Who won this evolution/ID debate?

Stile writes:

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Isn't a "debate" supposed to be an academic confrontation between two parties in order to see which side is better? Or do I simply have a misunderstanding of the basic principle of "an academic debate?"

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But a public debate is anything but an academic confrontation. Academia is really a collection of knowledge that scientists all over the world have spent their whole lives painstakingly collecting data and interpreting those data piece by piece. In a debate setting where one person has 10 minutes to give a presentation and the other has 30 seconds to respond, is it really realistic to suppose we can teach a whole course of evolutionary biology in a 10 minute presentation?I remember when fox ran that program about the supposed moon hoax landing. There was a part where the news crew asked a photography expert why all the moon landing photos were shot so perfectly, and the expert said he didn't know. This is another aspect that is wrong about a public debate. Just because an expert can't answer the question right there and then in a 10 second response doesn't mean it's a mystery or that the expert is incompetent. I was no expert, but given enough time it occurred to me that NASA only published the photos that were decently taken. How would you respond to a news paper if the front page had a photo of Armstrong with his head cut off?I think creationists (cranks in general) have known about these weaknesses in public debates and therefore keep insisting on using it to trump experts.Personally, I think Shermer knew that he couldn't possibly give adequate evidence to support evolutionary biology in the time allotted. So, he did the next best thing, which was try to corner his opponent into supporting the ridiculous positions of intelligent design "theory". It didn't work out as he planned, unfortunately.To the creationists present. Evolutionary biology is a rather large field of body of knowledge. Nobody could adequately do it justice even given a whole year to do presentation after presentation. And it also depends on how educated the audiences are. If it's really that easy to present the evidence in a couple of hours for any field of study, everyone in the world would be an expert in something, which they are clearly not. Please don't kid yourselves.

Wounded King writes:

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There may have been a time when Academic debate could be run somewhat along those lines under the auspices of organisations like the Royal Society, but now there are so many academics in so many fields, especially in the sciences, that the most substantial arena for debate is in the published literature. One might argue that there is a degree of showmanship in producing a well crafted research paper but the ideal is that it is the research itself that is compelling.

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No, I think such academic debate in an arena is still possible nowadays. The only catch is we shouldn't have a time limit for presentations and responses. Again, we can't expect an expert to present his side of the story in 10 minutes and we can't expect his opponent to respond in 30 seconds. That's just not realistic with the body of knowledge we have today. And the audience also have to be qualified experts, not just Joe Smith from 31st street.