Jack the Bodiless

It's also possible that Smith "refused" to debate Strobel for the same reason that Stephen J. Gould "refused" to debate Kent Hovind.

Hovind claimed victory by default when Gould didn't show. Hovind had ensured this outcome by simply not inviting Gould to the debate. As Gould said afterwards, "I have never heard of the man".

I'm not saying this IS the reason, but I haven't yet encountered any limit to the depths of duplicity that certain Christian apologists will sink to.

Harrumphrey

I agree with you. Even if you succeeded in putting an idea in a theist's brain, you can't change the brain itself. The intellectual power required to think rationally and evade the psychological seductions of religion must be self-sustaining and inherent. Debating is pointless, you're right, excepting that it can be therapeutic as well as good mental exercise because it forces one to examine, refine and sharpen one's own thoughts and arguments.

Gooch's dad

So some pastor claimed that Smith refused a debate?

YAWN

Genesis, do you happen to have a better source for this claim than a pastor claiming this? I could find no reference on the web for anything about Smith refusing a debate with Strobel.

Rhea

I like the debates best in writing. To weed out the pollution as described above by audience "participation".

When a question is dodged in writing, the question remains, dangling like a signal flag on a ship. It can't be ignored, it must be addressed. Hubris is exposed by it's own glaring discord. Qotes can be justaposed with rebuttals - and with themselves. Handwaving, distraction, smoke and mirrors - all are hamstrung by the opportunity to reply to a written account.

Yes, a written debate is worth a hundred oral ones, IMO. An oral presentation of a written debate would be a grand thing.

Beetle

I don't think the point of the debate is to change the thinking of the opponent. The attainable objective is to stir thinking in the audience. If that were truly pointless, there wouldn't be so many deconversion stories in the secular lifestyle forums.

stryder2112

Well, here are a number of highly unflattering reviews at the sec web:

here, here, and here.

Stryder

Fiach

That is interesting and enlightening. I saw the overwhelming Christian majority applauding the Fundy's barmy arguments and booing the Atheists cool rationality as frustrating. I admit I had not considered that the few Atheists allowed were irrelevent. What is important is that a several hundred fundies heard rational arguments for the first time. Or second time, and this could precipitate thinking. Thinking is the greatest enemy of fundamentalism and indeed of religion in general.

Good counterpoint.

Fiach

Drew J

I think perhaps this is why Smith declined.
And maybe also this site also which talks about an alleged fine tuner.

Yahzi

Micheal Shermer, of Skeptic Magazine, disagreed with him. Right up until he had his own debate with Dr. Kent "Dino" Hovind. And now he says the same exact thing you (and everybody else) says.

Skeptics are not afraid to debate theologians, creationists, etc. They do debate them, constantly: it's called science. It's the religious ones that recognize they are being crushed in that arena, and want a change of venue.

Yahzi

From that link:

Hard to debate with that, isn't it?