Debating Fascists
Rebecca Watson (Skepchick) | 24 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4px0MUlTvBk
Oh, the debate between the Biologist who happens to be an Evolution believer, and Creationists is ideally supposed to consist in him (or her, but Dawkins and Myers aren't ladies) educating, and Creationists being audience.
Nice take on what debate means.
The implication is that the general public, the guys we go to as "audience" when we provide content, are divided into one huge solidly evolutionist majority who won't be persuadeded by the creationist no matter what he says and a minority who is creationist and either willing and capable or not of getting educated.
Or maybe not. The implication may instead be, the audience part of the evolutionists are carefully shielded from actually hearing the debate.
Which is what you guys (and gals, I recall Genie Scott making a point of telling evolutionists that creationists are too stupid to debate) are to a big degree actually doing.
I might say that this shows that guys and gals have different temper when it comes to debates. It's not so much a gal thing. Come to think of it, the only gal I've seen debating Creationists is Gutsick Gibbon.
Now, my take on what a debate ideally looks like is:
- Creationist and Evolutionist sides both find themselves championed by people with debate appetite
- Audience consists of both sides and of undecided
- If the general public isn't shielded from the debate, I consider that some of each side would join the other, it might even be more common among debaters than among audience, and the undecided would eventually tend to go with the one having the stronger argument.
Unfortunately, a certain Genie Scott has lobbied heavily for the slogan "there is no debate" ... in other words, for cancelling whatever debate there is to shield the public from it.
Was an evolutionary biologist 0:24 able to meaningfully educate and 0:26 persuade an audience of young earth 0:29 creationists, for instance, or was the 0:32 attempt less than useless with the 0:34 debate actually elevating creationism to 0:37 be an equal philosophy on par with 0:42 evolution.
Well, 10/10 for intellectual snobbery.
If philosophies aren't a totally vain pursuit, they cannot be equal. But equally, if debate and democracy (in some sense of the word) are not vain pursuits, they must be treated as equal.
The debate debate is back now 2:43 because people have learned that debate 2:46 is a money printing machine online, 2:48 especially if you adopt the Jerry 2:50 Springer tactic of hosting basically 2:53 brawls between groups of extremists or 2:56 otherwise loathsome people.
I'm noting that Slate, Popular Science, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry are perhaps money printing machines as well.
Are you arguing for an authoritarian régime where intellectual content is banned from spreading further than the coffee table and making any money?
That begs the question what you live off ....
5:03 Jordan Peterson is impossible. He is telling everyone to be more virtuous, defines virtue in basically stoic terms, supports Christianity because it's more stoic than atheism is, is on the fence on actually becoming a Christian or not ...
I definitely believe in the Immaculate Conception. I recently defended why Jesus had to have a mother without sin and Mary didn't, which is one thing some Protestants bring up, well, Mary wasn't making a public ministry. If She didn't need the same dose of security, in the psychological and social sense, She had less need of a parent being exactly like Herself morally.
But then, I actually am a Christian. And definitely NOT a Stoic.
13:00 I'm pretty sure Candace Owens would have found some ground with Edwin.
Is an Edwin point the opposite of a Godwin point?
I think you bringing up those other 19 opponents of Mehdi Hasan is pretty close to a Godwin point ... and an illicit one when it comes to Conor James Estelle.
Citing Times of India:
- ... Estelle openly supported autocracy and responded with "Yeah, I am," when asked if he would describe himself as a fascist ...
- When asked about Nazi persecution, Estelle dismissed concerns by saying he "frankly doesn't care" about being called a Nazi, and that the Nazis "persecuted the church a little bit." When pressed about the Holocaust and Jewish persecution, he admitted it was "bad" but quickly moved on.
Why was he even asked about Nazi persecution in the first place? He admitted to being Fascist, not Nazi. He said he didn't get insulted by being called a Nazi, but he didn't say he was one.
He may have known about the Nazis depriving the Catholic bishop of Dresden of the driving licence, for speeding when bringing the sacraments to a dying man, but he seems to have ignored the execution of an Austrian nun, who as a nun had made a poem against Hitler and was executed because she refused to step back and be a nun no more ...
Asking a Fascist about his regrets for Nazism is like asking a Social Democrat or Bernie Sanders if he doesn't hate the Russian Revolution and Communism. Well, if you are exposed too much to a question that doesn't make remotely sense, you get jaded. That's all there is to Conor Estelle not being insulted when called a Nazi, as far as I can see.
14:20 Was Conor Estelle one of the guys who flagged Edwin?
The fact that he called himself a Fascist doesn't guarantee that.
Was Conor Estelle one of the guys who told Mehdi Hasan to get back?
Dito. The fact that he called himself a Fascist doesn't guarantee that.
On the fund raiser, Conor Estelle mentioned the views he expressed were legal. I suppose that means he not even once said a word that could be reasonably interpreted as incitation to hatred. Obviously some very unreasonably take his self identification as a Fascist to mean that, but that's totally beside the point.
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