From some organization called Dare2Debate.net, which I don’t know but seems loosely affiliated with the late Duane Gish, we get a list of the ten atheists most wanted for debate.

Their “challenge”:

Objective: To schedule and promote a one-day Creation Conference to be held in conjunction with each proposed debate. Each conference will be held on a Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and the debate, if it happens (if the opponent accepts the challenge), will take place that night in the same facility. The conferences will be held in the following cities…. Norman, Oklahoma @ the University of Oklahoma

They give a phone number.

To accept the challenge, call 1-877-2DEBATE.

When you call it (I called via Skype just to check), you get a message that “You have dialed a number that cannot be reached.” I suppose that’s a metaphor for the mentality of these creationists.

What good company I’m in! But I’m sad that they could find nothing better to pwn me with than this: “Jerry Coyne, professor of biology at the University of Chicago, runs a web site [at least they got that right] called ‘Why Evolution is true’ and has written a book entitled the same.” OMG: I’m humiliated! At least they could have dumped on me the way they did on Pinker: “With a smug look and condescending voice, Harvard professor Steven Pinker says, ‘The idea we were put here for some purpose is ignorance. . “. Of course, anybody who knows or sees Pinker realizes that he doesn’t produce smug looks, and his voice is not condescending but passionate.



What am I afraid of? Nothing, you lamebrains, except that debates aren’t the way to settle the question of evolution, which we already know is true. They are exercises in rhetoric and showmanship, with the creationist debaters engaging in the “Gish Gallop,” as Genie Scott called it. I much prefer to engage the questions of creation vs evolution in either public lectures (where I do take questions) or, preferably, in print, as in the article I wrote on Intelligent Design for the New Republic, “The faith that dare not speak its name.” That brought me literally hundreds of positive emails from readers and effected several conversions to evolution.

With articles, books, or longish lectures, the reader/viewer can contemplate the issues at leisure, which is really the only way to come to weigh the evidence dispassionately.

Oh, and debates give creationists an undeserved credibility. It’s like debating a homeopath or a flat-earther.

I received the most wanted list from professor Peter Boghossian, also one of the “wanted,” who was bursting with pride (“We made it!” he crowed). When I asked Peter if he’d ever consider such a debate, he responded, “I don’t debate anyone until they’ve passed the defeasibility test.”

The test was devised by Matt McCormick, who defines it thusly:

So in the spirit of John Loftus’ Outside Test for Faith , I propose a test. Before I or any other doubter, atheist, skeptic, or non-believer engages in a discussion about the reasons for and against God, the believer must look deep into his heart and mind and ask this question: Are there any considerations, arguments, evidence, or reasons, even hypothetically that could possibly lead me to change my mind about God? Is it even a remotely possible outcome that in carefully and thoughtfully reflecting on the broadest and most even body of evidence that I can grasp, that I would come to think that my current view about God is mistaken? That is to say, is my belief defeasible? If the answer is no, then we’re done. There is nothing informative, constructive, or interesting to be found in your contribution to dialogue. Anything you have to say amounts to sophistry. We can’t take your input any more seriously than the lawyer who is a master of casuistry and who can provide rhetorically masterful defenses of every side of an issue. She’s not interested in the truth, only is scoring debate points or the construction of elaborate rhetorical castles (that float on air). In all fairness, we must demand the same from skeptics, doubters, and atheists. They are just as guilty of conflict if they rail against religious beliefs for lacking rational justification, but in turn there are no possible considerations that could ever lead them to relinquish their doubts.

Peter considers this idea to be one of the “most important to come down the pike in a long time.” And I do think that Loftus’s related argument, in which he says that believers must apply the same standards to their own faith that they use when rejecting other faiths, is a great contribution to the science/religion debates. And do note the last paragraph of McCormick’s quote, which argues that an evolutionist can debate only if you’re open to evidence and argument against evolution—and presumably for religion. Well, as I’ve always said, I am open to evidence for God and the truth claims of particular religions, and I’ve specified what would provisionally convince me of their existence. And all evolutionists are open to good arguments against the fact of evolution. We just haven’t seen any. (Some, like P. Z. Myers, have specified that there is no evidence of any sort that could convince them of a god’s existence, and we differ on this issue.)

But you couldn’t convince me of these things in a debate: it requires lots of documentation and observation that isn’t on tap in a short exchange of views.

Peter added this in his email, ” [If] someone wants to debate you, just have them take the defeasibility test. 100% of potential debate opponents will go away.”

There I don’t agree, and for two reasons. First, some believers claim that they are open to changing their minds, and have given on this website the evidence that would convince them. (Whether one believes them or not is another issue.) In fact, many believers, including former pastors like Mike Aus, Jerry DeWitt, John Loftus, and Dan Barker, have given up religion when they rationally considered the arguments against it.

So I don’t think that 100% of opponents will go away.

Second, those opponents, since they’re already practiced in lying for Jesus, have a strong incentive to lie about accepting the defeasibility test so they can get you on the platform with them.

The fact is that debates are not the place to settle issues of science. I would no more debate a creationist than I would debate a fellow scientist in public about whether speciation is largely sympatric (occurring in one area) or more often allopatric (occurring in populations separated by geographic barriers). Such debates occur, and the issues weighed and often settled, in public lectures and scientific papers.

If you want to debate me about evolution, just read my book and publish a written response. Good luck.