If I was a Skeptic, I'd be very angry right now with Drs Paul Willis, Alex Ritchie and Ken Smith and their feeble mishandling of a debate with Answers In Genesis (now Creation Ministries International).
I used to think that Skeptics were basically men like me - men who loved reason, men who listened patiently and carefully to opposing views, even if ultimately disagreeing, and men who liked to focus on the issues instead of playing dodgeball. But if these three doctors were the best the Australian Skeptics could muster, my respect for the lot of them is substantially damaged.
The debate : "Did the universe and life evolve, or was it specially created in 6 days?" was held in three rounds and was published in full by the Sydney Morning Herald. To keep the articles relatively short for a newspaper audience, a limit of 1,500 words was placed per side per round. Read the debate for yourself : Round 1, Round 2, Round 3. UPDATE : These links have been pulled off the web! See details and alternate link at the end of this article...
But before you read it, let me warn you...
If you read just the Skeptics' arguments, you'd be convinced the Creationists were grossly misguided and didn't have a fact to stand on.
If you just read the Creationists' arguments, you'd be convinced the Creationists were raising some serious issues and you'd assume the Skeptics must be doing the same.
But when you read the two together, you see, as plain as the daylight sun, that the Skeptics are constantly ignoring the real issues and forever grossly misrepresenting their opponent's views.
If I was trying to be nice, and not hurt their feelings, I might chide them for intellectual dishonesty. At best, perhaps if they really were in a mad rush and had such terrible contempt for the Creationists that they just glanced at the Creationists' arguments instead of reading them properly, they might honestly have thought they did a good job.
But the evidence doesn't support such lenience. Indeed, when the Skeptics repeatedly and consistently misrepresent their opponent's arguments, one doubts their open-mindedness. And when they flatly ignore large portions of their opponent's arguments, pretending the arguments don't even exist, it becomes clear that these Skeptics aren't interested in addressing the issues - they're only interested in saving face. All they care about is making sure that a casual reader glancing inattentively through the debate (and let's face it - many readers will only give it that much attention) will be strongly impressed with the apparent strength of the Skeptics' position. It's all bluff and bravado. "If we sound confident and keep saying the Creationists don't have a leg to stand on, we'll minimise the damage that would be caused if people checked out the Creationists' claims for themselves." Wow! And these are the best the Australian Skeptics can muster.
I really don't want to dwell on Skeptic stupidity, but some concrete examples for those who won't bother reading the debate for themselves (in no particular order) :
i) The Skeptics claim that the Creationists don't offer any evidence for a young earth. In fact, the Creationists cite a range of evidence, including hard scientific evidence such as the presence of Carbon 14 inside coal and inside diamonds. Carbon 14 inside diamonds is just one of many things that by itself spells a death-knell to Evolution. The Skeptics ingenious response? Continue to insist that the Creationists haven't offered any evidence! Crikey! Are the Skeptics actually even reading their opponent's arguments, or just skimming for keywords so that inattentive readers won't notice the Skeptics constantly dodging the issues?
ii) The Creationists make a clear and valid point that it is not a debate of "Creationism versus Science", but rather "Creationism versus Materialism, with both appealing to science" (my paraphrase). Some Skeptic, who left his brain at grade school, responds with the preposterous claim that the Creationists are attempting to remove science from the debate. The Creationists never said such a thing, and their references to hard science reveal that just the opposite is the case. There is no way that you can jump to the conclusion the Skeptic did, based on anything in the debate thus far. The only reasonable interpretation? The Skeptics were deliberately and maliciously misrepresenting (in fact, ridiculing) their opponents in an attempt to avoid the real issues.
iii) The Creationists point to the woeful lack of "missing links" (that even Charles Darwin himself expected were Evolution true). "Not a problem!" exclaim the Skeptics, "look at horse and whale Evolution! The evidence is incontrovertible!" Of course, in what is beginning to appear to be a stark contrast to the Skeptics, I am open-minded, and am very eager to know of real "missing links" if they exist. And so of course I clicked through immediately to the link the Skeptics provided to a page on horse evolution. What struck me very quickly is that the majority of these supposed "missing links" were all, in fact, horses. Variations of horses! A horse getting bigger or smaller or stronger or leaner or whatever - what's the big deal? This is variation within existing genetic potential! It's a pity the site didn't have pictures. There was just a mountain of text with "just-so" statements of incontrovertible fact that this evolved into that evolved into the next thing and so on. Nice theory. But all this unequivocable certitude is sounding a lot more like a religious faith than anything else. And then of course when I read further into the third phase of the debate, the Creationists did a nice job of pointing out the paucity of the "whale evolution is incontrovertible" side of things that the Skeptics said in a just-so fashion earlier in the debate. [UPDATE : See for example The non-evolution of the horse]
iv) The Skeptics claimed a few times that "Creationism is not testable and is not falsifiable, and thus is not scientific" (paraphrase), despite the Creationists mounting a superb demonstration of the stupidity of that claim. In fact, the Skeptics repeated this "point" in their closing arguments in phase 3, without bothering to respond to the Creationists' valid criticism of the point! Just one more thing which leads me to believe the Skeptics either a) weren't even reading the Creationists' arguments; or much more likely b) were deliberately and maliciously intent on misrepresenting their opponents. (If you think I'm being too harsh, take half an hour and carefully read the three pages of debate for yourself!)
I could go on.
My issue is not that the Skeptics disagree with Creationism. My issue is not that they think they have evidence to support their beliefs. My issue is not that they are haughty and arrogant (although the ones in this debate most certainly are!). My issue isn't even that they derisively dismiss almost everything the Creationists have to say, without seeming to pause long enough to even understand what they're dismissing. All of the proceeding could be done as an honest mistake - albeit an ugly mistake.
Until today (when I read this debate) I had thought many times of going along to a Skeptics meeting and hearing what they have to say. Doing them the justice of treating them like rational men who may have something of value to contribute.
But illusions of fairness and impartial open-mindedness have been stripped away. The Australian Skeptics have proven themselves willing to say anything they want, even directly in the face of the evidence, grossly misrepresenting their opponents and ignoring serious claims, as if bravado was the only measure of truth.
Congratulations, Australian Skeptics. You have lost my respect.
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UPDATE Sun 10-Jun-2007 : Ladies and gentlemen, the game continues! The Sydney Morning Herald website has removed it's copy of the debate! One wonders if they did so under pressure from Skeptics, who are intent on ensuring only their side of the story is told. For example, Google for "did the universe and life evolve, or was it". Include the quote marks. Then click the "show all results" link. What do you notice? A HUGE number of matches on Skeptic websites. Go to the websites and what do you find? The Skeptics have published copies of their side of the debate, instead of publishing the debate in full. They're terrified of looking like morons if both sides of the debate were presented side-by-side.
I have been criticised for the strong language I have used to describe the actions of the Skeptics in regards to this debate. But an unbiased reading of both sides of the debate show the Skeptics to be consistently and deliberately misrepresenting almost everything they can. They're interested in tactics, not truth.
But enough pondering Skeptic censorship and their hatred of well-reasoned free speech that disagrees with their position. At least CMI, in contrast to the Skeptics, has been kind enough to present both sides of the debate, and they've made it available in PDF
