Nowhere Man wrote in talk.origins, on 2003-05-01 20:42:16 PST: [link]

I am tired of boring old evolutionists tactics and discussion practices. I am tired of evolutionists escaping defeat by pretending like they don't understand your point. I am tired of evolutionists resorting to personal attacks instead of showing evidence. I've had many discussions with evolutionists and they are all the same. They are right and I am wrong. Reasoning doesn't even break their concentration. They just keep calling you stupid cutting up your posts into little tiny pieces so that they don't have to respond to your overall theme of logic. I'm tired of it all and it's time to put an end to it. I have been thinking of a way to stop it and show up evolutionists for what they are. The solution is in the form of a challenge. I challenge an evolutionist to a fair discussion. Here are the rules...

1. I choose the topic of debate.

2. The discussion will be between me and one evolutionist.

3. Personal attacks are strictly prohibited.

4. Illogical statements are strictly prohibited.

5. References must be given for evidence that is not common-knowledge.

6. All major points must be responded to.

7. Responses must be paragraph by paragraph. No chopping up paragraphs.

8. There will be three judges who will oversee the discussion. They will be responsible for making sure that the discussion is fair.

9. If any rule is broken a discusser can ask for a "judgment call". The judges will then vote if the rule has really been broken. If it has then the violator will be forced to fix his mistake. If the violator refuses to fix his mistake he is disqualified.

10. The discussion will end when the loosing person has no choice but to admit defeat. This will be called "checkmate" because the person has no options left but to repeat himself. This is an important rule.

11. Dana Tweedy cannot be the debater.

There will be nowhere for the evolutionist to hide from the power of reason. I imagine some of you are trembling at the thought of a fair discussion. But maybe there's someone out there bold enough to take me on without the security of their shallow tactics. Choosing the judges is one problem I thought of. You're all going to want judges who only care about evolution winning and I'm going to want neutral fair judges. If one judge is an evolutionist and the other is not then what will the third one be? I am confident enough in my discussion skills that I will give you the third judge. Besides if the evolutionists team up together it will become very apparent to those reading and end will be put to it. So there you have it. You have two options. You can decline my challenge and show everyone you really do rely on shallow tactics to appear as though you win debates or you can accept the challenge, choose a debater and put together a judge panel of two evolutionists and one non-evolutionist. What do you say?

Hiero5ant wrote in talk.origins, on 2003-05-03 09:07:32 PST: [link]

I don't know why no one has proposed this yet (or if they have, kudos, I just haven't seen it in my newsreader), but why doesn't Nowhere man debate Lilith, who's been trying for weeks now to get a creationist to debate on precisely the topic that Nowhere Man now wants to argue? Just a thought.

John Harshman wrote in talk.origins, on 2003-05-03 09:42:31 PST: [link]

Excellent idea, and I would have proposed it too except for the fact that Lilith hasn't volunteered herself. Since much of the best evidence on the evolution side will come from the molecular data, it would be good if the debater were someone who is comfortable with that data. Morphology (including paleontology) are valuable but secondary sources of evidence, and it would be nice to have a debater who knew something about those too. Ideally, you want a primate systematist who works with both sequences and fossils, but I don't think anyone here fits that description.

Of course, Nowhere Man actually has the choice of opponents. If he doesn't play, there's no debate.

Lilith wrote in talk.origins, on 2003-05-03 15:52:34 PST: [link]

He's also said that he gets to "choose the topic" as I recall. I have no idea what that means. If he chooses geochemistry, does that mean I can't use molecular data?

I volunteer to debate him, but Steve J is also a good choice, as is Larry or John or, heck, a lot of people here.