Oh, I can give a general answer about how the debates went. We did three debates the first week in a sort of high school format, with intro speeches, a question and answer section, then rebuttals. The second week, we did the last three debates in more of a talk show format. One side got to give a short, general presentation of their view point, then their was open discussion, with a moderator interrupting or asking questions as necessary. At some point, up to the moderator's discretion, the other side would give a short presentation, and then the discussion was re-opened.
The second way was definitely more fun, in my opinion.
The kids' opponents were three of the parents, myself and two other dads. One dad is really an antievolutionist, one is undecided, and I am a staunch believer in evolution, because I'm still irritated about being purposely deceived by those who think the Almighty needs people to defend him. The kids had six teams of two, each of which debated once. The other two dads and I had to debate twice, once each week.
The first week I avoided having to pretend at all by simply making the case that a lot of scientists don't believe in evolution. I made great use of John Baumgardner's credentials, and I tried to keep the kids away from the physical evidence. Unfortunately, I think I did a pretty good job, which is their fault. When they got on the geologic column, I swiftly and adeptly turned them to a different point they had made about Chinese history going back to 3500 BC. I told them the Septuagint gives older dates for the flood (it does), and so the flood could have happened just before 3500 BC, which would explain why Chinese history starts at that point. Then I kept them on that point and off the geologic column.
Some of our audience noticed me dodging the geologic column (and thus thought I did poorly), but most were captivated (even if also bored) by the credentials of all the creation scientists I listed. I even resorted to a little bit of quote mining (blush).
I remember that debate well. The antievolutionist dad did pretty well, in my opinion, because he's very smart, and he did his homework well on creationist sites. The audience thought he lost both his debates, anyway, but I would have thought he won both. I'm not sure why the discrepancy in viewpoints. It may have been my desire to see the kids do well, so I was looking for the best and missed the good in them.
My favorite one, though, was my two youngest and least confident students, who slaughtered the third dad. He told me later that he meant to get away from the flood, because he wasn't prepared much on it, but they sucked him into it, and he looked as unprepared as he was. They, on the other hand, were pretty well prepared, and made a great case from the progression that could be seen in the geologic column, including a wonderful point about just how the flood managed to sort ammonites--a shelled creature found from the Devonion through, uh...oh, oh, I forgot this one...to the Cretaceous, I think--by the complexity of the sutures between their gas chambers, since their size and shape stay basically the same throughout all those layers.
They also did a good job with the 15,000 layers of shale and sand in the Hammond beds in Texas and with some research they did on corals. I was real proud of them.
™ Version 4.2
