So I, like many of you out there in the atheist blogosphere, watched the big debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Answers in Genesis' Ken Ham. Going into it, I was expecting not too much from Bill and pretty much the same old same old from Ken Ham. Mainly why I wasn't expecting much from Bill had not to do with his scientific understanding (which is quite considerable), but because of tactical practices that are part of the process of formal debate. The problem with the practice of debate with its rules put in force is that it is less about what is true and more about who argues well, and how you lay traps and keep someone from really being able to make the actual point. Simultaneously, if you can get someone into a trap, you never have to actually make a point of your own or provide any real reason for your position. This is why people like Duane Gish or William Lane Craig are generally successful in debates.
WLC likes to strawman and lie about his opponent's positions and lie about science. The lies about science are obscure enough that it would take some serious effort or existing knowledge of a subject in order to uncover them. The lies about the opponent's position are designed to rouse ire and goad the opponent into wasting time reprimanding WLC for his crime. Gish, on the other hand, takes the tactic of rapid-fire switching between subtopics, ensuring that people can only really respond to a fraction of the questions posed (note that because creationists set up this false dichotomy, they assume that if a given question isn't adequately answered by their adversary, they win by default). This latter is the primary tactic that Ken Ham used in his opening statement. From there on, it was a lot of the usual fallacies of "historical science vs. experimental science" and a lot of "you weren't there" and "the Bible is automatically true" bullcrap. The most cringeworthy example of this for me was during the Q&A where Bill was asked about the origin of matter, and in Ham's response to Bill's answer, he said "there's a book out there that actually tells us where matter came from." Ugh... right, the book says so, therefore it's the right answer. He did it again with the "where did consciousness come from" question as well. I really felt like wringing Ken Ham's neck right there.
WLC likes to strawman and lie about his opponent's positions and lie about science. The lies about science are obscure enough that it would take some serious effort or existing knowledge of a subject in order to uncover them. The lies about the opponent's position are designed to rouse ire and goad the opponent into wasting time reprimanding WLC for his crime. Gish, on the other hand, takes the tactic of rapid-fire switching between subtopics, ensuring that people can only really respond to a fraction of the questions posed (note that because creationists set up this false dichotomy, they assume that if a given question isn't adequately answered by their adversary, they win by default). This latter is the primary tactic that Ken Ham used in his opening statement. From there on, it was a lot of the usual fallacies of "historical science vs. experimental science" and a lot of "you weren't there" and "the Bible is automatically true" bullcrap. The most cringeworthy example of this for me was during the Q&A where Bill was asked about the origin of matter, and in Ham's response to Bill's answer, he said "there's a book out there that actually tells us where matter came from." Ugh... right, the book says so, therefore it's the right answer. He did it again with the "where did consciousness come from" question as well. I really felt like wringing Ken Ham's neck right there.
