Kent Hovind

Case in point was Clifford Stoll's description of his oral exams for his PhD Astronomy. The question was: "Why is the sky blue?" It took him two or more hours to answer the question fully.It took him two or four hours, but it's been quite a while since I've read his book, The Cuckoo's Egg, which tells the story of how he had discovered and tracked down a German spy for the Soviets breaking into US government and university computers for information of the Strategic Defense Initiative, AKA "Star Wars". It was reenacted for an enjoyable 1990 episode of Nova, The KGB, the Computer, and Me, which I found on YouTube a few years ago. The book has apparently been reprinted, since I spotted it last week during Borders' liquidation sale. As creationists are well aware of. They are more than eager to engage in oral debate any time anywhere, more than willing to go far out of their way. But they absolutely refuse to engage in a written format. Yes, there have been a few exceptions with the results that you predict, but creationists know full well that a written format will remove their single advantage: being able to baffle us with their bullshit.

That was the situation in the beginning of the creationist "debates" in the 1970's. Those poor scientists went in thinking that the debate would be about what science is and says and shows us. Instead, they got hit by an avalanche of creationist bullshit the likes of which they had never seen before and could have never imagined in their wildest nightmares. They were totally unable to deal with the mass of misrepresentations, misquotes, and outright lies that was being thrown at them.So, they started taking creationists seriously. They started reading the creationists' books and articles. They saw the scientific citations in those claims and they did what no creationist ever would do: they looked up those scientific sources cited by the creationists to see what those sources had actually said. It's SOP for scientists and academics, but completely foreign to the creationist mentality. That revealed how the creationists were misquoting and misrepresenting their sources. It also gave the scientists and professors familiarity with creationist claims and what was wrong about those claims.Then, through informal communications, those early victims of creationist "debators" got in touch with each other (were probably already in touch with each other through every-day work) and shared their experiences and what they had learned. This led to the state-wide "Committees of Correspondence" (CC), which by 1980 led to a nation-wide clearing-house for these CCs, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). From the history offered at that link:

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In 1980 Stanley L. Weinberg, a veteran high-school teacher in Iowa, began to organize statewide Committees of Correspondence "committed to the defense of education in evolutionary theory," modelled upon the committees of correspondence in pre-Revolutionary America. Their purpose was to keep interested parties informed about creationist endeavours and to share ideas for responses, allowing a political response at a local level. This grew into volunteer networks in most states, with the Creation/Evolution Newsletter interconnecting them, which was incorporated as the NCSE in 1983.

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I started getting involved in 1981 and first heard about the NCSE in 1984. I've seen a lot of the history unfold during that time. I've been discussing creation/evolution on-line since circa 1987. I know what I'm talking about and I know about creationist misconduct from very personal experience.One thing that has worked to our advantage is that the creationists' presentations are very well-polished. That means that they are running through a script; eg, Duane Gish, the universally acknowledged creationist "master debator" (you won't get it, but everyone else is fully free to play with the wording inside those quotation marks). This means that, while that well-oiled machine may serve the creationist well against uninitiated opponents, the more studious opponents will know exactly what the creationist will do, what false claims he will use, and what the appropriate responses are.A little sage advice; you should include this scroll in your scripture:

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Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):

31. Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles
    you will never be in peril.
    
32. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of
    winning or losing are equal.
    
33. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every
    battle to be in peril."
    

(Sun Tzu The Art of War, translation by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963)

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What the scientists and educators did was to alleviate themselves of their ignorance of their opponents, the result of which was the turning of the tide circa 1980. For example, in 1979 there was a new public school policy to include "creation science" in the local curriculum in Tampa, Florida. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Kenneth Miller (a biology PhD and professor and a self-professed creationist, yet an ardent opponent of "creation science") debated Institute for Creation Research (ICR) then-President (now deceased) Dr. Henry Morris (PhD Hydraulic Engineering) in Tampa. At the time, Henry Morris and Duane Gish, both of the ICR, were the two top creationist debators and had actually quite literally written the Book on "creation science". The ICR reported that Morris' performance in that debate had substantially strengthened the creationist position in Tampa (not the first time they've lied), but in reality as a result of the debate the school board indefinitely shelved their planned implementation of a creationist curriculum. Gish fared even worse in a subsequent debate with Miller, sealing the fate of that creationist curriculum.Get somebody in there who knows what he's doing and the creationist will have a very hard task before him. It's the newbie who doesn't know what kind of utter bullshit he's about to be hit with who remains easy prey for creationist deception. And like B.T. Barnum's suckers born every minute (model for all these new creationists reading the long-refuted false creationist claims, never knowing the rich history of their absolute refutation, yet another creationist lie being told them), there are scientists and educators out there who are unaware of the rich resources available to them. But as they also become educated, they also cease to be such easy prey for your deception. Au contraire! -- et vous n'tes pas mon frre.The greatest advantage a creationist has is the element of surprise. If they are able to deceive their opponent into thinking that the issues of the "debate" are scientific, then they are free to chew him up piece-meal. The very last thing that creationists would want is to allow their opponent time to analyze their claims and to research them. An oral debate with time constraints ensures that that will never happen. A written debate opens the doors for actual examination of the evidence, which is the very last thing that any aware creationist would want.Of course, there are creationists who, according to Sun Tzu, do not know themselves. But, to my mind and in my three decades of experience, any creationist who has been involved in discussion for any length of time cannot help but know how weak their position is. This is why I believe that honest creationists don't last long, because they very quickly reach a point where they have to become wilfully ignorant, IOW to start to actively deceive themselves.{ABE: Dawn, you have seen for yourself how well your bullshit plays in written form. It doesn't play at all, does it? Why do you remain so deeply in denial? Because you believe that your faith depends completely on the lies that you keep spewing? Why are you unable to see what's so fundamentally wrong with such a sick and perverted theology?} No, Dawn, you are the purveyor of bullshit. Drosiophilla was telling the truth.You really have no clue, do you? The perfect creationist patsy.BTW, may I please extend my congratulations? You have made incredibly enormous progress. Most of your writing is actually in complete sentences. I honestly would not have believed it possible, but you did it! It's a wonderful achievement!Now if you could only place actual content into those sentences.Edited by dwise1, : ABEEdited by dwise1, : spelling

Oh come the frak on! How's about the entirety of creationist claims? And you expect me to display the entirety of those false claims that extend for over four decades right here and now?How about the countless misrepresentations of what evolution is and what evolutionary theory says?How about the countless misquotations and misrepresentations of scientific sources?How about the countless misrepresentations of science?Why don't you give us a specific creationist claim that we can explain to you?

You fracking stupid idiot! That's your opposition to Coyote? You fracking stupid idiot! You have no idea what Coyote was saying!The truth of any "inspired claimed source" was never ever the question! The question -- if this does not blow you miniscule mind -- is that [i]even though all these "Chrisitian" groups claim the same "inspired claimed source", they allj come up with different conclusions.That is all that Coyote was saying, that all these groups, even though they all claim the same "inspired claimed source", all come up with very different conclusions.As usual, Dawn, you don't understand anything. You are listed as the most prolific poster in this topic ... and you have absolutely nothing to contribute.

Yes, I do understand the argument, unlike you.And how does this affect the "proposition of creationism as a logical principle"? Absoluta-fracking-lutly not in the slightest bit. Nothing in this topic ever had anything at all to do with that. Duh??Coyote was saying that there is no concensus whatsoever to judge the validity of creationist claims. Period. Punkt. Was anderes erwartest du, Knabe? Then you barge in and inject all kinds of extraneous garbage. What part of that do you not understand?All you ever post is garbage. You pay lip service to "logic", and yet you have repeatedly displayed absolute ignorance of logic. We directly challenged you and you ran away immediately, remember? If absolutely required to, I will research back through the posts here. Will you even begin to have the balls (questionable given your girly name) to stand up to that kind of challenge? You know that I will. And you know full well that you will not be able to stand up to that kind of exposition. Let's put it this way: I am half Scottish, nearly half Irish, and about a 16th German. The Scottish part will not put up with yer bullshit and the German part will methodically tear you apart. Oh? Do you actually have an argument? Care to enlighten us as to what it is?

Granted! Written format!Girly name or not, do you have the huevos?If you truly believe that having a written format has no effect, then what are you afraid of?

Oh frickin' frak! You forgot how to write sentences. A huge step backwards!

This forum does give us the tools for accomplishing my task. Even though it does take some work.Your days are numbered, you fucking liar! Which is to say, "typical creationist". Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

So just who is this "Dr Warren" idiot you are referring to?

The issue here is that we have soundly refuted your repeated empty incantations to "logic". When we actually asked you about logic, you fled.You fucking liar!PS
So just who the hell is this "Dr Warren" idiot you brought up?Edited by dwise1, : PS

I remember the posts quite well. Of course it will take me some time to hunt down those posts, but I will indeed hunt them down and I will post them here.You are indeed a fucking liar and you will indeed be exposed. Yet again.PS
Yet again, just who the fuck is this "Dr. Warren" idiot you metioned? You really want to hide that, don't you?Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

What does that have to do with creationist debates? Or with "creation science" for that matter?For one thing, creationists' aren't about what's actually in the Bible -- especially what's in a non-KJV such as the Tanakh which you mention -- , but rather about what they've been taught to believe about it. I've often wondered not just where some creationists' beliefs came from, but also and much more important whether they even know; asking them never seemed to work very well, triggering the same hostile reaction as I would get for trying to discuss their claims, a reaction that I've come to understand as being because they don't understand their own claims and were just mindlessly repeating what they had been told.For another, "creation science" does not make direct use of the Bible. It doesn't dare to, since it was created as a deception to circumvent the US court system in which you can't base a law solely on a religious purpose. To make direct use of the contents of the Bible would be to expose their own lies, even though the courts have already discovered on their own that "creation science" is religious, not scientific. Bringing the Bible into the debate would defeat their purpose; it would be self-defeating."Creation science" claims that the scientific evidence best supports creation, but rather than to show that to be the case, all they do is to attack any science that appears to support evolution and an old earth. And those attacks employ misrepresentations, misquoting, and outright fabrications. That is the BS that creationists' debate opponents have had to learn to deal with. The Bible has nothing to do with it.

Well, actually Thomas B. Warren. He appears to be an actual scholar and the debates he participated in appeared to be actual debates on theological and philosphical issues.So why did you mention him here? Are you trying to intimate that he was a "creation science" debator who used the same dishonest tactics that they do? From what I read, he was not such a base and immoral person. Are you trying to tell us that you learned all your own debate tactics from him? We have seen far too well what you have to offer, so I cannot help but wonder why you would slander this person so grossly.What exactly was your point and what does it have to do with the topic of debating "creation science." Remember, your own personal mis-definition of that common and well-established term does not apply.