Debate Techniques and Strategies

This is a thread for discussing how debate here at EvC Forum should be approached. Members trying to work out differences about debate style can also use this thread, but the approach should be constructive rather than critical.

Ok, thanks to percy for opening this. While especially relevant in the light of the recent flood epic, this thread was inspired from the [forum=-2] forum. The original post is Message 9 to which replies were made by Son Goku, Nosy, myself and Chirop, with mine being the most caustic Message 12 Percy in Admin mood gave a pre-warning which I felt was valid but I made the following reply Your thoughts?

There are two major techniques in any debate because there are two basic possible weaknesses to any argument:1) The conclusion is incorrectly derived from the premises;2) The premises themselves are not factual.The first weakness is best attacked with rhetoric (which could be described as "reasoning about reasoning"), analogies, identification of fallacies, etc. The second weakness is attacked by the presentation of evidence, although that itself is open to the first weakness because we cannot present evidence over the internet; only references to evidence. The scientific peer-review community provides a legitimate basis to conclude that a given reference to evidence is actually itself evidence so long as the reference meets certain requirements for credibility.I myself find it easier to attack the first weakness than the second. Others may find the reverse true for themselves. I think there's a tendancy among some to consider the second attack to be superior or more desired than the first, but both of these are legitimate, required lines of attack against creationists. Their arguments are based both in advancing premises that are counterfactual and in disguising faulty reasoning from what few premises they have that are not outright falsehoods.