For example, I’m not a big fan of the Intelligent Design thesis. Treated as maths, I think it’s fatally informal; treated as science, I think it adds nothing but unnecessary complexity to our models of the universe.

Since my objections are mainly based on the logic and the facts, I could be won over by either:

1) a rigorous presentation of ID maths
2) a predictive model that incorporated ID as an essential part

By contrast, one ID supporter I discuss this stuff with says that his biggest reason for supporting ID is that it at least tries to include God. Mainstream science is literally atheistic in the sense of not discussing deities much.

If scientists ever discovered rock-hard evidence of God, or if he could be persuaded that science was not atheistic in any stronger sense, he’d presumably have no need for ID.

What are your sticking points? What are the hypotheticals that could lead you past them?

I was very frustrated because several times, the Creation side seemed stumped by the Evolution side, when it was clear they were just throwing words out there.

I think neither side did very well in responding to the other’s remarks on this topic. I think Comfort and Cameron could have done much worse than they did (I thought they would), it wasn’t really good, but I have heard much worse.

I definitely agree that debates like this only tend to make people fight and those that attend them are already set in their views.

Blogs and forums are actually quite good in this respect. The downside is that it’s rather easy to lose the thread.

On the topic of Evolution/Creation debate, I’ve come to believe that this is not the forum to convince people to change their minds. It must be a one on one teaching. People who participate in – or attend – debates usually have already chosen their side and are not convinced, but rather disappointed if their side doesn’t win.