Actually, Doomy, treat2 has a valid point.

You could rephrase it in several ways, my favorite bing "Evidence, logic, and reason are beside the point. Ccreationism is a moral issue held by people who think morality is handed down by a law-giver who is simultaniously unkowable and clear in its intent."

How that for fried frontal lobes?

A more colorful summation: "No matter how clever your strategem, or how extensive your experience, playing chess against a macaque only results in broken peices, a wrecked board, and feces being thrown at you."

 I'm not really fond of the word "fail" in this context.  I mean, to extend the macaque analogy, if I say, "I'm going to play chess with a macaque," and then the macaque breaks pieces, flings poo, and overturns the board, has anyone actually played chess?

So a more accurate way to say it would be this:

Atheists cannot debate Creationists because Creationists do not debate.

Before you get upset with that statement, think about the monkey and the chessboard again.  Suppose you give the monkey (whom I'll call Ray Comfort, or simply Ray, henceforth) a high colonic and teach him to gently pick up pieces from the board and set them back down again.  Once Ray had learned to do this, you could begin playing a proper game of chess, perhaps by moving the queen's pawn forward two spaces -- a legal and very basic move.  If Ray then picked up his queen and set it down next to your pawn, would he be playing chess?  NO!  He'd be moving chess pieces around haphazardly while you tried in vain to engage him in a game of chess.

That's what happens when Creationists debate.  They say things like, "I'm going to prove that God exists without using the Bible.  Now, if everyone will please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 23..."

One other thing.  Occasionally a Creationist will abide by the rules of debate and engage in a serious debate with an evolutionist.  When that happens, the evolutionist, unless he is a complete incompetent, will always win -- if the measure of a win is presenting a better case and refuting the opposition.  If the debate is decided by a show of hands from the audience, it depends on whether the audience is made up of Creationist or evolutionist sympathizers.   Of course, such a show of hands is utterly meaningless if our goal is to learn whether or not evolution or creation is true.  It only tells us which of two humans an audience believes more.

Me: Pawn to e4.

Creationist: Uno! Haha, I got you. Take that back and draw some cards.

Creationist #2: Pshaw, your pawn has no chance against my lvl 46 wizard!

A few years ago while I lived in the US, and much against my own better judgement, I was asked to debate this subject with a self-avowed "intelligent designer" who was on a publicity visit to the town before an audience largely made up of his fans. It was a generally civilized affair - at least on stage - and we followed a strict format in which we both set forward our independent pre-prepared arguments and then engaged in a set number of retorts to each other's points.

It wasn't a debate of course. Our views never even came close to touching, therefore disallowing tangential reference by either side and making our rebuttals of each other's stances simply opportunities for much whooping, clapping, hissing and booing from the audience and little else.

Then came the surprise. The final segment of the debate was an opportunity for the audience to ask questions of each of us which were theoretically designed to get us to elucidate more fully on topics germaine to the discussion which the audience felt they required in order to reach a personal verdict. An adjudicator would ensure that the questions were relevant, non-repetitious and shared equally between the protagonists.

That didn't happen. All the questions were directed to me. Some had been prepared beforehand (you know - "Yes, but how absolutely sure can anyone be that geological dating is accurate?", "The eye - explain the eye!" etc) but others were genuine requests to explain terms like "biostratigraphic evidence", "radiometric white noise samples" and so on, as well as to expound on one of my principal points of difference with the creationist - that science illustrating the irrelevance of god to the process of evolution is not an attack on religious belief except to those whose belief has stopped them from understanding that process. It is simply a statement of fact with demonstrable and neutral proofs to back it up. Offence must be taken, in other words, and isn't being given. Moreover, religious adherence to creationist belief must counter every proof to be as valid scientifically and fails woefully to do so. The few attempts my opponent made, all easily rebutted, demonstrated this admirably. It is as incompatible with reason as a persistence in believing that the sun is hauled across the heavens by Helios, the easy rebuttal of which is not intended to make out that all Helios-worshippers are evil, but that they are simply factually in error.

I lost the debate on a show of hands by a factor of 10 to 1. But I received a small string of people (maybe 7 or 8 ) afterwards who thanked me for helping them realise how foolish they had been and how much they needed to read more. My opponent was visibly infuriated by this (despite his standing ovation and a few hundred who lined up to buy his book and shake his hand afterwards). All pretence at being civil on his part ended abruptly at that point. That in itself told me what was really going on in that "debate", and how in fact it was I who had "won".

Well, I suppose my point was also how one adjudges victory and defeat in these situations as well. My aim was to appeal to reason, and if I failed to make the slightest impact on either my opponent's argument or our audience's views then I would simply have put it down to just what you said - closed minds all round.

However my opponent had different expectations. Anything less than retaining his full followship represented disaster to him, and I knew why. Underneath all the rhetoric with these people is a nagging certainty that they are wrong - and the longer they find they have to invent and contort logic to defend their position the further they plunge into that scizophrenic state of being further entrenched in one's views while simultaneously seeing them destroyed through logic over and over again. It is an embittering process, and this bitterness is expressed when anything - and I mean anything - reminds them of their resultant insecurity and the tenuous hold they retain over their logical faculties the more they invest in their abilitiy to persuade. The few waverers who advertised they had been influenced by my argument represented to him the uncomfortable prospect that even his ability to persuade was lacking. He left the hall a defeated individual, and he knew it, no matter how many shook his hand afterwards.

That's a huge win, let's be honest. I usually don't expect anyone (even the undecided) to attend a debate and really be swayed by the end, so I think you did phenomenally well.

Treat2, you recently replied to a post of mine in a different thread without really hearing out my argument in full but I will repeat it more thoroughly here and I recommend you give it a full chance before assuming you know what I am arguing for.

The numbers analogy is a very nice way of visualizing this but I am confident that even if we concede 1: the existence of a creator, we can still debate them quite reasonably. The problem I have with your numbers example is that you say the theist is at 2, but I say that most theists are at 3, or even 4, 5, 6, 7 or however far you have to actually go from just the belief in a creator to the terribly flawed religions of the world. Many theists believe directly in religions like christianity and other anthropocentric ideas. For the sake of this argument I will say that 1 is the existence of a creator, 3 is the belief in a religion such as christianity, and 2 is that this creator gives a shit about us. Even if we concede 1 to a theist, we can still argue how the entire universe as we know it conflicts with 2. Black holes, asteroids, the complete insignificance of us compared to the massive cosmological formations, life only existing in relatively rare places within this universe. See, the theistic argument is so weak that even if we concede 1, there are still ways to argue against all the other jumps of irrationality it takes to get to organized religion.

I did just realize that most people called creationists believe that some creator, created life, but that is just a silly notion . Anyways, I still like the idea of conceding a creator of the universe and it still being highly improbable that theists are right.

Madmax958 - I understand exactly the point you made and agree completely with your approach, though I admit it is wasted when your interlocutor has no respect for logic anyway. In my own experience however such an argument as you propose is one of the more effective available to a rational person in convincing otherwise intelligent people that the logical flaw in their delusion is serious enough to warrant a total rethink of everything they have presumed in relation to their religious faith.

Don't mind treat2 - his admission that he doesn't read the full text of comments which he chooses all the same to criticise dismissively simply points to the fact that ignorance and bad manners are by no means the preserve of the theist. He seems to have begun already to lose whatever audience he had first attracted so it seems his own posts will shortly receive the same treatment as he dishes out to others though, from what I have read on these threads, with politer rebuttals than he is capable of himself.

I haven't a clue, though I'd wager it beats being an infantile dipstick with the social intelligence of a mollusk and the intellect of its mother .

Then again, what do I know about that? You tell me.

And here was me thinking you were capable of telling me something which might contradict my assessment of you.

But then I'm rarely wrong when identifying dipsticks, thicks and the mentally deficient - can't see why I was hopeful in this case. Must be just my good nature.

Yup!

One more thread spammed to shit by brain dead Atheists here.

And yeah, that's a correct
summary. Period.

1st, it's a 2-ways street.
2nd, I post plenty of serious posts
3rd, I'm NOT part of your Hive
4th, There's pleny that can be done on the other side of the street.

Do yourself a favor, and think what that would be. It's pretty damn obvious.

5th, do yourself a favor and
lighten up. You'll live longer.

At one point, in high school, there was a Teens for Christ rep who heard about my atheism. He heard this, because my friend was big into Jesus, and he wanted to see my ass handed to me.

We got into a debate about many things, Jesus' existance, creation event, young earth vs old universe, etc. But the one that sticks out in my mind was him trying to prove the flood.

He told me, that there existed, on the great pyramids, water damage. This was his 'winning argument,' I shit you not.

The amazing concept that it RAINS in the desert! And that it has rained quite often from here all the way back to the construction of the pyramids!

Four of his flock stopped going to TFC after I mentioned that rain-water is how cacti survive.

Edit: This thread is a lot more fun when read backwards.

Well done! You got/get it.

They shoulder having the burden of proving their claims, not Atheists.

Atheists are in no way obligated to accept any hypothetical scenarios they suggest. And as Dawkins so foolishly showed when debating Bill O. on Faux News, when doing so, he and Atheists EASILY can be made to appear as if they are idiots.

What has been shown by Dawkins to clearly idiotic, is to accept any unproven religious garbage and then having accepted it, deny it in a debate. You automatically loose, as gods can do ANYTHING AND the Theist debater can make ANY CLAIM and attribute the truth of it to gods which the Atheist has foolishly accepted and therefore can not deny.