Vince McMahon should moderate

"Now they're setting up a 'debate' with their own rules, stacking the situation until it's as fake as pro wrestling."

Fake? That's just hurtful: please allow me to hold at least one irrational belief without mocking it.

As a pro wrestling fan (tho not a Vince McMahon fan,) let me object mildly by pointing out that it does contain displays of real athletic ability, similar to ballet (which is also "fixed"!)

So I'd say this get-together is MORE fake than pro wrestling.

My understanding is that Keith Morrison of MSNBC will be one of the critics.

I'm not sure what his credentials are in this field. It must be that he's the step-father of friends star Mathew Perry.

This event is only about 30 miles from my apartment, and I thought about going to observe the spectacle. Until, that is, I found out it costs 20 bucks to get in the same room as the panel, and five just to sit in another room and watch on closed-circuit TV. I was iffy about going anyway, but having to pay to hear people not address the issues? Nah, probably not gonna happen.

Smoochie smoochie PZ.....

I wouldn't have been able to attend the photo-op - sorry, I meant the Biola event - and in any case, I thought the chances of ID getting asked the "hard questions" and having them answered was nil. I had no inclination to be part of dignifying the Discovery Institute's little dog and pony show for the Biola faithful.

In my reply, I wrote that "ID proponents have been asked plenty of hard questions in the past - on the Internet, in public forums and in court - and it is unlikely that either they or the audience will hear anything new at this event."

I was trying to be polite.

Paul wrote:

"In this case, though, they are trying to salt the crowd with a few opponents. Most have wisely turned them down, since this is about feeding the creationist pretense rather than actually putting some pressure on the clown show."

Or maybe they're afraid of getting their asses kicked ;-)

I'd be happy to show up as one of the token critics of ID, if it were possible for it to be more like a wrestling match. The chance to piledrive William Dembski would be too good to pass up!

Pro wrasseling is fake?

I assume the seats at the Dover trial were free; they should really pay people to sit in. Perhaps they are finally running out of PR money.

Charlie, at least make us believe you read the links and commentaries before you make your usual contrafactual commentary. And since IDiots cant find their own asses the rest of us are safe anyway.

Hey, PZ this is sort of on topic- do you want to field this latest bit from Agape Press linking to a "degree program" - and check out the applicant questionaire...

Dealing with Creationists can be likened to the front end of a charging bull. It is very easy to get impaled on the "horns" of the dilemma.
If you try to refute the notion that god did it, you get impaled on the left horn, since there is no way to disprove that claim.
If you try to defend evolution by advocating neo-darwinism you get impaled on the right horn, since there is little empirical evidence for the claim that variation and selection is the mechanism of evolution.
If it were possible to disprove "god did it" or to prove "variation and selection did it", there would be no dilemma.
But every dilemma affords not two, but three classic refutations. In this case, you could choose to "go between the horns" and claim that creationism and evolution are not the only two choices. That's one that I'm rather inclined to.
There are however, some illogical, rhetorical ways of addressing the dilemma. One is to use obfuscation. In other words, "throw sand in the bull's eyes". This is a very effective and often used way of dealing with the dilemma. For example, it is a well known fact that the competence of the speaker is irrelevant to the argument being made. Evolutioists love to use this charge of incompetence to diminish the claims of their opponents without addressing the claims being made.
Socrates would have sent these folks running for the hills by simply declaring "Yes, I'm incompetent on this matter. Now show an old fool the error of his ways, otherwise how am I to improve?" Touche!
Another way of dealing with the dilemma can be called "lulling the bull to sleep". Point out that there are many unanswered questions in science and evolutionary theory has its fair share. The fact that science has not found an answer to all of these questions, that would not be proof that at some point in time answers can not be found. Can't we work together to find these answers? Unfortunately, it's probably too late for that gambit. Both sides are too sophisticated to fall for that!
But now, the evolutionists have discovered what is most likely the best defense.

They simply refuse to enter the arena!

"This is an escalation of the debating ploy, which was always intended to do one thing: put creationists on stage with real scientists, falsely amplifying the creationists' credibility. Now they're setting up a 'debate' with their own rules, stacking the situation until it's as fake as pro wrestling."

I guess you can't lose a debate if you refuse to participate. Brilliant strategy!

Sigh... another staged theatrical farce. A Christian club did something like this once with the nuts from Reasons to Believe. They were having a hard time getting scientists from the panel that were going to ask the Ross/Rana duo questions. In part because scientists know it will legitimize pseudoscientists, and also because the club had restricted its panelists to naturalists. I talked to the organizer personally, and he said that he only wanted naturalists (atheists), and they might settle on a theistic evolutionist if they had to. Nevertheless, the two professors creamed them.

In this event, because the ID critics will be restricted to the floor, and to only one question each, we can see that there won't be an opportunity to even put them "under fire." I wonder what's in it for Flew?

Charlie, as a Neil Young fan, you can't have COMPLETELY abandoned reality, however much the rest of the evidence appears to point in that direction.

Surely, therefore, you understand--on some deep "pre-programmed" level--the difference between this farcical PR event and an actual DEBATE.

You know, the kind with rules, a moderator, equal time, a structured fair format. Minor stuff like that.

Steviepinhead wrote:

"Surely, therefore, you understand--on some deep "pre-programmed" level--the difference between this farcical PR event and an actual DEBATE."

If I held the high ground, had the evidence and logic to back me up, I wouldn't miss ANY chance to present my case.

P Z Myers wrote:

...I will predict that on the 13th, the Discovery Institute will be proclaiming victory by press release, and saying that they sailed through a trial by fire unscathed.

What's the betting the press release is already written?

Charlie Wagner wrote:

I guess you can't lose a debate if you refuse to participate. Brilliant strategy!

See above

"If you try to defend evolution by advocating neo-darwinism you get impaled on the right horn, since there is little empirical evidence for the claim that variation and selection is the mechanism of evolution."

There was a post a little while ago about physicists debating the structure of wrongness. Hint: it's not called "neo-darwinism" by anyone actually working in the field, just as we never call ourselved "evolutionists". We prefer the term "biologist".

There are buckets of empirical evidence for the claim that variation and selection is A mechanism of evolution. The other big mechanisms are called migration, mutation and drift.

It's not worth entering such a debate because it's impossible to win. Any competent, reasonable person, given a chance to review those buckets, could present a very strong series of arguments outlining the evidence behind evolutionary theory. That doesn't matter, because the audience will only listen to the ID lunatic, and can't be swayed by such pedestrian methods as "logic", "reason" and "evidence" when the IDiots will trot out cute homilies and endless lies. Remember, it's not a hypothesis if, by definition, it cannot be falsified. Show me ONE ID or creationist claim that can be EMPIRICALLY TESTED, please.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5398604
Be worried, very worried.

The blurb is relatively tame:

Journalist Michelle Goldberg, a senior writer for the online magazine Salon, and covers the Christian Right. In her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, she writes that Christian nationalists believe the Bible is literally true -- and they want to see the nation governed by that truth.

What is scary is the extent to which these people are organized.

More here:
http://www.kingdomcoming.com/

If you try to defend evolution by advocating neo-darwinism you get impaled on the right horn, since there is little empirical evidence for the claim that variation and selection is the mechanism of evolution.

Actually, there is. You just stick your fingers in your ears and sing at the top of your lungs when anyone shows you, or else you say it "doesn't count" for some absurd reason.

I see Charlie still avoids to read and comprehend why two for show 'opponents' refused to participate the second time around, yet still pile on more contrafactual arguments.

Yes, Charlie, we know you don't miss ANY chance to present your case. Even though it has been thoroughly refuted. But it wont hurt you to try to understand what we rest of us are discussing right now.

TheBrummell wrote:

"There are buckets of empirical evidence for the claim that variation and selection is A mechanism of evolution."

There are buckets of evidence that variation occcurs and that selection can change the frequency of alleles in a population.
What there is no empirical evidence for is that variation and selection can lead to the emergence of the highly organized structures, processes and systems that are found in living organisms.

Oh for the love of Shub-Niggurath. This again. Here -- let me save everyone some time and explain exactly how this is going to go:

Charlie: [Blather about lack of empirical evidence]
Forum Poster: [cites emperical evidence]
Charlie: [Sophistry, misdirection, random quote]
Forum Poster: [explain that Charlie is off topic, gives more empirical evidence]
Charlie: [random citation, popcorn eyeglasses]
Forum Poster: [insults Charlie]
Charlie: [something smug]
PZ: [finds new way to tell Charlie that he's being obnoxious]
Charlie: [Begs for a ban]
Time: [commits thread to the depths]

I'm pretty sure that covers it. Further argument will be anticlimactic.

It's easy to show that god isn't responsible for something when the definition of 'god' being used is logically invalid.

Logically valid definitions are at least potentially meaningful, and for sufficiently powerful such entities, falsification will always be beyond our capabilities, although not the theoretical bounds of science.

So what? There are always an infinite number of hypotheses that are compatible with a given body of evidence. That's what Occam's Razor was formalized for.

Socrates would have sent these folks running for the hills by simply declaring "Yes, I'm incompetent on this matter. Now show an old fool the error of his ways, otherwise how am I to improve?" Touche!

Having actually gone through the business of reading the Socratic dialogues, I doubt very much that he is an appropriate metaphor for this 'debate'. Socrates always let people speak as much as they wished. He usually gave his opponents enough rope to hang themselves with (however, in some dialogues he lost the debate, like Protagoras).

If Socrates had run a debate like this, he would have told his friend Crito, "Hey, Crito, old buddy. I know you're very intent on my saving myself from the death sentence imposed on me. Look, why don't we hash it out here in my cell? I'll invite the jailer, a few of the jury members, and a couple of people who don't know much about the case like Kephalos the olive-vendor for balance. I'm going for a type of panel press conference feel rather than a debate, strictly speaking. You know, the kind of thing to stretch Plato's abilities--he's a good kid, getting stuck in a rut with all those dialogues."

"Um, Socrates, if you're filling up the panel with your jailers and people who won't be able to argue strongly one way or the other, then where do I fit in?"

"Oh, well, we'll take questions."

"Questions?"

"Yeah. I think giving you an opportunity to ask a question should allow you ample opportunity to put your case."

"A question? Am I to infer from the singular that I'm allowed to ask only one?"

"Yeah, that's how it is. After all, I wouldn't want to let you monopolize the question and answer period."

"Socrates, this is bullshit."

"Oh, come on now! If you really feel this strongly about saving my life, you should welcome any opportunity to make your case!"

[exit Crito shaking his head in dismay and fade out on Socrates looking smug]

Kansas Anarchist's powers of analogy leave me humbled.

It's really great that these clowns have their little show. But while they are doing that I'm going to be in my lab working on my elaterid systematics, adding one more tiny piece to the mountain of evidence against them.

From the website: "Contact the Christian Apologetics Department at 888.332.4652 to order tickets or for more information on this exciting event!"

Which says it all.

Well, although "Apologetics" may sound like truth-in-advertising, it's an archaic term for a reasoned argument. Theologians love to use archaic terms; it helps maintain the illusion that there is something timeless about what they talk about. But it's basically just a form of jargon.

ANy chance we can get hold of a video of the event? If useful volunteers exist, you could cut up the event with answers to the creationists questions. Something like:
{Creationist starts to speak, and makes statement]
Cut to scientists, who speak for 30 minutes explaining with charts and photots and stuff why the creationist is wrong.
Cut back to creationist.

And so on. I appreciate it would last for 125 hours or so, but maybe it could be copied and distributed for free outside future events?

Hey Charlie old chap;

It's considered polite to acknowledge the original author when you parody them. The original (and more interesting) version of the dilemma metaphor was Robert Pirsig's

I live in a better place. Here's how it goes for me:

Charlie: Dumb comment removed [with Gumbies!]
Forum Poster: [cites emperical evidence]
Charlie: Dumb comment removed [with Gumbies!]
Forum Poster: [explains that Charlie is off topic, gives more empirical evidence]
Charlie: Dumb comment removed [with Gumbies!]
Forum Poster: [insults Charlie]
Charlie: Dumb comment removed [with Gumbies!]
PZ: [finds new way to tell Charlie that he's being obnoxious]
Charlie: Dumb comment removed [with Gumbies!]
Caledonian: Dumb comment removed [with Gumbies!]

See, isn't that much better! Thanks, Firefox! Thanks, Greasemonkey! Thanks, Stan Dyck!

I'm a biomedical engineer, but the DI is really making me want to be a full-time biologist, just so that there's one more person officially and directly working against them.

I'll note that if you like Stan Dyck's killfile, and wish it covered more blogs, I've got a version that covers here, Panda's Thumb, most of livejournal, pandagon, haloscan comments, and more. (I keep adding new spots) It also lets you selectively show certain comments even of people who are blocked.

It's available here: killfile greasemonkey script.

Heh. I just looked up "evolution, intelligent design" on the spiffy new google trends. Looks like evolution wins by a landslide. Of course, it means absolutely nothing, even apart from their calculation parameters, since there ISN'T ANY LABEL ON THE Y AXIS (no pony for you, google!) but it is amusing.

Or maybe they're afraid of getting their asses kicked ;-)

What a great comment! It's like Charlie is a pro-wrestling promoter trying to lure in an audience by saying maybe Fuzzy Cupid will beat Bruno Sanmartino in a title bout!

Mike Kelly wrote:

"It's considered polite to acknowledge the original author when you parody them. The original (and more interesting) version of the dilemma metaphor was Robert Pirsig's"

Yes, Pirsig used it in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
http://bonigv.tripod.com/
but I doubt very much that his was the original version. The notion of "horns of a dilemma" in which you lose the argument either way goes back at least to Erasmus (1548)
and probably much further.

"All things are wearisome, more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time." Ecclesiastes 1:8-10

Mark wrote:

"It's like Charlie is a pro-wrestling promoter trying to lure in an audience by saying maybe Fuzzy Cupid will beat Bruno Sanmartino in a title bout!"

I liked Fuzzy Cupid, but with all due respect, he could never beat Bruno Sammartino ;-)

Interesting you should mention Fuzzy. Jon Stewart had a piece yesterday about KISS tribute bands made up of midgets (there are apparently two!)
Reminded me of Fuzzy, who as you probably know was also a midget.

Do high school seniors actually apply to places like this (Biola, Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell's and Oral Roberts' "universities" etc.) of their own free will?

I assume a lot of them (a) had that decision made for them by particularly bone-headed parents (and you have to be really boneheaded to send your kids to places that cost more than their local public universities while offering degrees that are just an embarrassment in the real world); and (b) are conscious of having been thereby screwed academically by their own parents.

Forget the public shouting matches over ID--how do you offer fundy-raised kids a path out?

Forget the public shouting matches over ID--how do you offer fundy-raised kids a path out?

What worked for my husband was meeting a nineteen-year-old sex-crazed liberal atheist chick.

Eleven years later, it's like he'd never been to church in his life.

Remember the group around election time that offered to have sex with anyone who swore not to vote for Bush? Maybe that tactic should be tried in the vicinities of fundie universities... though finding volunteers might be even harder than finding people willing to sleep with Republicans.

I'm right with you Johnny Vector!
Thanks, Firefox! Thanks, Greasemonkey! Thanks, Stan Dyck!

I appreciate it would last for 125 hours or so...

Easily. And I'd think it would eventually get pretty boring, I'm afraid. I do truly enjoy a good speaker talking about evolutionary biology, and punctuating it with the distortions of the ID crowd would provide an interesting springboard for them, I'd think... for a while. It is fun watching the frauds being exposed, to a degree.

But I'd think from the very repetitive nature of most ID arguments, it would actually tire even me out. Same thing that was noticed during the Dover trial... call it 'flagellum fatigue'. I'm finding, now, that trying to track the ongoing efforts of the DI wankers does just get boring. They don't tend to come up with much that's new terribly quickly.

I was reflecting, reading the stories on the whole Dover decision--particularly the descriptions of that Mike Baksa character haranguing the biology teachers over lunch--that I could so picture that scene. Day after day, the guy comes back with the same arguments, the same specious bullshit, and the fact that he's been answered a hundred times (a) isn't having any impact upon his spiel, and (b) isn't deterring him from his oh-so-sacred mission. Zombies, the lot of them, really.

That said, I like your idea, anyway. It *would* make a point, I guess (albeit, a point that's been made before... again and again and again). Sure, you (almost) never convince the already zombified one making the argument, but at least you can hold it up to anyone on the cusp of thinking he might actually have a point, point to the distortions he's peddling, and count upon the merely sane to add that name to their mental killfile.

Which, incidentally, is probably all you can do, in the end. We're mortal, and our time is finite. The Baksas of the world are presumably terminally infected, anyway. You can't cure them. All you can do is innoculate those around them.

When writing about this tea with the creationists (they are drinking theirs, still, thank you very much), one should consider programming a macro on one's computer so that if one ever types "BIOLA University" it comes out, "the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA)" instead.

Accuracy, you know.

Now using greasemonkey to permanently replace all Charlie's comments with his above quote from Ecclesiastes 1:8-10...
Thx!

What worked for my husband was meeting a nineteen-year-old sex-crazed liberal atheist chick.

Well, sure, but we all know there aren't *nearly* enough of those anyway. :)

They don't tend to come up with much that's new terribly quickly.

That's because they're going for the "repeat a lie a million times" Goebbels thing.

Remember the group around election time that offered to have sex with anyone who swore not to vote for Bush?

*blink* NO.

Will they be back for the midterms?

Brock Tice: What do you work on as a biomedical engineer? You could be very useful in explaining how what you design is very different in some ways to what is found in nature, and moreover, why it is needed. (Either of these illustrates the folly of creationism, I should think.)

Molly, NYC: I suspect that answering that question would revolutionize philosophy of mind and action, since it would tell us reliably when brainwashing and propaganda impede choice.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie;

Please, you and Mr. Pirsig are not both drawing from Erasmus, you are plagerising "Zen..." almost word for word.