Hello, my name is Jackson Wheat, and I had a discussion/debate with Kevin Anderson a couple weeks ago. Here is the link if you want to watch:
The topic was universal common ancestry (UCA); however, we barely discussed this topic during the debate. Anderson focused his opening largely on a few experiments, mostly involving flies and bacteria, and as I am a rather unskilled debater, I focused my rebuttal and a large portion of our discussion on the topics he brought up rather than the debate topic itself. When the conversation did finally turn to UCA, we either ran out of time or Anderson would never agree to relatedness among any organisms. For example, he would not agree if the Galapagos “finches” Geospiza magnirostris and G. conirostris were related, even though Answers in Genesis typically states that the “family” taxonomic level approximately equates to a baramin. Both “finches” are members of the family Thraupidae as well as the same genus. My intro was never discussed except by Anderson casually disregarding all fossil evidence, which must be strange for his colleagues at AiG like John Whitmore who have published in the secular literature on fossils.
I had another debate on UCA the next week, in which I do feel UCA was discussed more:
So, if I could impart one piece of advice, which I need to follow myself, it is keep the creationist on topic. In the creationist worldview, there is homology among closely related organisms, but beyond those organisms, any perceived homologies are just “common designs.” But what is the point at which this occurs? There is, as far as I have seen in the creationist literature, no answer to this. That question must be hammered during debates on UCA. Aron Ra has outlined this argument and termed it the “Phylogeny Challenge” (see his YouTube video). In total, my interaction with Anderson was very congenial, and I do certainly need to work on my debating skills.
