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Member (Idle past 2518 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Do we talk up or down to fundies? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3623 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Taz: Take the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument from the creo side, for example. All they have to say is the 2nd law states that chaos will only increase while order will only decrease, disproving evolution, which states that simpler organisms "evolve" into more complex organism over time. Any child can hear that statement, understand it, and agree with it wholeheartedly. I honestly can't refute that statement without giving a whole lecture on the laws of thermodynamics[...] But in a public debate, one is only given like 2 minutes to refute that statement. How the flying fuck can one make it clear to the audience that that statement is an outright strawman, not to mention a lie? Stop trying to 'expose' your opponent. Just take anything from that side of the stage as raw material. Be a teacher. Two everyday examples. 1. Notebook Computer Plug it into the wall and you have a constant power supply. The effect of entropy is indefinitely forestalled. 2. Evolution of Child to Adult This illustration may be stated very quickly. But if you have time, I recommend a bit of dialogue even if it burns most of your turn. People will remember the point and the interaction helps you develop some rapport with the audience. ____ Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair. Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity. Edited by Archer Opterix, : ongoing typo repair. Edited by Archer Opterix, : html. Archer All species are transitional.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3623 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Jar: Yes. we certainly are at a disadvantage. I disagree. Reality always beats Unreality. Science versus Pseudoscience is like the New England Patriots versus the Bucksnort Beer Hall Flag Football Club. New England has everything they need heading into the game. Bucksnort has gambits. You just have to go into it as a teacher. This is Day 1 of class for your audience. A good teacher doesn't try to explain every detail of every thing in the introductory lesson. You try to engage the students, introduce the main ideas, and give them some sense of what more lies ahead to be learned, and refer them to resources for learning more. My advice would be to have, going in, 3-5 main ideas about the science you want the audience to know. Have some interesting illustrations, stories, analogies, and demonstrations in mind. Anything your opponent says can be used as a springboard to present the lesson. Listen for something in all the chatter that serves the purpose particularly well, then use it. This is the most many people in this audience will ever hear about evolutionary science from a qualified speaker. Tell them what they need to know. We live in an Internet age. Young people in the audience, if you engage them and spark their curiosity, will look up web resources after your talk. Their parents and preachers can't stop them from doing this. You may walk away thinking you've made no headway at all. But you never know what kind of inquiries you start. Anything can happen. Good teachers never know where their influence stops. _____ Archer All species are transitional.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3623 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Quetzal: Ignorance and superstition will almost always trump science and reason. It's ever so much easier to swallow. Winning a debate is one thing. Winning a straw poll is another. I wasn't talking about the latter. The debate is in the bag. You hold all the trumps. But a partisan audience is a partisan audience. Whether the debate is Science versus Pseudoscience or Republicans versus Democrats or Coke versus Pepsi or PC versus Mac--if you're talking to a roomful of people who have already decided they're for one side of the thing, you won't win the straw poll. There aren't enough undecided voters in the room to manage it. If you sway them all you still come in under 50%. The decided voters won't budge. Not in one day, anyway. Talk to the audience anyway, for all the reasons I said. Accept that you're talking to a partisan crowd with all the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining--then go in and do what you can. You have reality on your side. It's still the best opportunity they will have to hear an unfiltered presentation about science and how it works. Reality is bigger than one audience. Talk to those undecideds in the room who are afraid to say out loud that they are undecided. They are always there. They aren't saying much, but they are listening. _____ Edited by Archer Opterix, : html. Archer All species are transitional.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3623 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Ye Olde Double Post.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : Ye Olde Double Post. Archer All species are transitional.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3623 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
Percy: Most evil people think they're one of the good guys. How do you know you're not one of the people Jesus was talking about? Rob: Jesus told us how... I already know I am an evil person. [...] So that is how I know. You know you're not one of the evil guys because you know you are one of the evil guys. Okay. So much for morality as an absolute... Archer All species are transitional.
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Archer Opteryx Member (Idle past 3623 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
RAZD: What Cho did was a result of impulses. The processing of those impulses may have been faulty (chemical or neurological imbalance due to environment, genetics or some combination), but that doesn't make it unnatural. It was certainly abnormal, as your adjective 'faulty' recognizes. The word unnatural is a popular (if not very accurate) synonym for the pretty much the same idea. 'Faulty' neurological processes are those that do not function as well as we would reasonably expect them to, given the norm of efficiency as it exists in nature. Being 'outside the norm of efficiency as it exists in nature' yields both terms: 'abnormal'(outside the norm) and 'unnatural' (as it exists in nature). A scientist is more likely to prefer 'abnormal' or one of its kindred terms --pathology or disorder--where a lay person might just refer to a phenomenon as unnatural. It's not the most helpful word, as 'nature' means many different things to many people. But this kind of imprecision characterises much popular terminology. The desire to be more precise is why professionals in any field develop jargon.
To think that such action is "unnatural" means that there is some non-natural cause ... ie some kind of demonic possession or something similar. This is a logical sequence of thought, but in standard usage 'unnatural' is not really a synonym for 'supernatural' as you use it here. The popular understanding isn't so literal ('outside of nature'). It's a bit sloppier ('outside the norm as it exists in nature'). ______ Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity. Edited by Archer Opterix, : html. Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity Archer All species are transitional.
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