Duane Gish vs Ian Plimer - Creation vs Evolution 1988

This debate ( video | 2:42m ) took place in Australia between the infamous Dr Guane Gish and pre-Climate Change Skeptic Ian Plimer. It was on the topic Creationism vs Evolution and was quite heated and filled with low-blows.

2.75 stars: Both sides engage in some pretty underhanded tactics here, making for an entertaining but unilluminating spectacle.

Heads up: the introduction is so freaking long that the link I provide above skips it. Also, I usually mention this at the end of the review, but the audio quality is pretty bad. The dated feel isn't helped by the fact that both speakers sound like they time-traveled from other time periods - Gish being an Antebellum gentleman and Plimer being a 30s/40s newsreel narrator.

Because Gish is what the Gish Gallop is named after I never bothered to listen to his debates because I would rather listen to more skilled Creationist debaters. Now I know that that's rather silly and so I finally decided to check him out. In Plimer seemed to handle himself well when he went up against George Monbiot and Tony Jones, in terms of rhetoric so I wonder how'd he do if he also had the facts on his side.

Well Gish brought up the usual stuff and didn't really support Creationism except by default. Plimer on the other hand came up and almost pointedly decided to attack Creationism itself. He listed several of the absurd implications to the story of Noah's Ark, accused Gish of lying in his own publications and cited specifics, cleared up some common Creationist misconceptions and ended with a pretty good anecdote about Creationism taught in public schools in the US.

The issue with Plimer's pointing out the weird parts of the Ark is that he does get some basic things about the ark story wrong, making it unsure whether or not he has attempted to go through the arguments. However, Gish's rebuttal seems to have just been an appeal to outrage at the underhanded tactics and he spent most of his time trying to clean up Creationism's image rather than pointing out the facts. The only specific correction he made is that God brought the animals to Noah, Noah didn't need to go all over the world to get them. Of course when Plimer comes up for his rebuttal, he rightly points out that that makes Creationism not scientific. The problem is that most people see the dogmatic prohibition of God in the science lab as unappealing or narrow-minded, which is a shame.

Again, a lot of heat was generated in this one. It was nice to see a Creationist having to deal with an underhanded opponent for once, though. Usually it's a befuddled scientist unaware of the weird Creationist arguments trying to talk about how awesome science is, instead.

Pigliucci v Hovind on Evolution and Creation BEST TOP TEN

This debate ( audio | 2h10m26s ) occurred in 2003 on the Infidel Guy Show. It was between Biologist/Philosopher Massimo Piggliucci and Dr. Kent Hovind. It was on a lot of topics.

DB: 1m40s

5 stars. BEST TOP TEN

This one is pretty great. A lot of different topics are covered including evolution, Creation, geologic time, science education, Hovind's salary.

The debate is pretty one-sided, Piggliucci almost never lets Hovind get away with anything and calls him out on a lot of things. Hovind certainly is a smart man but he refuses to correct himself and though he is polite and doesn't interrupt or talk over his opponents he is a total sleazeball. You can tell he ultimately wants to just keep people from leaving the insane views of YEC.

One particularly annoying part is Hovind's relentless stance that time is the god of evolution. Apparently saying that evolution occurs over a long period of time is the same as saying that anything can occur given enough time. This is the argument Hovind uses to argue that evolution is a religion, too. The worst thing is that I have heard others use this argument - more specifically: Rabbi Schmuley Boteach uttered it in his 2008 debate with Hitch. So a pastor and a rabbi are so ignorant of what is required to label something a religion that they'll label the concept of time as a religion, as a god even.

Oy.

Anyways, like I said, a lot is covered, Hovind has a response (not necessarily an answer one would take seriously) to everything that can be brought up on this topic so he certainly keeps at the debate all the way through. The calls are all pretty great too, again this is one of the best!

Technical: Decent AQ, no video cause it's an internet radio show.

Kent Hovind vs The Infidel Guy Show - Creation Science vs Evolution 2004 BEST TOP TEN

This ( audio | video | 2:05.37s ) is one of my favorite debates, ever. It was about all things evolution.

5 stars. BEST CHECK TOP TEN

I think in 2004, Kent Hovind took on all the IG callers for two hours! It was pretty epic. Three callers in particular stand out, one was named River and he has called into Hovind's other show as well which I will post later because he's the only one I think ever reallllly got under Kent's skin and it is hilarious.

Three best callers:

One guy calls in about ERV which Kent just does not know about at all, Kent responds by saying that we don't know anything about DNA and that it is like a child looking under the hood of a car (this will get a laugh in the church or the prison church, now) but the caller (Ondo?) simply responds "but this is what we do know..."

Another (River) calls in and calls Kent out on quote mining articles about carbon dating and gets really specific and detailed, this is the longest call of the debate, too.

And another great call is an Irish geneticist, who points out the fact that research using evolution is successful enough to provide money and fund research on evolution and that if Creation science was producing research that could do the same thing then creationists wouldn't have to complain about not getting tax dollars or the fact that evolution does get tax dollars. Kent gets pretty annoyed by this guy, too. The guy says he studies the genetics of salmon and Kent tries to belittle this by saying something like, "in your professional field of salmon..." Pretty weak Kent.

Almost all the calls are great. Check this one out!

Lynn, Scott, Ruse and Miller v Johnson, Behe, Buckley and Berlinski BEST TOP TEN

This ( audio | video ) is an epic debate on a show that I was too young to know about and wish was still on: Firing Line. It was about Intelligent Design and Evolution and took place in 1997. It featured NCSE’s Eugenie Scott, Brown U Prof (and the best debater I know of against ID and Creation) Kenneth Miller, Good-Humored Philosopher Michael Ruse and Pastor-Lawyer Barry Lynn versus Cal Prof and Lawyer Phillip Johnson, Irreducible Complexity Promoter and Prof Michael Behe, the late William F. Buckley and douchey Philosopher and Mathematician David Berlinski. I know I was nice to about all those guys but Berlinski but I hate that guy, sorry.

5 stars. BEST TOP TEN

See how epic this debate was? I took a whole paragraph just on explaining who was in the debate. The debate format was also a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, it emphasized cross-examination and short intros and conclusion speeches.

There are so many great things about this debate:

-Johnson is the biggest guy behind popularizing ID and I think is known for making the infamous “Wedge Document”. I don’t think he does these kinds of debates all that often, or I haven’t seen/heard them yet.*

-Barry Lynn is a great lawyer and definitely deflates the other side’s arguments about the atheistic implications associated with evolution by the fact that he’s a pastor albeit a super liberal one.

-Scott is a great promoter of science education, I suggest you all listen to her other debates on the issue. She’s pretty glib about things. She’s also an anthropologist so that makes her even more awesome.

-Ruse is a pretty interesting sounding guy, for a philosopher I was surprised how down-to-earth his portion of the debate was.

-Miller is my favorite opponent of ID/Creation. He’s been doing this since at least the 1980s against the likes of Henry Morris.

-Behe just isn’t good at debate, I think the best proponents for ID are Stephen Meyer and Steve Fuller.

-Berlinski is good at sounding smart but there isn’t really any substance to what he says a lot of the time. He also relies on a pretty lame tactic that he further keeps bringing up. Here’s a little spoiler: he focuses on the fossil record and Scott calls him out on using an article supporting his claim that the fossil record sucks that was written in the 1960s. He definitely does the classic creationist argument:

Creationist: There is a gap in the fossil record.

Scientist: Oh well, we just found that…after 1966…

Creationist: You just made it worse, now there are two gaps: what came before the thing you just found and what came after it? BAM.

Berlinski at one point even cites the fossil record of insects as being crappy. INSECTS. This is a guy who has a bunch of degrees, one in biology, and he brings up the fossil record of insects. When he brings it up Scott still addresses it and says that there is a well documented fossil record for asdfasdf (the wasp, which is like the template for a lot of insect species like ants and stuff)and that STILL wasn’t good enough for Berlinski and Lynn calls him out on it.

-Buckley…I’m not sure about the actual show Firingline but I think he is a regular on it and takes a side (I think usually the conservative side). He didn’t really bring too much to the debate, just sounded cool, which I can’t really fault him for if his role on the show is what I mentioned above. The other side he was against were all noted for arguing on this specific topic and thus were experts, he just chose the side that happened to have the crappy position.

This is the best evolution debate if not the best debate on this entire site.

Technical: Great AQ and there is a video but it is edited, the first 40 minutes(?) is cut out.