During the last six or eight months, I have received more calls about debates between creationists and evolutionists than I have encountered for a couple of years, it seems. I do not know what has inspired this latest outbreak, but I am not sure it is doing much to improve science education.
Why do I say this? Sure, there are examples of "good" debates where a well-prepared evolution supporter got the best of a creationist, but I can tell you after many years in this business that they are few and far between. Most of the time a well-meaning evolutionist accepts a debate challenge (usually "to defend good science" or for some other worthy goal), reads a bunch of creationist literature, makes up a lecture explaining Darwinian gradualism, and can't figure out why at the end of the debate so many individuals are clustered around his opponent, congratulating him on having done such a good job of routing evolution -- and why his friends are too busy to go out for a beer after the debate.
The worse situation is that he and his friends think he did just fine, and remain ignorant of the fact that the majority of the audience left the auditorium convinced that evolution was "a theory in crisis."
What usually happens in these debates? Usually they take place at the invitation of the other side, and usually they take place in a religious setting or minimally under religious sponsorship. That's the first problem. The audience that is most anxious to come, and that will be recruited the most heavily, is the one that supports the creationist. In the comparatively rare situation where the debate is held on a college campus, the supporters of good science and evolution are invariably in the minority in the audience, whereas the creationist supporters seem to exercise every effort to turn out their crowd. Don't be surprised to see church busses from many local communities lined up outside the debate hall. In some cases, the sponsors advertised only among the faithful, posting up only a handful of flyers on campus. Guess who came?
The second problem is that the evolutionist debater has an upstream battle from the start. Evolution is a complex set of ideas that is not easily explained in the sound-bite razzle-dazzle of the debate format. Evolution applies to astronomy, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, biology, geology -- you name the field, and evolution will relate to it, like as not. Most audiences have an abysmal understanding of basic science. How are you going to bring an audience up to par? The goal of a debate (I assume) is to teach the audience something about evolution and the nature of science. This is possible in a debate format, but it is difficult to do well, because it is not easy to do quickly.
Consider that your opponent will offer as proof that evolution did not occur that Stephen Jay Gould has said that the fossil record does not support gradual evolution. A good debating strategy: he is citing a famous evolutionist source, which gives him credibility. Plus he is confusing Gould's statement about the rate of evolutionary change with an unmade conclusion about whether evolution occurs. Plus he is operating from the creationist enthusiasm for authority ("if famous scientist X says it, it has to be true.") Gould, like any scientist, can be wrong on any point. We don't accept "famous scientist X's" conclusions just because of the fame of the maker, but because of the quality of the argument.
