(April 14, 2013 at 9:21 am)Esquilax Wrote:(April 14, 2013 at 8:54 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: Who do you count as credible opposition? During his last years with cancer Hitchens literally debated anyone in any venue. Whether or not you agree with the New Atheists or not, it's pretty hard to say they haven't engaged their opposition.
He's going to come up with issues on the "credible" part of that equation, given creationism's propensity to attract frauds with phoney degrees or no credentials whatsoever. That, and theology is possibly the biggest waste of time qualification there is. He may produce credible, for a given value of credible that every big name atheist has surpassed, but, well...
Back in the 1980s creationists started offering to debate evolutionists. For the first few years they took the bait. They never won.
The winner was decided by applause and no matter how lame the creationist was people applauded the confirmation of their beliefs. That these "debates" were held at places like Falwell U clearly biased the audience. Twenty years later the trap of debate was not realized by Hitchens.
Way back at least in the early 80s or older I happened to come across a debate between the top ranked US and British debate teams. It was held in the US. The British style of debate was so unamerican that they lost by audience applause. If it has been held in Britain I assume the British team would have won for not only the audience but for the stylistic differences. While I was watching it I kept asking why the Brits considered what they were doing was a debate.
