Do we talk up or down to fundies?

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.

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Unplug the computer and run it on the battery. You can see the law of entropy do its work in a matter of hours.

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The earth is like that notebook computer. As long as the sun burns, the earth has more than enough energy coming from outside it to fuel all its life processes.

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Let the sun go dark and the world would be running on its own power reserves. The effects of entropy on our planet would become evident very quickly.

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.

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Find a gregarious young adult in the room and ask that person a series of questions. Where do you go to school? To church? Can you say your name? Do you understand the words 'entropy'? 'trinity'? 'atonement'? 'thermodynamics'? How tall are you? What languages do you know? Do you go to the bathroom by yourself?

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Then ask how many of these things were true of the person at age three months. None of them, of course.

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Feign disbelief. 'I am shocked, shocked, to hear of such a thing!' you say. 'Do you seriously expect me to believe that once you were shorter than you are today, couldn't speak any languages at all, couldn't even go to the bathroom by yourself--and now, here you are?'

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Everyone enjoys a chuckle. Sure, says the person.

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Object. This cannot be so, you say. This person has just asserted that a complex form of life (adult) evolved over time from a simpler form of life (infant). This is impossible because--according to the logic the creo debater just used--it violates the second law of thermodynamics.

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The only realistic thing to believe is that once this person was a genius who stood 24 feet tall and spoke seventeen world languages. The individual we see today who is shorter and only speaks 1-4 languages is the product of entropy.

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If time permits, point to children in the audience. 'Are they growing as you did?' you ask. Yes, of course they are. 'Then why can't I see them growing?'

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Then drop the persona. Your objection, of course, is fallacious. There's nothing strange about babies growing up to become adults. There's no one day when it all happens, either. It's a process. But we know it happens. It's normal.

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Then draw the conclusion: yes, ultimately--in this universe--entropy gets everything. But as long as the sun offers light and heat to drive all earth's life processes, growth and development can take place. Even change from simple to complex life forms. This young adult you have been talking to is living proof.

____Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : ongoing typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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._____

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Ye Olde Double Post.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Ye Olde Double Post.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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...

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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. 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

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ArcherAll species are transitional.