Mr. Jeff Cliff, BSc(CompSci) is a user on niu.moe. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

@pzmyers @bgcarlisle The alternative is escalation of violence and ignorance.

@jeffcliff @bgcarlisle No. The alternative to debate is smarter engagement with the audience you want to address.

@jeffcliff @bgcarlisle Anyone. Debate is an ineffective way to reach anyone.

@pzmyers @bgcarlisle and yet it does reach people. The 1860 Oxford evolution debate reached Hitchens, for example. We'd all be poorer had not it been effective with him.

@jeffcliff @bgcarlisle The Huxley/Wilberforce debate has been so thoroughly mythologized that citing it as a significant influence 150 years later to justify debate is really stretching it.

@bgcarlisle @jeffcliff Hitchens did not "see" or even read a transcript of the debate -- it doesn't exist. He was reading 3rd hand stories about the debate.