Another debate and something to keep an eye on

Here's a recent one between Stephen Meyer (author of Signature in the Cell) and intelligent design proponent and Peter Atkins, Oxford University chemist. I haven't listened to it myself but according to Jeffrey Shallit of Recursivity (a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, Ontario) its part of a repeated, depressing theme: slick ID arguments not quite adequately countered by polite and sometimes humble opponents who find it hard to explain very complicated concepts in a quick fire debate format. Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic.

In other news, Ben Stein's thoroughly flawed ID documentary Expelled arrives in the UK this month. Joy. Its been more than adequately ripped apart by internet-savvy scientific commentators and so I'll just recommend a simple (and yet critical) visit to Google University...

Or if you can bear it, actually watch it.

Debating intelligent design/creationism

These can be painful viewing as IDers and creationists can often be much slicker debaters than those from the evolution side. Which to be honest, nobody should mind, I'd rather trust good science than good PR. However I think its a useful exercise to be familiar with ID/creo arguments for several reasons: 1) challenges to a working theory are healthy and remind us not to resort to intellectual laziness or groupthink, 2) some of their objections are not easily answered by the average evolution accepting layperson or even those familiar with the science, and 3) nobody wants to look stupid at social events, being stumped for a comeback when the token 'skeptic' pops up. Some arguments are of course hideously obvious in their shortcomings, like the old "why are there still monkeys?" or "there are no transitional fossils". But its more difficult if somebody confidently asserts something like "there are not enough beneficial genetic mutations for natural selection to be a creative rather than simply whittling force". It isn't immediately very easy to refute this without some technical knowledge.

To this end, I thought it would be helpful to post a list of some classic evolution versus ID/creationism debates and some further resources for your perusal...


Barry Lynn, Eugenie Scott, Michael Ruse, and Kenneth Miller vs. William F. Buckley Jr., Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and David Berlinski, December 1997


PZ Myers vs. Geoffrey Simmonds, January 2008 

Peter Ward vs. Stephen Meyer, May 2008

Michael Shermer vs. Jonathan Wells, December 2008

Michael Shermer and Don Prothero vs. Stephen Meyer and Rick Sternberg, December 2009  

The ID/creationist arguments are generally horribly flawed, though some more so than others, but importantly, they make you think, and some of the evolution rebuttals are not quite satisfying, so I think overall they are worth watching if you can bear it.

An extremely useful follow up resource can then be found at talkorigins.org's Index to Creationist Claims which comprises hundreds of useful bits of information all in one convenient location (if you'll excuse their 1995 web design). Its also available as an Iphone app I think!

Happy debating!