Debate materials

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

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"This house believes that natural selection plus mutation fail to adequately account for evolution."

Get your English Department to challenge your Biology Department to debate this proposition. The Biology Department has everything it needs: 150 years of accumulated theories and data. What does the English Department need? This site, and copies of our sponsor's books.

The key to having fun over this lies in the word "adequately." What does that mean in this context? Lacks proof of being the mechanism of evolution? Here you can draw on "Big Guns Take On Darwin" in our "Critiques of Darwinism" section. Fails to account for human evolution? For this you can check out Alfred Wallace's papers on the subject. Or fails to provide a basis for the self, which you expect of an "adequate" creation story--see our "Humanities & evolution" section.

This should sharpen wits on both sides of the aisle, providing an excellent exercise for brighter students and bringing the attention of both students and staff to the issues.

Send us transcripts of any such debates, and we can post them here. Also alternative wordings of the proposition, and any other materials you think might be useful.