[John H K]

Well, it's usually a dumb idea for evolutionists to do these debates because the audience is always stacked full of creationidiots and the creationidiot participating in the debate is usually a demagogic tool like Gish.

[VadeRetro]

Well, it's usually a dumb idea for evolutionists to do these debates because the audience is always stacked full of creationidiots and the creationidiot participating in the debate is usually a demagogic tool like Gish.

It's well known how these things go. The creationist needs only to conduct his half of the time as a "drive-by shooting," spewing more attacks on evolution than can possibly be rebutted in an equal amount of time. (Saying anything definite about what creationism actually means would only highlight divisions in his own camp, anyway.) His attacks are all bogus, being illogical, untrue, or both. Nevertheless, each one of them takes time and effort to show the fraud. The cleanup takes longer than the spill. That's why the creationist can't really lose. Almost all of his spewing will necessarily go unrebutted.

The evolutionist needs to spend some time on the virtues of evolution and probably some time rebutting the drive-by shooting. (If he ignores the latter, he risks the charge of "ducking" the C arguments.) It's hard to come out well. Paradoxically, he has too much evidence and no time to present it.

Live debates are made to order for the snake-oil salesmen, a far less friendly venue than an Internet teeming with linkable sites full of real scientific data. It's hard to get better than a draw against a Gish or a Hovind with thirty minutes of a 1-hour debate. On the Net, if a creationist makes twenty bogus arguments, you can refute all twenty and still point out the scientific usefulness of evolution. Night-and-day different.

[Con X-Poser]

<< Well, it's usually a dumb idea for evolutionists to do these debates because the audience is always stacked full of creationidiots >>

Don't blame us because your side is too afraid to support their man publicly. When I arranged the Hovind-Paulson debate, we did it ON CAMPUS of the UW-0. We should've had throngs of college students. Professor Paulson, and others, had been advertising it *on campus* for weeks.

Actually there were lots of college students among the overflow crowd (over 600 came, several hundred latecomers were turned away). But the evolutionsts haven't been as successful at brainwashing their students as they might imagine. Many of them regurgitate what they've been force-fed in a public school and believe in a Creator anyway.

<< and the creationidiot participating in the debate is usually a demagogic tool like Gish. >>

Usually the ad hominem attacks and insults don't begin until the evolutionists have emptied their water pistols and are out of evidence. It seems that you are one of the rare evolutionists who recognize that you're out of evidence from the beginning!

[razorbak]

Well, it's usually a dumb idea for evolutionists to do these debates because the audience is always stacked full of creationidiots and the creationidiot participating in the debate is usually a demagogic tool like Gish.

Speaking of demagoguery...