Why face-to-face debates are wrong

When you debate honestly with a shameless liar, reality has already lost. Public debates are garbage if truth is not the first, last, and only goal for both sides. The deck is stacked from the beginning in favor of poor logic and outright falsehood.

I just got back from a debate about "whether gay rights should triumph over Biblical morals". It was a travesty, and entirely predictable. On one side was Hector Avalos, a reasonable and soft-spoken professor of Biblical studies. On the other side was some bigoted yahoo with a radio talk show, named Jan Mickelson. Can you guess who was on which side?

Avalos came out with pretty standard, solid arguments. There was some interesting material about the history of the times when the Bible was written. The problem is that he talked softly and used big words, and he was honor-bound to be reasonable. Mickelson talked several decibels louder, had a folksy manner about him, and cracked jokes to distract the crowd from the vacuousness of everything he said. He monopolized the time, he got most of the crowd cheering for him, and he used a tactic called the Gish Gallop.

The Gish Gallop (named after the creationist Duane Gish) is a simple and very effective debate tactic: if you hit the audience with lies and distortions fast enough, nobody will be able to distinguish truth from lies. It works great when you have the audience rooting for you, and it can only be used by people who don't care about reality.

And make no mistake, this guy was all about the lies. According to Mickelson, the earth was created a few thousand years ago and gay people are a hoax. This is not an honest man. And that's how he won the debate.

This is why debates should be done in writing. It may not be as theatrical, and it may require people to read (oh no!), but in writing the truth stands a chance. A deceitful debater can't rip off a bunch of lies and expect to get away with it in writing. Points can be explained as more than sound bites in writing.

Face to face public debates need to die, so that honesty has a chance.