Nathaniel Jeanson and Herman Mays: A YEC-Evolutionist Debate

Want to invite him to an Office Hours? See: Organizing Office Hours. Also, point him to: Heliocentric Certainty Against a Bottleneck of Two?.

We need to get the word out about TMR4A because it is the autosome analogue of his mito-study, using much stronger mutational rate evidence.

Sure, I’ll reach out and invite him.

Hahahaha, yes you completely ruined it for me! :stuck_out_tongue:

I disagree. I noted in my brief glances two things.

  1. No one is asking him to engage with TMR4A. Why not? It is a direct falsification of his proposal, using the exact same method on autosomes.

  2. At the very end, Mays pressed him on the AIG belief statement, which obligates him not to acknowledge any falsifying evidence. Mays is cutoff. That should be the beginning of the conversation, not the end. Why not start with this?

This is really not a good thing. Scientists need to do a better job in engaging him. From this exchange, it seems that Jeanson won. He can claim he held his own. That is all he has to do, and it is likely true.

How can you say this? Dr. Mays outclassed him on the science. Dr. Jeanson had no coherent responses.

The work you’ve done with TMR4A is pretty new, I’d be surprised if many people outside of this forum have heard of it yet, much less be familiar enough to present it in a debate. If you write it all up into a paper then it can spread much more quickly.

Yeah that would have been good.

I definitely agree the exhange could have gone better. The opening presentations were mostly useless in the grand scheme of things, I would have preferred to see a 90 minute free-flowing conversation specifically talking about things like mutation rates, coalescence, etc. Really drilling into his arguments rather than presenting more general arguments against creationism. It picked up towards the end though, I think the final 30 minutes were good.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say that Jeason appeared to win though, I think most people would recognise how much time he spent dodging questions.

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How do you get to the after show party?

It is not about who is right. It is who is trusted and how it is sold. I have no doubt that Mays was right (or at least largely right) on the science, but what concessions did he get out of this? Will anyone in Jeanson’s camp hear this as anything but technobabble? If the answer is “no”, he one the public theatre hands down.

Working on it.

Pretty sure it will be full, but try messaging the hosts on g+, and/or comment in the live chat when it goes live.

https://plus.google.com/+SteveMcRae

The aftershow:

My short take:

“You didn’t read the book.”

“You don’t understand population genetics.”

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Aaron Ra is the new Christopher Hitchens.

Meh, I’m not so enthusiastic about him. He’s a bit too caustic for my taste. Makes for great “Aron Ra OWNS brainwashed xian!” videos, doesn’t really progress the debate. Nowhere near as eloquent and sophisticated as Hitch.

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Atheists do not need another Christopher Hitchens. You guys need some real peacemakers to get some press. That is our moment right now. People are tired of the conflict, and at times even scared about the divisions in society. They want peace.

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How about Stephen Pinker?

He is better than most, but not that engaged with the public. Right now we live in a fractured society that brings anxiety to everyone. People who are build bridges are important.

One of the best of your kind, though he is not yet famous, is Scott Lilienfeld from Emory University. Find people like him, and make them famous.

I watched half/most of it.
i have read the creatyioniost guys articles in magazines.
i thought he did a great job and the evolutionist stuttered too much over what he was trying to say. then both got into trivial details too much.
The evolutionist , as usual, insisted dNA is the trsil for biological relationships. yet common design would deny this and so the evolutionist is mnot making a point. Just a faith statement.
There is no limit to what common design could do in nature. any result can be from processes of a common design in biology.
In these debates they need to make a FEW killer great points and a FEW great counter points to the others killer points.
Otherwise its hardly a debate but just stating your points.
For a public its not very good but Jeanson would win any vote of a neutral audience.
Another thing was the evolutionist started, wasted our time, by striving to discredit the intellectual right of dissent opf his opponent and others like him.
THEN had the debate. He should of just left to be consistent.
it was embarrassing for me to watch him dISCREDIT himself by this high school attack.
IF YOU ACCEPT A DEBATE ON SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE BEHIND SOME SUBJECT then you can’t say the other guy is not scientific. !! THATS a real rule. It just looks like cheap shots because they are cheap shots!
I have seen worst origin debates with both sides at fault.

I can’t believe it @Robert_Byers but I totally agree with you on this.

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Of course it can, that’s why it’s in principal unfalsifiable, but most of us are interested in getting the best explanation for a phenomenon, not the only possible one. Common descent explains the pattern of neutral DNA differences between species far more readily than any model of “common design” yet presented.

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12 posts were split to a new topic: Introducing Herman Mays