In response to my post from yesterday, several commenters questioned the utility of debating creationists. This is an interesting question, and one that I have faced since my college days of standing on the stoop debating creationists who decided to bang on my door to spread their faith.

My answer is this – it depends upon what your goals are.

My goals in debating creationists have always primarily been understanding the scientific and logical issues. I want to understant what the creationist’s arguments are. It turns out, their arguments are all terrible. It is therefore interesting (at least to me) to drill down to determine exactly what the malfunctions are in their arguments.

Creationist arguments are a veritable textbook of logical fallacies. They also abuse science in just about every possible way, and are always looking for new ways. The tactics of evolution-denial employed by creationists crop up in other forms of denial and pseudoscience.

Further, it is a good exercise to ask yourself questions such as – how solid is the evidence for a particular claim, what is the nature of scientific evidence, and when is a scientific theory established enough to be considered a fact. Also – are historical sciences legitimately scientific, which gets to the question of what constitutes science.

Also, I find debating creationists has deepened my knowledge of evolution. This is not necessary, and I have studies evolution in the classroom and on my own completely separately from the question of creationism. But, debating creationists has been an exercise in probing for any weaknesses in my understanding and holes in my knowledge about evolution.

It also forces you to be very precise and specific – for example, we cannot really talk about “evolutionary theory” as if it is one thing. Evolution contains several sub-claims that need to be dealt with individually – common descent, natural selection as a dominant mechanism of change, and the specific evolutionary history of life on earth, for example.

Therefore I admit that a primary motivation for me to engage with creationists is selfish – to improve my understanding of evolution, science vs pseudoscience, and logic.

Publicly debating creationists is a more complex question. If the goal there is to show to the public that creationists arguments are all vacuous, and evolution is a solid scientific theory, then public debates are very tricky and can easily backfire. I would stay away from them unless one is very confident, not only in their knowledge of evolution, but their knowledge of creationist arguments and their debating skills.

Even then, and open-ended debate is probably a losing proposition. They tend to energize the creationists and stir up trouble. Also, even a good debater will be vulnerable to the Gish-Gallop – throwing out numerous misconceptions each of which take much more time to correct than create.

Public spoken debates should therefore have a clear purpose. They should also be focused and moderated – not open-ended. This means that the debate can be focused on specific points to sufficient depth to deal with them, and will at least limit the ability of one side to avoid points against them by simply shifting to new points.

Much better than spoken debates are written debates. In a written venue arguments can be laid out in far greater detail. It is easier to keep the focus on specific points, and to provide references to back up factual claims. You can keep people to a higher standard of scholarship in writing, and often more time is available to do so.

The purpose of public written debates can be to help educate the public about the issues and the science. It is a very useful form of education. It also provides an accessible answer to creationist misinformation they are placing on the internet.

It is also a useful format for exposing all the logical fallacies and deceptive debating techniques used by creationists (or anyway trying to defend a false and intellectually bankrupt position). Take John Andrew (truthseeker), for example. Yesterday I challenged him to answer to a very specific claim and line of evidence. His response was classic. He failed to address my question. Instead he replied with a series of non sequiturs.

He asked about the origin of life and the universe, which has nothing to do with the evidence for common descent. He replied, essentially, “well, scientists don’t know everything.” He then followed up with a vague reference to authority – there are other people, he assures us, who are smarter than him who could answer my question. He does not name these mystery experts nor point to their alleged answers to my challenge.

He then finished off with Pascal’s wager – if he’s right, he warns us, then we risk eternal damnation. Of course most readers saw right through such scare tactics – what about the other hundred or so faiths in the world?  And even still – this is a discussion about scientific evidence, not about faith. We care about what is the best scientific conclusion, not covering our existential bases.

Our little exchange exposed the tactics of John quite clearly, and now there is a written record that anyone can see. I gave a specific and polite scientific challenge with detailed evidence and logic, and he responded by dodging the scientific debate with a string of non sequiturs. This is particularly satisfying as he has been crowing here and on his blog that “Darwinists” refuse to deal with his challenges and simply want to insult him. He is essentially guilty of doing exactly what he accuses others of.

But getting back to the original topic of this blog entry – the purpose of debating creationists, I will conclude with one final point. The purpose of such debates is not, and has never been, to convince the creationist one is debating. That is almost always (being generous with the almost) a pointless exercise.