Kevin has a PhD in Microbiology from Kansas State University and Young Earth Creationist. He debated Jackson Wheat on Universal Common Descent. He was also in the film Is Genesis History? and is known for his work in Dinosaur soft tissue.
I believe he once debated @JacksonWheat1. Perhaps @Joel_Duff or @David_MacMillan knows more.
What do you think? Should I? Or not?
Dunno, but if you do you should study up on phylogenetics. You need to find out in advance what he thinks a âkindâ is, or at least a few specific groups that he âknowsâ are kinds. Universal common descent is way too broad a subject when he presumably believes that humans are unrelated to chimps. I also assume he believes that ravens are unrelated to doves.
Yes, definitely, it is always an opportunity to all public hear the both sides! Please do it!
I know you do a lot of dialogues with various people especially with those who you disagree with. I would be entertained by a debate, and so Iâm not opposed to that idea.
But Iâll throw out a few ideas to consider for something else (instead of or in addition to that)?
Maybe something that helps laypeople understand the way science works and the proper way to adjudicate scientific ideas (maybe something where there would be more agreement between the two of you and the audience could understand why there is agreement and understand the process for getting things into mainstream science even if they start at the periphery). Another idea would be a sort of public peer-review of each othersâ work to show what is meant by this process. A third idea is to steel-man the otherâs best arguments or something agreed upon beforehand.
Actually anything that would help with having more trust in the process of science (at least certain aspects of it) I would find highly valuable and interesting. Just one personâs vote.
Im happy for others to riff off of or correct anything if I did not describe that well.
Does it have to be a debate? Can you have it structured as a conversation instead?
No, unless either (i) you like wading through garbage and ignorance, or (ii) youâre planning to spend the time ignoring everything he says and educating any audience.
I think part of the answer should be how willing and how able (in terms of such things as time youâre able to commit) you are to commit to preparation for the event.
I think Ken Millerâs description (in your recent interview with him) of his preparation for his debate with Henry Morris provides a good example:
when i realized what was going on i practically panicked uh and decided i have to drop everything in terms of lab setup and i spent five weeks before the debate reading all of morris's books listening to audio tapes of his previous debates and quite frankly looking up every one of his individual very peculiar arguments arguing that the earth was young and that geology was mistaken and evolution was impossible and so forth and by the time the debate came i actually had and this is in the old this is before powerpoint this is the old days of regular old 35 millimeter slides i went to that debate with two carousels of over 150 slides ready to rebut every single one of his arguments which i did
Five weeks and 150 slides may be overdoing it for preparation for Anderson (who probably is not as proficient, or as heavily documented, as Morris), but the overarching sentiment stands â if it is worth doing, I think it is worth doing well. I think you owe it to both yourself, and to the scientific community.
I endorse this. If you go back and watch Andersonâs debates and videos, the stuff he says is the most banal creationist talking points. For example, he claims that the most common mutation that confers lactase persistence does so because it break a repressor gene. Thatâs absolutely false; the gene in which the mutation occurs codes for a helicase subunit, and the lactase persistence mutation is in an enhancer within an intron of that gene. So heâs wrong on two fronts: The mutation doesnât inactivate the gene in which it occurs, and that gene is not for a lactase repressor. And he could learn all of this with thirty seconds of google but would rather just repeat the nonsense talking point anyway. In my opinion, someone like that is not worth the time unless you plan to basically ignore him except to call out the obvious lies, and focus on saying what you want to the audience.
I agree with the many concerns people have raised above about debating him and about the debate format. A âconversationâ format would in principle allow you to force him to respond to you on some points (âyou mean, you really donât think that salmon and tuna fish have a common ancestor?â). But it has to have a forceful and fair moderator to keep him from talking over you. He will want to debate âuniversalâ common ancestry with an emphasis on the âuniversalâ. Perhaps he will refute the âtreeâ by pointing out the existence of hybridization or horizontal gene transfer, and then declaring victory. And any evidence you point to, he will explain away as Common Design, when that is an explanation for all we see, but alas also predicts all we donât see as well (it explains why elephants are small, pink, and fly around pollinating flowers).
I agree. There needs to be a focused topic in order for the discussion to be productive. Common ancestry between humans and other apes would be the perfect topic given the wealth of observations both from fossils and genetics.
I should also suggest that the venue matters. There are places I will not appear because the hosts have a history of distorting what is said after the fact, to the point of editing video in a deceptive manner. So if this question was to me, my answer would be âYes, I would be happy to debate Dr. Anderson, provided that we can agree on a venue and a very narrow topic.â And then spend the debate ignoring most of what Dr. Anderson says while starting each thing I say by quickly pointing out the litany of factual errors in the last thing he said, and then making whatever point I want to make on the agreed upon topic.
This is the venue: Swamidass and Guzman: The Science of Universal Ancestry
Oh, Guzmanâs cool, no worries there I think.
If you like debates, definitely.
If not, maybe still if you think you can do something productive with the time in front of the audience youâll have. Putting yourself, as both a supporter of current science and a man of faith, in front of an audience convinced that those two things are logically incompatible, might be helpful to some of them.
If you think your time there would do more to promote creationism than promote good science, or you donât have time, or you just arenât interested enough, then donât. No one with an opinion that matters will think less of you for not âdebatingâ a creationist.
@Joe_Felsenstein makes an excellent point to the importance of framing: Establish the narrowest range of common ancestry he rejects, then make the debate about that range exclusively. So if he rejects, as I assume he does, the common ancestry of all mammals, then any discussion of the common ancestry of all life is pointless. Narrowing it even further to common ancestry of humans and chimpanzees would obviously be ideal.
This is actually one of my biggest complaints about YECs in general, they reject things that are easily demonstrated, but instead of listening to that demonstration insist on running to the hard stuff. Debating the plausibility of abiogenesis is fair enough in conversation with someone like Sy Garte, but not someone who thinks the earth is <10ka.
Finally, I may have been the one who suggested your name for this⌠Sorry about that.
This is what Jackson Wheat did a few months back, and it resulted in a pretty funny few minutes where Jackson was like âok, do dogs and wolves share common ancestry? what about dogs and coyotes?â and so on, back and forth, and Anderson would not acknowledge any common ancestry beyond dogs and wolves. Just "I donât know, I donât have an opinion"ed the whole thing.
Thatâs why you need an example he rejects, and Hominini is a great choice for that. Also to the point of framing: It is important to establish, by agreement, the expectations of common ancestry first. And really, how can he say he opposes common ancestry if he doesnât know what common ancestry predicts? Never provide evidence for something in a debate until youâve agreed on what that evidence would mean. Evidence without agreed meaning is useless in debates, evidence with agreed meaning is fatal.
So either he agrees that XYZ would be strong evidence for common ancestry, and then you show XYZ, or he refuses to agree to XYZ, in which case you hammer his inability to actually form a position. Either way, you win. And I say âwinâ intentionally, because debates arenât about who is right, they are about who has the best command of rhetorical tactics.
Thatâs the ultimate problem. Kinds are just based on opinion. For that matter, all taxonomic levels above species is based on opinion, but scientists arenât pretending there are objective criteria for determining if two species belong to the same genus (other than phylogenetic relationships). We could decide tomorrow that humans, gorillas, chimps, and bonobos all belong in the same genus and this wouldnât break any rules. This is where cladistics becomes a bit more useful.
^^^^^^^This. Demanding agreement on discussing a single relevant paper would be better still.
Thatâs a good suggestion as well. You could also each share bullet points so you can both be informed on one anotherâs arguments before the discussion begins. Gotcha moments may be entertaining, but not educational.
Itâs like youâre trying to have an actual, formal debate! Online, with creationists? What a strange notion!