origin of the vertebrate immune system.
NICK MATZKE: And then he starts to say, "Well, have you read this book, Dr. Behe?" And he starts to pile these up on Behe's witness stand. Eventually, Behe was almost dwarfed by the stack of scientific literature on the evolutionary origin of the immune system.
ERIC ROTHSCHILD (Dramatization): All these hard-working scientists publish article after article over years and years, chapters and books, full books, addressing the question of how the vertebrate immune system evolved, but none of them are satisfactory to you?
And if Ham wants to get cute:
TAMMY KITZMILLER: One letter was pretty disturbing. I think this was the one with the passage that...the last sentence especially: "Madeline Murray was found murdered for taking prayer and Bible reading out of schools, so watch out for a bullet."
CHRISTY REHM: We have a neighbor, actually, who was appointed to the school board and was in support of intelligent design, and he was out campaigning and saying very negative things about our family, how we're atheists, and, "if you vote for those atheists, well, then, God is not going to be happy with you."
So what we are left with are supposed Christians guilty of advocating both violence and fraud.
Yes, but if you did do that, isn't it likely that your "opponent" would simply reverse those accusations right back at you?
People perceptions as to who won a debate is often based on how well they conducted themselves during the course of the debate.
Look at the way you phrased what you said, it wasn't Ken's position that won, it was Ken himself.
I will alway have a hard time taking Bill Nye seriously, because I remember him as a local Seattle comedian from years past.
To me he is just a performer looking for an audience, this is his most resent way of doing that..
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Bill Nye’s Take on the Nye-Ham Debate
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bill_nyes_take_on_the_nye-ham_debate
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bill_nyes_take_on_the_nye-ham_debate
Given that it's a portion of "the public" that is sending their children to private schools, what could possible be wrong with a proportional amount of public money being used to pay for those children's education?
If (hypothetically) 10% of children go to private, then 10% of the education money should go there too.