Anti-evolutionists often feel outmatched on these debates by the amount of research and evidence on the "pro-evolution" side, but they don't seem to really grasp why. Here's an essay which says it better than I could, and it's 100% relevant to our current exchange (I've added the red fonting for emphasis):
The Mirage
Post of the Month: July 2003
by Louann Miller
Subject: Re: Suggestion to Judges regarding Nowhere Man Newsgroups: talk.origins Date: 29 July 2003 Message-ID: p50div8im6ou2mukhtgfimdu9kg1ej9sud@4ax.com
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 12:36:30 +0000 (UTC), Seamus Ma' Cleriec wrote:
>> This is not fair. Your tactict is to drown me in messages so I can't
>> respond. Then when there's no time for me to write a responce you try
>> to end the debate. Instead of wanting an honest and fair debate you
>> just abuse the spirit of the rules and try to call everything. If you
>> do then you can be ashured that you did not really win. You can only
>> win the debate by addressing the real arguements. Now your making me
>> respond to post after post filled with filler. It's not fair and I'm
>> doing my best to respond. I am a busy person and this is the best I
>> can do. Just remember if you call off the debate you did not really
>> win.
>
>"Drown you in messages" ??? What messages has Lilith posted vis-a-vis
>the debate since late *MAY* are you having trouble with? There has
>been much commentary from the peanut gallery, but considering that you
>really [I think he meant to add the word 'only' here] have to respond
>to Lilith there is no excuse for not responding, other than not being
>able to respond.
>
>If you really *can't* respond in whole, respond in part - show
>everyone you are making an effort or do the honorable thing and give
>it up.He's got a good idea there. Take, for example, Lilith's last message that was part of the formal debate thread. Divide it into ten parts, or five, or fifteen, whatever you're comfortable with. Then address one part at a time. While you're at it, you might indicate which parts of the message you believe to be filler.
(The risk there, of course, is that Lilith would very likely reply by explaining why those parts are not filler but an integral part of her argument. She might then re-explain what she said and how it relates to the argument as a whole. This is necessarily going to involve more words, which people will expect you to absorb and reply to in some way. Because that's what you do with the opponent's arguments when you're in a debate.)
I do have some sympathy for the mess you're in, NM. It's a self-inflicted mess, but I can appreciate that it's uncomfortable. I also understand that you were acting in good faith. Here's how it looks to me from the outside:
When you posted your challenge you had the idea that "evolutionism" and "creationism" were roughly parallel ideas about how the biological world works. Especially, that they were about equal in the size and detail of the body of information that they're based on.
That is the part I don't blame you for. Creationist leaders work very hard to give exactly this impression. Since they (creationist leaders) mostly quote each other's works rather than reading the "evolutionist" scientific literature, most of them probably believe this part themselves.
Problem is, when they said that they lied to you. They lied massively.
The totality of what might be called "the creationist literature" is very small and doesn't go into, by scientific standards, much detail at all. "Creation scientists" don't actually do the work of science. They don't spend, for example, six months repeating the Miller-Urey experiments five or six times to see if they really work or not and writing up the results in such great detail that anyone who reads their paper can duplicate the experiment themselves exactly. Instead they just write something for popular consumption saying "The Miller-Urey experiments were awful and bogus and nobody should believe a word of them."
In the short run, this saves them time. They've spent one sentence saying "don't believe Miller-Urey, because I say so" instead of 50 pages providing proof and support. But in the long run, it means someone like you who's at least trying to debate honestly is completely screwed.
Keeping with our same example: You might say "The Miller-Urey experiments are awful and bogus and nobody should believe them." Quoting your creationist sources in good faith. It's the information you've got for your side of the debate, so you use it.
The problem is, at that point Lilith is vastly better armed than you are. She has millions of volumes of published papers which are collectively called "the scientific literature." She can go back to the original Miller-Urey paper and see in detail what they did. She can also read dozens of other papers written since which redo the Miller-Urey experiments with some variation or talk about how they relate to a new experiment, again in huge amounts of detail.
So she naturally replies "What exactly is awful and bogus about the Miller-Urey experiment? Because it looks pretty good when you study it. You see, (fifteen paragraphs of details.)"
At that point, you're stuck. Because "awful, bogus, don't believe them" is all you were given by your creationist sources. You can't look up an equal mass of research to support the creationist view because they didn't do any research. They just asserted "awful, bogus, don't believe it -- take our word for this" and expected you to buy it. You did buy it, and it's you not them who's paying the price in embarrassment.
Worse, it's natural for you (in imitation of your creationist sources) not to just make one assertion like "Miller-Urey -- bogus" at a time but five or ten or more in a single post. It's easy and it doesn't take up much space. But Lilith can go look up details on every single one of those assertions just like she did on the first one. So you post a ten-sentence message, get a 150-paragraph reply, and feel like she's piling on. It's not filler and it's not a personal attack, it's just that treating each assertion honestly involves going into detail.
A metaphor I like to use: creationism is a mirage. From a distance, where you can't see details, a mirage of, say, a hill looks perfectly solid and real. But as you get closer, instead of being able to see more and more detail as you would with a real hill, it just melts away. Actual biology ("evolutionism") is a real hill in the same environment. From a distance, it may look no more solid than the mirage of creationism. But as you get closer, you can see individual rocks and shrubs and animal burrows and so forth -- detail, in short. If you ask someone "describe this hill as it looks from 10 feet away" you're going to get that detail in any honest answer. It's not Lilith's fault that your own hill melts away into a vague heat shimmer at the same distance.
Not your fault either, you didn't start creationism. But it would be more adult to admit "hey, my hill seems to have melted away like a mirage" instead of complaining that having a lot of facts on one side rather than the other makes it an unfair debate. This is what we were trying to warn you about, even if the tone of the warnings wasn't always kind, when you insisted on having this debate in the first place.
Louann Miller
