Bill O'Reilly punks Richard Dawkins

[Tiberius]

Are you also saying, that even though there seems to be strong evidence to support evolution, no one can be certain that it actually happened?

Yes. I've always argued that. Evolution is a scientific fact; it is not an absolute truth.

This was one of the five points where "The Young Turks" said that O'Reilly had the advantage in the debate. O'Reilly insisted that to not even allow for a discussion of religion vs evolution in the science class, presented Dawkins as unreasonable, pompous, close minded, and facist. It was an effective tactic that neutralized his argument.

No, it was a dishonest tactic that O'Reilly didn't even go into that much. Dawkins rebutted it, and turned it around on O'Reilly, saying that what O'Reilly wanted was to discuss one specific brand of religion in a science class. Dawkins isn't against the discussion of religion; he does it all the time. What he is against is the discussion of unscientific ideas in a science class. If you think that is fascist, do you think that preventing someone from discussing Biology in an English is also fascist? It's the same thing, just with different subjects.

O'Reilly used them effectively to neutralize Dawkins arguments. When Dawkins admited that science couldn't answer how everything came into existence, he was put on the defense throughout the rest of the debate.

He wasn't put on the defensive...that has been his position from the beginning. What O'Reilly (and apparently yourself) do not seem to understand is that there is no logical reason to substitute religion into science when science doesn't know. It isn't scientific, and it isn't helpful. By all means, discuss such things in a religious class, but not in science.