Your EvC Debate Dream Team - Fantasy Debating

Is a four-person team a debate standard? I don't know much about the organized sport of debate.Anyway, cleaving to the established "four person team that you have to be on yourself" protocol I would take Modulous, Schraf, and Dan Carroll. And I'm just joking about "Team Crash", I think I'd call it "Old School All-stars". Pretty sure they'd give all you young turks the what-for.

Well... did you perhaps say something so stupid it was as if you had an IQ of 50?You have to understand - it's not ignorance we detest, it's aggressive ignorance. The person who comes in, maybe they're 12 or whatever, saying "my parents taught me that sperm contain little people inside them, like the plant in a seed, and that's where babies come from, is that true?" is someone who gets a lot of latitude from us because they're a questioning, interested individual saddled by an unfortunate failure of their education. They get the polite contradiction and instruction.The person who comes in saying "you stupid evos, science has already proved that sperm have little people inside them and that's where babies come from, and how could that possibly have evolved, pinheads?" gets the full-on Dr. A treatment because they're not here to learn, they're here to tussle. They're here to aggressively promulgate nonsense. What they're attempting to do is not learn about the facts, but to spew lies and run up post counts.Look up there at Buz - he's under the impression that he won something, because he was able to keep generating posts that ignored rebuttals to his "evidence" and simply dismissed requests for further elaboration - as though, somehow, a "lesser" man wouldn't have been able to keep typing words and hit "Submit reply" in the face of an "onslaught" that consisted of nothing more than "hrm, that's not very convincing - can you do better?"Wow, what a burden. Buz doesn't get that there's relatively little standing in the way of his producing messages without content and that don't meaningfully respond to the counterpoints raised, so his standard where "victory" is just "I got to keep posting messages that ignored rebuttals" is delusional. Trivially easy. The real standard of victory should be convincing your opponents. Of course, by that standard the evolutionists here don't have a lot of victories either. But, we do have some - at least some of the evolutionists here are former creationists who were convinced by the arguments we put forth. Some of them were even convinced by my arguments, if you can believe that. There are no reasonable creationists. There are only stupid, ignorant, or mendacious ones, because the only way to advocate positions that are objectively in error is out of stupidity, ignorance, or mendacity.

Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. Education is no guarantee of intelligence or knowledge. I know plenty of idiots who can do calculus much better than I. I mean, here's a guy famous for his skills at math:but nobody's going to mistake Rain Man for a genius.Look, where you advance objectively wrong positions - I don't follow your posts, so I don't know which objectively wrong positions you promote - I'm prepared to grant you the most charitable interpretation, which is that you are ignorant. (For instance, someone who was not ignorant would know that the word was spelled "motive.") But, you seem to be admitting here to advancing arguments that you know aren't true. Which would be "mendacity."So, I don't know, maybe you are actually pretty dumb? Usually smart people are better liars.

"Autistic"Look, I hate to keep correcting your spelling, but since you're talking about how smart and knowledgable you must be, it seems germane. No, you're proving my point. You're a creationist because of your ignorance. I'll accept your intelligence (nothing special but not deficient) and your lack of mendacity (I have no reason to believe you're not honest) but the sheer number of corrections you receive in response to your posts - usually three to four people telling you something you clearly were not aware of or misinformed about - indicates that you're substantially ignorant about the basic facts of evolutionary biology - like today, when you asserted that gene fixation is the primary driver of evolution. Well, obviously not. That's the debate we're all having, obviously. But the fact remains that there are only three reasons to defend a position that is objectively wrong - either because you lack the intelligence to perceive the wrongness, are ignorant of the wrongness, or are cognizant of the wrongness but are determined to defend it anyway for some ulterior motive.In other words - stupidity, ignorance, or mendacity.I mean, you must believe one of the three about me, right? From your perspective I'm defending at least two, possibly three notions that you must believe are objectively wrong:1) Evolution
2) Atheism
3) Slevesque is either stupid, ignorant, or mendacious.What are the only possible reasons that I could hold these views? You believe that YEC is objectively true; what could possibly explain my disagreement with you (from your perspective of believing yourself to be right) besides my stupidity, ignorance, or dishonesty? Pressed for time right now but I'll come back later with an example of someone who by their own admission does exactly that.

We've presented at length the criteria that would need to be met for evidence to be considered legitimate and probative, and none of it refers to the conclusion that the evidence would support.Legitimate physical evidence for creationism would be the same kind of evidence as for evolution, except that it would be consistent with creationism and not with evolution. In other words, if you ignored the difference in conclusions supported by the evidence, creationist evidence that was legitimate would be legitimate for the exact same reasons evolution evidence was.It's similar to how the rules of evidence in a courtroom are similar regardless of whether it's the defense's evidence or the prosecution's. It has to be of clear provenance. It has to be probative. It has to be accessible to examination by both sides. The part where you demand that there be special rules for your evidence that don't apply to anybody else's is the part where you're clearly engaged in the fallacy of begging the question, and a tacit admission that your evidence isn't evidence at all - just flim-flammery meant to convince no-one except those who already agree with you.

I don't really think that's true; the Bible being right about one thing wouldn't make it right about everything. (Indeed the Bible is right about many things; for instance, a city called "Jericho" really did exist right where the Bible says it did, as far as I know. That's a bit of a "Crashfrog claim", that is, one that I'm making from memory because I can't be arsed to look it up because it doesn't matter. Come on, you all knew I do that.)So the stakes really aren't that huge. Whether or not there are Egyptian chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea is a matter of physical evidence, and it wouldn't matter all that much if it were true - it wouldn't be evidence that Exodus was literally true in every regard. So why is it our problem that you're bad at interpreting and presenting evidence? I'm sure there are trial lawyers out there who have never won even a single case. Is that because the whole legal system is uniquely and unfairly stacked against them, or is that because they suck?Don't you think it's possible you're a lot worse at understanding and interpreting evidence than you think you are? Don't the copious errors of fact you're repeatedly being corrected on by dozens of different, more knowledgable people indicate that? Every single creationist is always allowed to get away with it, for instance: you. EvC is notorious for the unfair leeway that creationists have always been extended.

Whose fault is that? It's certainly not Percy's; Chuck was made an admin; you've been an admin. The universal trend among creationists at EvC is that they whine endlessly about how completely fair and equal burdens of evidence are such a disadvantage for them, how all the admins are stacked against them and there's zero creationist representation among the moderators, and then a creationist gets made a moderator - and that's the last we ever hear of them. Given ample opportunity to enact whatever reforms creationists feel would make it fairer around here for them, they invariably fold like card tables.What's the deal with that? Why is the creationist community here at EvC so completely non-supportive of creationists? As EvC's longest-standing creationist, Buz, don't you have the bulk of the responsibility to organize and direct your creationist cohorts? Why is it that all you ever seem to do is whine about your own plight? Here's Chuck, worried he can't make the intellectual bar - and for what it's worth, I see no reason to believe that he lacks the intellectual caliber to contribute constructively to the debate - and your response is "well, kid, you're on your own."Chuck, at least, has stepped up into a role of authority with the intent, perhaps, to rectify the imbalance you're so certain exists. I continue to be amazed at the essential correctness of the pattern Percy first identified - you creationists just don't stick together in the least. Aside from a few transparent "attaboys!" from Bolderdash in threads he hasn't even read, there's just no indication whatsoever that EvC's creationists, as a community, are looking out for each other, helping each other, educating each other, affirming each other. There's no indication that EvC's creationists are a community, even. Every thread is one creationist against half a dozen or more evolutionists. Why do you guys let that happen? Why do you let it happen, Buz? As EvC's most prominent and longest-running creationist, it's really your responsibility to advocate and organize your side. It's time for you to start directing those fingers you've been pointing back at yourself. If EvC's creationists are truly marginalized and oppressed, you have no one to blame but yourself.

That's sort of the problem with opposing an overwhelming, fact-based consensus, now isn't it? That there's an infinite number of ways to oppose that consensus, so consensus-opposers aren't usually able to agree on anything?The fact that evolutionists tend to converge on the same theory of evolution is an enormous mark in its favor, and it's the reason that the evolutionist side here has such solidarity. It's not that it's all a conspiracy to disenfranchise people like you. It's that when people genuinely seek out the truth about the history and diversity of life on Earth, they very naturally home in on the science of evolution.I don't envy the job you would have, trying to herd all those different creationist cats. But you seem to be agreeing with me that the disarray among creationists at EvC has nothing to do with anything we're doing to you.

Except that even people who somehow sidestep this indoctrination - for instance, the naturalists of Darwin's time who, primarily, trained in seminaries - home in on evolution.The evolutionists here at EvC are overwhelmingly not a group whose knowledge of biology comes from formal education, but by their own independent study. I myself was an evolutionist long before I was exposed to it in school; my early knowledge of the science of evolution came through creationists.Contrast that with you and your creationists - universally of the same religious movement, universally of the same politics, universally of the same opposition to mainstream science in other fields. (For instance, EvC forum has zero creationists who also accept the scientific consensus of global warming.) The only reason you guys don't have universally the same position on creationism is that, since there's no truth to it, you've all had to make it up as you went. There's no surprise when multiple liars find themselves unable to agree on the lie.