I understand what you mean but … seriously, you overestimate the rationalist skill of the average biologist TA in jeans. Even professors have a hard time making their scientific knowledge truly part of themselves. I don’t hold out much hope for TAs.
Don’t send out an average TA. Send out an ambitious, bright TA from a higher-ranked school (or just with good SAT scores, I understand the results are the same) who’s been vetted by P. Z. Myers for ability to debate well, explain well, and respond with scientific accuracy to standard lies. But send out a TA nonetheless, and make sure they’re dressed in jeans.
In other words, don’t give viewers the impression that creationists are to be taken seriously, right?
The thing is, because BHTV has previously limited itself to hosting diavlogs between mostly honest, mostly reasonable people about topics that haven’t been settled a hundred years ago, and because of the participation of scientists like Sean Carroll, merely taking part in a debate on BHTV gives that impression.
Okay, so send out a TA in jeans to respond. Seriously, I think that defuses the attempt to manufacture the appearance of serious debate.
I understand what you mean but … seriously, you overestimate the rationalist skill of the average biologist TA in jeans. Even professors have a hard time making their scientific knowledge truly part of themselves. I don’t hold out much hope for TAs.
Don’t send out an average TA. Send out an ambitious, bright TA from a higher-ranked school (or just with good SAT scores, I understand the results are the same) who’s been vetted by P. Z. Myers for ability to debate well, explain well, and respond with scientific accuracy to standard lies. But send out a TA nonetheless, and make sure they’re dressed in jeans.
In other words, don’t give viewers the impression that creationists are to be taken seriously, right?
The thing is, because BHTV has previously limited itself to hosting diavlogs between mostly honest, mostly reasonable people about topics that haven’t been settled a hundred years ago, and because of the participation of scientists like Sean Carroll, merely taking part in a debate on BHTV gives that impression.