I do not that I have converted anyone on this forum, but I had a rare experience on a Danish board. It was run by Danish YEC's, but was mostly frequented by people accepting of evolution and science, and eager to debate.
We argued furiously with a Biology student, who claimed to have been an "evolutionist", but that he then saw the light, and now subscribed to some kind of ID creationism.
What was different about him was that we seemed to get through to him. He once made the argument that since the appendix might have a function it could not be vestigial. When explained that vestigial structures are simply homologous structures which have lost their original function, but not necessarily all function, he didn't concede his point, but he never brought it up again.
This happened again and a again. He would link to Dembski's travesty of a paper on why humans do not share common descent with apes, and when i microbiologists trounced this paper, the issue of common descent was never brought up again.
His statemens became increasingly more aloof and he never returned to a dud argument.
Then one day he announced that he was shortly to graduate, and that his web presence would end.
I would like to think that he had become more critical during the years this went on, and that his disappearance from all discussions was in part because he had been persuaded.
Sadly I find that it is rare that the creationists I debate abandon an argument once they have lost the debate over it. They just wait around and bring it forth again.
We have a guy in the Danish debates who is notorious for this. He makes drive by statements, and when challenged he claims he was only asking to be educated, he then concedes, and a week later He'll make the same statement again. It'll go like this
Statement:"ID is the most reasonable explanation. After all it is impossible to imagine a intermediate between sexless replication and replication with males and females."
Reply:"Well hardly impossible. Some critters have cycles with sexless replication in one stage, and the differentiating out to cells with half the chromosome count, that replicates with each other, some plants can do both self fertilisation and cross, etc.. Since there exists intermediate forms now, this it can't be impossible to imagine. And besides lack of imagination is not an argument"
reply:"Well, I was only asking a question, thank you for informing me."
And next week he'll make the same argument, perhaps replacing sexed replication with intermediates between single celled life and multicellular, or the egg laying practices of wasps etc.
Looking back, I must have debated him for at least 8 years now, and he hasn't moved an inch.
Finally theres the ever present possibility that I might be just as stubborn and set in my faulty ways, but thankfully this seems to be outside the scope of this thread.
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